MakeUseOf » database

Make A Product Review Database With WordPress: Custom Post Types, Custom Fields, Featured Images & Widgets!

James Bruce — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 17:30:16 +0000

Last time I showed you how to create a simple events listing using perhaps the most powerful feature of WordPress 3.0 – custom post types. After some requests to develop this further, today we’ll be creating a product review database to tie together everything we’ve learnt so far.

You’ll be able to maintain a separate list of products using custom post types, each with an associated image, as well as some meta-info such as price, rating, specifications – and we’ll finish it all off with a way to display them in a sidebar widget and an index page.Sounds good? Read on.

Requirements:

You’ll need a working WordPress 3.0+ self hosted install, and this will make use of extensive PHP coding. I’ll give you the code, but you’ll need to be relatively comfortable with PHP and XHTML to adjust variable names to your needs or change the style. If you need a quick beginners course on CSS and XHTML, may I suggest our wonderful free beginners guide to download. I’d also suggest you use a cleanly coded but basic theme – the default Twenty-Ten or Twenty-Eleven theme is actually quite complicated to edit, so try this first on something simpler before trying to integrate with that.

Create Post Types

If you read last weeks tutorial, you should be somewhat familiar with creating a custom post type in WordPress. Copy and paste this base code into a new plugin, activate it, and begin adding some new products so we have a dataset to work with. (Note: If you’d rather just download the complete and full code now without trying to add things along the way, use this finished code instead. You can still follow along with the tutorial and customize it as we go)

It’s also wise to decide now what kind of meta-info you want to associate with each product. A database of digital cameras for instance might need:

Retail Price
Resolution
HD Video
Purchase Link
Rating

Rather than adding this info directly to the description of the product (the ‘post content’), we’re going to create custom fields to hold this info. On the add product screen, make sure you’ve enabled custom fields, then create a new field for each info set. You’ll only need to create new fields once – the next product you add you’ll be able to select the name of the custom field from the drop down box. Don’t forget to add a featured image, as well be using this to display alongside the info product later on.

Single Product Template

If you try to view one of your products now, you’ll probably get a 404 – Not Found error. To fix that, head into the permalinks settings of WordPress and just hit Save Settings once. Now when you view one of your new product entries, depending on your theme, you might see something a little plain. The title and description text are there, but what about all our custom meta info and the image?

To customize the single product views, we’ll need to customize a new template file called single-products.php – do this by duplicating your existing single.php so we have the groundwork in place and aren’t starting from scratch.

At this point, I’m going to make a very small change to the line that displays “Written by (author) on (date)”, so instead it just reads “Added to the database on (date)”. This is just so I can be sure template is working, and refreshing the single product page should show this change instantly.

Now, to add the featured post image we attached to the product, this one line should do it (I included style info too, in case you need it). I’ve posted the full code to my own single-products.php here, but remember it’s unique to my theme so simply copying that into your own theme directory may produce unexpected results.

The simplest way to add the meta info anywhere is to use:

…but this will only give us a very basic output list of key-value pairs. In order to do anything more complicated with the returned values (such as display a star-rating graphic), you need to grab all the values then iterate over them. [View the code here]:

In the example above, I’m checking each custom field name (the $key) to see if it’s called ‘Level’. If it is called level, instead of just echoing the value of the field back, I’m displaying a different graphical element based on the content. For any other custom fields, I’m echoing the value as it is, along with the name of the field (which is exactly what the_meta() does). Now my single product page looks like this:

I’m going to leave it there for single product views, as it really depends upon your own theme and what you want to achieve with it. For now, let’s move onto a sidebar widget to display… the 3 highest ranked products in the database?

Widget

To do this, I’ve slightly adjusted the code I gave you before in the post How to Write a Basic WordPress Widget, but instead of showing a single random post, I’ve adjusted it with the following [view the full code here]:

This will give me 3 posts laid out similar to the example screenshot below. If you’re not seeing any of your products displayed, check very carefully the section that says &meta_key=Rating to make sure you actually have a meta key of that name. Notice how I also chose to display the meta info associated with that product along with the featured thumbnail, but you can edit that particular code block to show whatever you like.

Product Archives or Listing

Finally, I also wanted to make an index/archives page, so that visiting http://yourdomain.com/products/ would show a simple list of all the products, similar to a blog index. The basic excerpt + post thumbnails style I showed you how to make in the How To Add Post Thumbnails To Your Theme article was mostly sufficient, but in order to customize it I duplicated the archive.php file in my theme and renamed it archive-products.php.

If you don’t already have an archives page, just duplicate index.php and rename it to archive-products.php. Again, by adjusting the article meta-info line and adding a call to the the_meta() somewhere, I got this:

Obviously, it looks a bit silly with both the archives and sidebar, and it could do with a bit more style adjustment, but I’ll leave that up to you!

That’s it from me today. You can view the complete full code online here – just copy and paste or download the entire thing into a file called products.php, and place it in your plugins directory. You should be able to potentially expand your WordPress blog into a database of anything now! It’s difficult to answer individual problems you might be having, but do please post in the comments if you’d like some help or would like to show your appreciation – a tweet or Facebook like would very much be appreciated, or even a mention on your blog if you decide to implement this. Thanks for reading, and don’t forget all the other WordPress tutorials we have!

How To Regularly Back Up Your Large MySQL Database with MySQLDumper

Ryan Dube — Fri, 13 May 2011 16:31:37 +0000

Having a growing, popular blog is not something that I’m accustomed to. I’ve always been in awe of Aibek and his tech staff, and how they always have a backup of MUO on hand whenever anything may go even slightly wrong. As I watch my own WordPress blog grow in both posts and user comments, I’m starting to eye my growing database with a wary eye. What happens if the server goes down, gets hacked or worse? Shouldn’t I be prepared for such a situation with a constant, ready backup of all posts and comments?

This is something that a few MUO writers have covered here over the years. Years ago, Aibek himself wrote about 4 tools that were available back then for backing up your database. More recently, Jeffry wrote about the Updraft WordPress plugin for backups, and Tim covered a few manual ways to do backups, such as with FTP.

I admit it, sometimes I’m lazy and if it’s not simple and easy I just don’t have time for it. Plus, I have MySQL databases that are non-Wordpress, so a WordPress-only plugin won’t work for me. After a bit of searching, I finally came across a brilliant free MySQL backup utility called MySQLDumper.

Installing MySQLDumper

Running MySQLDumper is actually easier than most applications you’ve installed on your web server. Unlike WordPress where you have to run an install utility, with MySQLDumper you just extract the Zip files into a subdirectory in your public web folder, and then call the index.html file from your browser. Here, I’ve copied all files to the “sqlbackup” folder on the web server.

In this example, to access it (accessing my local web server), the address would be “http://localhost/sqlbackup/“ If you’re installing this on your own web account, just replace “localhost” with your domain.

Once you access the index.html file in that folder, the “MySQLDumper Installation” screen comes up. This is actually more of a “configuration” than an installation. Just click your language and click “Installation“.

The installation procedure is simply setting up your database access parameters. If you want to use MySQLDumper to back up all of the MySQL databases on your server, then you’ll need to give it a user ID and password with access to all tables. You can either create a new user on each table just for doing backups, or give the web application root access.

Once you click on “Connect to MySQL“, the system will attempt to connect to each of the databases on your server and it will give you a status at the bottom.

That’s all there is to it! Once you click Next, you’ll find yourself on the main control panel of MySQLDumper.

Using MySQLDumper To Take Database Backups

The status of your databases, including space limits and usage, is all displayed on the main page. You can switch selected databases by using the dropdown box at the lower left corner of the screen.

Click on “Configuration” to see an overview of all of the MySQL databases on your system. Here, you can also customize SQL commands for each backup dump for individual databases.

Click on the Email tab inside the configuration area to set up delivery of your backup files via email. If your database isn’t too huge, and your email account doesn’t have a small attachment size limit, go for it. However, in most cases this will become impractical, especially if you have a very large and growing WordPress database.

If you have a huge database (or databases), and if you don’t want to store all of your backups on the server due to precious limited space, you can FTP the files to a remote location, like a free storage account or a PC you’ve set up at home as an FTP server just for this purpose. Every time you perform a backup, the file will be FTP’d to the location you’ve defined.

If you want to do a backup, just click on “Backup” from the main screen. Make sure the database that you want to back up is selected in the lower left corner, and then click “Start New Backup.”

You can watch as the status bars display the progress of the backup procedure. You’ll see the table names as they get backed up, the space required of the backup file, and percentage remaining per table and overall.

Once the backup is finished you can find the zipped files stored in the /work/backup/ folder inside the folder where you installed MySQLDumper. This web-based app also has the ability to quickly restore your database from any of your backup files in an instant. It also has a database browser that puts PhpMyAdmin to shame.

What really makes MySQLDumper stand apart from the crowd is it is specifically designed to handle huge databases. According to the website, it does this by getting around PHP script timeout limitations by breaking up the backup into segments, and then calls the script recursively until it completes the entire backup process, no matter how large your database is.

Have you ever given MySQLDumper a try? What do you think? What are your favorite tools to backup and restore your MySQL database? Share your insight in the comments section below.

OpenSubtitles – The Web’s Largest, Completely Free Searchable Subtitles Database

Tim Brookes — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 21:30:37 +0000

It’s a rather annoying moment when you realise that film, episode or documentary you downloaded (completely legally, of course) doesn’t come with the necessary subtitles.

For those who are hard of hearing or obsessed with world cinema, subtitles are a necessity. Step in OpenSubtitles.org, a vast database of subtitles that we’ve happened to mention previously.

The key is in the name, but OpenSubtitles.org aims to be as open as possible. This has allowed for a few features that give the website the edge over the competition.

Finding Subtitles

The home page is packed with info and small text, but if you’re simply after a quick download then you’ll be done in no time.

Finding the subtitles you’re after is a fairly straightforward process. On the main page, enter your search query and hit Search. You’ll immediately be taken to a list of possible films that match your query.

Once you’ve found the film you’re after you’ll be taken to the subtitles results for that film. The language of the subtitles you are downloading is indicated via the flag in the second column of the results.

Simply click on a result to learn more information, add a rating or comment or click Download (ZIP) to download your subtitles. Extract the archive (put the subtitles file in the same directory as the movie, for ease) and you’re good to go.

You can then use your favourite media player to choose the file you just downloaded as a subtitle track and finally enjoy your movie.

Openness

In line with the openness mantra that OpenSubtitles.org follows, there are a few other ways of getting hold of your subtitles. There happens to be an API for the website, which a number of applications take advantage of.

The list of supported media players is a fairly long one. It’s also refreshing to see some big-name projects on the list.

One such supported player is SMPlayer, a popular Linux media player which also works on Windows. Within SMPlayer is the ability to directly search OpenSubtitles.org using the file you are playing.

Simply click Subtitles then Find Subtitles on OpenSubtitles.org. Your results will be showed almost immediately, and can be directly downloaded with a click.

Another media solution that makes use of OpenSubtitles.org is Boxee, the media centre application which transforms your TV into an internet-ready entertainment centre. Simply click the closed caption (“CC” in a speech bubble) button and Boxee will automatically connect and display results.

There are currently more than 220 registered user agents making use of the API, so there’s a good chance you’ve already got software that supports OpenSubtitles.

There’s also the website’s own project, the OpenSubtitles MKV Player which only works on Windows. Much like the other programs, it is a player that connects and downloads subtitles for you (though there are better media solutions out there).

Uploads & Requests

If you’re a particularly patient individual with a love of helping out your fellow man then you might be tempted to upload subtitles. You don’t necessarily have had to slave away on each and every line, you just might find a version in your collection that the website doesn’t have.

Simply click the Upload link to be taken to the subtitles upload page. You will need to input a fair bit of information related to the film that you’ve subtitled, including the IMDB ID and how many frames per second (FPS) your version adheres to.

If you can’t find the subtitles you’re after then you can lodge a request, but you’ll need to register on the site before you can do so. You can also see what everyone else is after, and whether you can help out.

If all that’s not enough, then there’s also some add-ons for your browser. For iGoogle users, you can add an OpenSubtitles gadget, there’s also a Firefox subtitle matcher add-on and an Opera widget if you’re that way inclined.

Conclusion

There’s loads of subtitle search engines and databases online, but none quite offer the plug-and-play ease of OpenSubtitles.org. The use of an API to deliver the content directly within media players is second to none.

Whether you’re physically searching yourself or have a media player that uses the API, you probably won’t find a faster way to download subtitles online.

Do you have any favourite subtitle spots? Do you use Boxee or SMPlayer and rely on the ability to directly download subtitles? Share the love in the comments.

4 Online Places To Find International Statistics Quickly

Justin Pot — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 16:31:07 +0000

We live in an amazing world that is changing quickly. Numbers are one way to grasp what it all means, and the web is full of them. Whether you’re writing a paper for school, putting together a post for your blog or just trying to win an argument with a friend, knowing where to find the international statistics can make all the difference. Population, GDP, Internet usage and fertility rates are all part of the larger story of where humanity is heading.

There’s no end of out-of-context information on blogs and websites, so it’s important to find raw sources of information. You know, information from a primary source instead of an aggregate source. This information empowers you to draw your own conclusions, instead of leading you to them. I’ve highlighted a few such sources below, so let’s check them out.

UNdata

The various branches of the United Nations create staggering amounts of international statistics on a regular basis. Data.un.org gives the people of earth access to this information. Check out UNdata and you’ll see a simple search engine database, as well as a selection of the newest information.

Run a search and you’ll quickly notice there’s a lot of information here. The search engine interface makes finding the information you’re looking for quick, though the amount of information there can be overwhelming. Check this site out if you’ve got a particular statistic in mind.

The CIA World Factbook

If you’re looking for an overview of a certain country you should really check the CIA World Factbook. This site provides the basic numbers of every country and territory on Earth, including a brief history and more stats than you probably need.

Go ahead and check out the World Factbook right now. You an even browse the world’s countries by flag.

If you’re anything like me you’ll even stumble upon territories you didn’t know existed (like this tiny French territory south of Newfoundland). You will then spend far too much time reading about them.

Internet World Stats

This one’s a great collection of Internet usage stats from around the world. The digital divide is a well-publicized phenomenon; these numbers can give you a fantastic amount of context for it. All the information they have is cited, offering a look at where the world’s Internet users reside.

Information is broken down by continent, so be sure to explore a bit to find out how your country ranks. Go ahead and check out Internet World Stats.

Wikipedia

Anything can be found on Wikipedia, so its inclusion on this list should surprise no one. Pull up an article about any country or territory and you’ll find a handy sidebar:

This overview is a great way to quickly find stats such as population or GDP.

Not sure if you can trust Wikipedia? Any article worth its word count is heavily cited, so check the article’s source to find out where it’s coming from.

Conclusion

Numbers, like quotations, can be taken out of context. That’s the point Mark Twain was trying to make when he mis-attributed “Lies, damned lies and statistics” to the 19th Century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. This doesn’t mean numbers are useless, though; just that you should fact check them.

These sources give you the chance to do just that, but there must be more sources out there. Feel free to share any you know of in the comments below, or to share any interesting numbers you might stumble upon.

Oh, and by the way: the chart at the top of this article represents the top ten countries in a certain category. Feel free to offer guesses below!

The 2 Best Non-Techie Ways To Backup WordPress Blog

Tim Lenahan — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 21:31:36 +0000

If you run a blog and you care about your data, you probably keep backups of your blog, right? What’s that? You don’t? Well, you should. If nothing has happened to your blog yet, you may be one of the lucky ones. What if your site crashes or is hacked? Your webhost keeps backups? That’s good, but what if something goes wrong on their end? It has happened.

Here at MakeUseOf we have covered the topic of how to backup a WordPress blog before. In fact, I plan on referencing a couple of the articles in this article. What I have found through reading and experience is that there are multiple methods of storing your site files once you have backed them up.

I would like to share some of those methods to backup a WordPress blog, some orthodox and some unorthodox, and share some of the pluses and minuses of each. Then I would like to share a few quick tips in order to have the safest backup possible.

First let me mention that there are several different parts to your blog that you will want to back up:

The database tables.
The files such as pictures.

Each part of your blog is able to be stored in the 2 methods I am about to share.

1. Back Up Your WordPress Blog Locally

One of the possibilities when it comes to storing backed up website files is to back them up locally on your own computer.

Files:

In order to back up the files, you can use tools such as FTP clients FileZilla or Cobian Backup. Just access your site via FTP and copy over everything to your local machine.

Databases:

In order to back up your databases one of the best plugins to go with is WP DB Manager (makes both backing up and restoring a cinch). A local copy gives the best control and flexibility.

The downside about a local backup is that you’re also vulnerable to a computer crash. What are the odds of both your site crashing and your computer at the same time? I don’t know but it does happen. You may want to also back up your local files remotely with a service like Mozy.

2. Back Up Your WordPress Site To A Third Party Service

Another option is to rely on a third party to host your backed up WordPress files.

Files:

The tip at the end of the last method is a good example of using a third party to keep a backup of your website’s files using Mozy. You can also save your files using Google Docs now that they allow you to save and access any type of file.

Just zip all the files (keeping the directories the same) and save them there, depending on how much data you have. However, for an easier solution, keep reading past the database section.

Databases:

A good example is how Online Backup for WordPress works when it backs up the WordPress database to the service’s server instead of your own computer.

Both of the third party solutions for files and for the databases may work fine for you but if you want an easier solution that covers both, I have the plugin for you. Check out the Automatic WordPress Backup plugin. This plugin will backup both the files and the database(s) and upload them to Amazon S3 for you. Cheap storage plus an easy backup? Nothing to complain about.

The third party method has several pluses including not having to manage the files on your system, you don’t have to worry about your PC crashing, and a website restoration could possibly happen from any place if need be. The downside is that you may not want to rely on someone else to handle your precious data. What if they mess up? Like I said before, using multiple methods together is a better idea, just in case.

How To Restore Your Site From Backup

Knowing how to restore your site if something should go wrong is also important.

Files:

In order to restore the files, use an FTP program and upload the backup copy of the files keeping the same directory structure.

Database:

I mentioned the WP DB Manager plugin earlier. This plugin comes with a restore feature which does the database restoring for you. If you have just the database file, you can also use phpMyAdmin (the WordPress site has a tutorial on this).

What type of WordPress backup tips do you have? Are there any tools that I could have linked to in any of these methods? How do you backup your WordPress blog?

Ant Movie Catalog – An Open-Source Movie Organizer For Your Video Collection

Saikat Basu — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 18:30:44 +0000

My earliest recollection of trips to the video store usually ended with drumming my fingers. I did that while the guy behind the counter filled out the pink index card with the borrower’s details. Why couldn’t he be quicker about it? My frets didn’t speed him up. But any of today’s open source movie organizer or collection managers could have.

I don’t know if the guy behind the counter has updated his system, but I certainly have. I used to be a disgrace to the fraternity of digital packrats. Not anymore, because I have tidied up my act. From movies to songs, you ask it”¦I can bring up all the information you might need with a click. Thanks to a bevy of collection managers I have tried out.

Ant Movie Catalog is the latest open source movie organizer that I am sieving my movie collection through. And I have been pleasantly surprised by the efficiency of this Open Source software. Ant Movie Catalog is a free open source movie organizer that you can download and install or download, unpack and run without an install. I opted for the later. The download size is a tiny 3.5MB.

When you take the first look at the screen, you might feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of fields that need to be filled out. For a true movie lover, that’s candy for the eyes because all he wants are details and details about his favorite movies. But for him also, it would be a migraine inducer if he had to fill it all up by himself. But then why should you when the web can do it automatically for you.

Here’s how I did it for the first bunch of film titles I put into the collection.

In 3 clicks, get all the information on your movie

Ant Movie Catalog not only goes into a lot of details for a movie but it makes it easy to get all that from a host of film databases. To fill out all the fields for a movie, you need to just click on Movie ““ Add”¦Put in the name in the Original Title field box and then either click on the Get Information toolbar icon or go via the menu (Movie ““ Get Information ““ From internet using a script).

The scripts are where all the riches of Ant Movie Catalog lie. You have about 238 scripts at last count. You can try any one of them. These scripts are nothing but codes that help the software get specific information from online movie websites and online DVD stores. Familiar biggies like Amazon and IMDB are there of course.

Run the any of the scripts; for similar named titles. Select yours and let Ant Movie Catalog collect all the values for the fields. You can customize which fields to include in your database.

You can add a bunch of titles in one go and complete your collection with a few clicks. Ant Movie Catalog also facilitates import of movie titles from other file formats.

Ant Movie Catalog also connects any movie to online movie info sites like ““ IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, DVD Empire and DVDZone2. You can add more sites from Preferences.

So many ways to visualize all that information

Ant Movie Catalog is an information hound’s delight. There are many ways to order, categorize and display all the movie information collected in the database.

You can group movies by any of the field values. For instance, group it by borrower to see which of your friend has begged, borrowed or stolen which title. Or by Media Type to give you an idea of the format you have used to archive the movie.

For the guy who has an eye for pie charts and bar graphs, the Statistics feature is an information mine.

Ant Movie Catalog has an added Loan Management feature. Using it, you can manage the movies that your friends have borrowed from you. You can add borrower names and keep tabs by checking in and checking out the titles that you lend out.

The feature that I use most often is the Export to another file format. You can use any of the six available formats to send out a detailed list of your movies. For instance, I use the HTML format to send out the titles I have to my friends.

And of course, you can print out your entire movie list with lots of customized templates to choose from.

Ant Movie Catalog may lack the glamour but it catches the grammar of an efficient and comprehensive collection manager. Some extra bits like a feature to track movies by how many times we watch it would have helped.

But it squeezes in all the information it can find and presents it straight. For the sake of having all the movies info at your fingertips, that’s all you want in the end.

Ant Movie Catalog version 3.5.1.2 is compatible with all Windows versions up to Win XP. The site says that – the compatibility with Windows Vista and 7 is not perfect, but that does not prevent the program from running normally.

Do you use any open source movie organizers? Which is the one for you?

How To Easily Auto Backup Your WordPress Database

Dean Sherwin — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 20:01:02 +0000

So for the past few weeks my mind has pretty much been in ‘blog’ mode, which you can probably tell due to my recent fixation on blog related posts. I’ve done nothing but think about my new blog and over the previous weekend I got the barebones live on the net.

However, it didn’t all go to plan. There was something wrong with the host which left my site back in 1982 until the MUO authors, more specifically Karl, was able to get her up and running while I yelled at my hosting company.

So I was happy. For a while. But then the thought of “˜what if the host was to go belly up right now?’ popped into my mind. At any minute it could all just go wrong and I’d be left blogless. All my posts would be gone. The theme I’ve fine-tuned. The media I’ve uploaded. It would be the virtual equivalent of pulling the pin from the hand grenade and tossing it into the epicentre of my site. The only remnants of its existence being a ’404′ error. And you want to know the worst thing? No matter how many times your press ‘F5′, the blog simply wont appear. Ever.

There are two things you need to do to have a full backup of your website. The first one is easy, you just have to backups server files. This can be easily done using any FTP client. Just connect to your server and copy the contents of the folder to your computer.

Second, you need to backup your database. Figuring out how to backup your WordPress blog database is the way to go. Most definitely.

One could do this the hard way. You could manually backup everything using an FTP client and an external hard drive. But that’s the hard way. So here is an easy way to backup your WordPress blog ““ in three easy steps no less.

Getting a WordPress database ‘back up’ plug-in

If there’s one thing that separates WordPress from the other half dozen popular blogging platforms, it’s the abundance of plug-ins. There are quite a few which back-up your blog but I recommend using the ‘WordPress Database Backup Plugin’. For those of you familiar with the innermost working of a website ““ this plug-in will back-up your tables in your WordPress database. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the innermost working of a website ““ it will save you a weekend of going through the five stages of grief.

Installing the plugin

Have the plugin downloaded? You sure? You’re not just reading on through this post while your blog sits utterly vulnerable to destruction? OK, good.

Now comes the installation. It’s pretty much the same as any other plugin installation.

First go to the plugin menu on the WordPress admin page and under plugins click ‘add new‘ as seen in the screenshot. Upload the plugin. You can leave it in the .zip format if you like. Then click ‘Activate‘ once the install has finished.

Setting it up

Go to ‘Tools‘ along the left-hand sidebar in the WordPress admin area. Under ‘Tools‘ you’ll find a new menu called ‘Backup‘. Click on that.

There are three main areas that you have to fill out in the screen which appears. The first area is entitled ‘Tables‘ and put simply, it allows you to specify what you want to back up. I’d suggest leaving everything ticked. This will basically back up your entire blog including posts, comments, users and settings.

Then, under ‘Back Up Options‘ you can select where you want the backup files to go. You can either save to your server, download to your computer or e-mail to a specified address. Pick whichever one works for you. I’ll be keeping mine on an external hard-drive so I’ll be downloading it to my computer. However the other two options ““ particularly the e-mail options are also good.

Finally, the third table allows you to choose how often your blog is backed up. This is done automatically. I’d suggest doing it at least weekly. If your blog is really big with multiple posts per hour you can back up hourly, daily and twice daily.

Finally click ‘Backup Now‘ under the second section to make sure you’re safe from the get-go.

So now if it all does go horribly wrong (i.e. a virtual hand grenade has just blown up in serverland) you’ll be back up (no pun intended) in no time by simply restoring the backed up database and uploading WordPress files using an FTP such as FileZilla.

For more great plugins for your WordPress blog click here.

Image Credit: John Loo

4 Websites To Conduct A Niche Industry Analysis

Ryan Dube — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 18:00:01 +0000

Have you ever had a fantastic business idea that you’re absolutely certain will make loads of profit with hardly any effort? Maybe you’re considering opening up a shop or offering a service in your part of the world. One of the more difficult aspects of starting a new business is putting together an accurate analysis of the local market and trying to determine if there’s a demand for your service. Even better, if you can analyze the industry and uncover a unique “niche” that is either unserved or underserved, you could create a wildly successful business.

Many companies spend a fortune for a complete niche industry analysis. I should know – I used to conduct the research and write up niche industry reports for a company that sold those reports to big businesses. Today, I’d like to share some inside secrets with MakeUseOf readers and reveal the naked truth – you don’t need memberships to special databases or statistics firms to uncover those industry niches, all you need to know is where to look for the information yourself and you can create your own free industry analysis.

Always Start With Your Government

The truth is, almost every government in every nation devotes a great deal of effort and resources to measuring the just about every aspect of society – from how many pounds of potatoes your country produces to the number of people born with specific diseases. Regardless of the industry you’re looking into, the odds are pretty good that there’s a government agency that produced a report on the topic. For example, when I was digging into Real Estate markets, I discovered a report on Mortgage Loans produced by the special “Office of Thrift Supervision” within the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Seriously, there’s such an office. The mortgage loan data they provided (for free, I might add) was exactly what I needed.

The best place to start when you’re creating your free industry analysis is at an online government office listing directory such as my favorite, USA.gov for the U.S. or Direct.gov for the UK. The individual agencies that you’ll find offer their own library chock-full of statistics, charts and detailed demographics that you’ll be hard-pressed to find anywhere else. For an international listing of government agencies around the world, the FDA (of all places) offers a fairly comprehensive list.

Schools and University Studies and Research

It’s almost comical that companies spend so much money for a private corporation to produce a niche analysis on an industry when there’s so much free information available on the Internet. Aside from government agencies, Universities and Colleges from around the world constantly conduct studies and collect data and then publish the results online for free. These are typically published in the form of “white papers.” One of the best way to find these studies is by using Google Scholar, a white paper search engine that will turn up those results for you.

The quality of data that you will find from these results and from the various University research projects are amazing. For example, while researching the real estate market, I uncovered a detailed Harvard study on rental housing.

If you’re looking for data, graphs and charts that uncover industry trends, social demographics and reveal the sort of niche opportunities for your business – you’ve got it all right here. Don’t only search for the larger schools, if you’re interested in your local market, make sure to check on any local studies your local community college or University might have completed – you may be very surprised what you find.

The Pew Research Center

In almost every niche analysis report I’ve ever written, I usually always come back to the Pew Research Center for research. The motto of this organization is, “Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World.” This is no exaggeration, Pew publishes some of the most obscure and eye opening social trends of any research organization I’ve seen.

It’s from Pew that I learned that middle-age women make up the largest demographic of users for online games, or that more teen girls use social networks than boys do. If you want to uncover any niche opportunities for a potential business, this site should be at the top of your bookmarks.

Using Google Trends to Reveal Global Demographics

Now, this article wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t mention the single tool that I’ve used above all others to uncover unique niche opportunities. It goes without saying that the Internet has become an important gauge of public sentiment, and of course since Google Trends reveals “the big picture” for particular keyword searches, then it makes sense that you should be able to use Google Trends to identify industry trends. In a simple example, if you’re thinking of investing in rental properties and becoming a landlord, it stands to reason that you would want the trend of people searching for “apartments for rent” to be rising.

Well, look at that. Google trends reveals that while interest in apartments held pretty steady (aside from the annual fluctuations) from 2004 through 2008, there’s been a sudden upswing in public interest in apartments in 2009 – interesting! With Google trends, you can dig even deeper than this. By copying each annual graph and overlaying them together (using your favorite image editing software), you can also reveal seasonal patterns. In this case doing so would reveal what part of the year more people usually hunt for apartments.

As you can see here, most people are looking for apartments during midsummer, and then that interest tanks as the school year approaches, recovering only at the end of the year. While this particular trend isn’t very shocking, you would be very surprised to see some of the fascinating seasonal trends that Google Trends sometimes reveals within certain industries.

So, whether you’re just curious about the current market for your small business idea, or you’re thinking about opening an enterprise on a much larger scale, just remember that the tools and resources are available on the web so that you can identify those awesome niche opportunities yourself.

Have you ever started your own business? What online tools and resources did you use to research your market? Share your insight in the comments section below.

Browse, Download & Install Freeware Easily With FreeWareUpdater

Guy McDowell — Wed, 27 May 2009 21:00:44 +0000

With all the downloading, reviewing, testing and occasionally, publishing of freeware that I do, you would think I would have seen this sooner. FreeWareUpdater is a simple, yet very effective tool for people who like freeware. Note, personal ethics and the laws of the nation require that I disclose to you the fact that I get 10% of every sale of FreewareUpdater. Which is, um, 25% of zero, carry the one, um, ah, it’s exactly zero. Raw deal.

Anyway, the point of FreeWareUpdater is to present you with a catalogue of freeware and open source software (OSS). From that catalogue you can download and install what you think you would like. Once the freeware of your choice is installed, FreeWareUpdater monitors the new software’s website for updates. Occasionally, FreeWareUpdater adds new software to its catalogue as well.

Download and Install FreeWareUpdater

You can get the software over at FreeWareUpdater.com. Install is a breeze, since the only option is where you want to install the program.

Open Up FreeWareUpdater and Choose your Freeware

At last count, there are 203 different pieces of freeware you can download through this app, in about 40 categories ranging from CD and DVD Tools to Video Software. Some of the software comes from heavy-hitters such as 7zip, Adobe, TurboCash, Google, and HijackThis. I’ve already got most of those installed, so I’m going for something a little different for demonstration purposes. I’m thinking Stellarium. Sounds pretty.

“What is Stellarium?”, you ask. The brief above gives you a short summary, but if you look to the bottom left-hand corner of FreeWareUpdater you’ll see the Application Info button. Give it a click!

There you go. Now you see a full description of the program, as well as some other information you might find important.

That’s cool. I didn’t know that a 3 dimensional map of the stars was called a stellarium. Clicking on View full description opens a web page on the FreeWareUpdater site that tells you even more about the software. I want it.

Click on the Stellarium box so that it is highlighted the darker blue. Look up in the top of FreeWareUpdater. Click on the Download and Install icon.

Oh lookie! There it is downloading!

Once the download is complete, the install process for Stellarium starts. I won’t go into the install of that since it isn’t pertinent to our article. But here’s a picture for snickers and giggles.

FreeWareUpdater will also alert you to updates for freeware that you have installed through it. It might be a little shaky on that, but so far, it’s the best software I’ve found (for free) to do this. It’s a great app for new users to explore the amazing world of freeware and open source software.

Caution: It appears that FreeWareUpdater.com is a one-person show. So don’t go expecting awesome tech support or hourly updates. It is usually the one-man-show that is the backbone of the freeware and OSS movement. Be thankful for their time, and for the cost of the application. If it’s not good enough for you, trot on down to your local SpendAGrand computer store and pay through the nose for something that is marginally better.

What do you use to manage your freeware? Got links to another cool app like this? I’d love to hear about it in the comments. I almost always respond to them.

18 WordPress Security Plugins & Tips To Secure Your Blog

Damien Oh — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 16:44:32 +0000

Without a doubt, for a self-hosted blog, WordPress is the best blog CMS that you can get. However, being a popular and open source software, it also means that hackers have full access to the code which they can scrutinize to find any exploits they can use to hack into any WordPress-enabled site.

On the good side, one of the best things about WordPress is its plugin system that allows anyone to install any plugins or create your own plugins to extend its functionality, including improving security.

Here, I have listed some wordpress security plugins (and a couple of tricks) that you can use to secure WordPress blog.

All the plugins and tricks listed below are meant for WP 2.7 and above. If you are still using an older version of WordPress, it’s time to upgrade your blog.

Protecting Your Login

1. CHAP Secure Login

This plugin uses the CHAP protocol to encrypt your password. The password is first salted with a random number (nonce) generated by the session, followed by the md5 transformation algorithm. This result is then sent to the server where it is decrpyted and authenticated. This is a zero-configuration plugin, which means you can use it immediately after activating it.

2. Stealth Login

Stealth Login obfuscates your login page by allowing you to define a custom login page rather than the default wp-login.php. In the event that your password is leaked, the hacker will also have a hard time finding the correct login URL. A good use of this is to prevent any malicious bots from accessing your wp-login.php file and attempting to break in.

3. Login Lockdown

Login Lockdown is useful in preventing a brute force attack. What Login LockDown does is to record the IP address and timestamp of every failed login attempt. If more than a certain number of attempts are detected within a short period of time from the same IP range, it will lockdown the login function and prevent any people from that IP range to log in.

4. AskApache Password Protect

This plugin adds an additional HTTP authentication to provide a second layer of defense for your blog. You can set up password protection for your blog using HTTP Basic Authentication, or you can choose to use the more secure HTTP Digest Authentication.

Note that this plugin might/might not work depending on your server capability. If your site does not pass the AskApache configuration tests (the tests run by the plugin to detect your server capabilities), contact your web host and see if they can make changes on the server side.

5. Semisecure Login Reimagined

This plugin provides a “semisecure” login environment by encrypting your password with the RSA cryptography

Protecting Your Database

6. WP-DB-Backup

Perhaps for some of you, backing up a database could mean a troublesome technical chore. With WP-DB-Backup, you just need to configure it once and get it to run automatically at regular intervals.

What this plugin does is to automate the backing up of your database and have it sent to your email inbox. Other than the default table created by WordPress, you can also backup custom tables created by plugins. In the event that your account crashes, you can easily import and restore the database with the backup.

7. WP-DBManager

Wp-DBManager is just like a phpmyadmin within your dashboard. You can easily manage your database directly within your dashboard. There are useful features such as optimizing/repairing/backing up/restoring your database and if you are technical enough, you can even run your own SQL query from the option page.

On the bad side, if any hackers manage to login to your site, this plugin is going to be a gateway for them to create havoc in your database.

8. Change database table prefix

The default prefix used by WordPress is “wp”. You can easily change the prefix to other terms that are difficult to guess using the WP-Security-Scan. More detail on this plugin below.

9. Protect your wp-config.php file

Your wp-config.php file contains all your database login credentials and it should be hidden from public view in all circumstances. In your htaccess file, put in this line:


order allow,deny
deny from all

to prevent anyone from viewing the wp-config.php file.

Protecting Your Admin Page

10. Admin SSL

This plugin forces SSL on all pages where passwords can be entered so that all information transmitted are encrypted.

One thing though, you have to own a SSL certificate before you can do it. If you are not willing to shell out the extra money to buy a private SSL certificate, you can ask your Web host about Shared SSL. Most web hosts provide Shared SSL for all their clients and it is easy to configure.

11. Change login username

Using “admin” as your login username is the last thing you want to do. When you first installed WordPress, you should immediately create another administrator account with your own username and password and delete the “admin” account.

Prevent Others From Viewing Your Internal File Structure

12. Hiding the WP version

In most WordPress themes under the section, there is always a line of code showing the WordPress version that you are using. Giving away your WordPress version number means telling the hacker what exploit to use to hack into your site.

Since WP2.6.5, WordPress has made it even harder to remove the wp version as it embeds that information within the wp_header tag. A plugin that you can use to remove that information is WP-Security-Scan.

13. Hiding the WP-content

The WP-content folder is where you stored all your plugins and theme files. This is the place where you want to prevent other people from looking into. You can either upload a blank index.html file to the wp-content folder, or create a .htaccess file in the wp-content folder and add this line:

Options All -Indexes

14. Block wp-folder from indexing by search engines

While you want the search engines to index your blog and bring in lots of traffic, the last thing that you want to see is to let the search engines expose your internal file structure to the public. What you can do is to block all your wp-folder from indexing by search engine by adding the following entries to the robot.txt:

Disallow: /wp-*

Maintenance

15. WP Security Scan

I have mentioned this plugin several times, so it is time for me to explain what it does. WP-Security-Scan checks your WordPress for security vulnerabilities and suggests/provides corrective actions. The corrective actions include changing your database prefix, hiding the WordPress version number from the header and allows you to test out the strength of your password.

Once in a while, it is a good idea to run the inbuilt security scanner and check your blog for any security invulnerabilities.

16. Change password regularly

Not only should you change your password regularly, you must also make sure that it is a strong one. If you have difficulty in creating one, find one how you can create strong passwords that you can remember easily.

17. Update WordPress and all plugins to the latest version

Needless to say, upgrading to the latest version of WordPress and plugins is the best way to protect yourself.

Protecting Your Connection

18. SFTP

Transferring files to your online account is a common thing to do. However, instead of using the unsecured FTP, you should use SFTP (Secure FTP). This will create a SSH connection and sent all your files encrypted to the server. If you need help creating a SFTP connection, here’s the guide.

The above information should be sufficient for you to create a secure WordPress blog. If you have not implemented any of these, I would urge you to do so now.

What other methods do you use to secure your WordPress blog?