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

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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.

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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.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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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:

<Files wp-config.php>
order allow,deny
deny from all
</Files>

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 <head> 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?

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The main reasons: it’s very good and very free – not to mention very expandable in functions and very flexible in looks if you use the self hosted Wordpress.

Given those facts, it surprises me that lots of people are still afraid of the (self hosted) Wordpress. “Wordpress is for geeks,” they say, “It’s too difficult for me.”

Well, you can’t love what you don’t know. So, the first step is to get familiar with it and what better way to know more about Wordpress than to install Wordpress locally on your own computer? Be it a Windows, Mac or Linux PC. Plus, this is also the best way to check out plugins and themes before using them in the real live online blogging world (and start building your own Wordpress themes and plugins – should you choose to go that far).

Here’s how you do it :

Step 1: Building The Local “Web Server”

In order to install Wordpress locally, you need to have a SQL database and a PHP environment in your computer. Before you ask with fear what creatures they are, let me clarify that these days you can easily summon them just by downloading and installing one of these:

• For Windows: XAMPP or WAMP (Read MakeUseOf review)
• For Mac: MAMP
• For Linux: LAMP

I use a Mac so the steps below are explained using MAMP. But the steps are valid under any OS and so slight differences are to be expected.

Step 2: Creating The Database

Open your AMP app and the server will automatically be on.

The web interface will show up in your browser. Choose “phpMyAdmin” tab.

Find “Create New Database” box, put a name there, then click “Create”

Step 3: Getting Wordpress

Download the latest build of Wordpress (at the time of writing is version 2.7)

Extract the zip file into the htdocs folder inside the AMP folder. It will automatically create a “wordpress” folder there.

Step 4: Configuring The Wordpress Database

Go inside the Wordpress folder, then find and open file wp-config-sample.php using any text editor.

- Find these lines:
–> ‘DB_NAME’ and change ‘putyourdbnamehere’ with ‘the database name from step 2’
–> ‘DB_USER’ and change ‘usernamehere’ with ‘root’
–> ‘DB_PASSWORD’ and change ‘yourpasswordhere’ with ‘root’

Save the file as wp-config.php

Step 5: Installing Wordpress

Open this address in your browser: http://localhost:8888/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php

You’ll be asked to put in a blog name and an email address. Click ‘Install Wordpress’ after filling in those boxes.

Wordpress will generate a username (admin) and a random password for you. Please keep the password safe until you have the chance to change it later. Click ‘Log In’ to continue.

Fill in the username and password and click ‘Log In’ one more time.

Step 6: Changing The Password

Congratulations, you’ve just built your own local Wordpress blog to experiment with. But there’s still one more crucial step to take: changing the randomly generated password to something you can remember easily.

Go to menu Users –> Authors & Users –> Admin –> Edit

Find the two password fields down at the bottom of the page, fill in the empty boxes with your preferred password.

Click ‘Update Profile’.

That’s it! Why not start experimenting with your Wordpress blog and see how you like it. If you have any problems, leave a comment and we’ll see if we can help.

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It is a dark and stormy night. You are home all alone and the phone rings while you are watching the latest horror flick. You jump out of your seat; a little scared and walk to the phone.

But you missed it and they hung up on your voice mail. You look down at the caller ID and see a strange phone number with an unfamiliar area code.

What do you do?

Most people would call that number back. But you forget I am a geek and I like to do things a little differently. I would grab my tablet and bring up the website Who Called Us.

This website allows you to type in the number that called you and see what other people know about this phone number.

I don’t know how helpful this site is but it lets you know that you are not alone and the phone calls are not coming from “INSIDE THE HOUSE!”.

So you pop in that number that called you. In my case it was 425-391-5973. A quick search revealed that 36 other people had recently gotten similar calls from this number and a few people actually got someone on the line preaching about extended auto warranties.

Now I don’t have to worry that some random old friend is trying to send me secret messages by hanging up the phone in a specific sequential order…

I can simply curse out the voice spammers under my breath and add my comment to the WhoCalled.us list.

According to their website, here are their statistics from the last 3 years:

There have been 612237 calls reported in total.
The last 100 calls are shown below.

This database of calls has been graciously provided by the community.
Thank you for taking the time to add to the pool of knowledge.

That is pretty impressive and this website can be a great resource to everyone in the United States. Do you guys in other countries have a similar tool? How do you deal with Voice Spam?

(By) Karl L. Gechlik is a superhero of the IT industry who wears many hats and changes in telephone booths. Karl mostly uses his powers for good and the occasional hysterical prank. Get your geek on & follow his geeky antics at askTheAdmin.com today.

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The way I see it, an ideal backup procedure should be simple, heavily automated and provide quick recovery option for almost any problem. Whether you want to restore your blog to an earlier state (eg. undo wordpress update), transfer it to another hosting server, get it back online after it’s been hacked/deleted, or just restore couple of recent posts. So, let’s see what tools we use for MakeUseOf.com

(1) BackUp Posts and Comments

BlogBackUpOnline: Fully automated online service that offers an easy way to store and schedule article backups on a daily basis. Please note, BlogBackUpOnline backups only your blog posts and comments, it doesn’t and can’t back up all plugin-related database data (ex. article views, user ratings etc.). It comes in really handy when you need to quickly export your posts and comments from one blog to another or restore mistakenly deleted article. In a way it’s similar to wordpress export function, but runs automatically. It takes around a minute to set-up and can run without your intervention. More on Blog Backup Online

(2) Backup Blog Database (Wordpress Plugins)

There are two excellent wordpress plugins that can perform automatic daily backup of your wordpress database. Depending on your understanding of the database and administration skills you may choose one over the other. Although, I highly recommend using both. The reason behind this is that, if you use both you can have 2 backups for each version, one only with core database tables and one including all extra tables brought by installed plugins.

Wordpress Database Backup – simple no-brainer plugin to schedule daily, weekly or monthly database backups. Backups can be emailed to your email or stored on your server.

WP-DB Manager – provides complete database management right from the admin interface. Automatic backups, database restore, optimization, repair, table add/drop options, SQL command line and more. ‘WP-DB Manager’ is more complicated than ‘Wordpress Database Backup’ however it provides a much-needed ‘restore from backup’ feature. So if you need an easy restore functionality and have no idea about the tool called phpMyAdmin than definitely stick with WP-DB Manager.

(3) BackUp Blog Files

Next step would be to backup all of your blog files. Sometimes servers crash and data gets lost. Most of the hosting providers maintain an emergency copy but you never know. I already had an incident when couple of my sites were deleted due to a server crash and the hosting company had no backup copy to restore them. Additionally, the whole process of asking your hosting provider to restore data maybe annoying and take up to several days. So, it’s really important that you always keep a fresh copy of your website on a local drive.

I personally use Filezilla for that, it’s not an automated FTP backup tool, but there is no difficulty in copying files manually once per week.

(4) Auto-store copy of your backup files

Finally, as the last line of defense, you may consider keeping a complete copy of all your local backup files (blog files and database backups) on some secure third party servers. This is just in case something terrible happens to your PC. Good news, this can be automated as well, and takes about a couple of minutes. Simply sign-up with one of the remote backup services, i.e. Mozy and download provided “set-it-and-forget-it” desktop client. Install it on your system and point it to the folder with all your backups. Once that’s done, you can relax and forget about it. As long as it runs on the background, it will keep online version up-to-date. Btw, you can also use Mozy to backup your local files, it’s an excellent and highly automated backup tool.

Suggestions? Let us know in comments …

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