Note: this advice only applies to self hosted WordPress installs. If you use WordPress.com, you generally don’t need to care about security, because they handle it all for you. What’s the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org?

Install Google two-step authenticator

If you already have two-step authentication enabled for your Gmail account or other services, you can use the same authenticator app with this plugin for WordPress.

Thankfully, you can restrict two-step authentication to only be used on upper level accounts so you needn’t annoy all your users.

Login Lockdown

An old plugin, but still working as intended; Login Lockdown checks the IP of login attempts and blocks an IP range for an hour if it fails 3 times within 5 minutes. Simple, effective.

Take Regular Backups

Hackers won’t just change one file, but will place their own control panel hidden somewhere and other hidden backdoors – so that even if you fix the original hack, they come right back in and do it all again. Take daily or weekly backups so you can easily restore back to a point where there was no trace of the hacker – and be sure to patch whatever it was they did to get in. Personally, I just invested in a $150 Backup Buddy developer license – it’s the easiest and most comprehensive backup solution I’ve found yet.

Prevent Indexing of Folders

Check the root of your WordPress installation for the .htaccess file (notice the period at the beginning – you may need to show invisible files to view this), and ensure it has the following line. If not, add it – but make a backup first as this file is pretty crucial.

Options All -Indexes

Stay Updated

Don’t make the same mistake as we did: always upgrade WordPress as soon as an update is available. Sometimes the updates contain minor bug fixes and not security fixes, but get into the habit and you won’t have a problem. If you have more than one WordPress install and can’t keep track of them all, check out ManageWp.com, a premium dashboard for all your blogs that includes security scanning.

Not just core WordPress files, but plugins too: one of the largest WordPress hacks of the past involved a vulnerability in a common thumbnail generator script called timthumb.php, and there are still themes out there which use the old version. Although plugins were quickly updated, keeping themes up to date is harder, of course – WordPress won’t tell you if your theme is vulnerable, and for that you’ll some kind of security scanning plugin – scroll down to the Security Plugins section below for some suggestions.

Never Download Random Themes

Unless you know what you’re doing with PHP code, it’s very easy to fall into the trap of download a lovely random theme from somewhere, only to find it’s got some nasty code in there – most commonly backlinks that you can’t remove, but worse can be found. Stick to premium and well-known theme designers (such as Smashing Magazine or WPShower), or for free themes only use the WordPress theme directory.

Delete Unused Plugins and Themes

The less executable code you have on your server, the better – remove the chance of having old, vulnerable code by deleting themes and plugins you’re not using anymore. Disabling them will simply stop their functionality loading with WordPress, but the code itself may still be executable by a hacker.

Remove Tell-tale Meta In Your Header

By default, WordPress broadcast its version to the world in the code of your header file – an easy way for hackers to identify older installs. Add the following lines to your theme’s functions.php file to remove the WordPress version, Windows Live Writer info and a line that helps remote clients find your XML-RPC file.

remove_action( 'wp_head', 'wp_generator' ) ; 
remove_action( 'wp_head', 'wlwmanifest_link' ) ; 
remove_action( 'wp_head', 'rsd_link' ) ;

Remove The “admin” Account

Most brute-force attacks on WordPress involve repeatedly trying the admin account – the default for all WordPress installs – and a dictionary of common passwords. If you either login with admin or have the admin account listed in your user table, you’re vulnerable to this.

Two ways to fix it: either use wp-optimize plugin – a great plugin that amongst other things, allows you to disable post revisions and perform database optimization – to rename admin account. Or simply create another account with admin privileges, log in as the new user, then delete the “admin” account assign all the posts to your new user.

Secure Passwords

Even if you have disabled the admin account, it may be possible to identify the username of your administrator account – at which point you’re vulnerable to a brute force attack again. Enforce a strong password policy of 16 or more random characters consisting of upper and lower case, punctuation and numbers.

Or just use the reallyLongSentenceThatsEasyToRememberMethod.

Disable File Editing Within WordPress

For those who don’t like to login through FTP, WordPress includes an easy editor in the admin dashboard for theme and plugin PHP files – but that makes your install vulnerable if someone gains access. In fact, this is how someone managed to inject a malware redirection into our header. Add the following line to the bottom of your wp-config.php (in the root folder) to disable all file editing features – and use SFTP to login to your server instead.

define( 'DISALLOW_FILE_EDIT', true );

Hide Login Errors

An incorrect password or wrong username can be identified by the errors given when logging in, which could be used to identify accounts for brute-forcing. This isn’t good, obviously, so kill the errors with this addition to your theme’s functions.php file

function no_errors_please(){
 return 'Nope';
}
add_filter( 'login_errors', 'no_errors_please' );

Activate Cloudflare

As well as speeding up your site, CloudFlare mitigates many known botnets and scanners from even getting to your blog in the first place. Read all about CloudFlare here. Installation is one click if you’re hosted at MediaTemple, otherwise you’ll need access to the domain control panel to change the nameservers.

Security Plugins

• Better WP Security implements many of these fixes for you and is the most comprehensive free solution there is.
• WordFence is a premium package that actively scans your files for malware links, redirects, known vulnerabilities etc – and fixes them. Price starts at $18/year for 1 site.
• Login security solution both limits login attempts and enforces secure passwords.
• BulletProof security is a comprehensive but complex plugin that deals with some of the more technical aspects like XSS injection and .htaccess problems. A Pro verison of the plugin is also available which automates much of the process.

I think you’ll agree this is quite a comprehensive list of steps to harden WordPress, but I’m not suggesting you implement all of them. If I had to do all these to every site I ever set up, I’d still be setting them up now. Running any kind of system introduces a risk, and it’s ultimately up to you to find the balance between the level of security you want and the effort you want to put in securing it – nothing is ever going to 100% secure. The low hanging fruit here are:

• Keeping WordPress up to date
• Disabling the admin account
• Adding two-step authentication
• Installing a security plugin

Doing those alone should put you above 99% of all the other blogs out there, which is enough to make potential hackers move on to easier targets.

Do you think I missed anything? Tell me in the comments.

The post How To Protect WordPress from Intrusion: Your Must-Read Checklist appeared first on MakeUseOf.

While both offer what every free-thinking democracy-guzzling thought-cannon wants – a place to express themselves – there are some core differences in each service. Both WordPress.com and Blogger are workable free solutions, but which is the right one for you?

This detailed breakdown of each service should hopefully help you decide.

What You Get For Free

WordPress.com is a commercial venture. It’s a way for the kind souls who have put time, money and a whole load of effort into the open source and free-to-download WordPress blogging engine to make some money back. They do this by making it stupidly simple to set up and maintain a blog, while introducing some rather hefty limitations for experienced users.

A free WordPress.com account offers:

• A blog, which you can turn into a full-on static or hybrid (part blog, part static) website.
• 3GB of free storage for posts and media.
• Publicize, a tool for connecting your blog with social networks.
• Free statistics for tracking visitors.
• Access to hundreds of non-premium themes, many of which can be customised further.
• WordPress.com access from mobile apps for iPhone, iPad, Android and BlackBerry.

WordPress.com designates the following as premium upgrades:

• Custom Design ($30 per blog, per year) adds custom CSS (not PHP editing) and fonts.
• Custom Domains ($13 per domain, per blog, per year) removes the .wordpress.com part of your URL.
• Guided Transfer ($129 one-off payment) for transferring your WordPress.com site to your own web-host for greater independence and freedom.
• Ad-free ($30 per blog, per year) removes any possibility of WordPress.com showing adverts on your blog to non-logged in visitors.
• Premium themes (priced per blog for the lifetime of the blog).
• A redirect ($13 per blog, per year) for redirecting traffic from yourblog.wordpress.com to your new domain.
• Additional space (priced per amount) for storing more posts and media.
• VideoPress ($60 per blog, per year) for uploading, hosting and embedding your own videos on your WordPress.com blog.

Conversely, Blogger is not a commercial service. It was acquired by Google in 2003 who have since kept it ticking over, with a few redesigns and some recently-added new templates. The rather ancient Blogger features page (ancient because it explicitly mentions uploading to Google Video and easily accessing iGoogle, two of Google’s many dead projects) promises users access to all features. There are no upgrades, no fees for adding a custom domain, and all the customization options thrown in that Blogger has available.

Included features worth noting are:

• A template designer for customizing your blog’s appearance.
• Free hosting, free Blogger (or Blogspot) sub-domain and option of using a custom domain (either registering through Blogger or using one you already have).
• The ability to add media to your posts, with no quoted maximum storage space.
• Quick access to Google’s advertising schemes.
• Pages static content on your blog.
• Mobile access via iPhone and Android apps, as well as SMS or email blogging.

It would seem that despite WordPress having the plugins and themes markets sewn up, Blogger still offers more for those looking for a free service.

The Sign-Up Process

WordPress.com allows you to register for an account with an email address, username, password and URL. Blogger is a Google service, and just like YouTube, requires a Google account. If you already have a Google account then this makes signing up a painless affair, but if you don’t (highly unlikely, unless you have something against Google), you’ll have to register for the whole package. This also means if you do have a personal Google Account but want to distance yourself from the topic you’re blogging about you’re going to have to create a new account, and also deal with Google’s messy multiple-account management.

Google’s sign-up process doesn’t indicate that you do not need to supply a mobile phone number or an email address, despite asking for one. Conversely WordPress.com only asks to fill out four fields but will also run a check for the URL you enter and try to sell you a premium domain (which costs to register, and requires an account upgrade to use on WordPress.com) as well as pointing out the flaws in the free account you’re about to register.

Once you’ve got yourself an account it’s time to start creating one or more blogs. With a Google Account you’re free to establish multiple blogs on the Blogger service. Each new WordPress.com blog you decide to create can also be linked to your existing account, so neither service will require a lot of user switching in order to maintain a stack of blogs.

Creating Your First Blog

WordPress.com users will be thrown into the blog-creation process as soon as they have confirmed their email address with the service. Click the Activate Blog link in your email and you’ll be invited to give your blog a name, subtitle, and language before choosing a theme. WordPress is famously customizable, earning much of its good name for the huge number of themes and plugins available in the standalone open-source release.

The WordPress.com team has definitely tried to retain that same feeling, with new customizable themes in the latest WordPress release making an appearance here allowing you to customize the theme you’ve chosen immediately.

This really helps to separate your blog from the rest of the WordPress world, so you should seize the opportunity to quickly stamp your mark on your patch of WordPress.com.

Google’s process is a little different and first requires you choose (or create) a profile. This is part of Google’s big push to get us all to start using Google+ and our real names on YouTube. If you’re not interested in Google+, a real name or picture, you can opt to create what Google is now calling a “limited Blogger profile” which is essentially a display name of your choosing, so go wild.

Once your profile is set (you can change it by clicking your name in the top-right) you’ll see the rather clean and attractive Blogger back-end. There will be a list of your blogs (which will be empty) and an area below for adding other blogs to follow. Create a blog by clicking New Blog.

The window that appears looks very similar to the WordPress.com variant, asking for a blog name and URL to be associated with the blog and offering a few templates to choose from. Click Create Blog! and you’ve just created your first blog – no more work required. Using this method you could set up a whole string of blogs in a matter of minutes.

Managing Your Blog

Both WordPress and Blogger have centralized areas from which to manage your blog empire, which are separate to the settings for the blogs themselves. The two areas are equally attractive and usable, with both services featuring an area to read blogs you follow as well as the various outlets under your control.

On WordPress this takes the form of a deep attractive blue theme with a tabulated layout that allows you to quickly switch between reading, overseeing blogs and managing analytics in addition to a quick post button.

Blogger houses all of this on the one page, with a quick compose button found next to the blog title itself. Beneath this are new posts from the blogs you have chosen to follow on the service. It goes without saying that you can’t follow Blogger blogs on WordPress.com and vice-versa, though it would be nice if we could all get along.

I’d be surprised if there are many people reading this who aren’t familiar with the screenshot above, which is the WordPress dashboard. Aside from a lick of paint and the odd facelift this UI hasn’t changed for years, and that’s because it’s great. Everything is compartmentalized, making it easy to find settings, compose a new post or page and mass-edit your content.

There’s one addition here that you won’t see on standard, self-hosted WordPress blogs and that’s the Store tab. Here you will find all those upgrades I mentioned earlier, as well as a few bundles that promise to save you money. This is another reminder of the big divide between the two services – one’s going to eventually cost you while the other will remain free (and probably slightly more limited).

Blogger’s back-end closely mirrors the WordPress look, with a similar menu bar floating to the left of the page. Straight up you’ll see statistics (this is also true for WordPress) and an overview of incoming posts, comments and new followers. Much like WordPress this is a very effective and responsive UI that does everything you could (probably) ever want.

The Blogger back-end hides a few features that might take a small amount of hunting to find – like adding users to your blog. On WordPress this has its own menu item, but on Blogger it’s hidden in the Settings menu. Both systems support widgets, though WordPress has a lot more to offer (with your theme dictating just how many widget areas you can use). This is a recurring theme, with WordPress feeling like the more mature blogging platform.

Customization & Themes

Both services offer a range of themes, though Blogger’s range is understandably more limited than that offered by WordPress which has benefitted from years of third-party theme development. With a free WordPress account you get access to hundreds of free themes which you can enable on your site in a click. Blogger’s limited range is split between fluid “dynamic” themes that will scale for larger and smaller screens, and older simple fixed-width blogs. You’ll probably want to choose one of the eight dynamic themes and their many different layouts which are highly adaptable depending on your content.

Each service comes equipped with a theme customizer for further fine-tuning your chosen theme. Oddly enough the Blogger customization options seem to run deeper than WordPress, allowing you to add your own custom CSS and edit the HTML without exchanging money first. You can even use a slider to change the width of your layout in pixels, at least for the dynamic layouts.

I was surprised to see that the WordPress.com theme customizer is different to that in the latest open source release. The new layout uses a touch-friendly sidebar that runs down the right-hand side of the screen and looks like it has fallen straight out of a Windows Blue developer preview. It looks good, but it’s really not that powerful, allowing you to change only a few variables like background, colors, header images but no additional CSS (that’s a premium feature) or the ability to change your site’s favicon.

The real difference here is minimal, after all if you really want to change your WordPress.com site’s look and feel you can choose from hundreds of ready-to-go themes. Blogger doesn’t have that depth, but instead favors those who are willing to take the time to carefully modify it. WordPress feels clipped by comparison, while Blogger isn’t dazzlingly complex it retains some advanced customization that WordPress.com sticks behind a paywall.

Both services also come with basic mobile theme support, which can be enabled or disabled as you see fit. WordPress takes the one-theme-fits-all approach, offering little in the way of customization while Blogger gives you a chance to choose a completely different mobile theme to your main blog theme, if you really want to.

The fact remains that both are effective and look great on my iPhone 5, scrolling fluidly and making excellent use of the limited space.

Expandability & Monetization

WordPress has traditionally been the blogging platform of non-bloggers the world over. By this I mean you can turn a simple WordPress blog into a static website, an ecommerce website, a photo gallery, promotional site and even your own microblog. It’s a workhorse that is adaptable in its open source, downloadable form.

This functionality does not carry over to the WordPress.com hosting service, and it’s a real shame. There are plugins, but they’re curated premium packages that are charged yearly for every blog you use. This means you might find yourself paying out more in upgrade prices per year than what it would cost you to host and manage the website yourself. This would be fine, but WordPress.com hosting severely limits you – there’s no direct editing of the code itself (even with an upgrade) and you don’t have webspace for other non-WordPress projects.

Of course, Blogger isn’t much better and has no plugin support whatsoever. Both services do however support pages, which can include HTML, text and various media. You can also redirect to a website of your choice using this method.

The only platform that will allow you to make a bit of money out of blogging is Blogger. You can choose to enable Google AdSense on your blog which will show targeted adverts based on your content. You’ll need to get some content up first, before choosing the option from the Earnings menu entry. This is in contrast to WordPress.com which has a “remove ads” upgrade to remove adverts shown to your non-logged-in visitors but has no option for opting into a monetization scheme of your own. This is not to say you can’t implement your own rudimentary adverts using widgets, but it’s far from an advertising scheme.

Free blog platforms aren’t the best way of monetizing your writing, particularly for WordPress users who will be interested in the many SEO and advertising-based plugins used by many successful websites. For more information download and read our detailed guide about monetizing a blog.

Social Media & Sharing

WordPress definitely takes the crown when it comes to social media integration, with the Publicize feature (found under Settings > Sharing) allowing you to connect to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Tumblr for automatic sharing. This menu also allows you to turn on and off sharing buttons, with big names like StumbleUpon, Pinterest and Reddit appearing alongside the option to email or print the article. These tools are very powerful and make up for a lack of plugins, as many WordPress users would add this functionality that way.

Blogger seems to only play nicely with Google+, which is a real shame because it’s the most deserted of the big three. Twitter and Facebook integration at the least would be nice, but you do get +1, Tweet and Like buttons on each post. There is luckily one workaround and that’s through the use of the excellent IFTTT web service.

IFTTT allows you to automate online tasks, like recording status updates and receiving notifications about new items on Craigslist. It can also be used with Blogger to trigger social media updates like Facebook statuses and Tweets when you publish new posts, and can even be used to create new blog entries from other actions, like Instagram photos saved or images added to Dropbox.

Check out what Blogger and IFTTT are capable of when paired together at the IFTTT website.

Writing A Post

WordPress uses two composers – the quick composer accessible from the main blog hub (above) and the traditional “everything including the kitchen sink” WordPress post editor which has always been a joy to use. I’m not overly impressed with the quick editor, but it’s a personal preference and probably works for quick posts that don’t need to be scheduled. The main editor (below) is as fantastic as ever, with a few extra features.

Here you can compose, edit HTML, add media, format text, add tags and schedule your posts. The WordPress composer actively scans your post and suggests tags to help you better categorize your content as well as the related content pane which suggests news stories and images based on the contents of your post.

You can also choose to categorize your post using WordPress custom post types and depending on the theme you have installed these various content types will appear differently on your blog. Choose Standard for text-heavy blog posts, Quote for a brief quote formatted accordingly or Image to post a photo that displays prominently. One thing you can’t add to your posts without paying is video. It’s fine to embed a video from YouTube but you can’t host the video file on your blog without a $60 per year upgrade.

The Blogger composer is also very dynamic and powerful, and actually looks like the Google Docs word processor with more orange. This allows you to edit HTML on the page, format text, upload and embed videos and other media as well as add tags, a location, edit the permalink and choose to schedule or not.

There’s no tagging help or related content to speak of in Blogger, and while it’s a nice feature on WordPress.com, for me it’s not really a deal-breaker.

Front-End & Mobile

The appearance of each blog, and each post, depends entirely on the theme and layout you end up choosing. For the purpose of this article I’ve left the default dynamic Blogger layout on and the Twenty Twelve WordPress.com default theme, neither of which have been tweaked at all.

Above is a WordPress.com blog, below is a Blogger blog.

Both will require a certain amount of work in order to get your blog looking sharp and unique, but both are also good to go from the beginning. Both look great on a mobile device, with dedicated mobile themes. Both allow you to build a static website. Both are visually quite pleasing, but only one is completely free to use.

In Conclusion

I could write another article to draw a conclusion from these findings, but the fact remains that each is suitable for different purposes. Blogger is highly attractive for its completely free model – there are no restrictions, if Blogger can do it, so can you. WordPress however will frustrate, particularly if you have used WordPress on a self-hosted blog in the past. The fact also remains that if your blog is the success that you probably hope it will be, that 3GB of space will eventually fill up, or you’ll want to add your own domain name or you’ll encounter another reason you suddenly need to upgrade. At this point you’d probably be better off with your own hosting package, at least in terms of value for money.

Blogger will scale – there will be no nasty surprise a year or two down the line when you suddenly need more space or decide to start hosting video on your blog. Blogger is arguably more customizable with its core template HTML editing abilities and the ability to add CSS. The result is more of a tweaker’s platform, something the standalone open source version of WordPress has long been but that the hosted WordPress.com variant avoids entirely. My only concern about Blogger is Google’s recent wave of closures including iGoogle and Google Reader. If they decide to pull the plug on Blogger then the service and its users will be forced to find new homes. It’s unlikely because Google is currently using Blogger for its own press purposes, but then again a switch to Google+ seems to be creeping ever closer.

Blogger is the platform to choose if you’re after a free product that might allow you to make a bit of money back. WordPress is there for those who are in love with its huge variety of themes, excellent UI and post composer and the user-friendly approach. Each is a viable blogging platform within five minutes of registering an account, but you are the person who will have to decide which one is right for you. That, or choose something different entirely.

Let us know what you think in the comments – are you a Blogger or WordPress.com user? Would you ditch it all and go for a standalone WordPress website? Add your input in the comments, below.

The post Blogger vs. WordPress.com: A Complete Comparison appeared first on MakeUseOf.

The attacks have been ongoing for about a week, and the number of blogs targeted is quite substantial. It’s possible that some of the attacked blogs were started and just never used, but it seems probable that a good number of them are actual blogs where the owner just did not think to change the default username.

The program used by the hackers would simply cycle through 1000 commonly used passwords with the default WordPress username. Obviously, if you are a savvy blog owner, you’re going to be just fine, but based on the number of successful attacks, it appears there were more than enough easy targets out there for the group of hackers to take.

Once the attack compromises the system, it drafts the blog into a botnet, which is a group of machines that communicate with each other and are capable of wide-spread attacks. The compromised blogs themselves are not all that useful to the attackers, but the actual target could be the servers on which they are housed.

At this point, we are not sure what the ultimate goal of the botnet is. 90,000 compromised machines could certainly be useful in denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, but only time will tell what comes of this.

If you’re still using “admin” as your username on WordPress, you should change it immediately. Come up with a more secure username, a secure password, and use two-step authentication to keep your blog as safe as possible.

Did your WordPress blog get attacked?

Source: Mashable

The post Hackers Compromise Over 90,000 WordPress Blogs – Keep Yours Safe! [Updates] appeared first on MakeUseOf.

More experienced webmasters will agree that switching web hosts is a excruciating process — one that must, if possible, be avoided at any cost. Therefore, selecting the right web host at the very beginning is crucial. So today, we’ll show you what you can expect from SiteGround — one of the most respected web hosting service providers in the market. We’re also giving away 25 1-year shared web hosting accounts from SiteGround valued at $1185!

SiteGround

SiteGround offers a variety of hosting options: from shared hosting which starts at $3.95/month, to more powerful dedicated hosting, and of course, everything in between. Let us begin by elaborating on the type of hosting featured in this review, SiteGround’s affordable shared web hosting plan.

This plan costs $3.95 a month, supports one domain to be registered for free, an unlimited amount of web space and traffic, plus an unlimited number of subdomains. It also allows the freedom for unlimited FTP accounts with brilliant FTP management, and unlimited MySQL databases. Lastly, provided with even this entry level shared hosting plan, is the infamous cPanel.

Test website: forthefoodie.com

For the purpose of this review, I decided to migrate my wife’s WordPress-based food journal, ForTheFoodie, from MediaTemple to SiteGround; illustrating the setup and migration process, as well as highlighting a couple of key features you may be interested in. At this point, I’d just like to note that ForTheFoodie is currently hosted on MediaTemple’s dedicated virtual (dv) server, which costs $50 every month — and is definitely overkill for the amount of traffic that it brings in. Plus, it’s not a very hefty site — with only a handful of posts, migration should be a piece of cake.

If you’re also looking to migrate your website to SiteGround, they provide free transfer service (a feature most web hosting providers charge for) and will handle the nitty gritty if you’re not so inclined. But as for me, I’ll be using WordPress’ Import/Export feature for the migration in order to avoid dabbling with databases. This convenient method is perfect for smaller websites with databases less than 24 MB in size and only involves transferring the entire WordPress site with just one XML file.

Auto-installation

Let’s get started. After signing up for an account with SiteGround, I’m presented with the setup wizard. In this step, a few relevant information about my website is required in order for SiteGround to properly determine the type of software which needs to be installed i.e WordPress, Joomla, etc. SiteGround prides itself with its in-house website setup tool which supports a variety of blogging and CMS platforms, as well as a multitude of shopping carts and e-commerce solutions.

In addition to speeding up the initial process of setting up a website (in particular, WordPress), allowing SiteGround to automatically install the appropriate blogging software brings another understated benefit — it also updates the software/platform automatically. Maintaining an up-to-date version of WordPress is vital for security reasons, but most webmasters often put it off. SiteGround’s auto-update feature is invoked whenever a new version of WordPress is available. Additionally, it performs a backup of the entire site before carrying out the update. In case anything goes wrong, the previous version can be safely restored.

After completing the wizard, SiteGround installs the latest version of WordPress, creates the appropriate database entries and directs me to my account dashboard. In essence, my new WordPress site is ready! But in my case, we’re not quite there yet because migrating a WordPress website involves overwriting a few files, which requires FTP access. And this takes me to cPanel.

cPanel

cPanel is a highly-acclaimed proprietary web hosting control panel which provides its users with the tools required to efficiently manage hosting of a website. Many web hosting services will charge extra for cPanel, some don’t even offer it. Even paying $50 every month to my former host, MediaTemple, didn’t equip me with cPanel when I needed it most. SiteGround offers it for free, even with their entry-level hosting plan — and that is truly a blessing.

Support

After setting up FTP access, importing the required WordPress files and redirecting the nameservers, we’re back in business. My wife’s food journal is now fully hosted by SiteGround. Now, I realise that even though you may aspire to start your own website or blog, you may not fully understand how to set up a new site or migrate one, for that matter. In fact, I wasn’t completely sure of the process myself. So it’s rather good to know that SiteGround is fully prepared to assist by providing a complete range of tutorials on hosting, sitebuilding, SEO, SSL, e-commerce — you name it.

And if you still have questions left unanswered, SiteGround’s capable customer support team is available all around the clock, every day of the year via their ticketing system, by phone or live chat. To be thorough, I reviewed the quality of their support as well. In fact, I bombarded a customer support representative with several inane questions about WordPress, what I should do next in the migration process and whether I’d be able to start publishing new posts right away. I even went to the extent of pretending to be slightly obnoxious. The representative seemed unfazed by my behaviour, and responded both professionally as well as courteously. To say that their support is impeccable is an understatement.

Speed

Finally, I’ll slightly touch on a very important criteria i.e. speed. It is common knowledge that shared hosting is often sluggish. SiteGround curbs this issue by having 3 data centres on 3 different continents (North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific). They’ve also partnered with CloudFlare to distribute copies of my website to 23 additional data centres globally. As a result, ForTheFoodie loads faster than 33% of the websites tested by Pingdom

Overall, SiteGround proves to be one of the best web hosts available today, with their brilliant customer support and superb lineup of features. And it’s affordable too — you can get started with just $3.95 a month with no setup fee for plans above 12 months, and free domain registration. Sign up for an account here.

Eager to start your own website? Win a year’s worth of hosting for free by joining our giveaway below.

How do I win a copy?

Step 1: Fill in the giveaway form

Please fill in the form with your real name and email address so that we can get in touch if you are chosen as a winner. MakeUseOf giveaways are open to readers worldwide.
 

Step 2: Share!

You’re almost done. Now, all that’s left to do is to share the post!

(Note: no points will be awarded.)

Alternative entry method: Use your points!

Exchange your MakeUseOf points for an entry into the competition. First, create a MakeUseOf account, earn points and exchange your points for an entry! Learn more about our Game system and Rewards program.

Sorry, the competition is now over

By participating in this giveaway, you agree to the giveaway rules.

This giveaway begins now and ends Friday, March 22nd. The winners will be selected at random and informed via email.

Spread the word to your friends and have fun!

Interested in sponsoring a giveaway? We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with us via the form at the bottom of this page.

The post Affordable, Secure and Fast Web Hosting by SiteGround [Giveaway] appeared first on MakeUseOf.

Powered by Bitcoin payment processor BitPay, the WordPress Bitcoin payment interface is straightforward and easy to use, putting Bitcoin alongside other mainstream payment mechanisms.

While Bitcoin adoption rates amongst consumers are far behind PayPal (not to mention traditional credit cards), this move goes a long way towards democratizing access to WordPress’s premium tools and leveling the playing field for bloggers and writers from developing countries. In other words, if you live in a developed country and have no problems with PayPal, this may not make much of a difference to you – but for users with no PayPal or credit card access, being able to pay via Bitcoin can make a significant difference. With this move, WordPress joins many other web hosting services who already accept Bitcoin, and becomes one of the fledgling virtual currency’s most high-profile supporters.

Source: WordPress.com

The post WordPress.com Now Accepts Bitcoin Payments [Updates] appeared first on MakeUseOf.

For me, it really started when I wanted to develop more interaction with readers. To do that, I included new Google Plus, Facebook and RSS feed buttons at the top of every post page. A little later, I also included the awesome Facebook “likes” badge that shows the growing number of people that liked your blog on Facebook.

Other stages of development for a growing blog also include things like adding new advertisers beyond just Google Ads, incorporating useful analytics to show reader behavior, and also tweaking the theme to include special information in every post footer or header.

However, I think the most important stage of development for any blog is the moment that you first launch your newsletter. While doing so was something that I had really feared for a long time – I figured it was far too complicated and expensive – I am happy to report that establishing a newsletter and growing the list fast isn’t difficult, especially if you promote it using an effective pop-up subscription tool like Pippity.

This week, we’ll be giving away 25 Pippity licenses, a premium WordPress pop-up plugin (that doesn’t frustrate) worth $49. Find out what Pippity can do for you and how you can win one.

Pippity is for Customized Pop-Up Forms

I should set the record straight right off the bat. Pippity isn’t just for newsletter subscriptions. It’s actually an effective tool to create customized pop-up windows on your site that behave exactly in the way that you tell it to.

The first reaction for a lot of people when they hear the phrase “pop-ups” is, “Oh, I don’t want to do that to my readers.”

Well, if you actually look at some of your favorite sites, you might realize that they use pop-up forms, but they do so in a way that is unobtrusive and useful. That is what Pippity is all about.

After purchasing a licence from Pippity, installing the plugin is as simple as downloading the ZIP file from the site, and then going into your plugin folder in WordPress and clicking on “Add New”.

Click on the “Upload” option, and then click “Choose File” and browse to the ZIP file that you just downloaded from the Pippity site. When you click on “Install Now”, WordPress uploads, unpacks and sets up the plugin for you – it’s as easy as that.

Once it’s downloaded and activated, you’ll see the Pippity link appear under “Appearance” in your WordPress navigation menu.

When you first click on the Pippity menu item, you’ll need to enter in the key that was sent to you when you purchased the software. Once that’s finished, the left Pippity menu includes the tools to create and manage your pop-ups. To start a new one, just click “Create Popup”.

In the window to the right, you’ll see a left navigation bar appear, and to the right you’ll see a preview window where you see a sample pop-up display, showing you how the pop-up will appear on your site.

Hover over each theme to see an example of how it looks. When you find the one that you like, just click on “Save & Continue”. The next step is customizing the pop-up further. Pippity gives you the ability to really alter everything about the pop-up, including the coloring, font sizes and colors, and more. Just go from top to bottom and make sure all of the style settings are set to your liking.

Once you’ve got the design down, the next step is to actually create the content that will appear on your pop-up. This doesn’t take very long at all. Just create the header and main text. For bullets, just use “*” to mark each item, and it’ll appear with the bullet graphic you defined in the previous style settings.

Click “Save & Continue” again, and the next step will be to define the behavior of your pop-up. I can’t stress enough how important this step is. This will make the difference between a really annoying popup, and one that readers will actually find useful and welcome. You can configure the popup to only occur on posts and not pages, make it wait a specific delay before popping up, and only popping up when the reader reaches the end of an article.

You can even set it up so that a reader doesn’t even get the pop-up unless they’ve visited the page a few times, and not just throwing pop-ups at every reader that visits the page. You can also make sure readers aren’t constantly getting popups by putting a delay in days before the popup happens again.

In addition to only showing the popups on posts rather than pages, you can also configure the plugin to only show pop-ups to people that aren’t logged into your blog. This prevents readers that are already signed up with your site from getting popups asking them to register.

Finally, once you’re done creating your popup – and if it is for a newsletter subscription – you will have the option in the next step to integrate the pop-up with the subscription script for many of the major newsletter management services out there. Here at MUO, we’ve covered ones like Madmimi and MailChimp, both of which can be integrated with Pippity by simply pasting the Newsletter subscription HTML form into the box in the Pippity Popup Creation form.

I have to admit, I was a little bit skeptical that such a quick setup could result in a quality popup that would interest people into signing up for the monthly newsletter that I’ll be offering. I was also skeptical that the pop-up behavior would really follow the rules that I set up in the popup creation tool.

I clicked on a post in my site, and then waited 60 seconds – the time that I’d set before an popup should appear to readers first arriving to the post. Sure enough, after a minute, the pop-up appeared.

I have to admit that I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was, and how professional the popups look. They are not at all annoying – they just offer a very fast sign-up form that readers can use to subscribe to your newsletter. It’s actually a way to offer your readers a fast, convenient method they can use to subscribe.

I haven’t quite been running Pippity long enough to say whether it has resulted in a huge influx of subscribers, but I can say that I’m already using the Pippity analytics to watch how many impressions of the popup take place every day. So monitoring the conversion rate using those tools is a great way to gauge whether or not the design or text on your popup works. By playing around and tweaking things, you’ll be able to increase your conversion rates easily.

Give Pippity a try and let us know what you think of how it looks on your WordPress site, and how well it performs in getting you subscribers. Share your experiences in the comments section below!

Good news for webmasters! We’ve got 25 licenses for Pippity to offer this week. Here’s how you can win one.

How do I win a copy?

It’s simple, just follow the instructions.

Step 1: Fill in the giveaway form

Please fill in the form with your real name and email address so that we can get in touch if you are chosen as a winner. Click here if you can’t view the form.

The giveaway code required to activate the form is available from our Facebook page.

Step 2: Share!

You’re almost done. Now, all that’s left to do is to share the post. There are 2 options to choose from or you can do both!

This giveaway begins now and ends Friday, March 16th. The winners will be selected at random and informed via email.

Spread the word to your friends and have fun!

Interested in sponsoring a giveaway? We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with us via the form at the bottom of this page.

The post Give Your Subscriber Count a Boost With Pippity Pop-Ups [Giveaway] appeared first on MakeUseOf.

AJAX, which stands for Asynchronous Javascript and XML, enables websites to dynamically fetch and display content without the user moving away from the current page. This leads to a far more interactive user experience, and can speed things up too since a whole new webpage needn’t be loaded. Luckily, making use of AJAX is quite easy to do from within the WordPress environment, and today I’m going to show you how.

This Ajax tutorial should be considered fairly advanced, and continues on from last time where we learnt how to use custom database tables from within a WordPress template – in my example, a simple existing table of customer data was used. When it comes to inserting things back into the database though, we’re going to be making use of a little AJAX magic within WordPress.

All the code in todays tutorial will therefore be referencing what we wrote last time, but if you’re just looking for how to do AJAX in WordPress then it’s equally as relevant.

Why Use AJAX?

The most common use of AJAX is related to forms – checking if a username is taken, or populating the rest of the form with different questions depending on a particular answer you give. Basically though, you use AJAX whenever you want an event (like a user clicking something, or typing something) tied to a server-side action that occurs in the background.

We’re going to use it to add new entries to our important customized customer database table, but you can probably come up with something more exciting.

Overview of How To Use AJAX in WordPress

1. Edit your custom template to include a form or javascript event that will submit data via jQuery AJAX to admin-ajax.php including whatever post data you want to pass in. Make sure jQuery is being loaded.
2. Define a function in your theme’s function.php; read post variables, and return something back to the user if you wish.
3. Add an AJAX action hook for your function.

Creating the Form

Let’s start by creating a simple form on the front-end for entering new customer details. It’s nothing complicated, just replace the main part of your custom template with this code that we began last week, around where the is_user_logged_in() check occurs:

if (is_user_logged_in()):?>
 
<form type="post" action="" id="newCustomerForm">
 
<label for="name">Name:</label>
<input name="name" type="text" />
 
<label for="email">Email:</label>
<input name="email" type="text" />
 
<label for="phone">Phone:</label>
<input name="phone" type="text" />
 
<label for="address">Address:</label>
<input name="address" type="text" />
 
<input type="hidden" name="action" value="addCustomer"/>
<input type="submit">
</form>
<br/><br/>
<div id="feedback"></div>
<br/><br/>

The only thing that might look odd to you is that there is the use of a hidden input field called action – this contains the name of the function we’ll trigger via AJAX.

The PHP Receiver

Next, open up functions.php and add the following line to ensure jQuery is being loaded on your site:

wp_enqueue_script('jquery');

The basic structure for writing an AJAX call is as follows:

function myFunction(){
//do something
die();
}
add_action('wp_ajax_myFunction', 'myFunction');
add_action('wp_ajax_nopriv_myFunction', 'myFunction');

Those last two lines are action hooks that tell WordPress “I have a function called myFunction, and I want you to listen out for it because it’s going to be called through the AJAX interface” – the first is for admin level users, while wp_ajax_nopriv_ is for users who aren’t logged in. Here’s the complete code for functions.php that we’re going to use to insert data in our special customers table, which I’ll explain shortly:

wp_enqueue_script('jquery');
 
function addCustomer(){
 
global $wpdb;
 
$name = $_POST['name'];
$phone = $_POST['phone'];
$email = $_POST['email'];
$address = $_POST['address'];
 
if($wpdb->insert('customers',array(
'name'=>$name,
'email'=>$email,
'address'=>$address,
'phone'=>$phone
))===FALSE){
 
echo "Error";
 
}
else {
echo "Customer '".$name. "' successfully added, row ID is ".$wpdb->insert_id;
 
}
die();
}
add_action('wp_ajax_addCustomer', 'addCustomer');
add_action('wp_ajax_nopriv_addCustomer', 'addCustomer'); // not really needed

Just as before, we’re declaring the global $wpdb to give us direct access to the database.  We’re then grabbing the POST variables which contain the form data. Surrounded in an IF statement is the function $wpdb->insert, which is what we use to insert data into our table. Since WordPress provides specific functions for inserting regular posts and meta data, this $wpdb->insert method is generally only used for custom tables. You can read more about it on the Codex, but basically it takes the name of the table to be inserted into, followed by an array of column/value pairs.

The ===FALSE checks to see if the insert function failed, and if so, it outputs “error“. If not, we’re just sending a message to the user that Customer X was added, and echoing the $wpdb->insert_id variable, which indicates the auto-increment variable of the last insert operation that happened (assuming you’ve set a field that auto-increments, like an ID).

Finally, die() will override the default die(0) provided by WordPress – this isn’t essential as such, but without it you’re going to get 0 appended to the end of anything you send back to the template.

The Javascript

The final step is the magic bit - the actual Javascript that will initiate the AJAX call. You’ll notice that in the form we added earlier, the action field was left blank. That’s because we’ll be overriding this with our AJAX call. The general way to do this would be:

jQuery.ajax({
 
type:"POST",
 
url: "/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php", // our PHP handler file
 
data: "myDataString",
 
success:function(results){
 
// do something with returned data
 
}
 
)};

That’s the basic structure of AJAX call we’ll be using, but certainly not the only way you can do it. You might be wondering why we’re referring to wp-admin here, even though this will be on the front-end of the site. This is just where the AJAX handler resides, whether you’re using it for front or admin side functions – confusing, I know. Paste the following code directly into the customer template:

<script type="text/javascript">
jQuery('#newCustomerForm').submit(ajaxSubmit);
 
function ajaxSubmit(){
 
var newCustomerForm = jQuery(this).serialize();
 
jQuery.ajax({
type:"POST",
url: "/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php",
data: newCustomerForm,
success:function(data){
jQuery("#feedback").html(data);
}
});
 
return false;
}
</script>

In the first line, we’re attaching our ajaxSubmit function to the form we made earlier – so when the user clicks submit, it goes via our special AJAX function. Without this, our form will do nothing. In our ajaxSubmit() function, the first thing we do is to serialize() the form. This just takes all the form values, and turns them into one long string that our PHP will parse out later. If it all works out right, we’ll put the returned data into the DIV with the id of feedback.

That’s it. Save everything, refresh and try submitting some form data. If you’re having problems, you can view the full code of the page template here (based on the default twenty-eleven theme), and the code to add to functions.php here (don’t replace, just add this on the end).

Things to Keep In Mind

Security: This code isn’t production ready and is for the purposes of learning only. We have left out one key point, and that’s the use of a wp-nonce – a one-off code generated by WordPress that ensures the AJAX request is only coming from where it was intended; a passkey if you will. Without that, your function could effectively be exploited to insert random data. SQL injection attacks aren’t a problem though, because we routed queries through the WordPress $wpdb->insert function – WordPress cleans any inputs for you and makes them safe.

Updating the table of customers: Right now, we only send back a confirmation message, but the table of customers doesn’t get updated – you’ll only see the additional entries if you refresh the page (which kind of defeats the purpose of doing this all via AJAX). See if you can make a new AJAX function that can dynamically output the table.

Input Validation: because there’s no validation going on with the form data, it’s actually possible to add blank entries, or multiple entries if you press too many times. Some input validation on the form fields, clearing them when completed, as well SQL to check the email or phone number that doesn’t already exist in the database would be useful.

That’s it from me this week – if you’ve had any problems following this tutorial then feel free to get in touch via the comments and I’ll do my best to help you; or if you’re trying to customize this in some way, feel free to bounce ideas off me. I hope this really goes to show just how much you can do from within WordPress simply by combining a little JavaScript, PHP, and MySQL. As ever, don’t forget to check out all our other WordPress articles.

The post A Tutorial On Using AJAX In WordPress appeared first on MakeUseOf.

Requirements

• A WordPress.org self-hosted blog (free WordPress.com blogs will not work).
• A host that allows fopen function – I believe GoDaddy supports this on shared Linux hosting plans, but I can’t confirm other hosts. I tested on a dedicated virtual server.
• Pretty permalinks should be correctly enabled (that means this won’t work if your blog still has post urls of the form yourdomain.com/?id=1234)

Warning

This plugin is still in alpha stage, and I don’t suggest you install it on anything mission critical or without backing up first. There is also an issue of bandwidth – since the page will be proxied by loading it through your server first, it will use your bandwidth allowance. Your hosting plan may specifically disallow this if it’s unlimited, or you may be charged additional costs if you go over your allowance.

No promises are made about legality. If your country or even your school prohibits the use of proxies, then this is a risk you take. If a particular site is illegal in your country, then this is likely also a criminal offence to open a proxy to that site. Make you own decisions, please.

Setup and Usage

Go ahead and grab it from the WordPress repository, or search within WordPress.

After activation, the single screen of settings can be found under the settings sidebar. The first setting is the permalink used for RePress. I’d actually suggest you change this right off the bat – though there are no vulnerabilities right now, a tool could be potentially released which would automatically scan for the defaults, just as tools that try to bruteforce hack the Admin user are available.

If you save the settings and visit that URL now, you’ll be presented with the basic interface of the proxy.

To prevent abuse, only URLs you specify will be accessible. Delete any you don’t want through the settings, and you can easily add any sites you do want to allow. These will be then listed on your proxy page.

Note: The plugin will force you to logout of WordPress before visiting any proxied sites to prevent possible abuse of the login data stored in your cookies.

Problems? Doesn’t work? The most likely problem is that your host doesn’t support fopen (a way of ‘opening’ a website in PHP) for security reasons. The is common on cheap shared hosting plans. I expect the plugin to add a variety of proxy options in future – using curl as an alternative to fopen for example – but for now I’m afraid there’s nothing you can do about this other than move hosting.

Summary

This is a great little plugin even as an alpha release. It could do with a few improvements – like masking the actual domain of the proxied site in the URL to prevent detection; and there’s also a few issues with CDN content on the proxied site that seem to be not served properly – but for the most part it works, and it works well. Will you be offering up a proxy for your friends in China?

Image Credit: Lock from Shutterstock

The post Setup A Proxy On Your WordPress Site To Bypass Filters & Firewalls appeared first on MakeUseOf.

The days turn into weeks, and then the weeks turn into months. Blogging become a chore. You realize that you are spending most of your time trying to format your posts so that they look professionally done.

Then you hire a writer, and then two. Soon, you have a team of writers sending you posts every week, and you’re now spending all of your time editing and formatting those posts to look the way that you want them to look on the blog that has become a labor of love.

The problem is that all of this editing and formatting has taken away all of the time that you used to have for what you loved to do the most – write.

WordPress is a brilliant invention, and has made it possible for more and more people to have amazing websites, with beautiful themes. However, there is still the matter of the content area, which still needs to be formatted for pictures, ads and well-spaced content.

Formatting Your WordPress Content with a Template

A while back, I described to you how you could automatically insert an ad into every single post using the In-Post Template Add-on for WordPress.

This works brilliantly if you are starting with a new blog – but if you’ve already been inserting ads into your posts, it’ll go back and re-insert a new ad and completely mess up all of your old posts.

Don’t worry – there is another solution that is even better. By simply editing one of your standard WordPress PHP files, and then creating a style sheet, you can create your very own carefully formatted content template that will appear every time you click “Add New” in WordPress. All your old content will remain untouched.

Here’s a sample of all of the formatting work that I have going on in my own blog.

I’ve got a header image that needs to be carefully sized, with padding around it and left justified. I’ve got the “more” break, followed by my in-post Google Ad. Then, throughout each post I have additional images that are sized to suit and right justified. For the most part, I’m ashamed to say, I’ve been doing all of this manually – including all articles that my writers send in.

Here’s what such a post looks like when it’s published.

As you can see, the formatting is a little tricky because in one area I have the image left justified, and in the next section I have the ad right-justified. Then all additional images are right-justified as well. I like this setup for my own blog because it’s easier on the eyes and flows well. You may have your own preference for your particular WordPress blog.

The first step to create your template is to back-up your functions.php file (you’ll find it in the root directory of your theme), and then open it for editing.

You’ll see a bunch of code in here – all functions currently used by your current blog theme. You’re going to insert a new section between those functions. Find the end of the first function, and then insert the code that I’m going to detail next.

Now, I have to give credit where credit is due – I actually got this idea from David Hansen over at Smashing Magazine, who wrote an article on this back in October. In this case I’m going to expand on his idea by showing you how to tweak that template for things like ads and pictures.

add_filter('default_content','custom_editor_content');
add_editor_style('editor-style.css');
 
function custom_editor_content( $content ) {
 
$content = '
 
    <div class="content-col-side">
 
<img class="alignleft size-full " style="margin-left: 10px; margin-right: 10px;" title="placeholder" src="http://www.yourwebsite.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/imageplaceholder.png" alt="content template" />
 
 
     &nbsp;
 
     </div>    
 
    <div class="content-col-main">
 
    Insert your introduction here
 
    &nbsp;
 
    </div>
 
    <div class="content-google-ad">
 
    <span id="more-98442"></span>
    <div style="float: right;">
    Enter Google Script Here
    &nbsp;
    </div>
    </div>
 
   <div class="content-section-two">
    Here is second section content
    &nbsp;
    </div>
 
    <div class="content-image-three">
<img class="alignright size-full " style="margin-left: 10px; margin-right: 10px;" title="placeholder" src="http://www.yourwebsite.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/imageplaceholder.png" alt="content template" />
    &nbsp;
    </div>
 
    <div class="content-section-three">
    Here is third section content
    &nbsp; 
    </div>
 
    <div class="content-image-four">
<img class="alignright size-full " style="margin-left: 10px; margin-right: 10px;" title="placeholder" src="http://www.yourwebsite.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/imageplaceholder.png" alt="placeholder" /></a>
    &nbsp;
    </div>
 
    <div class="content-section-four">
    Here is third section content
    &nbsp;
     </div>
   ';
   return $content;
}

Notice how the alignment actually works best using the image alignment built into your theme style, and in the case of the Google Ad, you should use the second div with the style attribute to align where you’d like it to go. It just works best. However, as far as sizing, padding and placement, you’ll need to create the css file.

Here’s the styling for each section defined above.

body {
   background: #f5f5f5;
}
 
.content-col-main {
float:right;
width:70%;
padding:1%;
border: 1px dotted #ccc;
background: #fff;
}
 
.content-col-side {
float:left;
width:210px;
padding:1%;
border: 1px dotted #ccc;
background: #fff;
}
 
.content-google-ad {
float:right;
width:20%;
padding:1%;
border: 1px dotted #ccc;
background: #fff;
}
 
.content-section-two {
float:left;
width:70%;
padding:1%;
border: 1px dotted #ccc;
background: #fff;
}
 
.content-image-three {
float:right;
width:210px;
padding:1%;
border: 1px dotted #ccc;
background: #fff;
}
 
.content-section-three {
float:left;
width:70%;
padding:1%;
border: 1px dotted #ccc;
background: #fff;
}
 
img { /* Makes sure your images stay within their columns */
   max-width: 100%;
   width: auto;
   height: auto;
}

You can use either percentages or pixels for sizing. I prefer pixels for images, but it really comes down to preference. If there’s too much space between the pictures and text, just tweak the content percentages a bit until it looks good.

After you’ve saved your .css file, open up a new post and you’ll see that your perfectly formatted content template is already in place for you.

All you have to do is click on the image and upload the one you want to use, and then fill in all of the content areas. It really is as easy as that. Everything is automatically aligned and placed where they need to go.

All right-justified Google Code or images are already there – all you have to do is update the content. The time it will take you to put together a post with all of this already done for you will drop by a huge factor, guaranteed.

Updating all of the images on the template is as simple uploading the pictures that you want to use to your blog using the media upload tool, and then clicking on the image and pasting the URL to those images in the “Source” field.

Of course you’ll want to update the title and alt tags as well. As you can see here in my test article, writing an article is now just a matter of filling in each of the content areas. I can’t tell you how sweet it is to be able to just concentrate on writing, knowing that all of the proper formatting is already in place to make the article look its absolute best.

The final result? Here is my first test article using the new WordPress content template. All images and ad code is inserted, aligned and spaced perfectly.

If you didn’t know any better, you would think that nothing at all has changed on the blog. The formatting looks identical to the way it looked when I slaved over them for an hour or more. Now, all of that effort and trial-and-error formatting is already inserted right into the WordPress content template.
So now all that’s left is sitting back and doing what you’ve always loved to do – writing.
Does this WordPress Content template lessen the load on your own blog? Do you have any other formatting tips that people can use in their own templates? Share your thoughts and insights in the comments section below.
Image Credit: Shutterstock

The post How To Use A WordPress Content Template To Write Faster appeared first on MakeUseOf.

Admin Bar

The new look admin bar has been streamlined to focus on updates and comment moderation, along with a quick post button.

The admin menu was a greatly heralded addition to the WordPress 3.2 release, but a lot of the more extraneous buttons have now been removed. Some of the more useful menu items, like widgets or menus, have been moved to a sub menu item when you hover over the blog name (but these are only accessible when viewing the blog, not when in the admin dashboard).

Speaking of the admin dashboard, fairly big changes there too. The side menus no longer drop down, but rather pull out instead upon hover. To be quite honest, I hate them. I find myself clicking more than I’d like and the behavior is sporadic.

Tablet users needn’t despair though, as the entire admin interface has also been given a touchable overhaul to make the admin experience on tablet input devices a more pleasant experience.

Tooltips

With an overhauled API for plugins too, WordPress now allows you to create tooltip-like popups to display messages or provide walkthrough tours. It’s an interesting addition that should make using the more complicated plugins more accessible to everyone. Here’s hoping developers don’t get overzealous with them.

Drag and Drop Uploading and Single Media Insert Button:

Before you get all excited, the drag and drop uploading doesn’t work in the basic visual editor. Instead, you still have to open up the insert media dialog box, then drag and drop into there. This is a limitation of HTML5 though, so we can hardly blame WordPress.

Where there were previously 4 buttons for inserting various types of media, there’s now only one, and the uploaded auto detects the filetype. 90% of users won’t care about this, since most of us only ever used the insert picture button. Still, it’s nice to have less clutter.

Other than that, drag and drop uploading works well, and saves having navigate through a laborious Select File dialog. A welcome addition, and possibly worth upgrading for that alone if it means shaving a few seconds off of every image upload.

New Help Screens:

Following on the theme of accessibility for new users, the help screens have been given an overhaul. Now they’re actually helpful – which is obviously a good thing for help screens to be. The dashboard also gets a unique set of welcome messages when performing a new install, again designed to help new users get familiar with the system.

Other stuff … Tumblr importer anyone?

As well as a long list of bug fixes (though none security critical) and performance updates (new version of jQuery!), 3.3 also brings a Tumblr importer, which some of you might have been on the edge of your seats waiting for if you wanted to graduate from Tumblr to your own real blog. I’ll give this a go at some point in the future, as I’m currently running a single Tumblr blog purely to upload a stream of images to. For those of you ready to switch, may I suggest my free guide that covers everything from WordPress hosting considerations to SEO tactics and monetization?

Incompatibilities

As is inevitable with such major updates, some plugins and themes will have minor errors, and some will cease to function entirely or break when you blog. There is a master list over at the WordPress forums of known issues, but the most significant ones as far as I can see:

• Atuhualpa breaks because of updated jQuery
• WooThemes broke the new media uploaded (refresh your cache to fix)
• Intense Debate shows mismatch of pending comments
• Improved Page Permalinks causes new pages to give 404 error
• Adblockers mess with the new visual editor (you shouldn’t be running them anyway)
• Dodgy styles occurring in admin dashboard due to plugins using print_styles hook instead of enqueue_scripts hook.

So as always, I would strong suggest you perform a full backup of both files and database before performing this upgrade, and be ready to revert if you have problems. Upgrade any plugins you can first, then upgrade your core WordPress.

The critical question I guess is should you upgrade yet? I’d certainly take a close look at your plugins – if you’re running ten or more you’re bound to have trouble with at least one of them. Upgrade where possible, backup, and just give it a go. The new features are certainly a worthy addition – even though the majority are aimed at new users – but who doesn’t appreciate performance increases and bug fixes? A few seconds saved uploading images? Yes, please.

Have you upgraded yet? What do you think, are you liking it? Did you have any random errors from your plugins? Let us know in the comments!

The post What’s New In WordPress 3.3 ? appeared first on MakeUseOf.

“Over the years one of the most frequent requests on WordPress.com has been to allow bloggers to earn money from their blog through ads. We’ve resisted advertising so far because most of it we had seen wasn’t terribly tasteful, and it seemed like Google’s AdSense was the state-of-the-art, which was sad. You pour a lot of time and effort into your blog and you deserve better than AdSense.”

Not all blogs will be eligible for the program. Blogs must be publicly visible and have a custom domain name to take part. If you would like to apply for the program, check out the sign up page on the official WordPress site. You must already have the custom domain name and blog set up to even apply for entry.

Source: TechCrunch

The post WordPress Announces WordAds To Compete With Google AdSense [News] appeared first on MakeUseOf.

I will be explaining how to create a brand new WordPress blog on your Linux server using Subversion (SVN) as well as how to convert a “traditional” installation to an SVN-type installation, as most people who will want to do this probably already have a blog going. This is possible because Automattic (the creators of WordPress) operate a SVN repository that allows this functionality. Without this repository, none of this would work.

Before you start, you’ll probably need to install the Subversion version control software onto your server. For Ubuntu and Debian servers, use

sudo apt-get install subversion

while Fedora/Red Hat/CentOS users should use

sudo yum install subversion

Creating A New Blog

In order to create a new SVN-controlled WordPress instance, log into your server using a program such as PuTTY, using :

cd /path/to/a/folder

so you can use

mkdir blog

to create a new folder named blog in your current location. Then use

cd blog

to go into the new folder, and run

svn co http://core.svn.wordpress.org/tags/3.2.1 .

to download and install WordPress into the current folder. If there is a newer version, replace 3.2.1 with the latest version. Also, don’t forget to include that lonesome period (.) at the end of the command as that is needed for the command to run correctly. Wait for the process to complete, then you can go ahead and enter in the correct URL to begin the installation script.

Converting From “Traditional” To SVN

Converting your blog to be controlled by SVN will require a few new steps. Essentially, this will create a new blog that is SVN-controlled, and move all your content and settings over to that new blog. This isn’t as invasive as it sounds, and shouldn’t mess up anything that you currently have on your blog.

To get started, use “cd” to go to where your blog folder is located (don’t actually go into the blog folder). Here we are going to assume that your old blog is in a folder named “blog” and your temporary new blog is going to be in a folder named “blog-new“. Go ahead and run

svn co http://core.svn.wordpress.org/tags/3.2.1 blog-new

which will create the new “blog-new” folder and download the necessary files into it. Please make sure that you download the same version as the one you are currently using. So if you’re not running the latest version, don’t choose the latest version in this process.

Next we’re going to go into the old blog folder by running

cd ../blog

and then copy the main config file as well as the htaccess file by running

cp -p wp-config.php .htaccess ../blog-new

so that these important files are in the new blog folder.

Now we’re going to copy over the actual content of your blog to the new folder, including plugins, themes, and whatnot. To do this, run

cp -rpfu wp-content/* ../blog-new/wp-content

and let that take a couple seconds or more, depending on how large your blog is. WordPress-provided plugins shouldn’t be affected, but you can double-check to make sure everything is running smoothly by running

svn status ../blog-new/wp-content

.

Any files that were modified will have an “M” next to them and need to be reverted by using

svn revert ../blog-new/wp-content/some/file

.

Any custom files or directories can also be copied by running

cp -rp images wp-digest ../blog-new

You can check that everything is copied over correctly and good to go by running

diff -rq blog/ blog-new/ | grep -v svn

(This is an example after I intentionally removed some files)

We’re almost done! We’re now going to move out to the big folder containing the two blog folders by running

cd ..

and then renaming them to make the final switch-a-roo by running

mv blog blog-old; mv blog-new blog

.

Congrats! Your SVN-controlled blog should now be up and running! If not, you may have forgotten to copy something from the old blog (now located in the renamed folder “blog-old”). You can now go ahead and update to the latest version if needed.

Updating Your Blog

To update your SVN-controlled WordPress blog, you’ll need to go into the directory of your blog using the “cd” command and then run :

svn sw http://core.svn.wordpress.org/tags/3.2.1/ .

which will switch your blog to the newest version. Remember to replace 3.2.1 with the latest version available.

Conclusion

For those that support it, Subversion version control is a great version tracking tool that is highly effective, relatively easy to use, and very fast. It’s a great thing that WordPress can be controlled via SVN, increasing the flexibility of the already-flexible WordPress platform. No wonder it’s one of the most used frameworks for sites today.

What do you think about WordPress and SVN working together? Have you even known that this was possible? Let us know in the comments!

The post How To Control WordPress Versions Using Subversion [Linux] appeared first on MakeUseOf.

1. Good Quality Content Is Always The Best Tactic

I can’t tell you how sick I am of hearing people announce their blog when it has less than 5 posts on it and/or consists of nothing more than YouTube videos and re-posted pictures with a one-sentence commentary. If that’s all you have to say, get a Twitter account or use Tumblr.

Make sure you have, at the very least, 10 quality posts, but aim for around 30 ideally. By “quality“, I mean 400 words or more of your own original content. Never copy content from elsewhere, like these mountains of autoblogs do with our MakeUseOf content…

Keep your articles focused, grammatically correct and spell checked. If you speak like a valley-girl or have a tendency to write in txtspk, do your best to hide it and take remedial English classes – no one wants to read that, even your best friends.

2. Get A Domain

Spend a whole $10 on a unique, short as you can, relevant domain name – even if you’re hosting your blog on a free WordPress.com or Blogger account. Get this right from the beginning and you will save yourself a world of hurt later.

Don’t be tempted to make up a “cool” domain unless you have a rock-solid web service and a VC investment to the tune of a million dollars to market it; and absolutely don’t get a free domain like .cc

3. Establish A Good Permalink Structure

Don’t promote your blog if your URLs still look like mydomain.com/blog?id=1324. Take a minute to go the permalink options in your WordPress settings. Something like mydomain.com/my-article is great.

You might also want to consider installing an SEO slugs type plugin, which reduces the length of your permalink URLs by removing common words such as a, the, or. Shorter URLs are better.

4. Change The Tagline

It’s just embarrassing to find a blog that still has “Just another WordPress blog” in the title or on the theme. You can change it from Settings -> General to something more relevant to your site. Apart from the fact that many themes feature the tagline prominently in the header, it’s also often used in the meta-titles of your homepage and therefore shown to everyone who finds your site through Google.

5. Set Up Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a free traffic report for your website. But what’s the point of installing Analytics if you don’t actually have any traffic yet?

Well firstly, motivation. If you have accurate feedback that shows a clear, progressive growth in traffic then you are far less likely to give up. Don’t wait until you think you have some traffic – get real feedback, right now.

The second reason – to find out exactly what’s popular on your blog; exactly which keywords bring in the most traffic; and make adjustments based on this. Try not to get too caught up in the numbers game yet, but if you find people are coming to your page for a particular topic and leaving quickly, perhaps try to write another post on that topic that’s more in-depth or targeted more specifically.

My favourite plugin in this area is Analyticator, as it connects to your Analytics account and lets you choose the profile from a drop down list, avoiding the need to copy and paste any fiddly codes. If you have no idea how to read all your Analytics data yet, just start collecting it anyway and I’ll go over the major features in a later article.

6. Google Sitemaps Plugin

This isn’t essential, but as far I’m concerned any helping hand you can give Google to index your blog is a good thing. Get a sitemap generator such as this, set it up correctly to automatically generate whenever you post something, and you’re halfway sorted.

7. Webmaster Tools

This is a useful, free set of tools from Google. It has a number of functions, one of which involves submitting sitemaps to be indexed. It also keeps a track of 404 errors, and alerts you to malware security issues and even if WordPress updates are available. You could get by without it, but it’s a nice tool to have under your belt.

8. SEO Friendly Images

The power of image search should absolutely not be underestimated. Put simply, this plugin will add ALT and TITLE tags to your images. You can do this using the WordPress image uploader, but I don’t know many people who actually bother to do that – so this plugin does it automatically. By adding these to your image tags, you may find a huge influx of traffic from Google Image search.

9. Join A Forum

Find a forum related to your particular topic and establish a presence there. Introduce yourself, make some good quality comments or advice on other threads, help some people out. After that, change your signature to include a link to your website, and repeat. This should give you a small trickle of visitors.

10. Social Networks

Be sure to announce your articles on your own social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and StumbleUpon – but don’t fall into the trap of promoting absolutely everything you write. Pick one or two of your best posts to promote, and you’ll be far more likely to get a good response and not piss people off in the process.

Done all that? Awesome, you should start seeing results soon. Got any other essential first steps or WordPress plugins you always install? Let us know in the comments!

Image credit: Shutterstock

The post 10 Essential First Steps When Starting A WordPress Blog appeared first on MakeUseOf.

To export your StumbleUpon blog into WordPress, you need to log into your account and then point your browser to the export tool. This will automatically export your entire blog into a file which you can save on your computer. StumbleUpon recommends that you create a new WordPress blog before you import your data and not import it into an existing blog. In the WordPress dashboard, you would need to go to Tools – > Import.

If you want the export file to contain videos, go to your StumbleUpon account settings and check the “Embed videos into your blog” box prior to creating the export file.

To import groups, you need to log into your StumbleUpon account, go to the group page and click the “Export Group” link. You should do this before October 24th, after which you will not be able to use groups anymore.

To learn more about exporting from StumbleUpon, visit the blog export guide and the group export guide.

What do you think of StumbleUpon’s recent moves? How will this affect the way you use StumbleUpon? Let us know in the comments.

The post StumbleUpon Offers Export Options For Blogs & Groups [News] appeared first on MakeUseOf.

E-Commerce – Your Own Online Shop

You might be surprised to learn that you can run an entire online store from WordPress, and more importantly you can do it for free.

WP eCommerce has been the standard for a long time and powers some really impressive sites like Icon Dock. With a free core feature set and premium upgrades (additional payment processors, affiliate managers, etc), it’s the choice of developers with easy to customise templates.

In terms of out-of-the-box ease of setup for non-technical users though, my favourite is JigoShop, with which you can have an attractive and fully functional shop up in minutes, fully compatible with the default twenty-eleven WordPress theme. Nice!

Classifieds & Job Listings

For local sites especially, providing classified ads can be a great resource, as can a jobs site. Be aware that with any systems like these though, you really need a strong initial boost of activity and new users to prevent the site becoming stale. It may be best to create the community first, instead of creating a classifieds or job site from scratch and expecting the users to naturally come.

For classifieds, the best contender by far is Classipress, a premium theme for $99 but feature rich and mature with full support. The same developers also make Jobroller, a respected job listing theme at a similar premium price.

On the free side, Another WordPress Classifieds Plugin is an impressive alternative with a good selection of basic features – including the ability to charge users for listings using Google Checkout or Paypal.

For free job listings, WordPress Job Manager does an admirable job, and the developer is always active in the support communities and project development. It integrates well, and has fantastic reviews on the plugin repository. If you’re looking to integrate it into your existing design and have the power to easily customise, Job Manager might be a better solution than a costly premium plugin.

Membership Subscriptions

It’s hard to believe that anyone would subscribe to a website in this age of physical newspapers sales declining and sentiment against paywalls running at an all-time high – but if you’ve got niche knowledge on a topic that doesn’t have the traffic pull for you to make money through regular forms of advertising, then a subscription model may be the way to go.

Membership is a well developed free plugin to handle every aspect of running a members-only site, compatible with the latest WordPress and a favourite of many.

On the premium front, Wishlist Member is widely regarded as the best there is by those who make a living out of this – but at $99 for a single domain you’d better be certain of a subscriber base. Luckily, a 30-day free trial lets you decide if it’s right for you. With a full set of training videos, sequential content delivery and integration with a number of payment processors, it really has an expansive feature set.

A Reviews Site

My own iPad Board Games site is a collaborative reviews site running on WordPress, and uses the fantastic (and free) GD Star Ratings plugin at the core allowing anyone to vote on the games. It is quite a complex plugin with various rating types – posts, comments, multi-rating blocks, stars or thumb-up/down – and to get the best of it you really need to read up on the vast templating options. Certainly worth the time involved though, I’m sure you’ll agree.

On the premium side, it hard to fault wpreviewsite in anything but price – $97 for a single site license, though it is feature rich and works well out of the box for those of you in a hurry.

ReviewIt is a significantly cheaper theme option at $40 and supports the community plugin BuddyPress as well, but I’m not a fan of fixed theme options as they tend to look quite cookie-cutter.

Discussion Forum

Simple:Press is my choice for any sites that need a fully integrated and WordPress-centric discussion forum. It works right into your existing theme and looks great even without customising it, featuring the full gamut of forum features you’d expect. A full WordPress integration, user accounts remain managed by WordPress, so for tying it to other parts of your site you couldn’t ask for more.

I hope you can see just how powerful WordPress is for rapid website development of a variety of site types – not just blogs – and perhaps even gained a little inspiration in the process.

Many of the plugins mentioned today are featured on our freshly published Best WordPress Plugins page, but be sure to check out the full archives of WordPress tutorials too for lots more general blogging tips and in-depth theme-customization tutorials.

Image Credit: ShutterStock

The post 5 Things You Might Not Have Known You Could Do With WordPress appeared first on MakeUseOf.