Wordpress Wednesdays: Blog Security

It’s an unfortunate reality that there will always be people on the Internet who are looking to hack their way into websites and do all sorts of nasty things. While you may not be able to completely protect yourself against these malicious attacks, you can certainly take steps to protect your site to the best of your ability.

Instead of going line by line and trying to interpret areas where your blog may be vulnerable, wouldn’t it be nice if there was an automated solution that worked in much the same way as antivirus or anti-spyware software? That’s exactly what WordPress Scanner from BlogSecurity.net is meant to provide. The simple plug-in needs only be uploaded and activated, and then you can let it do its thing.

After it is done scanning for various security vulnerabilities on your Wordpress blog, be sure to de-activate the plug-in. For more detailed installation instructions and other information, check out this page. The WordPress Scanner checks the Wordpress version, looks for XSS vulnerabilities in the Wordpress themes, and enumerates Wordpress plug-ins.

The scan provided by this plug-in is just one more thing you can do to keep your blog safe from the bad guys. Be sure to close those back doors and open windows!

Wordpress Wednesdays: If Older Than

Nick Ramsay is the kind of guy that likes to kick it old school, so when he codes a new Wordpress plug-in, he offers zero widget support, zero user support, and zero customization options in the Wordpress dashboard. That doesn’t mean that his plug-ins are not worthwhile however.

If you’re looking to add some advertising to your blog, but you don’t want to retract from the user experience of your primary readers, then you may want to check out the If Older Than Wordpress plug-in. It functions in a similar way as the Shylock AdSense plug-in, except it is a stripped down and very simple version of it.

In a nutshell, when a visitor is viewing a new blog post, they are presented with one set of information. When the same visitor goes to check out an older post, they are presented with a different set of information. In the example that Nick provides, new posts are accompanied by a list of top commentators in the sidebar, but older posts are accompanied by an AdSense ad block.

The idea is that people reading your older posts are coming from search engines and other sources, and you want to monetize them as much as possible. At the same time, you want to optimize the user experience for your loyal readers, rewarding them with a little less advertising.

You can download the If Older Than Wordpress Plug-In through Nick’s Wordpress plug-in page.

Wordpress Wednesdays: iPhone Optimized

As you may or may not have heard, it was officially confirmed yesterday that the Apple iPhone is coming to Canada. Rogers didn’t provide any further information, but we can fully expect the iPhone to be pretty popular around these parts, just as it has been in the United States and other parts of the world. Even where they don’t sell the iPhone officially, people have been jailbreaking and unlocking the touchscreen mobile phone for some time now.

Given the rising popularity of Apple’s phone, some blogs are starting to notice another web browser in their Google Analytics accounts, seeing that people are surfing to their sites not only in Firefox, Opera, and Internet Explorer, but also through the Safari browser in the iPhone. Most sites are not optimized for the smaller screen of an iPhone, so what is a blogger to do?

I came across this post on the blog of Miss604, highlighting a unique theme and plug-in that creates a secondary version of your blog specifically for iPhone users. Called WPtouch, it automatically recognizes when someone is viewing your blog from an iPhone and then it renders a version of your blog that is easier to read and navigate.

In a nutshell, what WPtouch does is strip the site of a lot of images and heavy text, replacing it with a simple single-column design that is more easily read on an iPhone. You can find the plug-in over at Brave New Code, along with some supporting documentation.

Wordpress Wednesdays: WordTwit and Timestamps

It seems that all the cool kids are hopping onto Twitter these days (Follow BlueFur on Twitter!). People are quickly discovering that there is much more to Twitter than just the ability to tell the world “what are you doing”, because Twitter can serve as an excellent marketing and networking tool. You are able to use Twitter to directly contact and follow individuals that you may not otherwise have access to.

You can also use Twitter to promote your blog, automatically putting up a new “tweet” each time you publish a new post on your blog. This is accomplished by a Wordpress plug-in called WordTwit. Installation and configuration are very easy, because all you have to do is unzip, upload, and activate. From there, you go the options section to connect your Wordpress blog with your Twitter account.

The trouble with WordTwit, however, is that it seems to have problems sending out a tweet when you timestamp a post into the future. Say that you wrote a post today and you weren’t going to make it live until tomorrow afternoon. You would assume that WordTwit would send out a tweet tomorrow afternoon, right? Well, for certain versions of Wordpress , this just doesn’t seem to happen.

There are two primary solutions for this.

1. Upgrade to Wordpress 2.5. The issue seems to be rectified in the latest version of Wordpress, sending out a tweet at the appropriate time.

2. If you have a post that is time-stamped, go back and “re-save” it after the post has gone live. This seems to push the WordTwit into action.

Naturally, the first solution is a lot easier and it’s something that you’ll probably want to do anyways. Happy tweeting!

Wordpress Wednesdays: Add Twitter To Your Blog

Twitter has certainly become very popular this past little while and it seems like everybody is “tweeting” these days. We’ve already talked about using Twitter for business, but did you know that you can automatically post your Twitter updates (”tweets”) on your blog? It’s actually a very straightforward process.

First, you’ll want to go to the Twitter and log into your account. From there, you will be presented with the standard homepage containing all of the recent tweets from the people you are following. If you look over to the sidebar on the right, you’ll first see your name and avatar. Below this is a section called “currently”, which displays your most recent Twitter update.

Just below “currently”, you’ll see a text box that reads “Put your updates on your site!” Click on that. You will then be presented with a few options. If you want to integrate your Twitter updates onto your Wordpress blog, select “Other”, which is the last option on the list.

You can choose between Flash or HTML/Javascript. Of the Flash options, there is a widget that shows just your updates and there is another option that shows the updates of all your friends. It’s up to you whether you want to use Flash or Javascript, but the Javascript option is probably more universally compatible.

For the HTML/Javascript option, you will be offered two areas of customization. First, you can adjust the number of updates shown. This can range from just your most recent Twitter update to showing 20 tweets. Second, you can change the title of the Twitter update section. From here, you just copy and paste the code into where you want your Twitter updates to be displayed. Most people will throw it into the sidebar some place. The text from the Twitter updates will automatically take on the CSS properties of your blog. You can see this in action over at Beyond the Rhetoric.

Happy tweeting!

Wordpress Wednesdays: Kramer’s Trackbacks

I’m always curious who is linking to my blog and that’s why I’ve subscribed to both my Technorati trackbacks and my Google Blogsearch incoming links RSS feeds. Even so, not all of these incoming links show up as trackbacks on my blog, because some just don’t get picked up. What’s the simplest solution to this little conundrum?

The Kramer Wordpress plug-in seems to do the trick. Originally developed by Nik Culbrilovic and then expanded and tested by Mark Jaquith, Firas, and Kevin Marks, Kramer is designed to add all inbound links to a post as pingbacks. In their own words:

What this means is that when a post in blog A links to a post in blog B, blog B will find the inbound link and add it as a pingback, without the need for the author of the post on blog A to send a ping to blog B. The way it finds the new links is by searching Technorati for all new inbound to a particular post and also by analyzing and verifying incoming referrers.

In this way, any incoming link picked up by Technorati will show up on your blog as a trackback. This can help to perpetuate a “blogging conversation”, so to speak, because readers are able to see what other blogs have to say about your posts. It’s not a necessary plug-in, but it sure helps to develop the blogging community.