Three external libraries included in WordPress received security updates:

I am listing several WordPress plugins here, just in case. They are “defensive” type plugins that are very helpful and will definitely protect the blogger further. They are easy to work with and can be very effective.

I will start with the Antispam Bee Plugin which can [...]]]>

I am listing several WordPress plugins here, just in case. They are “defensive” type plugins that are very helpful and will definitely protect the blogger further. They are easy to work with and can be very effective.

I will start with the Antispam Bee Plugin which can stop quite a bit of dangerous spam:

Kill spam

Antispam Bee is simple to use, has many options and filters. Does not store data on remote servers. Really.

Features

• Very fast execution
• Spam counter on dashboard
• Anonymous and confidential
• Trackback and pingback check
• Saves no data on remote servers
• No need to adjust any templates
• Cleaning up after plugin removal
• Support for the Project Honey Pot
• Accordingly no outgoing connection
• Interactive statistics on dashboard
• Automatically cleanup the spam folder
• Allow comments only in certain language…….Learn More

The TimThumb Vulnerability Scanner is a great plugin, so you can check if you are being hacked, just in case:

The recent Timthumb.php vulnerability (discussed here) has left scores of unsuspecting bloggers hacked. It’s the perfect combination of not so easy to fix for the technically disinclined, and easy to find and exploit for the malicious – resulting in a disastrous number of compromised sites.

The Timthumb Vulnerability Scanner plugin will scan your entire wp-content directory for instances of any outdated and insecure version of the timthumb script, and give you the option to automatically upgrade them with a single click. Doing so will protect you from hackers looking to exploit this particular vulnerability.

After new, lesser vulnerabilities were found, it became apparent that the plugin needs to be dynamic – able to keep you up to date with the latest version of timthumb, without requiring a plugin upgrade. The plugin now checks for the latest available version of timthumb routinely (each time you visit the scanner page, but no more than once a day), and can download and install the latest version…..Learn More

Here’s another scanner type plugin, just in case:

Get Off Malicious Scripts (Anti-Malware)

This Anti-Virus/Anti-Malware plugin searches for Malware and other Virus like threats and vulnerabilities on your server and it helps you remove them……Learn More 

This one is very interesting and can help any blogger to edit their Header and Footer:

Add to All is a powerful plugin that will allow you to add custom code or CSS to your header, footer, content or feed.

Add to All comes with out of the box support for Google Analytics, Statcounter, Kontera, with other third party services in the pipeline.

With this plugin installed, you do not need to edit your theme files every time you switch themes. You can also add custom CSS styles to your header as well as any HTML code to the header or footer of the theme…..Learn More

Finally, I added a couple of Icons on the sidebar, one is for just in case you wanted an alternative and much more easier way to create a Blog. IThemes Builder is not free but a very powerful tool.

Lastly and just in case you wanted to add “Live” support to your Blog, Olark is about the best and easiest manner to go about it but again, it’s not free.

This is from the official WordPress Blog:

WordPress 3.3.1 is now available. This maintenance release fixes 15 issues with WordPress 3.3, as well as a fix for a cross-site scripting vulnerability that affected version 3.3. Thanks to Joshua H., Hoang T., Stefan Zimmerman, Chris K., and the Go Daddy [...]]]> This is from the official WordPress Blog:

WordPress 3.3.1 is now available. This maintenance release fixes 15 issues with WordPress 3.3, as well as a fix for a cross-site scripting vulnerability that affected version 3.3. Thanks to Joshua H., Hoang T., Stefan Zimmerman, Chris K., and the Go Daddy security team for responsibly disclosing the bug to our security team……Learn More

The latest and greatest version of the WordPress software — 3.3, named “Sonny” in honor of the great jazz saxophonist Sonny Stitt — is immediately available for download or update inside your WordPress dashboard.

WordPress has had over 65 million downloads since version 3.0 was released, and [...]]]>

The latest and greatest version of the WordPress software — 3.3, named “Sonny” in honor of the great jazz saxophonist Sonny Stitt — is immediately available for download or update inside your WordPress dashboard.

WordPress has had over 65 million downloads since version 3.0 was released, and in this third major iteration we’ve added significant polish around the new user experience, navigation, uploading, and imports. Check out this short video that summarizes the things we think you’ll find are the cat’s pajamas:

For Users

Experienced users will appreciate the new drag-and-drop uploader, hover menus for the navigation, the new toolbar, improved co-editing support, and the new Tumblr importer. We’ve also been thinking a ton about what the WordPress experience is like for people completely new to the software. Version 3.3 has significant improvements there with pointer tips for new features included in each update, a friendly welcome message for first-time users, and revamped help tabs throughout the interface. Finally we’ve improved the dashboard experience on the iPad and other tablets with better touch support.

There is a ton of candy for developers as well. I’d recommend starting your exploration with the new editor API, new jQuery version, better ways to hook into the help screens, more performant post-slug-only permalinks, and of course the entire list of improvements on the Codex and in Trac……Learn More

Since the Twenty Eleven default theme showed up with the significant 3.2 update there hasn’t been much news on the child themes front until now. Of course, you can create your own child theme:

Twenty Eleven child theme should now be made when you want [...]]]>

Since the Twenty Eleven default theme showed up with the significant 3.2 update there hasn’t been much news on the child themes front until now. Of course, you can create your own child theme:

Twenty Eleven child theme should now be made when you want to modify Twenty Eleven, the default theme or WP 3.2 which is already available for everyone who use wordpress, and find wordpress updates is necessary to do.

I have upgrade this blog successfully without any issues, but like usual, there are a lot of users who have problems after wordpress upgrades which may be caused by alot of things, can be plugins or even themes.

I hope your blog stays cool and runs as usual if you have upgrade yours. If not, if you have just installed wordpress 3.2 in your webserver, then I hope you will have fun with Wp 3.2 +

I remember about a year ago, I wanted to create a video tutorial about Twenty Ten child theme.

However, I already found so many tutorials about it, and I thought the newest wp version will be released very soon, and soon, that tutorial would be less needed, so I guess it is a good time to create this Twenty Eleven child theme.

This tutorial is very simple actually, which works on mostly on the css style. (related: how to edit css file in wordpress). Apart of on the CSS file, I would use this Twenty Ten child theme to modify header a bit.

Twenty Eleven Child Theme – Why do we need it?

Just like Twenty Ten theme, the previous default theme or template, when we make modifications or customizations on the structure or layout, we would be happy what we can do.

But the problem would be when wordpress is updating some of its theme files, those custom layout modification would be just overrided with the newest files, and our customization would be just useless.

Therefore, it is best to use Twenty Eleven child theme to customize TwentyEleven theme safely, and we can modify anything we want, without being afraid that in the next update, our own style will be gone.

There are many customization you can make, depends on the coding language you have. People like me, who has very very limited PHP coding language, will only modify some of the CSS style, and so forth…..Learn More and Watch Video

This is great but you need time and bloggers just don’t have the time to start from scratch. So I searched around and there are a few folks who have created, like I mentioned in the start of the post, tailored made Child Themes for the Twenty Eleven Theme. I am using “Speaky” but it is a Twenty Ten Child Theme so I am searching to update my Child Theme also. There’s only a few available, here they are.

I don’t know if it would be helpful enough but it’s good to know there are pioneers out there creating all the times.

Talking about new, here are some new plugins that will make your life more pleasant.

Get Sucuri SiteCheck scan results directly in your WordPress dashboard. The best way to know if your site is infected with malware or blacklist by Google.

This plugin enables full malware and blacklisting scan capabilities from Sucuri SiteCheck right in your WordPress dashboard. It will check for malware, spam, blacklisting and other security issues like htaccess redirections, hidden eval code, etc. The best thing about it is it’s completely free….Learn More

Here’s an interesting one:

Proofread Bot automatically checks your content for grammar, style, statistic and plagiarism issues.

Why Proofread Bot?

Good grammar and style gets more customers in business and better grades at school, and now you can get automated help for perfecting your writing with just one click with Proofread Bot. This tool utilizes cutting edge natural language processing to identify difficult grammatical and stylistic issues, and it also checks your content in Bing for online plagiarism. Click here for a sample report.

How to use it?

When you are on the “Add New” or “Edit Post” screens you will have a box with a Proofread Bot button, and clicking it will pass your content to Proofread Bot for analysis……Learn More

Here’s one that I have mistakenly bypassed (by Nrelate):

The best way to display related content: Thumbnails or Text, on all your pages.

The best way to display related content from your site, and/or your blogroll.

nrelate is not just another related posts plugin. Our patent-pending technology continuously analyzes your website content and displays other related posts from your website. This ultimately leads to higher page-views for your site, and a better user experience for your visitors.

Installing this plugin is as simple as activating it, and you can leave the rest to nrelate. Once activated, the nrelate servers will immediately begin analyzing your website content and associating similar articles. Of course, we provide an options page so you can fine tune the display….Learn More

I’m sure you are asking why? Why the Van Gogh logo? Well, let’s say that I am a lover of color schemes and there’s no other artist that can compare with Van Gogh. There are a few that have similar painting skills and I post their work here also. Eventually, I will combine the Van Gogh rich color scheme effect with a more appropriate Blog Design and Improvement Tool type of image. Working on it!

When editing at home with my desktop computer and not on the fly with my laptop, I run into a problem posting because of the amount of plugins I have on my editor. There are many plugins that add an icon on your editor and in turn [...]]]>

When editing at home with my desktop computer and not on the fly with my laptop, I run into a problem posting because of the amount of plugins I have on my editor. There are many plugins that add an icon on your editor and in turn creates an overlapping that blocks you from clicking on other essential icons. If you do not have an HD layout you will find this instant fixer (TinyMCE Advanced):

This plugin adds 16 plugins to TinyMCE: Advanced HR, Advanced Image, Advanced Link, Advanced List, Context Menu, Emotions (Smilies), Date and Time, IESpell, Layer, Nonbreaking, Print, Search and Replace, Style, Table, Visual Characters and XHTML Extras.

Language Support: The plugin interface in only in English, but the TinyMCE plugins include several translations: German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese and Japanese. More translations are available at the TinyMCE web site.

Some of the features added by this plugin

• Imports all CSS classes from the main theme stylesheet and add them to a drop-down list.
• Support for making and editing tables.
• In-line css styles.
• Advanced list and image dialogs that offer a lot of options.
• Search and Replace while editing.
• Support for XHTML specific tags and for (div based) layers……Learn More

After uploading this plugin you can go to settings, click on “TinyMCE Advanced” and move the icons around with your mouse until you find the look that accommodates you the most.

Need an easy to use video player that can play Flv, MP4 and H.264 video formats, yes, this one does:

FV WordPress Flowplayer plugin is a free, easy-to-use, and complete solution for embedding FLV or MP4 videos into your posts or pages.

• Plugin contains unmodified opensource version of Flowplayer 3.2.3. This version of our FV player plugin does include Flowplayer branding. Last version without branding is 1.0.6.
• Supported video formats are FLV, H.264, and MP4. Multiple videos can be displayed in one post or page.
• Plugin tested compatible with all WordPress versions from 2.5 through 3.0.1
• Default options for all the embedded videos can be set in comprehensive administration menu.
• In comparison with WordPress Flowplayer plugin, there are several improvements:
  1. Doesn’t use jQuery, so there will be no future conflicts with other plugins.
  2. Usage is simpler and forgiving, making the plugin easier to use.
  3. It will never display any annoying flowplayer logos or copyrights over your videos. (No longer true. Future Foliovision unbranded non-Flowplayer plugin in preparation.)…..Learn More

How would you like to enhance your Blog with some Javascript Powered panels. Very helpful for those who are selling products online. I only recommend to not make it too busy that the visitor get disinterested. Many options:

TheThe Sliding Panels plugin provides 5 types of Javascript-powered panels floating above the main webpage.

TheThe Sliding Panels WordPress plugin provides 5 types of JavaScript-powered Sliding Panels – Top, Bottom, Left, and Right side panels and a Modal Window floating above the main webpage.

Installing and activating TheThe Sliding Panels plugin on your WordPress site will cause activation of the following widget areas: Top Sliding Panel, Bottom Sliding Panel, Left Sliding Panel, Right Sliding Panel, and Modal Window. You can set all parameters of a panel as well as add any widget into each Sliding Panel/Modal Window widget area.

It is not necessary to use all Sliding Panels and Modal Window on your website. You are free to activate only the panels that you need on your webpage because even if activated, any sliding panel remains invisible until a widget is placed in the corresponding widget area.

Why use Sliding Panels on your website?

Sliding panels help in improving your website by:

1. Increasing usability of your webpage: Using sliding panels on your main webpage enhances the user experience, makes it easy to use by visitors as well as makes your website look more aesthetic and professional.
2. Avoiding multiple pages with smaller elements: Having to load pages over and over is annoying for many users and avoiding that is definitely a good thing for your website. With sliding panels, the user doesn’t need to load an entirely new page to access the small elements as they can appear floating on the main page itself.
3. Allowing effective use of page space: With sliding panels, you can get rid of those elements that don’t need to be on your main page. For example, rather than putting a full feedback form on each page……Learn More

Or maybe you are interested in customizing your headers:

Dynamic Headers does just what you think it would based on the name – it allows you to create highly dynamic header space on your WordPress site.

Dynamic headers fills a void that has been present for a while in WordPress. It is a small, easy to use plugin that allows you to manage what header media is shown on each page/post. Unlike some other plugins however, this plugin allows you to use any image file OR a .swf Flash file. So you are no longer limited to a certain media type for your headers and you are no longer limited to one site-wide header. Enjoy.

Features:

• Set different headers for each page and post.
• Use different media types on each page (image files, flash files).
• Cross browser compliant embed code automatically generated.
• Can set default header for pages/posts without set header image.
• Fails gracefully if no header media present for current page.
• Random media for individual pages/posts and default media.
• Alt / Title tag management for images.
• Supports both built in browser uploader or FTP.
• Quick and lightweight………Learn More    

So there you have it

It’s good to familiarize yourself with the Admin Dashboard and in a detailed manner. It’s important to know more about all the links you click on when scrolling about your “wp-admin.” Let’s take a look at a great link that will explain it all for you. Bookmark [...]]]>

It’s good to familiarize yourself with the Admin Dashboard and in a detailed manner. It’s important to know more about all the links you click on when scrolling about your “wp-admin.” Let’s take a look at a great link that will explain it all for you. Bookmark this link and read through it to learn more:

The Administration Screen provides access to the control features of your WordPress installation. Each Administration Screen is presented in sections, the Admin Bar, the header, the main navigation, the work area, and the footer. The Admin Bar, with links to various admininstration functions, is displayed at the top of each Administration Screen if a user has elected to Show Admin Bar in their Profile screen. The top portion of all Screens, the header, is featured in light shading. The header shows the name of your blog as a link to your blog’s main page, and a “Howdy, user” pull-down menu with links to your profile (shown as your user name), and Log Out. Just below the top shaded area are two hanging tabs, Screen Options and contextual Help, that can be clicked to expand them.

On the left side of the screen is the main navigation menu detailing each of the administrative functions you can perform. At the bottom of that section is a Collapse menu button to collapse the main navigation area to a set of icons, or to expand (fly-out) to show an icon and description for each major administrative function. Within each major function, such as Posts, a pull-down arrow is presented upon hovering mouse hovers over the title area. A click of that arrow expands the menu to display each of the sub-menu choices. Clicking that arrow again collapses the sub-menu.

The large area in the middle of the screen is the work area. It is here the specific information relating to a particular navigation choice, such as adding a new post, is presented and collected…….Learn More

Learning WordPress

Whether you’re a WordPress.com veteran or blogging newbie, the updated version of Learn WordPress.com is sure to teach you something that you don’t already know……Learn More

More Useful Plugins:

Spammer Blocker:

If you are tired of blocking spammers’ IP addresses manually, you can use this plugin. It blocks all visitors who posted a comment that was later marked as spam. After activation of this plugin all authors of spam comments will be banned immediately.

Features

• Advanced tools for managing banned IP addresses
• Simple tool for importing and exporting records
• Configurable banned message
• Two ways to detect spammers……Learn More

WordPress FireWall 2:

This WordPress plugin monitors web requests to identify and stop the most obvious attacks.

This is an updated version of the popular WordPress Firewall plugin, with fixes for all known bugs and a few new features!

This WordPress plugin investigates web requests with simple, WordPress-specific heuristics, to identify and stop the most obvious attacks. There are a few powerful, generic modules that do this; but they’re not always installed on web servers, and usually difficult to configure.

This plugin intelligently whitelists and blacklists pathological-looking phrases, based on which field they appear within, in a page request (unknown/numeric parameters vs. known post bodies, comment bodies, etc.). Its purpose is not to replace prompt and responsible upgrading, but rather to mitigate 0-day attacks and let bloggers sleep better at night……Learn More

YSlider:

YSlider automatically displays the first image inside the post or page for each item in the widget and takes care to adapt it to the right width size for the main image and to generate the relative thumbnail in the carousel.

YSlider can display the post excerpt as item content. If the excerpt is not present it also creates for each post a teaser of the text to be visualized from the first 55 words! (To visualize the post excerpt go to posts > edit > screen options > excerpt)……Learn More

User Activation Email:

Require users to enter an activation code to access the site the first time. The activation code is emailed upon user registration.

Adds an activation code to the new user email sent once a user registers. The user must enter this activation code in addition to a username and password to log in successfully the first time. A 10 character activation code is added to the user meta when the user is registered….Learn More

The process of editing and deleting hackers files can be very difficult so constantly searching for updates is crucial. It doesn’t occur on a regular basis but looking at updates is necessary at least once a week. Create a folder, fill it up with useful links and [...]]]>

The process of editing and deleting hackers files can be very difficult so constantly searching for updates is crucial. It doesn’t occur on a regular basis but looking at updates is necessary at least once a week. Create a folder, fill it up with useful links and keep it handy. At the end of the post i will place useful sites to bookmark. If you read Part One then this process will be considerably stress free. Your Blog should be well protected from any more attacks now but there are many folders to search through, many files to be edited and many files to be deleted. If you were infected after scanning your Blog, the results should indicate where the problems are. But even after you fix those obvious hacks there will be more work to be done. This exactly happened to me and it probably will be the case for you. I certainly hope it didn’t for you but the odds are against you and most people who are using WordPress.org. Also remember and as I reported in Part One, This vulnerability has nothing to do with WordPress.org at all. I also want to take the time now to express something to the readers here. These posts here are about the experience I had and the steps I took. And because, after searching throughout the internet, I am certainly not alone. Many have been infected since the beginning of August and are experiencing the exact problems.

Step 7. After searching around this article helped me the most:

A few days ago a new PhpRemoteView hack, a malicious JavaScript loading from superpuperdomain.com/count.php, attacked many WordPress website, including some of mine. There are already a few discussions on this topic and it was a pretty difficult to find a reliable source how to get rid of this problem, but a few websites like tbogard.com and techspheria.com introduce interesting solutions, which I combined together and first tested on my sites, before wraining this article (it worked on my WP blogs btw:)

Generally, the JavaScript
'<script language="javascript".............
redirects visitors that were going to the WordPress site to fake search engines full of ads. To check if you have it (except the obvious- redirection:), try to find a similar chunk of code on your homepage (it should appear just at the end of the html code, behind the closing body tag:

'<script language="javascript".........


It is caused by a security vulnerability in timthumb.php (also known as tumb.php), which is is a free PHP script that resizes images used by many WP themes developers. Many great WP themes use that script including Elegant Themes, so if you haven’t updated your theme during the last 5 days, your website is probably infected by it! Here is a step by step solution…Learn More

Step 8. Checkout other Bloggers and Forums discussing the situation because they are in real-time and as important:

Links:

1. WordPress SQL Injection – Latest Attack

2. PhpRemoteView hack: Superpuperdomain.com- How to Remove it 

3. Removing PHPRemoteView hack attack from your WordPress

4. WordPress.org/support

If there are more useful links, I will post them here. Throughout these two parts I have posted other links. Make sure you bookmark them also. Be careful and good luck!

There are many self hosted Blogs depending on open-source WordPress.org and who have lately been affected by hackers. Bloggersweekly has been attacked also and that’s why I am writing this post. I found the Superpuperdomain hacker script in my folders. But before directing any blame towards WordPress.org, [...]]]>

There are many self hosted Blogs depending on open-source WordPress.org and who have lately been affected by hackers. Bloggersweekly has been attacked also and that’s why I am writing this post. I found the Superpuperdomain hacker script in my folders. But before directing any blame towards WordPress.org, it is very important to note that this particular security breach only occurred because the hackers were able to tap into a vulnerable image re-sizing script named TimThumb. And because of its popularity, it has done quite a bit of damage:

Last week there was a serious flaw found in the code behind TimThumb, an image re-sizing library commonly used in premium themes.* Because the code is commonly embedded in themes it’s not easy to discretely update like it would be if the code were a plugin, and even when a theme is updated people are hesitant to update because they often customize theme code rather than making child themes, so if they were to overwrite their theme with a new version they’d lose their modifications. That, combined with the severity of the flaw, means that this is one of the more serious issues in the WordPress ecosystem in a while, even more than normal because it wasn’t in core.

It could have gone a lot of ways, but the incident brought out the best in the community. The core team sprang into action searching through the theme directory to inoculate any themes that contained the dangerous code. Community blogs quickly got the word out about the problem so people were aware of it. Mark Maunder, who originally discovered and broke down the problem, created a fork of the code called WordThumb that rewrote TimThumb from the ground up. Forking is not usually ideal because it fragments the market for users but Mark soon connected with Ben Gillbanks, long-time WordPress community member, and they’ve teamed forces to release TimThumb 2.0, a collaboration that exemplifies Open Source at its finest. An updated plugin should be in the directory shortly…..Learn More

The TimThumb issue was the whole problem:

Yesterday we learned of a vulnerability in a popular image resizing library called TimThumb, which is used in many WordPress themes and plugins. The vulnerability was first reported by Mark Maunder in a post on his blog, and has been confirmed by the author of TimThumb.

The vulnerability allows third parties to upload and execute arbitrary PHP code in the TimThumb cache directory. Once the PHP code has been uploaded and executed, your site can be compromised however the attacker likes.

We recommend deleting timthumb.php or thumb.php if your site will work without them. If the file exists in a theme or plugin that you’re no longer using you may want to remove the entire theme or plugin directory. After you remove the TimThumb library make sure you check that your site is still working correctly…..Learn More

I was concerned and wanted to double check if I were infected so I ran a scan with Securu.net here. Long and behold I was and then I started to investigate further. Here’s some more info:

Many people are asking us about this “counter-wordpress.com” type of malware, so we will post some details here. Our scanner has been identifying it for a while, so if you think your site is compromised, just check it in there.

So first, to make things clear, this is happening on sites that include the vulnerable timthumb.php script on them. You have to make sure that none of your themes or plugins are vulnerable. You can get more information here on how to verify it: TimThumb PHP Vulnerability – Just the Tip of the Iceberg. This is not a vulnerability on WordPress……..Learn More

Now and before I continue with the the ongoing developments, I suggest 3 very important steps, if you were or were not hacked:

Step 1. Go to WordPress.com here and change the password you signed in on when you established your Blog. You had to do this when activating Akismet.

Step 2. Change the password to your Blog.

Step 3. Change the password to your FTP program. You need to do this through your hosting control panel.

Step 4. Turn off Pingback throughout your Blog and in everyway possible way it can come back to you. Refer to my last post and where I covered it extensively.

Step 5. Block all Spam IP’s that can communicate with your blog and dump a hack on you. Go to this article here

Now you should feel much better but there’s much more to do. There’s some more stuff to check on and even if your scan did not  pick up any infected files you can still be infected. This brings me to my next and it concerns a very powerful plugin.

Step 6. I STRONGLY suggest you grab this plugin immediately and no further damage will be done:

WordPress website security protection. BulletProof Security protects your website from XSS, CSRF, Base64 and SQL Injection hacking attempts.

Website Security Protection: BulletProof Security protects your website from XSS, CSRF, Base64_encode and SQL Injection hacking attempts. One-click .htaccess WordPress security protection. Protects wp-config.php, bb-config.php, php.ini, php5.ini, install.php and readme.html with .htaccess security protection. One-click Website Maintenance Mode (HTTP 503). Additional website security checks: DB errors off, file and folder permissions check… System Info: PHP, MySQL, OS, Memory Usage, IP, Max file sizes… Built-in .htaccess file editing, uploading and downloading.

The BulletProof Security WordPress Security plugin is designed to be a fast, simple and one click security plugin to add .htaccess website security protection for your WordPress website. Activate .htaccess website security and .htaccess website under maintenance modes from within your WordPress Dashboard – no FTP required. The BulletProof Security WordPress plugin is a one click security solution that creates, copies, renames, moves or writes to the provided BulletProof Security .htaccess master files. BulletProof Security protects both your Root website folder and wp-admin folder with .htaccess website security protection, as well as providing additional website security protection.

BulletProof Security allows you to add .htaccess website security protection from within the WordPress Dashboard so that you do not have to access your website via FTP or your Web Host Control Panel in order to add website security protection for your WordPress site. BulletProof Security Modes: Root .htaccess security protection, wp-admin .htaccess security protection, Deny All .htaccess self protection, WordPress default .htaccess mode and .htaccess Maintenance Mode (503 Website Under Maintenance). In BulletProof Security Mode your WordPress website is protected from XSS, CSRF, Base64_encode and SQL Injection hacking attempts……Learn More

This will halt further hacking but there is much more. I will be back with more in my next post. Meanwhile take a look at how to update your TimThumb PHP code if either a Theme of yours is using it or a plugin depends on it. Here’s a list of all the WordPress Free themes that use the TimThumb.php code. This code should be located in your Theme Editor. If you have a Premium theme, do a search to see if it uses Timthumb, they probably do. Here’s an article for the Gabfire Premium Theme which will help you either way. Here are the plugins that have been used to hack because they workd with TimThumb.

Here’s an article that will help you copy and paste the new version of TimThumb.

I will be back with more on my next post (very soon). Meanwhile, do some searching on your own, there’s always new developments.

Update: Part Two here

Should you disable Pingback or shouldn’t you. From all the research I’ve done and from the comments I’ve been receiving lately on most of my blogs, I think it would be advisable to disable Pingback.

Here are easy ways to disable Pingback from further working (Two ways [...]]]>

Should you disable Pingback or shouldn’t you. From all the research I’ve done and from the comments I’ve been receiving lately on most of my blogs, I think it would be advisable to disable Pingback.

Here are easy ways to disable Pingback from further working (Two ways Settings and SQL):

Are you bothered by the pingbacks and trackbacks some spam sites post on one of your blog entries? It’s good as far as they are not being posted by spam sites and is a legitimate way to quote mentions of your post by other sources. However now-a-days it’s mostly the spam sites trying to steal your visitors by posting pingbacks and trackbacks. Here are two things you need to do to disable trackbacks and pingbacks on your wordpress blog……Learn More

How to disable Pingback from old blog posts and blog links (Two Ways: Through Child Theme or Plugin):

You have probably noticed that when you link to a post on the same site you will get a pingback on the old post with a link to your new post. If you for whatever reason wants to get rid of those internal pingbacks, simply put the following code snippet in your functions.php. Note that you will still get pingbacks from other sites…..Learn More

As I investigate further, I learn more that Spammers are using a flaw in the logic used by WordPress whitelist and sending emails to you because they are listed as “acceptable.” Thus, if there is a comment in which you accepted from a Blogger who is being Spammed, then you will receive emails through them from Pingbacks.

Here you have a Plugin to help you fight Pingback Comments:

Defeat automated spambots by adding a client side generated checkbox asking the comment author to confirm that they are not a spammer.

This plugin will add a client side generated checkbox to your comment form asking users to confirm that they are not a spammer. It is a lot less trouble to click a box than it is to enter a captcha and because the box is generated via client side javascript that bots cannot see, it should stop 99% of all automated spam bots.

A check is made that the checkbox has been checked before the comment is submitted so there’s no chance that a comment will be lost if it’s being submitted by legitimate human user……Learn More

Here’s another that works the same way:

Todd Lahman’s comment spam blocking plugin that blocks 100% of the automated spam with zero false positives.

Spam Free WordPress is a comment spam blocking plugin that blocks 100% of the automated spam with zero false positives. There is no other plugin, or service, available for WordPress that can claim 100% accuracy with zero false positives, not even Akismet. Manual spam is blocked with an IP address blocklist.

This plugin was born out of necessity in September of 2007 when HollywoodGrind was getting a lot a traffic, and with it a lot of spam that multiple plugins could not stop, but instead increased the load on the server fighting the spam. Since its birth, Spam Free WordPress has been tested successfully under real world heavy traffic, and heavy comment spam, conditions…..Learn More

If you have been hacked, try this scanner for your blog:

WP-MalWatch is a WordPress security plugin that performs a nightly scan of your WordPress blog looking for evidence of malware.

WP-MalWatch is a WordPress security plugin scanner designed to help alert you when hackers have been at work inside your blog.

When hackers infiltrate a blog, the first thing they do is plant hidden files, disguised .PHP, and malicious .HTACCESS files in various directores. Their goal is to litter your WordPress installation and theme with links to their sites.

WP-MalWatch performs a security scan of your WordPress installation nightly looking for evidence of foul play and if WP-MalWatch finds it, a dashboard widget will tell you were you should take a closer look. WP-MalWatch’s detailed report also provides you a very easy interface for looking at the contents of these files right from within WordPress so you don’t have to get into messy FTP clients and editors looking at potential problems.

Version 2.1.2 of WP-MalWatch is based on 2.0.2 which was a complete rewrite of the original WP-MalWatch plugin and provides efficient malware scanning. Version 2.1.2 looks for hidden files, HTACCESS files, configurable file patterns, keywords in theme files, encode 64 calls in key WordPress files, and .PHP files in the uploads directory.

Does WP-MalWatch protect your blog?

NO! WP-MalWatch is a scanning plugin that allows a blogger to easily identify the presence of files in a blog installation and provides a simple viewer for examining them……Learn More 

“Superpuperdomain.com” WordPress Hack 

Follow the instructions very carefully in the link provided at the end of the intro and you’ll be in fine shape:

A few days ago a new PhpRemoteView hack, a malicious JavaScript loading from superpuperdomain.com/count.php, attacked many WordPress website, including some of mine. There are already a few discussions on this topic and it was a pretty difficult to find a reliable source how to get rid of this problem, but a few websites like tbogard.com and techspheria.com introduce interesting solutions, which I combined together and first tested on my sites, before wraining this article (it worked on my WP blogs btw:)

Generally, the JavaScript………..

………………….redirects visitors that were going to the WordPress site to fake search engines full of ads. To check if you have it (except the obvious- redirection:), try to find a similar chunk of code on your homepage (it should appear just at the end of the html code, behind the closing body tag:

• Those files are added by hackers and are a part of the phpRemoteView hack, but just in case back up those files (do not open them!!!)……..Learn More
  

I hope you learned more about the ongoing Pingback spamming and the Superpuper.com Hack. The Plugins and links I posted here should help you further. Good Luck and don’t forget to update and upgrade regularly.

Well it seems there is a slight, let’s say, defect with the new Twenty Eleven Theme. It seems that the Gershwin creators excluded the ability of a sidebar to appear when the reader clicks on the post itself from the front page. Many are ticked off and [...]]]>

Well it seems there is a slight, let’s say, defect with the new Twenty Eleven Theme. It seems that the Gershwin creators excluded the ability of a sidebar to appear when the reader clicks on the post itself from the front page. Many are ticked off and it is very understandable. Most Bloggers rely on their sidebar showing up on every post and page. What other way can a Blogger advertise or simply showoff their widgets? There’s a lot of valuable information there.

I think the Twenty Eleven Theme creators took a chance and forgot the whole purpose of a sidebar. The theme is great and comes with many option, including which side you want your sidebar on. But when the reader goes to the link of the actual post or page indicated, there’s no sidebar. Just imagine placing your link in a location where others could read an article of yours and when they click on it, they just get the article itself and no sidebar. This would limit the readers on learning anymore about your blog, you leave them with very few options. If you are relying on them to scroll up and go through all the links on the main menu for more, then you are certainly stretching it. I don’t get it, why? Go figure…..

Anyways, there are several people who have tackled the problem and I found this Blog to have the quickest and easiest solution:

The procedure is very straight forward. First of all you need to open up your single.php template and find the call for the footer:

You simply need to add a call to the sidebar above this function like this:

<?php get_sidebar(); ?>
<?php get_footer(); ?>

You should repeat the above step in your page.php template if you want to add a sidebar to your pages too.

The last thing you need to do is open your functions.php template then go to the bottom of the template and remove the function twentyeleven_body_classes. Bart advises that you simply comment the code out so it can be added later however I don’t think there’s any need as long as you have a back up of Twenty Eleven on your computer.

function twentyeleven_body_classes( $classes ) {

if ( ! is_multi_author() ) {
		$classes[] = 'single-author';
}

if ( is_singular() && ! is_home() && ! is_page_template
( 'showcase.php' )&& ! is_page_template( 'sidebar-page.php' ) )
		$classes[] = 'singular';

return $classes;
}
add_filter( 'body_class', 'twentyeleven_body_classes' );

An alternative method of adding the sidebar was initially suggested by Chris Aprea. He has since stated that modifying the functions.php template is more efficient.

Please read ‘Add sidebar to single post in the WordPress 3.2 Twenty Eleven theme‘ for a more complete guide in removing the sidebar from Twenty Eleven. If you are unsure about any stage of adding the sidebar, please let me know and I’ll do my best to help

Thanks,
Kevin……..Read More

Note (Very Important): You don’t need to delete the Function Body_Classes as Kevin states in the article. all you need to do is comment it out:

CLICK on image to ENLARGE and VIEW COMPLETE

Note also, in this link there is no mention of adding the sidebar to the your Page. This is done just like you did with the “Post.php” file and by adding <?php get_sidebar(); ?> to the “page.php” file as well. It should not take you more than 10 minutes total.

WordPress has released their most significant upgrade up to date. This long awaited and most improved upgrade has catapulted WordPress.org into a higher level and will most certainly keep them on top forever. Addressing important matters and adding more possibilities with less difficulties. The announcement:

Here in [...]]]>

WordPress has released their most significant upgrade up to date. This long awaited and most improved upgrade has catapulted WordPress.org into a higher level and will most certainly keep them on top forever. Addressing important matters and adding more possibilities with less difficulties. The announcement:

Here in the U.S. we are observing Independence Day, and I can’t think of a more fitting way to mark a day that celebrates freedom than by releasing more free software to help democratize publishing around the globe. I’m excited to announce that WordPress 3.2 is now available to the world, both as an update in your dashboard and a download on WordPress.org. Version 3.2 is our fifteenth major release of WordPress and comes just four months after 3.1 (which coincidentally just passed the 15 million download mark this morning), reflecting the growing speed of development in the WordPress community and our dedication to getting improvements in your hands as soon as possible. We’re dedicating this release to noted composer and pianist George Gershwin.

Before we get to the release, in anticipation of the State of the Word speech at the upcoming WordCamp San Francisco (the annual WordPress conference) we’re doing a survey or census of the WordPress world. If you have a moment, please fill out this survey and we’ll share what we learn by publishing the aggregate results in August.

The focus for this release was making WordPress faster and lighter. The first thing you’ll notice when you log in to 3.2 is a refreshed dashboard design that tightens the typography, design, and code behind the admin. (Rhapsody in Grey?) If you’re starting a new blog, you’ll also appreciate the fully HTML5 new Twenty Eleven theme, fulfilling our plan to replace the default theme every year. Learn More

Here are the new features:

Highlights

• Refreshed Administrative UI – Admin redesign
• New Default Theme “Twenty Eleven” – Uses the latest Theme Features
• Full Screen Editor – Distraction free writing experience
• Extended Admin Bar – More useful links to control the site

• Requirements Changes-
  • PHP 5.2.4 or greater (old requirement – since WordPress 2.5 was PHP 4.3 or greater)
  • MySQL 5.0.15 or greater (old requirement – since WordPress 2.9 was MySQL 4.1.2 or greater)

• Enhanced Browser Compatibility-
  • Drop Internet Explorer 6 support
  • Start End-of-life (EOL) cycle for Internet Explorer 7
  • Browse Happy notify users of out-of-date browser

WordPress is Faster and Lighter-

• Faster page loads — We’ve gone through the most commonly loaded pages in WP and done improvements to their load time
• Faster Upgrades — The update system now support incremental upgrades so after 3.2 you’ll find upgrading faster than ever
• Optimizations to WP_Filesystem — Updates over FTP are now much quicker and less error prone
• Stream downloads to the filesystem — Improves update times and lowers the memory footprint
• Performance improvements for wptexturize()
• Remove PHP4 compatibility including timezone support….Learn More

There’s much improvement and I am very satisfied. The edit window is much more clearer and adjusts to all the gadgets uploaded to it. Where before one would hesitate in expanding the editor because of difficulties, would be more beneficial now. It is organized now and works great. When you visit your site directly from the the Dashboard area, you will see the extra buttons that emerge when you scroll to the top of your Blog. It is not a completely new feature but WordPress.org has added even more features, very well done!

Please familiarize yourself with all the newest buttons, so you can work on your Blog in a more sufficient and effective manner. You will save lots of time now and we all know how valuable time is in the world we live in.

Which brings me to the the “Twenty Eleven” Theme and the question everyone is asking, Is it worth using. Well, first of all, anything that is free, is worth trying. Especially when it’s a WordPress.org creation because it’s built to work best in the WordPress architectural environment. Let’s take a look at the Twenty Eleven theme  which was automatically downloaded for you and placed there with the rest of your other themes:

Twenty Eleven is the default theme for WordPress in 2011. There are tons of really cool improvements and features packed into it — more Post Formats, beautiful new header images, alternate color schemes and layouts, even custom link colors. All those features add up to the best part of Twenty Eleven: just how customizable it is. It looks great as a blog, a showcase of all your posts, and even a tumblelog or photolog.

Post format

Twenty Eleven features seven Post Formats that help the look of your blog posts better match what you’re publishing. Alongside the Standard Format (for traditional blog posts and longer articles) are six additional Formats; Aside, Link, Gallery, Status, Quote, and Image.

The Aside Format is for shorter posts of about 1 paragraph. Because they’re shorter and meant to be digested quickly the title of the Aside post is hidden on Index pages.

The Link Format looks a lot like the Aside post but if you’re using the Twenty Eleven Ephemera Widget to display a list of your recent Aside and Link posts (found in Appearance → Widgets) the title of your Link posts will point to the URL of the first link in your post instead of pointing back to the post on your blog…..Learn More

Here’s a Demo of Twenty Eleven:

Twenty Eleven uses Sticky Posts to power the Featured Post area on the Showcase Page Template. And it’s pretty easy to use. Just publish a Sticky Post and it’ll show up in the Featured Post area. If you add a Featured Image the same size as the Custom Header Image it’ll be used as a full-width image link to the post. If your Featured Image is smaller, it will neatly float to the right of your content. Neat, huh? If you have more than one Sticky Post featured you can view up to 10 of them on the showcase page using the circular links that appear at the bottom left of the Featured Post area. Totally neat…..Read More

But it is very important and actually necessary now, to create a child theme. The great news is its simplicity:

It is time for Twenty Eleven Child Theme

Twenty Eleven child theme is now should be made when you want to modify Twenty Eleven, the default theme or WP 3.2 which is already available for everyone who use wordpress, and find wordpress updates is necessary to do.

I have upgrade this blog successfully without any issues, but like usual, there are a lot of users who have problems after wordpress upgrades which may be caused by alot of things, can be plugins or even themes.

I hope your blog stays cool and runs as usual if you have upgrade yours. If not, if you have just installed wordpress 3.2 in your webserver, then I hope you will have fun with Wp 3.2 +

I remember about a year ago, I wanted to create a video tutorial about Twenty Ten child theme.

However, I already found so many tutorials about it, and I thought the newest wp version will be released very soon, and soon, that tutorial would be less needed, so I guess it is a good time to create this Twenty Eleven child theme.

This tutorial is very simple actually, which works on mostly on the css style. (related: how to edit css file in wordpress). Apart of on the CSS file, I would use this Twenty Ten child theme to modify header a bit.

Twenty Eleven Child Theme – Why do we need it?

Just like Twenty Ten theme, the previous default theme or template, when we make modifications or customizations on the structure or layout, we would be happy what we can do……Read More

More on Child Themes here and Here’s a great editor, Notepad Plus Plus to use.

From the the Official WordPress Blog:

WordPress 3.1.4 is available now and is a maintenance and security update for all previous versions.

This release fixes an issue that could allow a malicious Editor-level user to gain further access to the site. Thanks K. Gudinavicius of SEC [...]]]>

From the the Official WordPress Blog:

WordPress 3.1.4 is available now and is a maintenance and security update for all previous versions.

This release fixes an issue that could allow a malicious Editor-level user to gain further access to the site. Thanks K. Gudinavicius of SEC Consult for bringing this to our attention. Version 3.1.4 also incorporates several other security fixes and hardening measures thanks to the work of WordPress developers…Learn More

It can get very annoying when checking all the hits you receive on your Blog when there are intruder access bots in the way. Besides, you want to obtain “realistic” real-time stats on your Blog. There are ways to completely find out how many hits you really [...]]]>

It can get very annoying when checking all the hits you receive on your Blog when there are intruder access bots in the way. Besides, you want to obtain “realistic” real-time stats on your Blog. There are ways to completely find out how many hits you really have and how they entered your Blog. With this information you can find in what areas you need to improve in order to improve and attract more readers. Askimet is the best spammer for WordPress Blogs, when it comes to comments but you need to tackle the spam bots. After searching around, I found 2 additional plugins that will finish them all and leave you in peace. If you install these two plugins then you will not have to worry anymore. You might get a little upset though, when you see less hits on your favorite analytical tool but you will be much more aware of your standing in the Blog world.

First install WP-Ban:

Ban users by IP, IP Range, host name, user agent and referer url from visiting your WordPress’s blog.

It will display a custom ban message when the banned IP, IP range, host name or referer url trys to visit you blog. You can also exclude certain IPs from being banned. There will be statistics recordered on how many times they attemp to visit your blog. It allows wildcard matching too….Learn More

Once you install this just go to Settings> Ban and you can adjust it. Leave it as it is because it’s set at all the recommended levels. If you like, type in the IP addresses of the visitors you feel are suspicious. But then again, I suggest you wait until you finish downloading the 2nd plugin Bad Behavior:

Bad Behavior prevents spammers from ever delivering their junk, and in many cases, from ever reading your site in the first place.

Welcome to a whole new way of keeping your blog, forum, guestbook, wiki or content management system free of link spam. Bad Behavior is a PHP-based solution for blocking link spam and the robots which deliver it.

Thousands of sites, large and small, like SourceForge, GNOME, the U.S. Department of Education, and many more, trust Bad Behavior to help reduce incoming link spam and malicious activity.

Bad Behavior complements other link spam solutions by acting as a gatekeeper, preventing spammers from ever delivering their junk, and in many cases, from ever reading your site in the first place. This keeps your site’s load down, makes your site logs cleaner, and can help prevent denial of service conditions caused by spammers.

Bad Behavior also transcends other link spam solutions by working in a completely different, unique way. Instead of merely looking at the content of potential spam, Bad Behavior analyzes the delivery method as well as the software the spammer is using. In this way, Bad Behavior can stop spam attacks even when nobody has ever seen the particular spam before…..Learn more

Once you have both of these plugins installed on your WordPress Blog then everything will be set for you. Watch it in action, go to Tools > Bad Behavior and see all the Illegal Access Bots being blocked. It is important to note for recognition purposes, that Bad Behavior works directly and in conjunction with Project  Honey Pot. I deservedly added a permanent link to this Organization on the  sidebar.

The “About us link”:

Project Honey Pot is the first and only distributed system for identifying spammers and the spambots they use to scrape addresses from your website. Using the Project Honey Pot system you can install addresses that are custom-tagged to the time and IP address of a visitor to your site. If one of these addresses begins receiving email we not only can tell that the messages are spam, but also the exact moment when the address was harvested and the IP address that gathered it.

To participate in Project Honey Pot, webmasters need only install the Project Honey Pot software somewhere on their website. We handle the rest — automatically distributing addresses and receiving the mail they generate. As a result, we anticipate installing Project Honey Pot should not increase the traffic or load to your website.

We collate, process, and share the data generated by your site with you. We also work with law enforcement authorities to track down and prosecute spammers. Harvesting email addresses from websites is illegal under several anti-spam laws, and the data resulting from Project Honey Pot is critical for finding those breaking the law…..Learn More

But there is another plugin which works with Project Honey Pot, it’s the AVH First Defense, I have not tested it but if you find it to be very helpful, please drop your thoughts off in the comment section right after this post:

The AVH First Defense Against Spam plugin gives you the ability to block spammers before any content is served.

The AVH First Defense Against Spam plugin gives you the ability to block spammers before any content is served by identifying them at the Project Honey Pot, a local blacklist or the local IP cache. Visitors trying to post a comment are checked at stopforumspam.com. Stop Forum Spam is not used to check before content is served due to the amount of requests, which overloads their infrastructure…..Learn More

You’re all set now, no more Spam Bots invading your WordPress Blog and real accuracy from your analytical tools.

WordPress.Org has the latest version(3.1.2) in case you are interested. Also, if you click on the “Blog” link above and just scroll down a little, you will be able to read about the features they are developing for the next version:

WordPress,org has many so-called related plugins and here you have some that would probably benefit any WordPress Blogger.The most important matter concerning Bloggers is keeping the reader on the Blog and making sure everyone comes back in the future. Of course, it is necessary to write something [...]]]>

WordPress,org has many so-called related plugins and here you have some that would probably benefit any WordPress Blogger.The most important matter concerning Bloggers is keeping the reader on the Blog and making sure everyone comes back in the future. Of course, it is necessary to write something interesting in the first place but this is only achieves 50% of  capturing the reader but is the most important. If you cannot hold the reader there and guide him or her through the post post, from beginning to end, then they might not return in the future. If you can entice your readers with well thought posts coupled with great subject matter to support it, then you are halfway there. The other 50% can be separated into two. One, Blog design and two, providing posts you have written in the past. It’s basically all I write about, if you analyze Bloggers Weekly here and read the posts. You need these three things working in unison for your Blog to shine.

Most of the times “new” readers find your blog through search engines and from articles you have written in the past that interest them. Depending on what exactly your Blog concentrates dictates the type of readers you are looking for but making sure these three things, interesting content (50%), Blog design + availability of all prior posts = the other 50%. That’s the 100% you need and if you really think about it, the rest will follow. As long as you feel your Blog is 100% satisfactory, then you will be successful. It’s better to establish your Blog in a slowly positive and consistent manner. Building a strong foundation is the most important element for success. Readership will follow as your Blog evolves into its own, just keep writing. Never, ever give up!

This particular Plugin works and looks great. It is named the IGIT Related Posts With Thumb Image After Posts Plugin. pretty long name but it works great! here’s more info:

• The IGIT Related Posts With Thumb After Posts Plugin Automatically inserts one widget after posts having related posts.
• Related Posts showing by title and content matching, If it not show related posts by title content matching it will search related posts by matching tags and title and if still it is not showing any related posts then it will show random posts.
• This plugin also empowers the Blog administrator to place manually related posts widget, Also having options to give related posts number,Display Thumb or not,Set Thumb Width and Height and Main thing it is giving three options to select related posts style – Horizontal, Vertical, Simple Style.
• By using this plugin on your blog you can attract your visitors to other related articles of your blog.
• This plugin is also SEO friendly.
• Ajax Based Admin Options.
• Exclude Categories from Related Posts.
• Note : This plugin is showing thumb images which are exists in posts and also exists on same server, Images from remote server are not showing in related posts to prevent bandwidth theft…..Learn More

Here’s yet another interesting one, nicknamed Yarpp:

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP) gives you a list of posts and/or pages related to the current entry, introducing the reader to other relevant content on your site. Key features include:

1. An advanced and versatile algorithm: Using a customizable algorithm considering post titles, content, tags, and categories, YARPP calculates a “match score” for each pair of posts on your blog. You choose the threshold limit for relevance and you get more related posts if there are more related posts and less if there are less.
2. Templating: New in 3.0! The YARPP templating system puts you in charge of how your posts are displayed.
3. Caching: Improved in 3.2! YARPP organically caches the related posts data as your site is visited, greatly improving performance.
4. Related posts in RSS feeds: Display related posts in your RSS and Atom feeds with custom display options.
5. Disallowing certain tags or categories: You can choose certain tags or categories as disallowed, meaning any page or post with such tags or categories will not be served up by the plugin.
6. Related posts and pages: Puts you in control of pulling up related posts, pages, or both…..Learn More

There are even more here. And check for more here.

Finally I will leave you until next time with a great link. It deals with all Current News for all WordPress.org Bloggers and loaded with new and important developments. Make sure you look back at their later posts because they update quite a bit.

WordPress.org has their newest version 3.1.1 out:

This maintenance and security release fixes almost thirty issues in 3.1, including:

How would you like to change your Blockquote look so it would stand out in an impressive manner on your WordPress Blog. First of all you must open up your Dashboard> Appearance> Editor and open your Stylesheet.CSS file. Once opened, look for:

`blockquote {

And then [...]]]>

How would you like to change your Blockquote look so it would stand out in an impressive manner on your WordPress Blog. First of all you must open up your Dashboard> Appearance> Editor and open your Stylesheet.CSS file. Once opened, look for:

`blockquote {

And then you are ready to edit. Read this CSSNewbie.com:

The blockquote XHTML tag is a fairly useful (if somewhat underused) element. Semantically speaking, a blockquote should be used any time you’re quoting a longer piece of text from another source – another speaker, another website, whatever. It’s a way of setting the text apart, and showing that it came from some other source. Stylistically, you could accomplish all this with a special class on your paragraph tags… but that wouldn’t be as semantically useful, now, would it?

Blockquotes do have some styling by default. Most browsers will indent the text in a blockquote tag, which helps the user recognize that the text is different somehow. But who’s to say that we need to stop there? Here are six different ways you could style your blockquotes using CSS….Continue Here

Play around and edit it to your liking, just like I did.

Testing your Blog so it can be seen by all the different browsers and Operating systems out there, is very important. Not to mention, you need the search engines to be able to see your Blog correctly. This Browser Compatibility Tool is the best on the web! It even checks your Blog with different screen sizes, color depth, Javascript, Java and Flash. Outstanding, I will promote it as much as I can, Browser Shots.

Try out Adobe BrowserLab, it is free also but maybe only for one year, you must sign up.

Finally, you must be sure your Blog’s Feed is “validating” correctly, so you need to paste the link of your RSS Feed on W3C Markup Validation Service and a quick test will take place, with results, to inform you. Great stuff, enjoy!

If you noticed, the heading of my articles have a larger font and my sidebar titles also. This was possible by installing the FontBurner plugin. This plugin is simple to use and works great but only applies to headers.

……..Well, I did use FontBurner but [...]]]>

If you noticed, the heading of my articles have a larger font and my sidebar titles also. This was possible by installing the FontBurner plugin. This plugin is simple to use and works great but only applies to headers.

……..Well, I did use FontBurner but then I changed it, you will read later. I made some changes while writing this post, so please bear with me and you will see it all come into place.

There are the two most popular font producers and they have teamed up with two WordPress plugins.

1. You have TypeKit which works with the WordPress TypeKit Plugin.

2. You also have FontServ which works in conjunction with the AnyFont WordPress plugin.

So you can pay for fonts or you can use codex to Play with your Fonts and with your editor. There are many interesting links that will help you understand fonts further but if you don’t have the time and patience, then you must use a Plugin. Here’s a very interesting plugin and it’s brought to us by Google and is appropriately named WP Google Fonts. NOTE: Do not use the Ultimate Google Fonts plugin.

BUT THERE’S ANOTHER WAY……..

Yes, as you can plainly see, here on this post and throughout the Blog, I found a great way to use Free and legitimate font files on Blogger’s Weekly. To not complicate things, I used the WP Google Fonts plugin for all the headers since that is all it can handle. Now I needed to make this blog more unique so I added and changed the fonts for my posts (body). It took me a good three hours but I did it and it is simple enough.

It is simple now and I will try to make it simple for anyone interested and who has a little patience, just a little. Believe me, after you learn the procedure, then it will be very easy to add more fonts and change the ones you have. Everything will already be setup for you. The instructions here will challenge you a bit but you will learn all about fonts and how they work. There’s no way to get around it, fonts is important in the ever growing world of blogs.

First of all, while searching for all the free possibilities available, I ran into the Awesome Fontstacks website and learned how to create a CSS code for fonts. Just to learn more, if you are interested, go through the steps provided there and create a Font Stack (Very Easy) and a CSS code will generates there. This is where I obtained the CSS code and the one which works the best, in my opinion.

Choosing, uploading and using a new Webfont on your blog

I will guide you here, in the simplest way, to uploading and using a font of your choosing and through Font Squirrel . Font Squirrel has gathered all the “$0.00″ charge fonts from all the Font websites available and made it much easier for everyone. Instead of registering on all these font websites and looking for these no-charge fonts, all you need to do is search for your font on Font Squirrel, all in one!

Listen to this interview (2010) with Ethan Dunham and learn more about Font Squirrel and fonts in general, great stuff!!!

Step One: Create two folders.

First Folder, through your FTP, create a folder where your blog is located and name it “fonts.” then

Second Folder, create a folder on your computer desktop and name it “Web Fonts” Go to step two

Step Two:

Go to the Font Squirrel home page and focus your attention to the very top-right of the page. Here you will see where you can filter your search (Image above). Just for the sake of example, click on True Type, Leave box blank and then click on Sans Serif. This will take you to all the Sans Serif fonts available. Go to Step Three

Click on Image to ENLARGE

Step Three:

Ok, now you should be on this page on Font Squirrel. Look at the image above and you will see that this Sans Serif font named Banksia has 3 “styles.” Click on “view” and you will be able to see all three styles for this particular font. Go to Step Four

Click on Image to ENLARGE

Step Four:

Now that you are on the Banksia Font Page you will be able to see all 3 styles available. Click on the down arrow and view how the three styles would appear on your WordPress Blog.  After looking through, note the specific style(s) you would like to use (Image Above). Now, download the TTF files (True Type File) for all 3 styles and save into the a new folder which you should name “Banksia” and will then place into the folder “Web Fonts” folder, which you created in Step One. The 3 TTF files will be in a zip file, so you will need to unzip it here. After unzipping you will see all three TTF files there. These files you grabbed will be the most important files and necessary ones to obtain others, which are just as important and essential, for all the different browsers available on the Internet. Go to Step Five

Click on Image to ENLARGE

Step Five:

Now, please go back to the Font Squirrel website (any page) and click on @font-face generator link on the menu bar above. This will take you to this page and where you will “Upload” the TTF file which you are most interested in. Click on “Optimal” and then “Add Fonts” Look for the “Banksia Folder” and choose the TTF file you want. Click and check the “Blank Box” and Download the Zip file containing the other important files (Look at Image above). Place this zip file in the “Banksia Folder” and again, unzip the zip file so you will be able to see all the new files added there. Go to Step Six

Step Six:

Now that you have uploaded the necessary “webfonts” so your font could be seen by all browsers, then “delete” the files of the fonts you are not using, so not to confuse yourself. (Image Above) Next, Grab the “Complete Banksia folder, upload it (FTP) and DROP it in the “fonts” folder which you also created in Step One. Go to Step Seven

Step Seven:

Go to your dashboard, click on Appearance, then  Editor and copy n’ paste this CSS code, all the way in the bottom of your Stylesheet (style.css) file:

@font-face {
font-family: ‘Banksia’;
src: url(‘http://YOUR WEBSITE/fonts/Banksia/banksb20-webfont.eot’);
src: local(‘☺’), url(‘http://YOUR WEBSITE/fonts/Banksia/banksb20-webfont.woff’) format(‘woff’), url(‘http://YOUR WEBSITE/fonts/Banksia/banksb20-webfont.ttf’) format(‘truetype’), url(‘http://YOUR WEBSITE/fonts/Banksia/banksb20-webfont.svg’) format(‘svg’);
font-weight: 400;
font-style: normal;
}

Final Step:

This would be it for that particular font and CSS code needed. You would need to do this for every additional Font in which you would be interested in. The great thing though, is that you will not need to do anything else afterwords. All you need now to complete is to add, in this case, ‘Banksia’ , just as it is here and to the front of all the other fonts located in any font-family section, where you are planning to change the fonts. In my case and in my theme Style.css file, I would place it like this:

.entry-content p, .entry-summary p{
font-family: ‘Banksia’, verdana, helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size: 20px;
line-height: 1.5em;
margin-bottom: 20px;
padding: 0 30px 0 30px;

}

This section would be under .post in my particular child theme. You can play with the font-size number to get the desired height of the font. Leave the rest alone, save and take a look at your blog with the changes. It seems a little difficult but I saved you the painstaking searching around and with endless trial n’ errors. Remember, you can use your font style on any section of your blog. Just place the  ‘Your Font Name’ ahead of the other fonts in the font-family code and you are all set. You will see, every time you pass by here, that there  will be some changes. Excuse me please, I am still tweaking the blog.

This security release is required if you have any untrusted user accounts, but it also comes with important security enhancements and hardening. All WordPress users are strongly encouraged to update.

Three point oh point five
Enhances security
Three point one comes soon

The release addresses [...]]]>

This security release is required if you have any untrusted user accounts, but it also comes with important security enhancements and hardening. All WordPress users are strongly encouraged to update.

Three point oh point five
Enhances security
Three point one comes soon

The release addresses a number of issues and provides two additional enhancements:

Two moderate security issues were fixed that could have allowed a Contributor- or Author-level user to gain further access to the site.

One information disclosure issue was addressed that could have allowed an Author-level user to view contents of posts they should not be able to see, such as draft or private posts.

Two security enhancements were added. One improved the security of any plugins which were not properly leveraging our security API. The other offers additional defense in depth against a vulnerability that was fixed in previous release……Learn More

This post will deal with very important innovative features in which everyone will have to learn sooner or later concerning WordPress.org. WebHooks and Child Themes. There’s more but for now this will keep you busy. It’s good to take a look at the future, so you would [...]]]>

This post will deal with very important innovative features in which everyone will have to learn sooner or later concerning WordPress.org. WebHooks and Child Themes. There’s more but for now this will keep you busy. It’s good to take a look at the future, so you would not be left behind.

Let’s take a look at WordPress.tv and checkout an interesting tutorial on “WebHooks.” Here’s a great tutorial on a Plugin named HookPress which will make it easier for everyone:

It is time to begin to understand “WebHooks.” Not so complicated and only gets easier but only when practiced repetitiously. Just do it over and over until it becomes easy, it will not take so much effort on your part. Checkout this video explaining Webhooks and how it evolved:

Go to the WebHooks Blog and learn some more or just upload the Plugin above and take a look at these two links on Action Reference and Filter Reference as explained on the first video.

Child Themes:

Here’s a great explanation of Child Themes and how they work:

A WordPress child theme is a theme that inherits the functionality of another theme, called the parent theme, and allows you to modify, or add to, the functionality of that parent theme. This article shows how to create a basic child theme and explains what you can do with it. As an example parent theme it uses Twenty Ten, the new default theme in WordPress 3.0.

Making a child theme is very simple. Create a directory, put a properly formatted style.css file in it, and you have a child theme! With a little understanding of HTML and CSS, you can make that very basic child theme modify the styling and layout of a parent theme to any extent without editing the files of the parent theme itself. That way, when the parent theme is updated, your modifications are preserved.

For this reason, child themes are the recommended way of making modifications to a theme.

With a basic understanding of PHP, WordPress Templates, and the WordPress Plugin API, you can make the child theme extend virtually every aspect of a parent theme, and again, without actually changing the parent theme files…..Learn More

As you can see Child Themes works with Webhooks. If you want to learn more about Child Themes go the ThemeLets . You will also find out about frameworks which I will post about in the future. Leland has a list of Child Theme and I am going to download the Speaky one which works with my Twenty Ten theme.You can find Leland on his other website, Theme Lab , where he frequently releases free WordPress themes, publishes reviews of third-party themes, and posts in-depth WordPress tutorials.

So now I will take advantage of my new Child Theme and you will see the difference. Read this article about creating your own twenty Ten Child Theme:

WordPress 3.0 is introducing a new theme that is light years ahead of Kubrick (also known as the old WordPress default), that looks so good you won’t even mind running it on a live site. In addition to being a beautiful theme in it’s own right, it’s also easy to build upon and create your own child themes for. I’ll show you just how easy it is to make some substantial changes. We are going to move the two column Twenty Ten to a three column theme I’m going to call Thirty Ten.

I’m going to lay out a couple of ground rules for myself when building this theme:

1. I’m not allowed to override any of the template files with my own version. I want this to be as easy to maintain as possible. This means that I have to use footer.php, header.php and all of the other files.
2. No output buffers This means I can’t use an output buffer and then regular expressions to get around rule number one.
3. I want the reader of this article to be able to take and borrow any piece of this theme and use it to modify their own theme Every part of this theme and tutorial is licensed under the GNU public license, just like WordPress

The first step is to create a theme folder and put a blank style.css and functions.php in it. This is where the bulk of the changes are going to come in. into our style.css document…...Learn More

Smashing Media has a Child Theme also, learn more .

If you always wanted to have a MultiBlog, then now it is very simple. I could explain but there’s no simpler way than to follow these instructions posted here in this post by WPBeginner. Follow the instructions on your admin panel (Dashboard) and you shouldn’t [...]]]>

If you always wanted to have a MultiBlog, then now it is very simple. I could explain but there’s no simpler way than to follow these instructions posted here in this post by WPBeginner. Follow the instructions on your admin panel (Dashboard) and you shouldn’t run into any problems at all. Here’s a more official installation guide that could explain more. But all the directions will be on the Admin Panel. You will need to tweak your Config.php file and add another .htaccess file, in which they provide. All in all, it will take you about 20 minutes and then you could start creating new Blogs and inside the one you have now, a network, all through your Dashboard Panel.

Official Notice:

Posted December 29, 2010 by Matt Mullenweg. Filed under Releases,Security.

Version 3.0.4 of WordPress, available immediately through the update page in your dashboard or for download here, is a very important update to apply to your sites as soon [...]]]>

Official Notice:

3.0.4 Important Security Update

Posted December 29, 2010 by Matt Mullenweg. Filed under Releases,Security.

Version 3.0.4 of WordPress, available immediately through the update page in your dashboard or for download here, is a very important update to apply to your sites as soon as possible because it fixes a core security bug in our HTML sanitation library, called KSES. I would rate this release as “critical.”

I realize an update during the holidays is no fun, but this one is worth putting down the eggnog for. In the spirit of the holidays, consider helping your friends as well.

If you are a security researcher, we’d appreciate you taking a look over this changeset as well to review our update. We’ve given it a lot of thought and review but since this is so core we want as many brains on it as possible. Thanks to Mauro Gentile and Jon Cave (duck_) who discovered and alerted us to these XSS vulnerabilities first….Learn More

If you are interested in converting your WordPress Blog into a BuddyPress Blog then don’t worry, it is very simple. There is no other database involved, all you need is to install the Buddy Press Plugin through your Blog and make some changes afterwords: This [...]]]>

If you are interested in converting your WordPress Blog into a BuddyPress Blog then don’t worry, it is very simple. There is no other database involved, all you need is to install the Buddy Press Plugin through your Blog and make some changes afterwords: This is how the Plugin page looks like. You will know the installation was successful when you see this new window show up on your administrative panel:

But you are not done yet because BuddyPress has its own themes. So after installed, one of three options will be presented:

Click on Image to ENLARGE

Before you do anything, just click on your Blog name on the left-hand corner and see how different it will be. Your widgets probably will not be there but don’t worry, you didn’t lose them. Scroll down and you will see links under your footer, don’t worry. Go back to your administrative panel and let’s take a look at the three options:

1. “Activate a BuddyPress Compatible theme” to take advantage of all of the features: When you click on this option, you will see a new a new theme listed in your “Available Themes” page:

Here you will need to decide of either using this default theme or leave the theme unopened and choose the second choice:

2. We’ve bundled a default theme, but you can always “install some other compatible themes.” The other compatible themes will be these.

Now, if you have worked hard to find the best suitable and best looking theme for your blog and do not find the BuddyPress compatible themes attractive enough, then you have a third choice:

3. or “upgrade your existing WordPress theme.” When you click on this option you will have to install the BuddyPress Template Pack and follow the 3 step instructions. I tried it and it worked without any adjustments, I hope it works for you also.

Here you have Demos for BuddyPress and 12 interesting themes. Here you have a list all the BuddyPress Plugins.

Note: This is an introduction to BuddyPress, if you are interested. This Blog will deal with WordPress Blogs without social networking involved but it is important to know how far you can go and after all, BuddyPress is just another WordPress.org plugin. And there’s more!

Note: If your Widget items disappears whenever you tryout other themes don’t worry, just go to Appearance> Widgets and go all the way to the bottom and you will see them there. Grab them and place them back where they belong.

As I was surfing and scrolling around for useful WordPress.org Bloggers, I ran into “Newsletters”and Plugins which are used to help promote your Blog further. I tested this Newsletter Plugin, here you can find it. It is not helpful and there’s much too little detail [...]]]>

As I was surfing and scrolling around for useful WordPress.org Bloggers, I ran into “Newsletters”and Plugins which are used to help promote your Blog further. I tested this Newsletter Plugin, here you can find it. It is not helpful and there’s much too little detail to help configure it out. There are other Newsletters but they work with Newsletter Providers and they charge. Here are seven, if you are interested:

The other “Newsletter” type plugins are either incomplete, insufficient or simply do not work. It seems that the pay/month newsletter services are the only way to go. Or Maybe I missed one , so please let us know if something shows up, thank you.

It is never ending! The amount of “New” and exciting ways to improve your WordPress Blog and make it even simpler to work is endless. Because of its popularity and simplicity, WordPress will always be improving and pairing up with other great platforms. For example, if you [...]]]>

It is never ending! The amount of “New” and exciting ways to improve your WordPress Blog and make it even simpler to work is endless. Because of its popularity and simplicity, WordPress will always be improving and pairing up with other great platforms. For example, if you took the time to look at WordPress TV you could find out so many tutorials, like this one, which will cut time when posting. Great tool from Snipi.com. Watch video and find out how easy it works , it took me 10 minutes. I have placed the logo and link of Snipi on the sidebar. The Plugin for Snipi can be found here.

Then for those who are interested in creating an Intense Debate right from your comment box, download this Plugin. Again, watch the how-to video and learn how easy it is and configure to your liking. I tried installing it on another Blog I have and ran into configuration issues. Try it but again only if you are really interested in long threads of comments.

Here’s an interesting “Real-Time” communication theme, that works just like Google Wave and has received overwhelming praise, it was simply named P2 . Here’s the Theme Page so you can download it.

Here are some more free interesting themes that I ran into, great stuff!

If you are interested in adding files so others can download them right from your WordPress Blog. The Box.net Widget will make it easier for you to share and others download, watch video . It is done through Box.net itself. More to come, Enjoy!

Both terms seem to be conveying the same task at hand and are exactly doing so! Mobile Blogging would be when you have established a WordPress.org Blog and you are looking to create and edit your posts through your Mobile device. It is understood, of course, that [...]]]>

Both terms seem to be conveying the same task at hand and are exactly doing so! Mobile Blogging would be when you have established a WordPress.org Blog and you are looking to create and edit your posts through your Mobile device. It is understood, of course, that you should have a blog through WordPress.org already established. But now you are interested in adding and/or editing your Blog on your Mobile device in a user friendly manner. There are Apps available and Plugins too. Here are the APPs for you to download:

Android:

WordPress for Android is an Open Source app that empowers you to write new posts, edit content, and manage comments with built-in notifications. Download it now and get blogging in no time…. Learn More

BlackBerry:

WordPress for BlackBerry version 1.4.4 has been released to BlackBerry App World.

Depending on your region or country, you may not see the latest version in BlackBerry App World yet. However, the new release should be available for download on your device starting today…..Learn More

IPhone:

It’s a whole new WordPress for a whole new platform. WordPress for iOS is now optimized to take advantage of the iPad’s new user interface, making blogging even easier than ever before. Download it from the App Store today..…Learn More

Nokia:

Allowing you to edit your existing blog content, add new posts and pages, or simply manage comments on the go, WordPress for Nokia allows you to do it directly from your S60 or Maemo-powered Nokia.

WordPress for Nokia is an open source project, making both the app and the source code free to download and use…..Learn More

Windows Phone (WPhone Plugin):

Looking to manage your WordPress install via your phone? Then the award winning WPhone plugin is exactly what you need. It creates an option while logging in to replace the default admin interface with one designed for your phone…...Learn More

And you have more here if you are interested. And even More Apps and Stuff.

Mobile Publishing

Now if you would like an easy to use admin panel/control panel on your Mobile Phone, then you must download available and attractive Plugins and create and/or edit your Blog. Here are some stable ones.

WordPress Mobile Admin:

WordPress Mobile Admin is a fully featured WordPress control panel for your mobile. It works on every device – no matter what it’s capabilities, so it doesn’t matter if you don’t have an iPhone or BlackBerry, you can still manage and update your blog whilst you’re on the go.

It uses Wapple’s advanced web services to produce perfect markup whilst at the same time maintaining the familiar look and feel of WordPress. You can write and edit posts, moderate and reply to comments as well as updating and managing tags, categories and pages…..Look into it

BuddyPress Mobile:

Mobile BuddyPress theme optimized for viewing on iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. No settings. Activate and plugin will detect mobile devices and use the BuddyPress Mobile theme. Will also work on Android and some Blackberry devices….Learn More

Squace Mobile Publishing for WordPress:

The Squace Mobile Publishing Plugin for WordPress enables site owners to develop a mobile site in just a few minutes and, using the unique distribution method by Squace, distribute your mobile site to your users mobile for free. The plugin let site owners place a download button on posts and pages which let users download the specific content they want to their mobile phones. This results in more entry points to the mobile site which will increase the mobile traffic. The plugin also comes with a widget that will give the user the complete site.

Once the plugin is installed and configured, users just have to click on one of the buttons and they will see Squace download page where they have to register (or login if they have a Squace account already). Once they have an account they can very easily, with just one click, add any content from your site directly to their mobile phones….Try it Out

Checkout the install Video from Squace Labs:

Mobile Look:

Here you have a great article on Mobile WordPress Themes , if you are interested in changing the “Mobile” look for when visitors go to your Blog through their Mobile devices. There are Free ones and others to purchase. I’m using this one, WPtap News Press and if you are interested in the look, either go to the Footer at the bottom of the page and click on the word “Mobile” or take a look at the Mobile link here. For the simplest mobile look use the MobilePress Plugin . The one which I feel is the most popular and looks the best is WPtouch:

WPtouch automatically transforms your WordPress blog into an iPhone application-style theme, complete with ajax loading articles and effects, when viewed from iPhone, iPod touch, Android, Palm Pre, Samsung touch and BlackBerry Storm/Torch mobile devices.

The admin panel allows you to customize many aspects of its appearance, and deliver a fast, user-friendly and stylish version of your site to touch mobile visitors, without modifying a single bit of code (or affecting) your regular desktop theme.

The theme also includes the ability for visitors to switch between WPtouch view and your site’s regular theme.

Now Available: WPtouch Pro! Totally re-written top to bottom, with a slew of new features like more style, color and branding customizations, themes, 10 languages, more advertising options, Web-App mode, and more!…….Plugin Link

Good Luck and Enjoy!

In this post I am going to concentrate on WordPress.org friendly platforms that work united and integrates together to enhance, simplify and create the best blog possible for them. Then again, it depends on what you are trying to express with your blog. Tumblr a [...]]]>

In this post I am going to concentrate on WordPress.org friendly platforms that work united and integrates together to enhance, simplify and create the best blog possible for them. Then again, it depends on what you are trying to express with your blog. Tumblr a popular and simple blogging platform is available in WordPress. With the WooTumblog you can have a Tumblr-style blog without signing up and starting from scratch.  Here you have more Tumblr related Plugins and Widgets.

If you are interested in creating a video gallery type Blog and at the same time use a video platform tryVodpod Video Gallery  Plugin. You will have to open an account on VodPod and upload the videos there. The Plugin will give you access to your Vodpod Account from the WordPress Admin area:

This plugin was upgraded to use the new version 2 of the vodpod API. It now requires you to configure both your vodpod username AND your vodpod collection. If you only have one gallery, it is likely that these two values are the same.

This plugin is based on Vodpod and creates a video gallery from a Vodpod account. Vodpod is a great tool for collecting videos. You can download a browser toolbar so that all you have to do is click a button when you are viewing a video and it will insert it into your Vodpod account, which will then allow it to appear in your WordPress gallery automatically. So get yourself a Vodpod account and then give this plugin a try…..Learn More

Adding video or images to your blog is nothing new, there are many Plugins around. But if you would like to incorporate these Videos and/or images and make an official Blog of it, then you need it as a gallery. So look for Plugins that  create a gallery of Podcasts, Videos and/ or images for you.

Note: For simply placing a video on your blog post or page I use either Viper Video Quicktags which sits on your post editor. If you would like to post ANY flv. file the Stream Video Player which I posted in the past with more help here . And of course Apture can easily place elegant looking Videos on your posts, great stuff!

Then you have this incredible Plugin named Post video players slideshow and photo galleries which does it all. It would look like this:

[cincopa AkGAkVqMLUUj]

You do have to create a FREE account and then you can add all the images videos and Podcasts you like. It is quick and easy to create an account and get moving but is not the best solution and definitive manner to have a video, image and/or podcast Blog. They also charge $80 a year and that’s too much.

Then you have the “Premium” Multimedia Themes. There are many out there so make sure you download the demo and then buy. Don’t spend more than $75 and make sure it comes with the most gadgets. Make sure you try them all before you buy. Here you have some more good ones to look at. Graph Paper Press has nice looking ones also.

SmashingMagazine has a great giveaway , try it out!

Stop everything please. There is something very important you should know and/or decide to do before you post anything on your Blog. This will apply and would help a Blog that is in in it’s initial development stages or not yet [...]]]>
Stop everything please. There is something very important you should know and/or decide to do before you post anything on your Blog. This will apply and would help a Blog that is in in it’s initial development stages or not yet constructed. As for the Blogs that have been already constructed and been operating for a  long time period, then this advice might not help you at all, unless you would like to rebuild it by recreating and and redirecting. It is not so difficult but depending on how many posts you have written, very time consuming. Either way, it is important to understand how Categories and Pages work. What’s more important is the way you are going to set up your Blog. Whenever writing a post, there is an option of what Category you want this blog to belong to. This is very important to note because there are TWO ways to organize and make your Blog appear. You either use you Categories as your Main Menu or your PAGES. The best way is to use your Categories to be focus of your attention when anyone visits your Blog. The reason is that there is much more you can do with Categories. For example, there are attractive sidebar widgets that you can use. But more importantly, Categories have RSS Feeds and that’s why you should use it. So the very first thing you should do when you create or renovate your Blog is setup the Categories that you are going write about. It is important that you select the correct Theme and don’t give up until you are totally satisfied.

By selecting the proper theme you need to have one that gives you the most gadgets and allows you to fine tune it to your liking. The first place you should look at when you upload a theme is to check Appearance> Theme Settings or Theme Options. If you been following this blog you will notice that I have changed my theme about 10 times already. I’m telling you, if you expect and depend on finding a good theme from your administration page, you will be a little upset and dissatisfied because they do not update too much. You must search through the internet and test them all. Here’s one I discovered and uploaded. It is free and is loaded. Try it out, it was created by Spectacu.la and they have great free themes and great tutorials so you can tweak them to perfection. The name of this theme is Caribou , try them all out.

I have been taking a look at the latest Plugins from WordPress.org and really haven’t found anything interesting lately. As for Themes I have run into great ones. First of all we have this one (Producer Theme):

Producer is a highly flexible theme that can [...]]]>

I have been taking a look at the latest Plugins from WordPress.org and really haven’t found anything interesting lately. As for Themes I have run into great ones. First of all we have this one (Producer Theme):

Producer is a highly flexible theme that can be used to build a standard blog with 4 layout options (includes a photo slideshow layout) or a magazine style blog with 3 static layout options and the ability to build your own widgets based layout. 6 possible configurations for left and right sidebars. Ability to hide one or both sidebars on 404, index, search results, single post, and static pages. Includes page templates for additional layout options. Re-arrange…Learn More

Here’s another (Magazine Basic):

Built for WordPress 3.0. A magazine style theme with a fully customizable layout. Theme options include site width, 1 or 2 widgetized sidebars, header logo, multiple front page grid layouts, new WP 3.0 menu system, Google Analytics, pagination, drop-down menus and tons more. Also includes dynamic SEO keywords and site descriptions. Tested in Firefox 3.6, IE 7 & 8 and Safari 4. Fully optimized for search engine ranking. Translation ready. 100% valid xHTML. Designed by Themes by bavotasan.com….Download Here

What about Premium (You Pay) Themes and WordPress Ready:

As a great cms platform WordPress has many examples for every work  like blogs, companies, portfolios, galleries etc. Magazine/Newspaper style themes are one of the most wanted WordPress themes and they are very useful for managing lots of posts on a page. This type of themes are mostly liked by small and medium-sized teams who can produce actual content every day. It is easy to show many thumbnails and sliders on a page so you can push up your page views easily. But you need to choose right theme for your visitors. For example if your visitors are generally looking for galleries check out a more visual one, otherwise take a look for most text-based ones…….See them all here

Here you have the 2010 best from Smashing Magazine but also the 2007 and 2008:

It’s hard to believe that a year has passed since our last WordPress theme collection, but there you have it — the time has come again. Once a year we feature the most useful and interesting WordPress-themes that we are collecting over months and present them in a nice quick overview. The collections from 2007, 2008 and last year are still useful, but some of the themes are outdated or updated now.

Looking back over these previous theme articles, you can clearly see how and why WordPress has rapidly matured into the CMS powerhouse it is today. With all of the features that have been added and improvements made with every new WordPress version and with its ever-increasing popularity among the design and development community, the quality of free themes is evident. Developers are continually pushing WordPress’ boundaries, giving us today’s outstanding free theme collection…... Learn More

There you have a great start in case you would like to change your look. Thi sBlog will be changing it’s look very soon, this why I have been away for so long. I will be updating much frequently in the future.