Wordpress

WordPress Security and WordPress Multisite Security [Hangout]

The Google+ Genesis Community had a hangout to discuss the different ways to secure a WordPress install and a multisite. We discussed various methods and plugins.

The first line of defense against a hack attack it to ensure you have a secure username, secure password and that you keep your WordPress software up to date. The massive hacks over the past several weeks have been successful because of users using the Admin username with a simple to crack password, like ‘abc123.’

Keep you WordPress site secure with some basic security measures. Listen to the hangout to get our take.

Several links, plugins and videos are referenced in the video, here are the links to those assets.

Plugins:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/sucuri-scanner/
http://wordpress.org/plugins/stealth-login-page/
http://wordpress.org/plugins/spam-free-wordpress/
http://www.toddlahman.com/spam-free-wordpress/
http://vaultpress.com/
http://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-mu-domain-mapping/

Resources:

http://wpebooks.com/2010/09/how-to-enable-multisite-in-wordpress/

http://wpebooks.com/custom-registration/ (This is a great resource on preventing Splog on a Multisite install)

Videos:

http://wordpress.tv/speakers/tony-perez/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctd41aCVHV0

If you have additional thoughts or suggestions, please share them in the comments below.

How To Add Image Sizes to WordPress Theme

By Alan Smith

UPDATE: I have turned this code into a simple plugin available WordPress.org. Activate it on your site and tell me what you think.

WordPress by default creates three image sizes when you upload an image to the media library, Large, Medium and Thumbnail. By going to Settings > Media, you can see what the settings are for your install.

Sometimes, you need more image sizes. The default images work, but what about an image that’s not square or in between 1024 pixels and 300 pixels? Often times your theme will include a piece of code to add additional images sizes to the site. To add a new image size to WordPress, you simply add the following to your functions. php file [NOTE: Always backup your files before making changes to your theme]

	/** Add new image sizes */
	// ( 'name', width, height, crop)
	add_image_size( 'Featured', 1040, 400, TRUE );

view raw

WordPress Add Image Size

hosted with ❤ by GitHub

The only problem is that this image does not appear in your Media Selection drop down. WordPress has created the image, but it is not offered as an option by default.

The way to resolve this is by adding another piece of code to your functions.php. This will add all of the image sizes you have created in your theme to the dropdown menu in the Media Settings.

	//** Add image sizes to Media Selection */
	add_filter('image_size_names_choose', 'me_display_image_size_names_muploader', 11, 1);
	function me_display_image_size_names_muploader( $sizes ) {

	$new_sizes = array();

	$added_sizes = get_intermediate_image_sizes();

	// $added_sizes is an indexed array, therefore need to convert it
	// to associative array, using $value for $key and $value
	foreach( $added_sizes as $key => $value) {
	$new_sizes[$value] = $value;
	}

	// This preserves the labels in $sizes, and merges the two arrays
	$new_sizes = array_merge( $new_sizes, $sizes );

	return $new_sizes;
	}

view raw

WP Image Size to Media Selection

hosted with ❤ by GitHub

When you have this added to your theme, you will now have access to all of the image sizes.

Now you have the ability to add all various image sizes to your theme and use them on post or pages. They work just like any other image.

Have you added image sizes to your WordPress theme? Do you have additional tips that would be helpful? Share them in the comments below.

Which CMS to Use For Your Website? [Infographic]

By Alan Smith

A CMS (Content Management System) is a system designed to help you manage the content of your website. It is the software that lets you publish, edit and monitor your website content from a central location. They are user friendly and are intended to help a “non-tech” user control the content of their website.

My Preferred CMS is WordPress

There are three major CMS options to choose for your business website, WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal. All three are good. They help users manage the content of their website in a fairly efficient manner.

At Media317, we use WordPress exclusively for our site and the sites that we design. We have found it to be extremely simple for our clients to use. When designing for small businesses, we wanted to make sure we had a CMS that was going have a small learning curve so they could run their business.

Dot Com Info Way has put together the following Infographic that compares the different CMS options. Take a look and share your thoughts in the comments below.

Infographic: The Most Popular CMS for Your Business Needs by Dot Com Infoway – CMS Development Company

WordPress Brute Force Attacks 2013

By Alan Smith

Fact or Fiction?

If you are on WordPress like I am, some of the reports that I’ve seen about the increase in hack attempts can be alarming. I received a notification yesterday from my host that there have been a significant increase over the past month.

Because WordPress powers close over 20% of the websites on the internet, it is an easy target. Since the core of every WordPress site is the same, there are obvious areas of attack. Upon installation, WordPress defaults to “admin” for the username and since users tend to use simple passwords, brute force attacks are not incredibly difficult to do.

Protect Yourself

So how do you protect your site from being hacked by a brute force attack? Here are two things to do immediately that will significantly reduce your vulnerability.

Get Rid of ADMIN

If you are still using the user ‘Admin’ for your administrator access, change that immediately. Create a new user with a different username and delete the previous user. Make sure you create a user with admin rights before deleting the ‘Admin’ user. Also, do not use admin, Admin, administrator, test, or root as an admin user name. These are the 5 most frequently used names to brute force attack a WordPress site.

Change Your Password

We tend to use passwords that are simple to remember. The problem is they are easy to guess. If you use 1234abc or some variation as your password, you are vulnerable. There are easily accessible known password list that can be collected online. The majority of the passwords on these list are alpha-numeric with 1234 and abcd in some combination. Create a password that is unique to you and contains upper and lower case letters. If you can include symbols, it will help with security.

One recommendation is to create a passphrase and use numbers, letters and symbols to represent the phrase. For example, I am a Georgia Bulldawg fan. Hunker down! So I could create a password that might look like this: Bu11d4wG! It is using numbers, letters, symbols and I can remember the password.

Additional Steps to Protect

Once you have made created a more secure account for your site, there are a couple things to do that will help secure your site against this and future attacks. In a previous blog post, I talk about 8 ways to improve the security of your WordPress site.

Let me highlight two here.

Cloudflare

If you are not using Cloudflare for your site, I highly recommend it. When you connect your site to Cloudflare, you get an added level of protection. All of your site traffic funnels through their network. It is aware of this brute force attack and is able to block the attacks based on known IP addresses. It is a free service and well worth the setup.

BackupBuddy

I have talked about BackupBuddy on this website several times. It is a premium plugin that allows you to generate backups on a scheduled basis. You can ensure that your site database and directories are properly backed up and stored. If you do find that your site is hacked, using a backup is simple to use and your site will be restored to its pre hacked condition.

How are You Protected?

What steps are you taking? What have you done to prevent this brute force attack from effecting your WordPress site?

Share what you have done in the comments below. Help the WordPress community with what you have done to protect your website.

How to Add a Custom Avatar in WordPress

By Alan Smith

Have you noticed the rather odd looking default Avatars that WordPress ships with? And who is Mystery Man?

Change that Avatar

You can add a default avatar of your choice. Add the following to you functions.php and upload the avatar to your images directory.

How to Style the TinyMCE Visual Editor in WordPress

By Alan Smith

When editing content in the TinyMCE editor, it would be nice for the text to look like it will once you publish the content. In previous versions of WordPress, there was no easy way to do this. You had to do some hacks to get the visual editor to display your style sheet.

Style the TinyMCE Visual Editor

To style the editor so your content in the dashboard looks like the content your publishing, you simply add the following to you functions.php file of your theme:

	/** Add Editor Styles within a WP Child theme*/
	add_editor_style(); //This will use the default styles of your child theme stylesheet.

	/** Add Editor Styles for WP Themes */
	add_editor_style( 'custom-editor-style.css' );

view raw

Custom Stylesheet TinyMCE

hosted with ❤ by GitHub

5 Features to Consider when Choosing a WordPress Theme

By Grace Beckett

There are so many advantage of using WordPress websites over static HTML ones. WordPress websites are cheaper and easier to build, can be easily updated and edited and allows users to add a number of social plug-ins. This makes WordPress websites the ideal solution for any small business looking to build a formidable online presence without breaking the bank. As WordPress is open source, small business owners can save a lot of money as they do not have to pay licensing fees for installing and using WordPress websites. Moreover, this open source nature allows anyone to create themes, widgets, applications for WordPress.

Businesses can get thousands of free and premium WordPress themes for their websites from various developers online. So what should one look for before choosing a WordPress theme – free or premium?

5 Features of WordPress Themes

Feature 1: Responsive layout

Responsive web design is all the rage nowadays. Why? Because a responsive website
adjusts itself depending on the platform it is viewed from – PC and mobile, without any loss of functionality. Small business owners should make sure the WordPress theme they have chosen or bought has a responsive layout. This means that the same website will work on all devices and browsers, eliminating the need to create separate websites for PC and mobile platforms.

Feature 2: Auto upgrade and error handling

The WordPress theme should be easily updatable without the help of the developers. Small businesses often do not have the resources to have a web development team so even an employee with not knowledge in web design languages should be able to update the WordPress theme with the click of a button when the developer of the theme releases a new version or update. Also, WordPress themes – especially premium ones, should have error handling code so that it can recover from errors on its own. This ensures that the website is robust and online round the clock.

Feature 3: Theme customization

With the release of WordPress 3.5, small businesses must select WordPress themes that have the Live Theme Customizer. This allows users to make small changes and see their effects in real time. Changes to the colors, text, font, etc. will take no time at all if this feature is present in the theme.

Feature 4: Demo installation

Most people look at the demo version of premium themes, get impressed and buy it immediately. Later on they realize that the actual set-up does not look like the demo version. Choose a WordPress theme that provides a demo version so that this demo version can be installed first and customizations can be made later on to get the final theme.

Feature 5: Custom widgets

Online and social media marketing is a must for any small business to grow. WordPress websites must allow effective social media marketing by having all the necessary widgets, which not only go well with the overall theme but also allows users to connect with the business. These widgets should be provided with the theme so that the small business owner does not have to manually add hundreds of widgets later on.

The Truth About Your Website . . .It’s Leaking!

By Alan Smith

One of the problems your website has to overcome is Bounce Rate. It is the metric of how quickly someone leaves your site. When the bounce rate is high, that indicates that people are leaving without spending any appreciable amount of time on your site.

A Mobile, Responsive Site for Business

A high bounce rate can be bad for business. Keep it LOW! [TWEET]

Recent studies have shown an ever-increasing trend in mobile users. The number of people accessing the internet with a mobile device is growing. According to a September 2012 study by PewInternet, nearly 50% of American adults have a smartphone.

With the increase in mobile devices, we have a function problem with our websites. The vast majority of websites are not ready for a mobile world.

When people share a link on Facebook or Twitter to your website, odds are someone with a mobile phone is going to see it in their feed. When they click the link, they are going to be taken to a page with a miniature version of your website that is unusable. Buttons are to small, images are tiny and text is unreadable.

A website that is not optimized for mobile is losing business. clicktotweet

Google collects hordes of data and has commented on the growth and power of mobile. As they looked at their data and measured user expectations, they found that web design for mobile devices had a significant effect on consumers. According to their study, when a person landed on a website that was mobile friendly, they were 67% more likely to buy from that site.

Having a mobile friendly website will have an immediate and significant impact on your consumers and business. Imagine what this would do for your conversion rates, your bounce rates and subscriptions.

When a person landed on a website that was mobile friendly, they were 67% more likely to buy from that site.

The same study found that when a they landed on a non-mobile friendly site with their mobile device, they were 61% more likely to LEAVE! They are out of there. They hit the back button.

A site that is not optimized for the mobile experience WILL cost you business, customers, and traffic.

The fact is this trend is growing. The number of mobile users is trending up, not down. The reality is that if your website is not mobile ready, you are missing business now and you will continue to miss out on business.

Steps to Take Now

1. Check the Data

I would immediately begin looking at your website analytics to see what percent of your site traffic is coming from mobile devices. If you are getting 40% or more of your traffic from mobile devices,

you should seriously consider making a change to your website. If you are less than 40%, you need to begin making plans to develop a

mobile site. The growth of mobile is compelling. Don’t get left behind and lose sales and leads.

2. Check out your referrals

Are you seeing a lot of social media sites, like Facebook or Twitter? These sites tend to have a higher percentage of mobile referrals than desktop referrals.

3. Plugins to the Rescue

If you are on WordPress, there are some options you can take immediately. There are several plugins that will convert your website into a mobile friendly site. Simply install the plugin and it will deliver a mobile friendly experience. The downside to these plugins is customization. Your mobile site will not match your site branding. It could be a good intermediate as you decide how to transition to mobile.

The Plan

The best solution is to develop a mobile friendly responsive website for your business. A responsive site will maintain your site’s branding and marketing message on all devices. It will use the same information, therefore giving your mobile user and your desktop user the same experience.

The worst solution is to create a stripped down version of your website to deliver to mobile users. They are looking for and deserve to have access to all of your great content, even if they are on a phone.

1. Migrate to WordPress

I am a firm believer in the value of WordPress to a small business. It is a simple to use content management system that will allow you to update and modify your site content. It powers nearly 25% of all websites on the internet and is a powerful tool for small business.

2. Deploy the Genesis Framework

The most secure, stable and robust WordPress themes you can use are built on the Genesis Framework. This provides you with an incredibly stable platform upon which to build your business. It is the framework that sits on top of WordPress to provide your site with the support and structure to meet your business needs.

3. Use a StudioPress Theme

There are numerous free and premium StudioPress themes that will provide your site with the mobile friendly experience and the professional design you deserve. The StudioPress themes are mobile ready by using responsive design code. This will make sure your site looks great on the desktop, tablet or phone.

Get Online

Making sure your website is mobile friendly will help your site traffic, conversion and lead generation. It will lower your bounce rate and improve your consumer experience.

What has been your experience? Are you mobile ready? What impact did it have on your site when you made the switch? Share you experience in the comments below.

Get Connected

WordPress Security and WordPress Multisite Security [Hangout]

How To Add Image Sizes to WordPress Theme

Which CMS to Use For Your Website? [Infographic]

My Preferred CMS is WordPress

WordPress Brute Force Attacks 2013

Fact or Fiction?