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How To Automate Your Blog’s Entire Backup Process

John Hoff — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 18:02:46 +0000

So why is there a picture of me and my boys kicking back in the mountains the other day on a post about backing up your blog?

Simple.

It illustrates how easy I’ve made it for my blog to be backed up. I figure this is where I was the other day right about the time my computer kicked on and backed up my blog for me.

How easy have I made this process? As easy as me doing nothing after the initial set up.

Yep, that’s right. My entire blog’s backup process is on autopilot and takes no further work from me to do–and in this article, I’m going to show you how I do it. (Note that SyncBackSE links are affiliate links)

2 Methods You Can Use To Automate Back Ups

The best two methods I know of to automate your blog’s full backup process is either:

A combination of a free database backup plugin and the program SyncBackSE . . . or
The BackupBuddy plugin

Each method will cost you a little money up front, but hey… your blog is worth it, right?

I use method #1; but let me first explain how these two methods work and then I’ll explain why I use method #1.

Method 1: Using SyncBackSE and a Plugin (way I do it)

Cost: $30

Backing up the database on autopilot

There are a number of database backup plugins for WordPress you can use. If you don’t already have one, Google “WordPress database backup plugins” and I’m sure you’ll find a few. I use the WP-DB-Backup plugin by filosofo.

Make sure whichever database backup plugin you install lets you run “Scheduled backups” and then set up the plugin to email you your database backup once or twice a week.

Okay… database backup set on autopilot, now let’s move on to your web hosting files.

Backing up your hosting files

To create a full backup of your site, you need both your database backed up and your web hosting files.

SyncBackSE is an AWESOME program.

There’s a one time fee of $30 to buy the program (free to try) and it’s well worth the money. Imagine one day if you or a developer mess up your blog, or your blog gets hacked… this one time charge of $30 could save you hundreds, if not more, down the road.

Here’s a screenshot from their site of some of the things you can do with SyncBackSE

Once you got the program, use the scheduling feature to automatically download all the files on your web hosting account to your computer. You can even have it zipped up. The scheduling can be set to back up your site however often you want, and it’s so easy to set up.

One question you might have is, “How does this program automatically back up my hosting files if my computer is turned off?”

Yes this is a program which runs on your computer, not your web hosting account like plugins do. So the way around this is to simply tell your computer to “Hibernate” rather than do a full shut down when you turn off your computer. It’s perfectly safe.

This will let SyncBackSE automatically turn on your computer and run its scheduled backup.

Pros: For $30 you can back up an unlimited number of any kind of website–yours, your clients, test blogs, html sites, blogs, etc. Also, you don’t have to store backups online, they can be downloaded to your computer automatically.

Cons: You’ll have to make sure your computer is on for a scheduled back up. This can be worked around through the use of putting your computer in hibernation mode.

Method 2: Using the BackupBuddy Plugin

Cost: $45-$150

This is an excellent premium plugin (hence the cost) and it will back up your web hosting files and database. You can even set it up to run on autopilot. Here’s a screenshot:

Backing up the database

Just like other database back up plugins, make sure to set this one to regularly email you backups of your database. Database file sizes are usually small enough to do this.

Backing up your files

Have the plugin scheduled to automatically back up your hosting files and store them on a web server. From there, you’ll then be able to manually download this zip file to your computer. For security purposes, I highly recommend that you don’t leave full backups of your site on a web hosting server, so be sure to delete the backup which is stored online once downloaded.

PROS: Since the plugin resides on your web hosting account, it doesn’t matter if your computer is turned on or off, the script will run either way.

CONS:

More expensive to set up than Method 1 and without shelling out $150, you’re limited to a specific number of sites you can use this plugin for. Also, this plugin only works if you have a WordPress blog. If one of your other sites is an HTML site on another domain, it won’t back it up.

Conclusion

If you don’t have a good system in place for backing up your blog, find one! Keeping regular backups is extremely important and as a blogger it’s something you need to put on your to-do list.

I personally use Method #1 because for $30, I can use a plugin and SyncBackSE to automate the back up of however many sites I want, regardless if they’re a WordPress site or not. BackupBuddy is still a good option, though.

So pick a method and check that item off your blogger’s “to-do” list.

2 Killer WordPress Security Plugins You Probably Don’t Know About

John Hoff — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 04:00:50 +0000

If you’ve been following my blog for awhile I’m sure it’s clear to you that I like toying with WordPress; unfortunately, there are those out there who like toying with other people’s WordPress as well.

People’s blogs get hacked on a daily basis. A simple Google search for my blog was hacked returns 2,620,000 results.

I tend to think of blog security like the progression of driving a car through the years.

At 16 when you’re new to driving a car, you know driving a car safely is good, but you don’t do it. Instead, teens tend to drive more carelessly than older more seasoned drivers. However, the one time one of these teens get in a serious car accident, all of a sudden a light bulb turns on and they realize just how dangerous it is to drive carelessly.

The problem is, the process keeps washing its hands and repeating itself. As that teen ages, new teens begin driving and take to the roads, and can you guess how they drive?

The same holds for blogging. When newbies begin blogging either they don’t know the statistics of blog security or they don’t think it’ll ever happen to them. Then one day if they do get hacked, all of a sudden blog security becomes an issue. If, however, they are lucky enough to not get hacked early on (i.e. as they age), they begin to realize blog security is becoming more and more important since they have a lot more to lose (posts, comments, design, etc.).

2 WordPress Security Plugins You Should Consider

1. Chap Secure Login

In order to log into WordPress, you need to enter in a username and password. The problem is, unless you log in through a SSL connection (tutorial post coming soon), this information is sent through the Internet unprotected and can be seen by snooping eyes.

That’s where the Chap Secure Login plugin comes in.

Chap stands for Challenge Handshake Authentication Protocol and what it does is encrypt your password through the use of the MD5 hashing algorithm in JavaScript so that it is sent to your web host in a secured manner.

Whenever possible, I suggest logging into your WordPress blog through SSL, but if that’s not an option for you, I highly suggest using this plugin; and the best part is, there’s no configuring, just upload and install the plugin and you’re all set.

2. WordPress File Monitor

Securing WordPress is great, but as I’ve mentioned before it’s impossible to completely secure WordPress 100%. Just as important as securing your WordPress from being hacked in the first place is knowing when your blog has been hacked.

Matt Walters developed an excellent file monitoring plugin, called WordPress File Monitor, which will monitor all your files for any alterations made to them.

Many times WordPress crackers will attempt to insert vicious viruses or spam links directly into your WordPress files. These viruses can be designed to do just about anything they want, including downloading viruses to your website’s visitor’s computers.

The WordPress File Monitor plugin monitors each of your files for changes that occur inside them. So, say for example, someone uploads malicious code to your footer.php file, the WordPress File Monitor plugin would capture that change and email you that a change has occurred. There’s also notification in your Dashboard.

Once notified, you can head over to that file and check for anything suspicious.

As a bonus, this plugin can also be configured to monitor and report changes to files outside of your WordPress directory. This is a huge bonus for those of you who run a static HTML website for your home page and have WordPress installed in a separate directory, like /blog.

Here’s a couple screen shots from this plugin:

Have you thought about blog security lately?

How would you feel if one day you found your blog has been cracked into?

Would you be prepared to deal with the problem and make your blog right?

If you’re interested in keeping up to date with the latest in blog security, WordPress, and my own personal blogging tips, you can subscribe to my RSS feed here. Also, if you’re interested in locking down your WordPress blog and add some security features to it, I can do that for you.

Hammering Down 2 More Ways To Speed Up Your WordPress Blog

John Hoff — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 04:00:32 +0000

In a recent post I talked about how you can speed up WordPress through compressing data using gzip by way of PHP.

Since I posted that article I’ve had more than a few people ask me what other ways I know that can help speed up a WordPress blog. To be honest, most of what I know is from what I’ve found online.

Something to note before we begin, though, is that if you’re going to toy around with your blog’s performance and theme’s code, be sure to back everything up first. Do NOT skip this step!

Also, always make sure your website is working properly immediately after attempting any of these hacks.

Speed Tip #1: Enable Caching Through .htaccess

If your web host supports mod_deflate, try adding this code to your root .htaccess file to compress javascript and css before it is sent to your visitor’s browser.

SetOutputFilter DEFLATE

Source: AskApache

Speed Tip #2: Combine and Minify Javascript and CSS

One way to speed things up is to rearrange Javascript and CSS files so that everything loads quicker. In practice, if you combine all your Javascript files into one file and load it at the end of your website (i.e. in the footer), your site will load quicker because there are fewer stops and waits for multiple Javascript files to be accessed.

Similarly, the same holds true for CSS files except you’d rather have those load at the top of your website, not the bottom.

WordPress makes this very difficult because of the use of plugins. Many plugins come with their own CSS and Javascript files and unless you’re into coding big time, it’ll be extremely difficult to combine all your plugin’s CSS and Javascript files.

There is hope, however, thanks to (ironically) minify plugins.

Two minify plugins I have experimented with are the WP Minify and Head Cleaner plugins.

These plugins attempt to speed up your blog’s load time by combining Javascript and CSS files respectively and loading them in their appropriate places for increased speed. Of the two plugins, the WP Minify plugin worked best for me as seen by these screen shots below using the Firebug/Y-Slow add-ons for Firefox.

Before WP Minify my blog had a B rating because it made too many http requests (which slow things down):

After installing the WP Minify plugin my blog now has an A rating:

One thing to note about the WP Minify plugin: if your blog is located in the /blog or some directory other than your website’s root, make sure to define its location in the plugin’s settings.

There are lots more little tips and tricks you can do to increase the speed at which your blog loads, some things work, others don’t or have very little performance changes. It’s always best if you can find articles which back up claims with statistics.

By the way, if you’re still looking to get your own WordPress blog or you’re in the market for a domain name, SSL certificate, etc., don’t forget we provide all these hosting/domains services here at WP Blog Host.

SSL certificates are a great way to log into your WordPress admin area and do whatever it is you want to do under the protection of everything being encrypted. We’ll talk more about that and how to set it up in a future post.

2 Easy Ways To Set Up A WordPress Firewall

John Hoff — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 14:48:00 +0000

Image by jasoneppink

Question: Is your blog’s security a top priority for you?

I bet the majority of you will say, “Yes John, it is.” However, I bet 90% of you have taken very little steps to actually secure your blog against intruders.

About 8 years ago I hurt my back (relation to blog security coming up quick) to the point where I have a bulging disk. I went to a chiropractor and he asked me, “How concerned are you of this problem?” I told him I was pretty concerned and wanted it fixed, but since the pain wasn’t unbearable it wasn’t top on my priority list.

He brought me into a room and showed me how over time an injury which starts out with only ‘some pain’ can easily turn into a huge problem for me down the road. He showed how without treatment my problem could get worse up to a point where I might have troubles doing simple things, like walking. If that were to happen, I bet my future self would say, “Why didn’t I listen to that chiropractor?”

He then asked me again, “How concerned are you of this problem?” My answered changed.

Now let me ask you again, how concerned are you for your blog’s security?

Do you think it’s possible one day that your future self might say, “If I only took steps to protect my blog earlier none of this would have happened.”

Realize too, you might not even know your site has been cracked until some time down the road. Sometimes a hacker’s only interest is to create backlinks to their websites (to help their Google PageRank) while other times it might be to simply steal your bandwidth.

See this article as an example. Also, Nik Cubrilovic over at TechCrunch mentions this in his article, WordPress Security Issues Lead To Mass Hacking. Is Your Blog Next?

It is unknown just how many WordPress blogs are infected (I have seen instances of double infection, where a previously hacked host had been hacked again), but as an indicator, across the ten or more WordPress blogs that TechCrunch and I have access to, we can see over 100 requests daily for these various security holes.

So how do you secure your WordPress blog?

There are many ways to harden your WordPress installation and I’ll talk about more of them down the road, so be sure to subscribe to our feed if you’re interested (link opens in a new window so you won’t lose your place).

Here are two quick and easy ways help guard your blog against attacks using SQL Injection.

1. Install a WordPress Firewall Plugin

There are a few really good firewall plugins out there for WordPress, but here’s one that’s easy to use. If you’re unfamiliar with what a firewall is, look up to the picture at the top of this article. Imagine the girl is your blog and the guy is an intruder. The firewall is the shield protecting you from his attack.

SEO Egghead offers the WordPress Firewall Plugin.

Simply install this plugin and then configure it to whitelist your IP address (so you yourself don’t trigger a block and alert). To do that, once the plugin is activated look over to your Settings area on the left sidebar of your WordPress Dashboard and click Firewall.

From there you can enter in your email address to send possible intrusion alerts to and also whitelist your IP address. To find out what your IP address is, you can head over to WhatIsMyIPAddress.com.

2. Upgrade Your WordPress Installation

This is the easiest thing you can do to help guard against SQL Injection and other blog security vulnerabilities. If you clicked over to read the article mentioned above, the author shows how he was using a recent, but not current, version of WordPress and his blog was still cracked.

Luckily, simply upgrading his WordPress installation fixed his problem.

If you don’t know how to upgrade your WordPress installation, we have a video tutorial on how to do it.

Finally, I’d like to note that WP Blog Host provides various blog services. If you’d like us to upgrade your blog and/or provide these and many more security upgrades to your blog, let us know. For a one time fee of $65 we can harden your WordPress install, help fortify your blog against SQL Injection, database cracking, and brute force attacks. Just send us a note in the comment section below or on our Questions page.

So, let me ask you. How concerned are you about your blog’s security?

50+ WordPress Plugins & Hacks Candy Store

John Hoff — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 08:00:14 +0000

Turning WordPress Into Your Own

Image by ShadowKris

WordPress is my chosen blogging platform. Since I’ve begun my blogging journey I’ve come across many great plugins and customizations that other WordPress users have created.

All our web hosting plans come with easy to install scripts, one of them being WordPress.

There are plenty of similar plugin and hacks list out there like this one, however, I’ve been asked by a few of our customers which plugins I use and where they can find some more great mods. Therefore, I created the following list.

1. Create A Custom Landing Page
Instead of displaying your most recent posts as your blog’s home page, create a landing page that shows whatever you want.

2. Formatting Images For Your Feed Reader
Show images correctly in feeds.

3. Embed Google Ad in First WordPress Post
Place an ad after the first post in your WordPress blog main page.

4. Display Your Most Popular Posts Plugin
A plugin that will show your most popular posts in your sidebar.

5. Word Count Plugin for WordPress
Counts and displays the number of words and images.

6. Display A Stripe Ad At The Top Of Your Blog

7. How to Put Your Best Content Forward
Two ways to put your best content in front of other posts.

8. Ban Users From Your Blog Plugin
Ban users by IP, IP Range, host name, user agent and referer url from visiting your WordPress’s blog.

9. Creating a Print Stylesheet in WordPress
Shows how you can create a clean print of your blog articles for your readers.

10. WordPress Blog Post Print Plugin
Displays a printable version of your WordPress blog’s post/page.

11. Display Twitter Messages In WordPress
Customize the Twitter message displayed on your blog.

12. Separate WordPress comments from pings and trackbacks
Very useful for keeping your comment section human chat flowing. See an example in my blog post here.

13. Create a poll plugin
Adds an AJAX poll system to your WordPress blog.

14. Moving a Static HTML Site to WordPress
How to move your .html pages over to WordPress and keep the same web address.

15. Create a custom login page

16. Create a WordPress Sticky Plugin
Adds a sticky post feature to your WordPress’s blog.

17. Add Related Posts To Your Feed

18. Random Posts Plugin
This plugin displays a list of posts chosen randomly from your blog.

19. All in One SEO Pack Plugin
Probably the most popular plugin of all time. However, if you’re looking for a program like this, I suggest taking a look at #35 down below. I prefer that plugin over this one as it automates a lot of the seo functions for you.

20. Secure Contact Form Plugin
Has an easy reCapatcha image verification to ward off spam.

21. Highlight author comments in WordPress
When commenting in your comment section, here’s how you can highlight your comments.

22. Customize Your 404 Page
The Google 404 widget is a quick and easy way to embed a search box on your custom 404 page and provide users with useful information designed to help them find the information they need.

23. Sitemap Generator Plugin for WordPress
Generate a site map for your WordPress blog. See our blog’s site map as an example. We have it set to only display posts, not pages.

24. Collapsible Archive Widget
Again, see our blog’s sidebar for an example.

25. Lucia’s Linky Love Plugin – remove the “nofollow”
We all know incoming links to your site is good. This plugin will remove the “nofollow” tag after commentator’s links in their name after they comment however many times you set for.

26. CommentLuv Plugin
Adds a little note at the bottom of a commentator’s comment in your blog that tells everyone what that person’s last blog article was. See our blog’s comment section as an example.

27. Post Teaser
Post Teaser generates a preview or “teaser” of a post for the main, archive and category pages, with a link underneath to go to the full post page. This is also good because it’s what Googlebot likes.

28. Recent Comments Plugin
Display recent comments in your sidebar.

29. Similar Posts Plugin
Display a short list of similar posts at the end of an article. Great for promoting other articles you have written but are buried in your archives.

30. WP-Cache
Speed up your blog by caching your posts.

31. WordPress Automatic Upgrade
The easy way to upgrade your WordPress blog to the newest version.

32. Disguise email addresses from spambots
Feel free to display your email address with this plugin which stops spambots from recording your email address.

33. Automatic WordPress database backup plugin
Get regular backups of your blog sent to you via email with this plugin.

34. Top Commentators Plugin
Display your top commentators names in your sidebar.

35. Platinum SEO Pack
In my opinion this plugin is better than the All-In-One SEO plugin. This one will automatically generate META tags for you based on what you write as well as automating other things.

36. PHP ImageManager + Editor
The ImageManager provides an interface for browsing and uploading image files on/to your server. The Editor allows for some basic image manipulations such as, cropping, rotation, flip, and scaling.

37. Sexy Comments Plugin
Make your WordPress comment section resemble a forum style discussion.

38. Quicktags Plugin
Quick and easy buttons for commentators on your blog.

39. Post Footer WordPress Plugin
Automatically add any custom paragraph, html code, ad code, technorati tags and/or related links list to the end of every posts.

40. Bad Behavior Plugin To Fight Spam
Bad Behavior acts as a first line of defense for fighting spam. It works even before Askiment sees the spam. In my experience, it has greatly reduced the amount of spam that reaches my Askiment filter.

41. Akisment Plugin To Fight Spam
Akismet is a must for fighting spam if you have a WordPress blog. If you don’t have it, get it!

42. Adsense Deluxe Plugin
The easy way to insertion Google AdSense or Yahoo Publisher Network ads to your posts.

43. Adsense Inline Plugin
Easily insert Google’s AdSense ads inside the content of your blog post.

44. AdSense Widget for WordPress Sidebar
Insert Google AdSense in your sidebar.

45. AdSense Earnings Plugin
Display your AdSense earnings within your WordPress admin panel.

46. Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator for WordPress
This program will generate a sitemap for Google to crawl and index your blog better.

47. One Click Installs Plugin
Makes installing and uploading of plugins easy.

48. PlugInstaller WP Plugin
Another program that makes installing plugins easy. With this plugin you can install a new plugin directly from te plugin site.

49. Maintenance Mode Plugin
When upgrading your blog or doing any sort of maintenance that will cause your blog to go down for a bit, this plugin lets you customize a landing page for visitors during this period.

50. Sociable Social Bookmarking Plugin
Add social bookmarks to the end of your posts.

51. I Love Social Bookmarking Plugin
A simple drop down menu of social bookmarks for a cleaner look.

52. Share This Plugin
A drop down social bookmark plugin that also allows you to email and post.

53. Social Bookmarks 3.2
Allows for drop down or display of your social bookmarks.

54. Hack Up Your WordPress Theme
An article which shows a bunch of code snippets you can use to customize your theme to do what you want.

55. iWPhone WordPress Plugin and Theme
automatically reformats your blog’s content for optimized viewing on Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch.

56. WordPress Security Tips and Hacks
Some great tips on protecting your blog from hackers and unwanted visitors.

57. Filosofo’s WordPress Gravatar Plugin
The plugin fixed my issue of not being able to get gravatars to work with my blog. If you’re looking to put gravatars on your site in the comment section, Filosofo’s code is well written.