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WordPress 3.0: Security Upgrades Overview & How To Install It

John Hoff — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 23:34:29 +0000

WordPress 3.0 “Thelonious” came out this week and like usual, everyone is encouraged to upgrade. Down below I’ll show you a video on how to manually install WordPress 3.0, but before we get to that, I just want to address a question I’ve been asked a few times already in regards to WordPress 3.0 security.

An online buddy of mine, Keith Davis, asked me a great question in regards to WordPress 3.0 security. He asked:

Hi John

I notice that WordPress 3.0 has now been released and we are all urged to upgrade.
I would have to make changes to my theme to make it compatible with WP 3.0 and since I’m not looking for additional functionality, the only reason I would upgrade is for added security.

The only reference I can find to increased security in version 3 is the ability to change the default username from admin – but most of us will have done that anyway as per your advice.

Would you say that an upgrade to version 3 is essential on security grounds?

Great question… and here’s my response.

It seems the security enhancements in WordPress 3.0 really only apply to those end-users who are installing WordPress for the first time (manual install).

For better WordPress security and help keep malicious hackers locked out, it’s a good idea to do the following three things:

Choose a different username than the default “admin”
Change the default database table prefix to something other than wp_
Add WordPress security keys

As Keith mentioned, I’ve shown him (and others) how to do those things in my ebook, WordPress Defender. WordPress 3.0 just makes it easier for you to do those things all during the setup process; in fact, the security keys are created automatically for you (see the video below).

So Keith, to answer your question about upgrading, no it’s not necessary in my opinion to upgrade right away; however, realize that although WordPress says they aren’t planning on a 3.1 right away, you never know. Tomorrow we might all discover one major security hole and every one must upgrade immediately.

If I were you or someone else in your position, I’d start planning how I’m going to upgrade real soon. You might contact your theme’s author and see what their plans are.

How To Install WordPress 3.0 Manually

Don’t forget, before you do a WordPress upgrade, it’s important to first fully back up your blog.

Want To Dive Into Video Blogging? Here’s Where To Start

John Hoff — Mon, 17 May 2010 04:00:09 +0000

Get this book from
Amazon.com

I don’t read a ton of books these days, I’ve just got too much to do.

But as an entrepreneur and blogger, I’ve got to keep my education growing.

Although blogs are great sources to learn from, nothing beats a well written book by an author who really knows the subject matter.

Since my time is limited, I try to choose what books I purchase carefully.

I check out a number of different books written on a subject, read at least 4 or 5 reviews and skim through many of the other ones before making my purchase.

As many of you know, I do video screen casts for WordPress bloggers and our hosting customers. But I’m wanting to push ahead and venture beyond simply creating screen capture videos.

To do that, I need to expand my knowledge in the “how to create online videos” arena, so I did what many people do, I bought a book.

Since I don’t read a ton of books, I don’t do many book reviews… I know, big discovery!

But when I purchased Get Seen: Online Video Secrets To Building Your Business and began reading it, I knew right away that I had to write a post about the book.

What Videos Can Do For Your Blog

Author Steve Garfield begins the book by talking about how popular videos on the Web are and why you might want to put your own videos on the Web.

Video allows you to tell a much richer story than you ever could with just words and pictures alone. Video enables you to engage the viewer emotionally.

Wait! Did he say emotionally?

Isn’t that what all those guru bloggers tell us we need to do? Engage our readers and spark some kind of emotional response?

If video does that, then I want some more of it! That’s what we all hope to accomplish on some level with our blogs, right?

And if we can tell a good story, invoke an emotional response, and put a real person in front of our readers, then we increase our ultimate goal of, wait for it….

A connection.

What more could you ask for, except maybe a house in Hawaii.

Topics Steve Covers In The Book

If you’re going to create video on the Web, realize that there’s a learning curve. It’s not as simple as hit record on your camera and record yourself talking.

Here’s something to think about which many newbies to video blogging get wrong.

Which of these three do you think is the most important in terms of priority?

What video camera you use?
What audio source you use?
Lighting

The answer might surprise you.

It’s lighting.

These are the kinds of secrets you’ll learn today so that you can skip ahead much quicker than the person just “learning as they go”.

The book is filled with everything you need to know about creating, editing, and publishing videos online.

You’ll learn about:

Different cameras and which might be the best for you
Lighting and recording sound options
Creating screencasts
How to record and shoot your videos
Editing your work
Sharing your videos in social networks
How to broadcast live online

Even better? Steve interviews a number of online video publishers to see what they’ve learned over the years and how we might skip ahead in our own learning curve.

Conclusion

If you’re looking to start creating your own videos online, Get Seen in my opinion is a must have for your bookshelf.

You’ll learn what equipment fits the bill for your needs, how to record your shots, how to edit your work, and get your videos seen online, all for under $20. Now that’s a steal in my opinion.

If you have a story you want to tell, this book will help you tell it.

Please note the links to this book contained in this article are my amazon.com affiliate links. This in no way has swayed my appreciation of this book.

So, are you wanting to create videos one day?

Fatten Up Your Wallet by Using Online Videos

John Hoff — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 04:00:58 +0000

I’d like to thank the Shoemoney Newsletter for bringing this site to my attention, and I loved it so much I wanted to share it with all of you.

Andy Jenkins (a.k.a. The Video Boss) is releasing a set of videos showing us how we can use video to increase sales and conversions on our sites. I have to say, this video series is freaking awesome and well worth your time.

In the videos he shows us which camera to use, which programs he uses to create video slides, how the video’s message should be focused, and so much more.

If you sell products or services online, this is a must see video series. I definitely plan on following his advice and will be working on perfecting my video skills for our WordPress video tutorials site.

Andy does ask for your email address before you can watch the videos, f.y.i. But if you’re like me, you have a special email address for subscriptions so as to not clog up your primary email address.

Here’s the link to the tutorials (not an affiliate link): The Video Boss.

My 3-Year Old Son’s First Video Blog Article!

John Hoff — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 21:27:29 +0000

Here’s a cute little Christmas video for all my blogging friends.

The other day I was busy recording a couple WordPress video tutorials while my 3-year old son, Joshua, sat quietly next to me watching me work.

When I was done he really wanted to sit up to the microphone and do a recording, so I figured, “Why not?”

In the beginning of most my videos I introduce myself as “John from WP Blog Host”, so naturally, that’s where he started.

Hope you all have a great Holiday season.

Blogging Bloopers, Outtakes, & Deleted Scenes 2

John Hoff — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 04:00:41 +0000

Hello everyone, it’s round two for my blogging bloopers videos. None of these were “planned bloopers”, they all happened on the spot.

Hope you enjoy.

1 Incredibly Wicked Trick To Speeding Up Your Blog’s Load Time

John Hoff — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 04:00:19 +0000

We all know attention spans on the Web are small. Make a potential first time visitor to your site wait more than a few moments for your blog to load and they’ll click away faster than you can say, “But wait!”

Here’s an incredibly easy trick you can do to reducing that “but wait”-time for your blog to load. In most cases, it’s as easy as copy & paste.

Now who doesn’t like the copy, paste, and done tutorials?

Let’s first show you what to do and then for those who are interested, we’ll talk about what we did (in easy terms).

Copy This and Put It Here

Copy

gzip‘)) ob_start(“ob_gzhandler”); else ob_start(); ?>

Paste A (for WordPress users)

For WordPress users, paste the code up at the very top of your header.php file (above the DOCTYPE line). If you’re not sure how to do this, see the video at the end of this tutorial.

Paste B (for static .html pages)

If your website is coded in html and not php, then what you’ll need to do is copy the code above and paste it up at the very top of each web page you want to compress (above the DOCTYPE).

The one change you’ll need to do here is change the extension of your web pages from .html to .php.

So for example, change: index.html to index.php

What Did We Do?

Without going into a bunch of techno talk, we basically instructed, through PHP, that the Web server compress files for transit to your visitors’ Web browser by use of gzip.

I’m sure you’ve seen zip files before (myfile.zip). Zip is a compression utility that takes a bunch of data and files and compresses them into one smaller size file.

By using gzip, we compressed your blog’s data into a smaller file size before sending it over to your visitor’s Web browser. As a result, your blog loads faster for your visitor.

Simple. Easy. Works.

How To Test It

Of course you’ll want proof that your site is loading quicker. You should notice a difference in load time just by clicking around your blog before and after the line is pasted in. But if you want to see actual data, head over to http://www.port80software.com and type your blog’s address in the Compression Check box.

Here’s the results for my blog. I circled the parts that showed my after compression data.

As you can see, my blog loads more than 4 times faster with the gzip compression enabled.

Also, the file size transmitted over the Internet and to my visitor’s browser was reduced from 60,241 bytes to just 12,963 bytes. That’s a 47,278 difference in file size!

WordPress How-To Video

For those who like videos, here’s how to copy and paste this command into your WordPress header.php file.

Share It

This little tip has helped many people decrease how long it takes their sites to load. If you have a moment, please consider sharing it through your social networks like Stumble Upon, Twitter, etc. While you’re at it, feel free to follow me on Twitter.

SEO Tips For WordPress Bloggers by Matt Cutts

John Hoff — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 17:25:01 +0000

I just watched an excellent video on the topic of WordPress search engine optimization (SEO) given by Matt Cutts while speaking at the WordCamp San Francisco 2009 seminar.

Matt heads up the anti-spam team at Google and frequently speaks about search engine optimization issues. The video is a little over 45 minutes but I have to say, it is well worth taking the time to watch if you’re at all interested in WordPress SEO.

Here’s the video and below it (for those with less time) I’ll highlight a few points Matt made which I thought you should know about. Rob Snell transcribed the speech if you’d like to soak it all in at your own pace.

Notes From The Video

I. WordPress is great for SEO

Take a look at this snapshot from his slideshow:

By “mechanics”, Matt means how WordPress is built. It’s built intelligently for Google to crawl it (i.e. your blog) with ease and indexs what needs to be indexed. For example, the url structure by default uses hyphens “-” to separate words in the url, which is great for SEO.

II. PageRank

Matt defines PageRank as “the number of people that link to you and how important those links are.”

What exactly does a high PageRank do for you? Well, the more PageRank your site has means:

The faster your site will be found.
The deeper into your site Google will crawl.
The more often Google will visit your pages to see if they’ve been refreshed.

Obviously, those are some things you really would like Google to do. Google also crawls sites in a decreasing order of PageRank:

III. Relevance & Reputable

Google wants to see that you’re relevant to something. If you focus in on a topic for your blog, it will learn that is what you talk about. In other words, don’t talk about a bunch of random stuff, otherwise may get lost in trying to figure out what exactly you want to rank for.

To build reputation, Matt mentions the following:

Be interesting.
Update your blog often.
Provide a useful service.
Do original research and reporting.
Give great information.
Find a creative niche.
Write some code
Live Blogging
Make list posts
Create controversy
Meet other people in social networks

IV. Keyword Notes

- Matt mentions something I’ve said many times in the past, don’t “overstuff” your landing pages with keywords. If you write about furniture, there’s no need to repeat that word 400 times. After mentioning the word 2 or 3 times and perhaps have that keyword in your title and/or url, Googlebot catches on and gets the idea that you’re writing about furniture.

- Contrary to what many SEO bloggers think, bolding the keyword doesn’t really help much; instead, concentrate on a writing style that a human can read and not feel like they are being YELLED AT!

- When trying to optimize your article for a given keyword or keyword phrase, realize that what you might think is the best keyword for your article might not necessarily be the best or only keyword people will use to find your product, service, or article. Use the Google Keyword Tool to find alternative keywords people are using to find your product and try to incorporate those keywords into your article as well. Just be sure that when you insert those other keywords that after reading your article, everything sound and reads naturally – don’t forget to do that!

V. WordPress URL Structure

Matt gives a great tip on how you can do one little tweak to help with your SEO. First, try to incorporate your keyword in your blog’s title and next, change that word slightly in your Permalink structure to another word someone might use in the search box (for example use the word “Changing” in your title and “change” in your url permalink.

Another tip he gives us which is probably the easiest search engine optimization check you can do for your blog is to use the /%postname%/ permalink structure for your blog.

As it turns out, I already have a video showing you how to do this on the WP Blog Host television channel: Setting The Best Permalink (url) Structure For WordPress SEO.

Again I highly suggest you take a little time out of your day to watch this video if you’re at all interested in learning search engine optimization for your WordPress blog. I realize this topic isn’t much fun for many of you and many times you might think you have more important things to do (like read other blog articles or tweeting about your day), but consider how much time you put into building your blog. Isn’t it worth your time to learn something so valuable to you?

Got a question about SEO? Ask away.

The images above are snapshots I took from Matt’s video. I give him full credit for the images I used for this article.

Learn WordPress search engine optimization!
Disclosure: Compensated Affiliate

Introducing The New WP Blog Host Television Channel: wpbloghost.tv

John Hoff — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 17:18:36 +0000

WP Blog Host has a television channel!

It’s my pleasure to introduce our new tutorials Web television channel, WP Blog Host.tv.

As many of you know, I’ve been spending lots of time creating easy to follow WordPress and WP Blog Host product video tutorials for bloggers and customers who host with WP Blog Host. The tutorials can be for anyone blogging and using WordPress, but bloggers who host with our company get the extra advantage of watching how to do everything using our hosting (click-by-click).

Here’s a snapshot of our new television channel:

Ok I know, a nice slick video slider would be nice on the home page. I spent days toying with lots of WordPress video themes and you know, none really clicked with me. Most of those themes are all very dark and hard to read. Some come with various color choices and I did experiment with color changes, but in the end a simple blog style theme worked best for me.

Down the road when I start doing “in the news” related videos, I’ll probably shell out the big bucks and really build a nice customized site.

I do have to give one mention, though, to a guy named Vishal from Fresh Lime Sode. They have a number of WordPress themes and this one in particular I really liked and tried. The best thing about him is when I ran into a few issues, Vishal was quick to reply to my emails and even did a little customization for me.

If you’re looking for nice WordPress Themes and want to know there will be someone available to help you with your support needs, I highly suggest checking out Fresh Lime Sode.

Subscribing To The Videos & Scheduling

The new site, http://wpbloghost.tv (opens in a new tab), has its own RSS subscription so you can keep up to date and notified when new videos are uploaded.

Because this is my project and it is relatively new, there is no set posting schedule at this time; however, that may change in the coming months. I do have a nice running to-do list and will add videos regularly, though.

WpBlogHost -> WP Blog Host

Converting our old tutorials page into its own tutorials Web channel is only the first step in some exciting changes coming to WP Blog Host.

Ah yes, did you catch that? I used WP Blog Host, not WpBlogHost. After months of watching how others reprint our name, WpBlogHost felt it best to go with what everyone usually remembers, WP Blog Host. Why not, right? That change will come to the main site real soon.

Also, released shortly will be a new design of our main site and my blog. I’m really excited about the redesign of my blog because it will be more representative of me, John Hoff the blogger, rather than our “corporation’s blog”.

Feedback

Back to the topic at hand, if you have a few moments, I’d love to hear a little feedback on the new site, WP Blog Host.tv and I hope you find the tutorials useful.

WordPress Management: Cleaning Up Your Root Folder

John Hoff — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 04:00:20 +0000

Most of the time I’m a very organized person. I say most of the time because being that I blog from home and having two little boys, one and three, being organized at home can sometimes be a challenge.

Ketchup might splatter on my keyboard and at times there might be a Thomas The Tank Engine sitting on my desk, but if there’s one thing I know I can keep organized, it’s my WordPress hosting files. When I log into my hosting account, everything is tucked away nicely and files are easy to find.

When you install WordPress, by default it places all its core files in the same directory of your WordPress installation. So for example, if you placed your blog in your root directory (i.e. www.myblog.com), then your web hosting root folder will include all the WordPress system files.

Below and on the left is an example what a typical WordPress directory looks like. Pretty cluttered up with a lot of stuff you don’t need to know about, huh? On the right is an example of what you can do by moving all those core files and folders out of your root directory and into a subdirectory (in the example below, the subdirectory is /root-blog.

So how do you do that?

Well you’re in luck, because have I got a video for you.

As I mentioned in the video, it might be wise to create yourself a maintenance page where you can send your visitors to while you’re moving your files around. The move shouldn’t take long, but just in case you missed how to redirect your visitors to a maintenance page while your site is down, here’s how I showed you how to do it in my post, How To Install WordPress Manually.

How To Create A Simple Maintenance Page

You could always download a WordPress maintenance mode plugin, but in this case it probably won’t work. During the move process you’ll be moving your /wp-content folder, which contains all your plugins. This will cause your site to not load; therefore, it’s best to have your own maintenance page independent of WordPress.

So, here’s how to create a custom maintenance page without a plugin.

Step 1

Create a simple html file and place it in your blog’s root directory. Name it something like, maintenance.html. Inside the maintenance.html file you can put anything you want. “Hi. I’m out to lunch for a few moments while the construction crew is busy at work . . .”

But why stop there? Your site is better than that. Customize the page with your site’s colors and images. Maybe add a video or your latest blog post. CSSgirl wrote some tips and shows some examples on the topic of creating a memorable maintenance page.

Step 2

Ok so now you have your maintenance.html page set up; the next step is to redirect everyone to it while you’re doing your upgrade.

Navigate to your blog’s root directory in your web hosting control panel and open your .htaccess file.

Once opened, you’re going to add this code at the top:

# Use this code to redirect visitors to maintenance.html file while upgrading
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !^618\.124\.259\.25
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/maintenance.html$
RewriteRule $ http://your-site.com/maintenance.html [R=302,L]

The yellow parts above are the areas you need to change. Visit What is my IP address? to find your IP address and put those numbers in under the first yellow highlight. Next add the url path to your own maintenance page in the second yellow part.

And that should do it. Your site should now show a maintenance page to everyone except you (your IP address was whitelisted). To see what everyone else sees, add a # sign in front of the IP line:

# RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !^618\.124\.259\.25

The # comments lines out.

When you’re finished, leave the code in your .htaccess file for next time. To disable the code, just add a # in front of each line:

# Use this code to redirect visitors to maintenance.html file while upgrading
# Options +FollowSymlinks
# RewriteEngine on
# RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !^618\.124\.259\.25
# RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/maintenance.html$
# RewriteRule $ http://your-site.com/maintenance.html [R=302,L]

Remember, if you need help with upgrades or moving your files around like in this tutorial, visit the blog services page and use the contact form there to get in touch with me. This is a service I can provide.

Questions?

Fire away.

WordPress 2.8.2 Has Been Released & Provides Security Fixes

John Hoff — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 23:26:27 +0000

Just a quick note to my blog readers, WordPress 2.8.2 has been released. The reason for the update was WordPress discovered 2.8.1 had a security leak in it which could allow malicious hackers get into your blog.

Taken from WordPress.org:

WordPress 2.8.2 fixes an XSS vulnerability. Comment author URLs were not fully sanitized when displayed in the admin. This could be exploited to redirect you away from the admin to another site.

You can download the latest version of WordPress here.

If you don’t know how to upgrade, WP Blog Host has the following video tutorials. I also provide this service for $50, by the way.