How to set up wordpress

Posts Tagged ‘Advice’

A good friend of mine recently got his WordPress blog hacked. It was quite a malicious attack that could have an impact on his search ranking and, of course, his momentum in traffic. It’s one of the reasons why I advice large companies to utilize a corporate blogging platform like Compendium – where there’s a monitoring team looking out for you. (Disclosure: I’m a shareholder)

Companies don’t understand why they would pay for a platform like Compendium… until they hire me to work all night at repairing their free WordPress blog! (FYI: WordPress also offers a VIP version and Typepad also offers a business version. )

For those of you that can’t afford a blogging platform with the services they offer, here’s my advice for what to do if WordPress gets hacked:

1. Stay Calm! Don’t start deleting things and installing all kinds of crap that promises to clean your installation up. You don’t know who wrote it and whether or not it’s simply adding more malicious crap to your blog. Take a deep breath, lookup this blog post, and slowly and deliberately go down the checklist.
2. Take down the blog. Immediately. The easiest way to do this with WordPress is to rename your index.php file in your root directory. It’s not enough to just put up an index.html page… you need to halt all traffic to any page of your blog. In placement of your index.php page, upload a text file that says you’re offline for maintenance and will be back soon. The reason you need to take down the blog is because most of these hacks aren’t done by hand, they’re done through malicious scripts that attach themselves to every writeable file in your installation. Someone visiting an internal page of your blog can reinfect the files you’re working to repair.
3. Backup your blog. Don’t just backup your files, also backup your database. Store it somewhere special in the event you need to refer to some of the files or information.
4. Remove all themes. Themes are an easy means for a hacker to script and insert code into your blog. Most themes are also written poorly by designers that don’t understand the nuances of securing your pages, your code, or your database.
5. Remove all plugins. Plugins are the easiest means for a hacker to script and insert code into your blog. Most plugins are written poorly by hack developers that don’t understand the nuances of securing your pages, your code, or your database. Once a hacker finds a file with a gateway, they simply deploy crawlers that search other sites for those files.
6. Reinstall WordPress. When I say reinstall WordPress, I mean it – including your theme. Don’t forget wp-config.php, a file that’s not overwritten when you copy over WordPress. In this blog, I found the malicious script was written in Base 64 so it just looked like a blob of text and it was inserted in the header of every single page, including wp-config.php.
7. Review your Database. You’ll want to review your options table and your posts table especially – looking for any strange external references or content. If you’ve never looked at your database before, be prepared to find PHPMyAdmin or another database query manager within your host’s management panel. It’s not fun – but it’s a must.
8. Startup WordPress with a default theme and no plugins installed. If your content appears and you don’t see any automated redirects to malicious sites, you’re probably okay. If you get a redirect to a malicious site, you’ll probably want to clear your cache to ensure you’re working from the latest copy of the page. You may need to go through your database record by record to try to locate whatever content might be there that’s paving the way into your blog. Chances are your database is clean… but you never know!
9. Install Your Theme. If the malicious code replicated, you’re probably going to have an infected theme. You may need to go line by line through your theme to ensure there’s no malicious code. You may be better off just starting out fresh. Open the blog up to a post and see if you’re still infected.
10. Install Your Plugins. You may want to use a plugin, first, such as Clean Options first, to remove any additional options from plugins you’re no longer using or wanting. Don’t go crazy though, this plugin is not the best… it often displays and allows you to delete settings you want to hang on to. Download all your plugins from WordPress. Run your blog again!

If you see the issue come back, chances are that you’ve reinstalled a plugin or theme that’s vulnerable. If the issue never leaves, you’ve probably tried to take a couple shortcuts in troubleshooting these issues. Don’t take a shortcut.

These hackers are nasty folks! Not understanding every plugin and theme file puts us all at risk, so be vigilant. Install plugins that have great ratings, plenty of installations, and a great record of downloads. Read the comments folks have associated with them.

This post was written by Douglas Karr

Douglas Karr is the founder of The Marketing Technology Blog. Doug is President and CEO of DK New Media, an online marketing company specializing in social media, blogging and search engine optimization. Their clients include Webtrends, ChaCha and many more.

Thanks for subscribing! download Doug's eBook on Blogging for SEO on us!

---

You might also find these posts interesting:

• Improve your SEO Writing Skills with Scribe (1)
• Why did Typepad make a Wordpress Anti-Spam Plugin? (6)
• Increase Pages per Visit and Reduce Bounce Rates (1)
• Accrisoft Freedom: A Different Kind of CMS (0)
• Bringing Enterprise Analytics to WordPress (10)

blog a lot and blog on any topic revolving around your subject matter. If you r blog is seperate from your web site just remember to put in links to relevant material between your blog and website.

I would like to add my own header logo to my wordpress blog but can;t find how I can do this… any advice?
(it’s the version that you host on your own)

I am not very much computer savy,but can surf on net for an hour or two.I want to earn money on net,someone suggested to creat blogs with good practical ideas and solutions .Now i wish to put my ideas on most actively visited site for blogs,please suggest some names

Google Adwords has implemented yet another new feature for Adwords PPC advertisers, and this time it’s pretty cool. The new feature is called ‘ad sitelinks’, and it allows PPC advertisers with high quality ads to add four additional links under their main PPC ad. This allows users easier access to deeper content of your website.

The sitelinks also provide advertisers with a good way of promoting seasonal services or products. Unlike organic sitelinks, the advertiser can pick and choose which campaigns get sitelinks and what those sitelinks are and where they link to. So they can be changed out as frequently as you would like.

Of course this new feature isn’t available to all Adwords advertisers. Google is being fairly vague when they say their new ad sitelinks are “available to ads that meet our quality requirements”, but do not go into any further detail than that.

To find out if your PPC account qualifies for the new sitelinks, simple go into your Adwords account, click on a campaign, click the settings tab, and scroll down to the ‘networks, devices and extensions section. If the sitelinks are available to you, there will be an additional ‘ad extensions’ option under this category. Simply click the edit button to add your sitelinks.

I think having the sitelinks is a great way to take users directly to a contact page or form page if that is your lead type. A few of my clients do qualify for the sitelinks and I’ll be adding them into today. My advice is if you do qualify, be sure to add tracking to the additional links so you can track data separately for the sitelinks to see if they’re actually helping.

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2009 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.

It’s been a while since I ranted about newspapers. Since I came from the industry, it’s still in my blood and will probably always be. The first newspaper I ever worked for is up for sale, and the local newspaper here is gasping its last breath. Like many, I don’t read the newspaper anymore, unless I see a recommended article through Twitter or one of the feeds that I digest.

This month’s .NET magazine mentions a short article on how Google and micropayments may try to save the newspaper industry. It seems that Google has submitted a recommendation to the Newspaper Association of America on a plan to utilize micropayments. To be honest, I think this is a terrible idea. Newspaper online readership isn’t doing terribly well – so I don’t believe asking for a penny or two is the answer.

Newspapers are blind to their value. The free press has a colorful history in this country… up until 40% profit margins for squeezing ads into every corner of the paper happened. Go to any newspaper boardroom and the discussion is all about ad revenue and how to keep printing ink on dead trees for profit. Go to any newspaper mogul and it’s all about how to cut staff, shrink newsprint costs, and – only now – how to begin getting profits online.

Void from any of those conversations is the incredible talent of journalists for digging deep and writing profound articles that both keep people entertained and keep our democracy in check. A couple years ago, I said that selling news is dead… I’m rethinking that now.

Here’s my advice to newspapers:

Don’t sell your content to readers. Instead, sell your content to portals, websites, and businesses. Allow websites to find and filter the information that they want to display, allow them to integrate the content into their own site, and allow them to present it the way they want it presented… at a cost.

Newspapers may have become effective advertising mediums over the years, but they need to return to their roots… providing great content with the most talented writers in their respective industries and regions.

The process of driving a story from idea to print is an incredible process that has, in my opinion, been destroyed in recent years. Newspapers need to return to their roots if they wish to survive. Allow journalists to make a name for themselves, pay them for their contents’ performance, allow them to be rock stars. That doesn’t mean journalists have to sell their souls… they understand the importance of a clean reputation.

I would personally love to supplement the content on The Marketing Technology Blog with content from professional journalists so the subjects and content are both wide and deep… while keeping costs down.

Those outside the industry are already seeing the opportunity. Friend Taulbee Jackson has launched Raidious Digital Content Services, and his company is borrowing both process and talent from the newspaper industry. Ironically, the local newspaper did an article on the startup.

I’m not sure if there’s any hope for newspapers to pull themselves out of this rut. I would just hate to see the talent of these organizations get lost, though. Great content is difficult to find today… hence the need for increasingly sophisticated search and social mediums. Newspapers could bridge the gap, keep their talent, and move back to profitability.

---

Help Support The Marketing Technology Blog

It's not often that we ask for support, but we'd love for you to do a couple things. First, a vote for Indiana's Top Blog would be wonderful! Second, subscribing to the feed in Bloglines increases our ranking!

Thanks!

You might also find these posts interesting:

• Getting in Print is still Cool!
• Why Hasn’t Your Company Implemented a CMS?
• Beware the Internet Famous
• Are You Feeding the 3 Styles of Learning?
• Fishing in a Million Lakes

Im looking to have a website where I can post Videos, Pictures, etc. Is Wordpress what im looking for?
Any advice would be helpful, thank you

Can you believe we've provided over 2,000 posts packed with great marketing advice? For free? If you'd like to give back, we'd love for you to add us as a favorite on Technorati! Let Doug know you did and we'll send you a free copy of Doug's eBook 25 Steps to Success: Business Blogging and SEO. Thanks!

A few weeks ago, I received an email from a woman asking about my e-Book on Blogging and SEO. It was a bit of a sad email – reading that a woman who wanted to buy my e-Book had spent a ton of money on the site where it was talked about and gotten no results in the past. Ironically, the article they read was one that I spent a ton of money on to put there.

The Internet Famous persons’ site had very impressive numbers and an even more impressive list of advertisers. They claimed well over 50,000 daily readers between all their distribution sources. That’s a nice audience to reach! And the audience was a shoe-in for my product. It was all there: eyeballs and targeted audience. Or was it?

A month after the post ran and I don’t even have 200 visitors from the site. That’s visitors… not conversions… simply visitors. Of the two-hundred visitors, not a single person actually purchased the e-Book. I found myself in the same predicament as the woman who wrote me. She complained that she had spent a bunch of money and never received a result from any of the advice she paid for from the website in question. The website was from someone Internet Famous.

Photo from Amit Gupta’s blog

My Theory on Internet Famous

So, with that in mind, and the collection of Internet Famous people I know or have done business with, here’s my theory:

Internet famous people are good at one thing… making themselves Internet famous.

Many of them don’t actually work with clients (outside of those who want to hire someone Internet famous and don’t have expectations of results). Most of them are busy trying to keep up the appearance that they are widely followed and smarter than the rest of us. Most of them are quick, intelligent, witty, and masters of the obvious. Many of them have book deals. Some of them are busy exaggerating the numbers to keep up the appearance.

They figured out that the transition from hard work and results to simply being Internet Famous was an easier way to make money. Why? Because we want some of their juice… we want to hitch a ride… we want the easy route, too.

It’s not easy, though. Don’t expect to get results when you throw some money at the Internet Famous… just remember that you’re helping keep them famous. (And that’s okay, too!)

About this Blog

That’s why I’m so passionate about this blog and the bloggers on board (with more to come). We’re all marketers who work every single day to improve our clients’ success. The blog is our passion, not our profit. Perhaps one day we’ll break out and be Internet Famous. If that’s me, be sure to write about me and hold me accountable, though!

As for the woman, I sent her a copy of 25 Steps to Success e-Book for free and asked her to only pay if she benefitted from the e-Book. That goes for any of you! If you’re skeptical, I’ll be glad to send you a copy!

Register Now! Indiana Business Rally October 1st

The Indiana Business Rally is back with a whole new format and reaching more Hoosiers for the same common goal of overcoming the wake of the economic turmoil of 2008-2009.

The breakfast rally will feature networking with executives and business leaders across all industriesand stimulate new contacts as you continue to grow your business and rally in our recovering economy. There will also be an opportunity to share the positive things that are happening in your business or industry!

I want to have a blah-g awn wordpress but I don’t know how. Please give me some advice awn which theme I should do, how to make my comments colored, and stuff like that. Thanks! xoxo, jjjcutie

Lately Ive had a lot of free time so I thought I might blog, so first off, can someone put in in a simple way what blogging is exactly, like what you talk about? I also wanted to start vlogging.
Can someone give me advice on how to start blogging and vlogging?