Malware Found in WordPress Theme – Protect Yourself Now

I’ve just published “WordPress Theme Malware Prevention and Protection on WordCast, covering the recent WordPress Theme dissection of malware by Otto. The article sums up his revealing analysis of how a Theme malware code integrates itself into your site, even down to the server level, through a twisting path of imaginative code. The code reminds […]

Exclusive First Interview with Woopra Co-Founders

I was honored to be the first to interview Elie Khoury and Jad Younan, co-founders of Woopra, the exciting new web analytics program currently in beta. We were at the LT Pact Conference in Las Vegas. The interview is featured in this week’s WordPress Podcast with Charles Stricklin. We talked about Woopra and the Woopra […]

Blog Challenge: What is the Most Unusual Blogger You’ve Found?

This week’s blogging challenge is designed to push you out of your comfort zone. I want you to do some research on who is blogging about what subjects and blog about the most unusual blogger and blog topic you can find. I call this the “blogging going to the birds post”, and if you think […]

The Beauty of a Good 404 Page Not Found Page

On the lighter side of web page design and development, check out this fabulous “pleases everyone” 404 Page Not Found Error from ibiblio.org. Not only is it a fairly good and helpful Page Not Found Error page, it provides information explaining what has happened in tons of different languages, including: 1337/h4x0r – j00 f001, 7|-|47 […]

I FOUND YOU – ONLINE SPELL CHECKER!

Firefox Spell Check Firefox now features spell check by default in their Internet browser. Misspelled words are highlighted with a red wavy underline, similar to word processing programs. Right click on the highlighted word and choose from the correct spelling in the right click menu. It’s not perfect, and the misspelled word isn’t recognized until […]

Blog Maintenance – Check For 404 Page Not Found Errors

Trying to practice what I preach, I finally got some time to check my site statistics this month for my main site and noticed that my 404 Page Not Found Errors stats were really high. In fact, I had over 400 visits to dead links on my site. These are internal links, not external. These […]

Those Pesky 404 Page Not Found Errors

I recently highlighted some amusing 404 Page Not Found Errors, but for most people, the Page Not Found Error isn’t amusing. It’s irritating. Site Point’s article, “Not Found Is Not An Option: Error Handling and User Experience” explores indepth what happens on a site to trigger a Page Not Found Error and how to deal […]

A New Kind of 404 Page Not Found Result

I love good 404 Page Not Found error pages. These are the web pages you encounter when you have landed on a bad link or wrong address. Really good 404 pages can be helpful to locate the information you want, with links to your site map and categories, but the best are the ones that […]

Blog Exercises: How Long Are Your Paragraphs?

How long are your paragraphs? Have you measured them lately? One of the telling differences between traditional writing and writing for the web is the length of the paragraph. Look at the example below. Which is easier to read? On the left, the paragraphs are huge, long blocks of text. On the right, the paragraphs […]

Blog Exercises: Dissecting Post Categories

In a recent article, Noah Weiss shared his struggle to figure out categories and tags on his personal site. I know many of you following these Blog Exercises have also struggled to figure out your categories, so I thought Noah’s site would be a perfect example, He has gratefully given me permission to rip his […]

WordPress Anniversary: Comment Spam Lessons

It’s hard to believe that I’ve learned much from comment spammers over the years. I’ve learned that they are among the most hated folks in the world, yet you have to respect them as well. As I look back on ten years of blogging with WordPress on this 10th Anniversary year, I realized that comment […]

Blog Exercises: The IKEA Effect for Bloggers

The Ikea Effect was coined by researchers who found out what we all know but rarely admit, we put too much ownership into our own brainchild ideas and concepts. In other words, we tend to fall in love with our own ideas and creations. If you have ever been around kids, you’ve probably had that […]

Blog Exercises: The Search for Like Minds

I tat. My 95 year old grandmother-in-law taught me almost 20 years ago. Tatting is 17th century lace making based upon island and coastal women looking for something to do besides fixing fishing nets for the men of the village. They got creative with their netting shuttles to make fine lace doilies, scarfs, edging, table […]

The Brute-Force Password Attack on WordPress Sites

My mother emailed me and asked if WordPress was under attack. With all the news of last week’s attack of the Boston Marathon, the attacks on WordPress and other PHP-based web publishing sites was low on the priority list for myself and others, but this is something to take seriously. As we get back to […]

Blog Exercises: Site Policies and Bloggers Code of Ethics

It’s time to start working on all of your site policies, one by one. So far, we’ve touched on some of these in Blog Exercises: The Don’ts of Blogging, Blog Exercise: Taking a Risk With What You Blog About, Blog Exercises: Comments and The Blog Bullies, and Blog Exercises: Quoting and Blockquotes. The basic policies […]