Tips on securing your Wordpress blog installation
Via the highly-useful Weblog Tools Collection, here's an article by a chap called Matt Cutts entitled Three tips to protect your WordPress installation, which happens to provide specific instructions on dealing with three of the security issues that Alan raised at the MWPUG session last week.
Matt suggests:
- Protecting your admin suite by restricting access to I.P. addresses specified in the .htaccess file.
- Including an empty index.html file in your /plugins/ directory to prevent anyone from browsing the otherwise wide-open directory (although attempting to access the plugins directory here seems to generate a 404 error instead...)
- Removing the WP version information metadata from your header.php file to avoid giving easy clues to potential hackers.
Needless to say, I'll be acting on all three of those across my client sites (as applicable, it could be difficult perhaps to get accurate I.P. address information from all my clients) in my next WP-admin session.
Readburner adds Digg-like aggregation to Shared Google Reader items
Via the ever-informative Lifehacker.com, news of a new (?) online feed aggregation service called ReadBurner.
Simple concept: add the URL of your Google Reader shared items RSS feed to their database and then every time you select an item for your Shared Items list, it will be added to the stats; automatically aggregating the most-shared items across its readership and creating an on-the-spot zeitgeist for Readburner's homepage.
Early days yet, apparently, but it will be interesting to see how this takes off. Unfortunately, I can already think of one way that less-than-noble marketeers and pro-bloggers could game this particular service (multi Google-account sign ups to share the same item a number of times) but hopefully that will be too little return for too much effort, at least for the time being.
Manchester Wordpress Users’ Group, January 16th, MDDA
Yesterday evening saw the inaugural meeting of a new Wordpress users' group, organised by Alan Holding of the Manchester Digital Development Agency.
The first session was relaxed and informal. Freelance designer and serial WP-user Leanda Ryan gave a presentation on WP templates that emphasised the great flexibility and adaptability of the even the basic WP installation, and Alan followed up with a few pointers on security. The group responded well, with several members chipping in with advice and suggestions as to useful bits of third-party software, several of which I've added to the ever-growing list of useful bits of software that I really need to check out one day soon...
Alan then asked for volunteers to do a spot of show-and-tell (bribing us with the offer of a free Wordpress t-shirt in the process!) and so I stepped up and ran through a few of the sites in my current portfolio - emphasising as I usually do that they might not be the bees-knees in terms of graphic design, but by heck, they work - and hopefully helping to demonstrate a range of uses that WP can be put to.
Next to volunteer was Paul Fabretti from Stockport agency KMP (see also their Daily Digital blog), who demonstrated two of the aforementioned third-party software suites that he'd recommended earlier, namely Qumana and Windows Live Writer, the latter of which Paul definitely recommends if you have a client who's nervous about the WP interface and would prefer something a little more familiar-looking, as well as well-stocked with helpful editing features. Definitely sounds like one to try.
Nathan Beck, another local freelance designer, then showed us his own portfolio site, which is built on WP but looks completely unlike the 'standard' column-based blog format. Again, demonstrating the versatility of the product. Nathan also mentioned a means of integrating WP, PHPBB and Gallery into a three-in-one community site; something that sounds very interesting. I'll have to drop him a line and see if he can offer any pointers in that direction.
All in all a very good introductory session to a group that should build into a very good opportunity for relevant knowledge-sharing and networking. Hopefully I'll be able to make the next few sessions and get to know a few fellow WP-fans from the area a bit better. And of course, it's always good to be able to swap notes and ideas with someone on the same wavelength.
CIDS Focal Point Networking, January 14th, Manchester
Popped down to Urbis in Central Manchester for a couple of hours yesterday evening, to attend a Focal Point Networking session, organised by the Creative Industries Development Service.
Four presentations by local creative businesses and artists (Tim and Matt from ManchesterOnlinePrint.com, mixed media artist Dinu Li, Chris from recent start-up film production company Serious Feather and Lauren, who's trying to sell her Manchester Stained Glass arts & crafts training business) was both preceded and followed by a couple of rounds of miscellaneous networking.
During which, I sat and had a good long talk with Gareth from Not Part Of - an event and festival which first ran as an alternative to the Manchester International Festival (although definitely not as a fringe event...) - whom I first met at the David Parrish T-Shirts and Suits seminar back in December.
I also got talking to Bernard Quinn from the Preston-based Northern Lights project, a provider of mentoring services to creative entrepreneurs and businesses across the North West; definitely something I'll be looking into in the future, as it sounds like it could be terrifically useful for a creative entrepreneur like me...
And I'll be attending the inaugural meeting of the Manchester Wordpress Users' Group at the Manchester Digital Development Agency tomorrow evening, which sounds like it has plenty of potential. Will report back on that one later in the week.
Web resource links from VirtualHosting.com
Received an unsolicited email the other day from a US-based outfit called VirtualHosting.com, who seem to be a reseller or affiliate for a number of US hosting providers. I've no use for their services right now, as I'm reasonably satisfied with my own hosting provider, so ordinarily I'd just assign it to the spam bin without a second thought.
Except... they also provided a link to an item that they've posted on their site/blog, entitled 100 Essential Web Resources for Freelance Programmers and glancing down, it does seem to contain some useful-looking third party information. And they've followed that one up with a couple more since, including 50 Tools and Resources to Help You Start a Webcomic.
So, fair play to them (assuming they've done the work themselves and not just grokked it off some other, poor, unsuspecting blogger, says the terrible cynic in me...) and quite a bit more useful than your usual e-spam, it has to be said...
Out and About: Bookseller Seminar, London, January 31st
Publishing industry trade journal The Bookseller is running what looks like a highly-relevant and potentially fascinating seminar on at the end of the month: Reaching Readers Online 2008 - How to market and sell books and content direct to consumers at the London Stock Exchange.
My good friend and extremely switched-on online marketeer George Walkley, the newly-promoted Director of Digital Strategy for Orbit Books' parent company Hachette Livre, will be one of the speakers, along with Peter Collingridge of Apt, a London studio that specialises in providing digital marketing services to publishers.
My ticket is in the post.