Archive for the ‘Web 101’ Category
Web 101: Fixed a hacked site and prevent it from happening again – Part 2
September 16, 2008 by Emily
Web 101
In my previous post I talked about what to do to fix a hacked site. This post is about things you can do to make WordPress more secure so that something like that doesn’t happen again (or ever). The basic things were mentioned in the last post: change your passwords regularly, use strong passwords and always have the most current version of WP. But here are some other things you can do:
2 commentsWeb 101: Fixed a hacked site and prevent it from happening again – Part 1
September 9, 2008 by Emily
Web 101
A client and Swank hostee emailed me a few days ago because her browser had notified her that her blog had been marked as suspicious by Google and she didn’t know how or why that had happened. Further checking revealed that google had found malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. Her site had been hacked and the hacker had added malicious code to her blog template.
Unfortunately, this can happen to anyone and there are a myriad of ways that a hacker can get into your site. I believe in this instance that the hacker was able to guess her password, which was a very simple name. So what is one to do if your site is hacked? My client had no clue and I know that not everyone has a trusted designer or tech support that they can email with problems such as these (plus speed is key, so waiting around for help can be frustrating), so I thought I’d write up a checklist of things you should do to remove malicious code from your hacked site and prevent it from happening again (or ever if it hasn’t happened yet). I’m specifically going to be using WordPress blogs as an example since almost my entire clientele uses WordPress, but most of these things can be applied to all content management systems.
Web 101: Full vs Partial Feeds
March 24, 2008 by Emily
Around the Web,Web 101
Over at the Blog Herald, there’s a great article on why people shouldn’t be using partial feeds. The author makes a lot of good points, essentially boiling it down to the fact that there are no benefits to using a partial feed. It doesn’t deter sploggers from stealing your content and it doesn’t bring extra traffic to your site; you are basically just frustrating your regular readers and alienating new ones. Read the full article for more.
What I find funny is his rationalizing of why it’s okay for some blogs (*ahem* the one he’s writing on) to use partial feeds. The only instance in which I think it’s okay to offer a partial feed is if you offer a full feed as well. I have seen several blogs that offered a full feed with ads and a partial feed without ads. I have no problem with that, it even kind of makes sense. Although, I can’t imagine there are an overwhelming number of people that hate ads so much they would put up with the frustration of a partial feed. But different strokes, right?
You should respect your readers enough to let them choose how they want to view your site. Offering just a partial feed takes that choice away and more often than not, they won’t bother reading at all.
