WP Blog Host Video Tutorials » Adding To WordPress

Guarding WordPress Against Hacker URL Requests

John Hoff — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 16:01:11 +0000

Update: This plugin can now be found in the WordPress plugin repository for easy installs.

I was skimming through my Google FeedReader the other day and read an excellent article by Jeff Starr of Perishable Press which showed us how to create a very simple plugin to help protect our WordPress sites from malicious WordPress crackers.

He found this code in the pastebin repository, a site where people who write computer code can come together and help one another.

A dead giveaway that someone is trying to hack into your blog is when you see terms like the following being used:

base64()
eval()

The plugin shown below will attempt to block such requests. So with that, let’s get on to the tutorial.

The How-To Video

Remember you can click the “full view” button to see it a little better.

Step-by-Step

Step1: Head over to Perishable Press and copy the code Jeff shows us by clicking here (link opens in a new window).

Step 2: Open a text editor and paste the code in. Be sure to save the file as a .php file (for example, block-bad-requests.php).

Step 3: Zip up the file you just created using a zip program like WinZip or the zip utility that comes with Windows.

Step4: Upload, install, and activate the plugin.

Quick, simple, and effective.

How To Backup Your WordPress Blog’s Database With A Plugin

John Hoff — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 04:00:20 +0000

In this video tutorial, I’ll show you how to backup your WordPress blog’s database using the WordPress Database Backup plugin by Austin Matzko.

Keeping a recent backup of your blog is a mandatory step for bloggers. Set this plugin up to email you a copy of your database at least once a week. It’s good practice to keep database backups for at least 1 year.

SEO Egghead WordPress Firewall Plugin Video Overview

John Hoff — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 18:13:56 +0000

Awhile back I wrote an article on my blog called, 2 Easy Ways To Set Up A WordPress Firewall. In it, I highlighted a WordPress Firewall security plugin released by SEO Egghead which greatly increases your blog’s security against common exploits and hacks.

In this video, I’ll go over how to install the plugin and a few of its settings.

If WordPress security is important to you (and it should be), I have a new WordPress security ebook being released soon. I’m currently setting up a newsletter for reminders but for now if you’d like to be notified when the ebook is released, leave a comment below. It won’t be that expensive.

How To Decrease The Load Time Of Your WordPress Blog Using gzip

John Hoff — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 04:00:08 +0000

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

You can test your results by visiting http://www.port80software.com.

How To Install Google Analytics On A WordPress Blog Without Using A Plugin

John Hoff — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 14:57:31 +0000

If you’ve been blogging for longer than a few months, you’ve probably heard of the ever so popular site analytics program, Google Analytics.

It allows blog owners to do such things as:

Discover how your site visitors found your blog
View how many visitors your blog receives each day
View areas on your blog where people have clicked
. . . and a ton more.

If you blog, it’s inevitable that you are going to try Google Analytics at some point. It really is a great analytics program; however, I must admit that it can seem quite complex at times and if you’re new to the program and you might feel a bit intimidated. In the near future I’ll try to post some examples on how to use the program.

When it comes to plugging Google Analytics into your blog, you have a couple of options available to you.

Download and use a plugin . . . or
Copy and paste code into your blog’s footer file

Why I don’t like plugins

Simply put, plugins slow down the load time of your website and also pose security risks which could leave your blog open to intruders. Even if the plugin is secure today, it might not be when a newer version of WordPress is released or if the plugin author abandons the program and stops issuing updates.

In my opinion, the best way (and just as easy) to install this is to simply copy and paste Google’s supplied code into your theme’s footer file. That’s it, no plugin, done and move on.

Step 1: Sign up for a new Google Analytics account.

Step 2: Copy the JavaScript code.

During the sign up process you’ll be asked things like your name, email address, etc. At some point, you’ll come to a page that looks like the image seen below. You will will need to copy this code and paste it into your blog.

As a side note, even if you used a plugin to install Google Analytics, you would still need to copy and paste this code at some point; so plugins don’t necessarily make things any easier.

Step 3: Pasting the code into your footer.php file

At this point, log into your WordPress blog and navigate to your theme’s editor by going to Dashboard -> Appearance –> Editor.

Then on the right you should see a list of your theme’s files. Click on the Footer.php file.

Paste the code you copied from Google Analytics just above the ending tag.

Click Update File

And that’s it. No plugins and no worries about updates.

To view your site’s statistics now, log into your Google Analytics account and view your stats. It may take a day or so to start receiving your traffic stats, so if you don’t see it right away, just be patient.

How To Not Track Your Own Visits In Google Analytics – Setting Up A Filter

John Hoff — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 14:49:54 +0000

Anyone whose been blogging for longer than a couple weeks will of at least heard of Google Analytics.

Problem is, it’s so damn difficult to try and figure out when you’re just starting out because there’s SO much you can do with it. One of my first frustrations with it was the fact that I couldn’t determine which clicks and visits were my own?

Obviously, you’re more interested in who is visiting your site, where they came from, and what they did to find you. You’re not interested in how you found your own website.

So here’s a little video I put together which hopefully you’ll find useful. It will show you how to set up a filter on Google Analytics so you don’t track your own movements and visits to your own website.

If you haven’t already set up Google Analytics to run on your blog, here’s how: How To Install Google Analytics On A WordPress Blog Without Using A Plugin

How To Set Up A Google Analytics Filter

How To Add New Users To WordPress

John Hoff — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 17:27:50 +0000

There may be times when you want to allow someone else, like a web designer, to access your WordPress dashboard.

Here’s how you can create them a new username and password so you can allow them access to your blog without giving them your own login and password information.

How To Manually Install WordPress

John Hoff — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 15:21:52 +0000

Video 1

Video 2

Note for Video 2: For WP Blog Host customers, instead of logging into the database to get your Database Host, you could just click the pencil icon as shown below.

Video 3

Video 4

Links shown in the videos:

Download WordPress: http://wordpress.org/download/
WordPress 5-Minute Install: http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask in the comment section below.

A Complete Guide To Setting Up FeedBurner On WordPress

John Hoff — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 14:04:38 +0000

The 3 videos are shown below.

Sorry for a 3 part video (YouTube only allows up to 10 minute videos), however I wanted to make sure this was a COMPLETE tutorial on how to set up a FeedBurner account and hook it up to your WordPress blog. It will show you how to:

Set up your FeedBurner account
How to add a RSS image to your blog’s theme if there’s not already one there – and how to link it to your FeedBurner’s feed
How to set up a “Subscribe by Email” box which users can subscribe to your blog by email
How to redirect all the default WordPress feeds on your blog to your FeedBurner’s feed through a .htaccess file
All this is done without the use of a FeedBurner plugin (which I don’t like using)

1. Your Feed Address
Your default WordPress feed address you’ll need to type or paste into FeedBurner will look like this:

http://your-site.com/feed

If your blog is contained within a subdirectory, say /blog, your feed’s address will look something like this:

http://your-site.com/blog/feed

2. How To Redirect Your Feeds To FeedBurner Through .htaccess

UPDATE: Thanks to feedback from viewers, we’ve discovered that this code doesn’t always work with your theme. If it doesn’t work, you may have to go into your header.php or sidebar.php file and manually replace the default WordPress feed’s address with your FeedBurner’s address.

If your WordPress theme already includes a RSS icon, it will link to your default WordPress feed and not your FeedBurner’s feed. To link it to your FeedBurner’s feed, log into your web hosting control panel, navigate to your WordPress installation’s directory and either create or open the .htaccess file.

Paste in the following code to your .htaccess file. Don’t forget to edit the feed address in the code below (shown in blue) to your own feed. Save the .htaccess file and your RSS icon should now link to your FeedBurner’s feed.

# Redirect your WordPress feeds to your FeedBurner's feed automatically

 RewriteEngine on
 RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !FeedBurner    [NC]
 RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !FeedValidator [NC]
 RewriteRule ^feed/?([_0-9a-z-]+)?/?$ http://feeds2.feedburner.com/wpbloghost [R=302,NC,L]

How To Set Up FeedBurner Video 1 of 3

How To Set Up FeedBurner Video 2 of 3

How To Set Up FeedBurner Video 3 of 3

How To Set Up Multiple Installs of WordPress To Share One Database

John Hoff — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 17:05:52 +0000

WordPress requires the use of a database and although this is not the case for WP Blog Host, some web hosts only allow their hosting customers one database in their hosting account.

This could pose a problem if you are trying to install more than one WordPress installation on your account.

Here’s how you can install multiple versions of WordPress on a hosting account and make them share one database.