WP Blog Host Video Tutorials » WordPress

The Super Beginners for Dummies Tutorial on RSS Feeds

John Hoff — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 19:27:48 +0000

If you want to be a blogger, one of the things you need to learn and know how to use are RSS feeds. In this video, I’ll show you how to use RSS feeds to keep up-to-date with your favorite blogs.

We’ll discuss how to sign up for a feed and be notified of a blog’s updates using 3 methods:

Email Subscriptions
Firefox’s Live Bookmarks
Google FeedReader (here’s the Firefox Add-on mentioned in the video)

If you need to set up your very own feed using FeedBurner, be sure to see my other video: A Complete Guide to Setting Up FeedBurner on WordPress.

You can read more about what RSS is by reading this tutorial here by Molly Piper.

Questions? Ask away.

A Complete Guide To Setting Up FeedBurner On WordPress

How To Create A Category In WordPress

John Hoff — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 21:45:14 +0000

When you write a blog post, it’s good to tuck those posts in under a specific category.

In this video, I’ll show you how to log into WordPress and create a category.

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 Move Your WordPress Core Files Out Of Root

John Hoff — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 18:33:46 +0000

This tutorial is meant to show you how to clean up all the system WordPress files that clog up your root directory by moving them into a subdirectory.

Watch The How-To Video

How To Create A Simple Maintenance Page

You could always download a WordPress maintenance mode plugin, but in this case it probably won’t work. During the move process you’ll be moving your /wp-content folder, which contains all your plugins. This will cause your site to not load; therefore, it’s best to have your own maintenance page independent of WordPress.

So, here’s how to create a custom maintenance page without a plugin.

Step 1

Create a simple html file and place it in your blog’s root directory. Name it something like, maintenance.html. Inside the maintenance.html file you can put anything you want. “Hi. I’m out to lunch for a few moments while the construction crew is busy at work . . .”

But why stop there? Your site is better than that. Customize the page with your site’s colors and images. Maybe add a video or your latest blog post. CSSgirl wrote some tips and shows some examples on the topic of creating a memorable maintenance page.

Step 2

Ok so now you have your maintenance.html page set up; the next step is to redirect everyone to it while you’re doing your upgrade.

Navigate to your blog’s root directory in your web hosting control panel and open your .htaccess file.

Once opened, you’re going to add this code at the top:

# Use this code to redirect visitors to maintenance.html file while upgrading
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !^618\.124\.259\.25
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/maintenance.html$
RewriteRule $ http://your-site.com/maintenance.html [R=302,L]

The yellow parts above are the areas you need to change. Visit What is my IP address? to find your IP address and put those numbers in under the first yellow highlight. Next add the url path to your own maintenance page in the second yellow part.

And that should do it. Your site should now show a maintenance page to everyone except you (your IP address was whitelisted). To see what everyone else sees, add a # sign in front of the IP line:

# RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !^618\.124\.259\.25

The # comments lines out.

When you’re finished, leave the code in your .htaccess file for next time. To disable the code, just add a # in front of each line:

# Use this code to redirect visitors to maintenance.html file while upgrading
# Options +FollowSymlinks
# RewriteEngine on
# RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !^618\.124\.259\.25
# RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/maintenance.html$
# RewriteRule $ http://your-site.com/maintenance.html [R=302,L]

How To Upgrade WordPress Manually

John Hoff — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 18:25:11 +0000