Just as you should keep track of your affiliate commissions you should also check all your websites regularly – To make sure they’re up and running, everything looks like it should, no problems in the order process, etc. If you have several different websites you might forget one or two – especially if many parts of your online business are running on auto-pilot. You might have some sites that are more popular than others and you keep a closer eye on them – but don’t forget the little ones ;)

I’m writing about this because I just discovered that one of my websites got hacked. Some unscrupulous people exploited a security flaw in my website and inserted an iframe (that loaded some dubious websites) in the header of the templates. I’m using a popular system to run that particular website so I checked the forum and saw that I wasn’t the only one hit with this. So, fortunately I was able to fix it and get my site (sort of) back on track.

It’s always a good practice to regularly take backups of your important documents (that includes your websites and databases) ;) If you don’t have a backup you might be able to use the “cache:” command on Google – for example for this blog I would type “cache:http://www.hannesjohnson.com” into Google. The Wayback Machine could also help you – but they might only have a copy that’s a few months old (even older). The WP-DB-Backup plugin should come in handy if you want to backup your WordPress blog.

How about you? Have any of your websites been hacked?
Do you regularly take backups?

Share This

Share This

When I installed the Share This plug-in 1.3 was the latest version. But Alex King published version 1.4 some time ago. So I decided to install the latest version. This version has StumbleUpon which seems to be pretty hot right now – it replaced Blogranks (which is certainly not as popular as StumbleUpon).

PostViews

I put the stats below the title of each post (right next to the date of the post and number of comments). If you have another suggestion for where I should put the view stats please let me know. I don’t think I’ll display the “Most Viewed Post” stats until I have some considerable stats to display ;)

404 Notifier

404 Notifier is the second plug-in I’m using from Alex King.

I think this is a nice way to monitor your blog – to see if everything is working like it’s supposed to. You might discover that people are linking to your blog using an incorrect URL for example. With this handy plug-in you could grab some extra link love and new readers.

Related Posts

Related Posts is a pretty popular plug-in. I believe it helps a lot with keeping readers on your blog longer and thus increasing page views. It also helps with linking posts back and forth (to help the search engines index all your blog posts).

I’ve seen some people putting the “related post” code in index.php so it appears on the main page under each post – I’m not sure I want to do that… does that look “natural”? Well, to start with I’ll have it on single.php and page.php. If a lot of readers also want to see “related posts” on the front page I might add it there too.

On a related note WordPress just launched a new plugins directory. The directory looks smooth and you can see what plug-ins are popular, the newest plugins and those that are recently updated. You can also rate plug-ins and comment on all your favorite plugins.

OK, these plug-ins should spice things up a bit and add value to this blog – both for me and my readers. Are you using any cool plug-ins on your WordPress blog that you think all blogs should have?

Keywords: WordPress, plugins, plug-ins, blog tips, Alex King, StumbleUpon, Blogranks, stats, PostViews, Share This, 404 Notifier, 404, Related Posts, SEO, directory

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Now you can put labels to IP addresses so you can recognize your visitors when they come back to your site. Like they say on the news release you can use it to:

• Help you identify click fraudsters
• Make it easier to see when “the competition” has visited your site
• Identify recurring visitors
• Let you see just how many times your mom has been admiring your site…

On that page they also have easy instructions for how you can use this feature:

• Login to your account.
• Click the stats for your project.
• Click “Recent Visitor Activity”
• Click the new “Label IP Address”
• Give it a description and you’re DONE!

I think I’ll be using this feature a lot. Here is an example:

I know this is Gary because when I go to http://www.hannesjohnson.com/some…im-using/#comment-102 I go to the last comment made there which was made by Gary from MrGaryLee.com

After creating a label for Gary the stats look like this:

You are then free to delete or edit any of your labels.

Do you use StatCounter? Do you think this is a cool feature?

Keywords: stats, StatCounter, tracker, label, news, screen shot

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Akismet
This is a vital plug-in for any WordPress blog – it’s by Matt Mullenweg from the WordPress team and catches all the comment and trackback spam that your blog is bound to get. My blog is fairly new but so far Akismet has caught 32 spam comments.

Akismet should be included if you download the latest WordPress update but you can also download Akismet here.

Adsense-Deluxe
If you intend on monetizing your blog with AdSense you should definitely try this plug-in. It makes it so easy to insert AdSense ads into your pages and posts. It also makes sure you don’t go over the limit of 3 ad units per page. Also, if you want to edit the ad units (e.g. change the colors) or replace them with other kind of advertising you can do that easily within the plug-in options.

Get Adsense-Deluxe here.

FeedBurner Feed Replacement
I mentioned this plug-in in the last post on subscriber stats and like I said this will forward all your feed traffic to FeedBurner. It’s easy to set up and even if you have some readers using your “old” feed the plug-in will handle that and forward them to the right FeedBurner URL.

Download FeedBurner Feed Replacement plug-in here.

WordPress Contact Form
You can see this plug-in in action on my contact form. Basically is easily creates a contact form for you so your readers can easily contact you without revealing your e-mail address (meaning: bots won’t scrape your e-mail address and spam you). I got the plug-in from Ryan Duff but for some reason his site has been down for the last few days/weeks. There is an alternative available with a challenge question [new page: the contact form project]. But if you want I can upload the original zip file I downloaded from Ryan Duff – just let me know in the comments or through the contact form.

Update: I’ve uploaded the zip file and you can download WP-ContactForm version 1.4.3 here.

That’s about it for now – I might write another plug-in post when the other plug-ins have gotten some “experience” :)

Keywords: WordPress, plugins, akismet, spam, plug-ins, plugin, adsense, FeedBurner

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If you’re using WordPress you should definitely use the FeedBurner Plugin to make sure you get accurate stats – Because this plug-in forwards all your feed traffic to FeedBurner. It’s easy to set up and even if you have some readers using your “old” feed the plug-in will handle that and forward them to the right FeedBurner URL.

Right now the widget says 31 readers which I think is pretty good for a new blog. The majority of my subscribers are using Firefox Live Bookmarks – which is also my RSS reader of choice. It’s so easy – you don’t need to log in anywhere or install additional software.

A couple of days ago my stats said 18 readers so going to 31 is a nice jump. I’m not sure if it’s because Google started reporting the number of feed subscribers or because of the link love from John Chow – or a combination of both… But I’m glad I have a nice little fan-base and I hope you’ll continue reading this blog. If you want me to talk about any specific topics please feel free to contact me or leave a comment.

Well, do you want to join the fun? You can subscribe to my RSS feed with Firefox (Live Bookmarks), Google, Bloglines, Yahoo or whatever suits you.

This is the URL to the feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/HannesJohnsonDotCom

Keywords: FeedBurner, Google, Bloglines, Yahoo, RSS, WordPress, plugin, plug-in, subscribers

Share This

I just installed a cool plug-in that is called Share This by Alex King. The plug-in adds a link to all my posts that enables my readers to add the post to all kinds of social sites (like del.icio.us, digg, furl, reddit…) or e-mail the post to a friend.

So, instead of having 15 different icons at the end of every post that would take up a lot of space and just distract my readers I only have one link that does the same thing :) When people click the link a small box pops up giving people different choices for what they can do with this post.

Alex created a new icon (which you can see to the right) to represent the action of sharing a web page. You don’t have to display that icon but I think it’s a cool icon and I believe more and more people are going to use it which means more and more people will start to recognize it as the “share icon”. You can find more about the share icon project…

What’s also cool about this plug-in is that you can customize it and add or remove social sites as you want. You can also customize the look of popup box. Also, you are free to put the “Share This” wherever you want – just add the special code to your template where you want it.

Feel free to try it out by pressing the “Share This” link and adding this post to some social sites. And if you want to send a link to this post to a friend this is what the e-mail looks like:

Subject: Check out this post on [name of blog, e.g. Hannes Johnson dot Com]

Greetings–

[Your name] thinks this will be of interest to you:

[permalink (URL) to the blog post]

Enjoy.

–
[URL of the blog , e.g. http://www.hannesjohnson.com/]

If you want to add this plug-in to your own WordPress blog you can download Share This here.

Are you using any other cool plug-ins on your WordPress blog? Let me know in the comments…

Keywords: blogging, wordpress, plugins, hannes johnson, social, social bookmarking, social, del.icio.us, tagging, web 2.0, delicious, tags, web2.0, digg, social-bookmarking, share, social media

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I filtered out the text because I don’t want to give the hacker credit – that’s often their only goal, to impress their buddies. But the message on the page was rather disturbing – looks like somebody doesn’t like George W. Bush and USA. Which is pretty funny because John Chow is Canadian ;) When the page loaded it also started playing a MIDI version of The House of the Rising Sun – not sure what that’s all about.

It looks like John’s buddy Stephen Fung was also hit by the same hacker. John and Stephen are both running WordPress so it might be a security hole in WordPress that the hacker exploited. But they’re both running version 2.0.6 of WordPress which did have some security updates… It might also be a plug-in they’re using that’s not 100% secure.

But both blogs are up and running again and everything looks like it’s back to normal – no major damage done. I would be interested in knowing what security hole the hacker exploited so I can close it.

It’s always annoying when your site gets hacked. A few months ago my article directory got hacked by some Nigerian spammers. They exploited a security hole in the system I was using to run my site and sent thousands of spam e-mails through my domain so my host was forced to suspend my domain. I had to start all over again with a new article directory system…

So, be careful and make sure you’re not leaving any doors open for hackers.

Technorati tags: hacking, hackers, security, hannes johnson, wordpress

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Standing out is usually good if you want to get noticed. Something that people can remember you by always helps when you’re promoting you or your business. That’s why I’ve added a “favicon” to my blog – favicon stands for “favorites icon” and it’s a small graphic that is displayed to the left of the URL in the location bar of most modern browsers (like Firefox 2 and Internet Explorer 7). Like the name suggests it’s also used if you add the site to your favorites/bookmarks. Tab-enabled browsers will also display the favicon along with the title when you have multiple tabs opened.

I think having a favicon is a good idea – it gives your website a little logo that people might start to recognize (and if your website actually has a logo you should definitely add it as a favicon). Creating a favicon is not difficult:

• You just create a 16×16 graphic using an image editor like MS Paint or Photoshop (- or if you have a program that can create .ico files that’s great).
• Next you need to convert your graphic into an actual icon. You can use this favicon generator that supports transparency which I think is pretty cool (my favicon is transparent).
• Then you upload your favicon.ico file to your website (preferably the root of the domain).
• The final step is adding the special code to the <head> section of the page you want to add the favicon to: <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon" />

When you upload your favicon to the root of your domain the icon should display on every page of the domain. Many browsers automatically look for the “favicon.ico” file at the root and display it if they find one.

The favicon I created for Hannes Johnson dot Com looks like this (only smaller). It’s only the letters H and J because I think favicons should be pretty simple – there is only so much you can squeeze into a 16×16 space and people should see right away what your favicon is supposed to be of.

What do you think? Does my favicon look good? Does your website have a favicon?

Technorati tags: favicon, graphics, branding, hannes johnson, logo, blog marketing, code.

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