After a friends WordPress blog/server was hacked recently I took a deeper look into securing my site beyond the default security available. While there are plenty of security enhancement plugins available on WordPress.org, essentially all that I saw had poor ratings, insufficient feedback or were otherwise not what I wanted.

Instead, there is a simple, fool-proof way to protect the admin section of your blog by restricting it to your unique IP with a .htaccess file. Be aware, this is not the .htaccess file in your root directory. Applying this to that file will prevent anyone from accessing your blog at all.

Create a new .htaccess file in your http://www.domain.com/wp-admin/ directory and copy the following code.

AuthUserFile /dev/null
AuthGroupFile /dev/null
AuthName "WordPress Admin Access Control"
AuthType Basic
<LIMIT GET>
order deny,allow
deny from all
# Home IP
allow from xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
# Office IP
allow from xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
</LIMIT>

Replace the descriptions and enter the IP addresses of your home, office, mobile etc. and you deny any outsider access to this entire section of your blog. In the event your IP address changes, you will be locked, you simply have to update the file to reflect your new details.

Much easier.

Using a plugin to achieve this is more complicated than it needs to be. By using a .htaccess file instead you’ll never have to worry about updates, version incompatibilities, bugs etc. Simple and secure. Image credit.

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When writing for my blog I don’t always write one post start to finish before moving onto the next. If an idea comes to mind for a potential post I’ll save a draft with a few notes jotted down and revisit it later, completing it over a day or two as time permits.

I started a post on blogging and overcoming writers block about 4 months ago that I’ve yet to complete, ironically it’s not going well.

Other writers cures range from drinking a glass of water, to going for a work or reading a book. There were plenty of suggestions out there, but nothing that struck a cord with me that I would consider for a definitive list. For me at least, if the words wont come it’s simply a matter of having a break and revisiting it when the mood strikes.

How about you?

I’ve since given up on compiling my cures for writers block, but hey, I managed to pull a post together out of the subject so it wasn’t a total loss.

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It’s nearly two years ago now that I converted my static HTML website to the blog you see before you. As this was my first blog and also my first WordPress theme some mistakes were to be expected. In retrospect though, there’s a lot I could have done better.

#1 A finished WordPress theme design.

I knew when I started that I wanted a clean, simple, content focused design to my site. 3 column, header and footer as you see before you. I was overly eager in wanting to get content posted, and once I had this basic layout and my design was approaching completion I began spending more time writing blog posts instead of finalising the design.

Due to the division of attention little flaws went unnoticed, sections of coding were sloppy or invalid, basically my site wasn’t being all it could be. Once the initial frenzy of posts slowed down I fixed all the issues, but I’d had been better off delaying the blogging itself for a few weeks and finishing the design.

#2 Quality & quantity of content.

“Content is king” as they say, but in the race for quantity the quality of some posts was extremely lacking. Posts/comments on YouTube videos, single logos with a pinch of copy that basically boiled down to “I really like this logo”, anything that was reasonably quick, easy and design related.

While these posts might warrant a quick glance they weren’t going to inspire any conversation (which somewhat defeats the purpose of a blog), weren’t very original and definitely weren’t going to gain any social momentum or backlinks.

As time went by the quality of my articles got better and in comparison the rushed posts looked even worse. When I reached around the 150 post mark I went back and deleted at least 50 articles that weren’t contributing to the quality of my blog.

In the time I wasted churning out these 50 I could have written 5 quality, interesting articles that would have served me far better.

#3 Planning for potential advertising.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I had the thought of advertising on my blog for a passive income, though as the design came together it wasn’t really taken into consideration. There are many standard sizes of advertising available and planning a web design around them is pretty flexible.

When looking into advertising more at a later date, I later found that the columns of my blog were not the correct size to accommodate the closest available ad formats.

Luckily I was only a few pixels out and was able to change the widths without any negative impact on the design. If and when I decide to monetize my blog further they will now drop into the design fine, but again it would have been time saved if I’d done this in the beginning.

#4 Social networking / bookmarking.

I suppose it’s fair to say search engines are where you want to rank best, but social networking and bookmarking sites are such a huge part of online marketing now-a-days that they’re hard to ignore.

I was originally of the opinion that twitter etc. was little more than people following each other for the purpose of promoting there own content while not actually caring about anyone else. It was about 7 months before I got involved with Twitter and Digg etc. and they’ve since turned into sources of significant traffic, links and the occasional bit of work.

Who knows what opportunities might have been missed. A front page article on Digg certainly would have kicked my site into gear early.

C’est la vie.

It’s easy of course to look back and see all the things you could have done better, but what can you do. With 250+ decent articles attracting business and traffic growing since the launch things are going good.

I’m in the process of launching a second blog at the moment, and armed with hindsight it’s coming together at twice the speed of the first. Hopefully this helps you do the same.

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A few versions of WordPress ago, I updated my blog in what seemed like one of many painless upgrades. My blog was live, all my plug-ins where compatible and everything looked to be working fine. It wasn’t…

Over the next month or so, traffic continued to climb, comments were being left with increasing frequency, my twitters followers were growing, but my Feedburner subscribers were not.

I had forever been subscribed to my own RSS feed to ensure it was delivering the goods, and as the weeks went by new content was being delivered to my reader as I published it, so I thought Oh well, the feeds obviously working, it must just be a bit of a slow patch.

After more weeks went by with no growth, I was forced to admit something was wrong. After unsubscribing to my own feed, I found that when I tried to re-subscribe, my RSS reader reported the feed was invalid.

After a little Google-ing, it turns out to be a fairly common problem that WordPress ( or some plug-ins… ) can sometimes add a single blank link to one of your php files, typically your wpconfig.php file, after an upgrade.

In some cases this results in your blog loading only a white screen, a fairly obvious problem… In others the result is more subtle. The blog itself and existing subscribers are unaffected, only potential new subscribers experience any problems.

Anyone who runs a blog has no doubt received a comment along the lines of ” I am having trouble subscribing to your RSS feed… “, 99.9% of the time this is spam. Due to these comments ending up in my spam filter and/or not being taken seriously, and the subtle nature of the problem, more than 2 months had passed before I found and corrected the problem.

More than 2 months of potential subscribers lost. Not happy.

Word to the wise…

I’ve since made the habit of not upgrading my/clients blogs for at least a few weeks after an upgrade is released. Both to wait for any required plugin upgrades to become available, and also to avoid any similar problems that might be discovered shortly after release.

I also view the source code of my blog online afterwards to ensure that row 1 isn’t a blank line, and I always re-subscribe to my RSS feed…

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When I first started subscribing to RSS feeds, I would subscribe to any site which had a bit decent, regular content. After a while, I was subscribed to so many feeds I simply didn’t have the time to read them and ended up skimming ( or flying… ) across 50 updated posts before deleting the rest to clear my reader out.

In her travels through out the internet my partner is kind enough to keep an eye out for design related material that I might be interested in blogging about. She comes to me the other day and says there’s a funny article on LG’s logo design you might like.

I know, I tell her…

It’s a post from my blog.

*Chuckle* I try to keep myself subscribed to less than 30 sites now or it turns into a blur ( and a chore… ) sorting them all, how about you?

P.S. No I didn’t really have 932,124,921,248 new items in my reader.

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After having 3 or so weeks off from blogging due to moving house, one might think I’d be bursting with ideas for blog posts. As it happens this is true, but putting pen to paper ( so to speak… ) is a different story.

People are undoubtedly creatures of habit, for the past 18 months or so my nightly routine consisted of 2+ hours a night combing the internet and writing at least part of a future blog post. It takes anywhere from 21 to 66 days to form a habit, depending on who you believe.

Having had 3 weeks off including no work and no internet, for the last few days I find I’m having to drag my self before my blog which I love working on, only to find some excuse to go do something else.

I’m sure I’ll get the spark back, but it seems habits are hard to restore.

How about you?

Everyone’s had that first day back to work feeling after having a holiday, but how about getting back to the blog you love after a little absence?

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Spam is an unfortunate reality when it comes to blogging. For every legitimate comment received, it’s not unusual for upwards of 50 spam to accompany it. Lately though it seems to be out of control.

Logging into my blog on this sunny Chinese New Year morning, I was welcomed by a new personal record of 387 spam messages over a period of around 12 hours. Advertising everything from coffee machines to no less than a dozen sex related drugs.

What a pain!

I still wonder if anyone actually buys anything as a result of these kinds of efforts.

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There are all manner of blogs. Some promoting a business, with successful advertising some blogs are businesses, and some are simply thoughts poured out onto pages.

It wouldn’t be the first time someone had started a blog with all the enthusiasm in the world, only for it to fade away in the proceeding weeks or months. Without somewhat regular new posts a blog is of little use, and regular posts require dedication. So where do you find the motivation?

I was asked the other day how I manage to keep myself going, and the answer is simple. I enjoy it.

My father often said to me, If you do something you love, you never work a day in your life, and it couldn’t be more true. Even if my blog never brought me a cent, I think I’d still find it fulfilling to see it grow.

What is your blog?

Just another day at work, or a profitable past time?

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So your web design is finished, you’ve got pages and pages of quality content with traffic and blog comments galore. If your anything like me, all that’s left to do now is obsess over every infinitesimal detail imaginable to improve your perfectly fine website.

If that sounds like you, you’ll probably be interested in minifying ( See, now the picture of the Morris Mini makes sense… ) your css/code.

The purpose of minifying your site is cut down unnecessary bandwidth usage/load times. The reduction in file size is usually around 20% – 40% which for a 10kb style sheet obviously isn’t a lot, but hey, every bit counts, especially for high traffic sites.

Take this code for example;

h1 {
font-size: 18px;
font-wei ght: bold;
font-family: Helvetica;}

h2 {
font-size: 16px;
font-weight: bold;
font-family: Helvetica;}

p {
font-size: 14px;
line-height: 18px;
font-family: Helvetica;}

a {
color:#D71920;
text-decoration:none;}

a:hover{
text-decoration: underline;}

Your CSS probably looks something like this and with good reason, it’s clean and easy to follow. Once you’re design is finished however there’s space to be saved here.

By changing your code to this;

h1{font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold; font-family: Helvetica;}
h2{font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; font-family: Helvetica;}
p{font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; font-family: Helvetica;}
a{color:#D71920; text-decoration:none;}
a:hover{text-decoration: underline;}

You remove any unnecessary data while retaining all the required information for your stylesheet.

Tiny I know.

If you CSS isn’t laid out like this don’t panic, the more user-friendly layout works perfectly fine. But as I said, if your looking for something new to obsess over…

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With the boom of social networking over the last few years gone there’s a lot more traffic to be squeezed out of your website beyond just having good search engine optimization.

Social network and bookmarking sites such as Twitter, StumbleUpon and Digg have the potential to bring in huge traffic. And while every site can be found through search engines not every one is using these tools, giving you a potential leg up on the competition.

The only downside is social networking requires regular work, and getting to the front page of Digg etc. for a huge boost in exposure requires a little luck. There’s a lot of competition on social bookmarking sites and writing a fantastic article doesn’t guarantee it won’t slip through the cracks.

If you are fortunate enough to have an article land on the front page however, the results are undeniable. It wouldn’t be the first time a web hosting server has been brought down by the huge traffic burst of an article featured on Digg.

Search engines are somewhat the opposite.

A search engine will crawl and index all your worthy content sooner or later without any input on your part, you can’t however put any extra effort into directly affecting search engine results even if you wanted to.

Your place in a search engines results is ultimately deciding by the engine based on your content, the more quality content the better your result, but unlike social networking you can repeatedly promote yourself to a search engine for increased traffic.

Search engine traffic is also slow to get going. In order to help prevent spam sites continually popping up, Google has what is commonly referred to as the sandbox. The reference is symbolic of children (new websites) playing in a sandbox until they’re all grown up and ready for the big wide world.

While there’s no official word on this from Google, it is believed that the sandbox effect lasts 4 months or so, during which you wont see much traffic search engine wise. Once your out however, search engines provide a steady stream of targeted visitors with no additional work required on your behalf.

Ultimately it’s all good. If you don’t have the time/inclination to keep up the social front, search engines will bring you visitors but there’s plenty to gain from social sites if you can utilize them.

Where do you get your traffic from?

As a point of interest I’ve included the above graphic detailing my traffic sources for the last 3 months, for me social bookmarking plays a huge roll.

Stumbleupon bringing me 45% of my visitors, Twitter brings in about 11%, Google 35% while the last 9% is made up from blog comments, lesser search engines etc. How about you?

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