Having a quick and easy way for your visitors to follow you on those social networks is just as important.

I have used several plugins to get this working and most of them do a great job.

AA’s Digg Digg Alternative

I used the Digg Digg Alternative as one of the more recent ones before I changed to Flare (more on that later on).

It looks good as a floating sidebar and you can set the top and side offset to fit your theme layout.

The reason fore using the alternative instead of the original Digg Digg plugin was based on performance in loading time.

Shareaholic – Sexy Bookmarks

This plugin is widely used but it slowed down my site, doesn’t mean it will do the same with yours, still looks good.

On the WordPress Plugin site is shown now as Shareaholic | share buttons & related content as it is now extended to show related posts as well.

Flare – Social Sharing Bar & Follow Widget

Earlier this week I was reading the Traffic Generation Cafe Blog and I saw this great looking, very slick share buttons. I was only when I scrolled down, this sidebar appeared with those share buttons.

So I looked at the source code to find out what she was using to do this, and after a short investigation I found out it was a plugin called Flare.

I switched over and removed all others I was using, so you can now see the plugin active on this website.

Installing and Configuring Flare Share Icons

Installing flare is a breeze, just go to Plugins -> Add New and search for Flare.
Find it, install it and activate it, first steps done.

Now you will find a new Menu option in you Dashboard called Flare, click on the Share option and set your options.

The first option you need to set is where you buttons and sidebar will appear on you website.

I choose to show them on top, on bottom and floating, all left aligned to fit the theme layout.

Next step: Your styling Options

You can choose the button type, round, square, etc.

Choose what you want to show, like the counters of how many shares you got, when you want them to show up and if you want your visitors to have the possibility to close the sidebar.

Upon fist installation you only see Twitter and Facebook buttons, click the big + button to add more.

Last thing you need to do is decided when you want the buttons to be shown, on posts is standard. For this site with a lot of pages I also want them to show up on pages.

Save it all and check if it works as expected.

Configuring Flare Follow Me Widget

If you are done with the Share Buttons, you can start with the widget and configure the follow me options.

Got to Flare and choose Follow, it should show you a screen like this one.

Again follow the instructions and push the plus button for more.

Configure your settings with things like your Twitter user name, your Google+ profile, your Facebook profile page and every other thing you want to show.

Once you get all the options done and saved, go to the widgets (Appearance -> Widgets) and place it on your sidebar.

I have set it up with a bigger then standard icon and with more spacing.

I like the cleanliness of the layout and all the options it gave me.

How about you? What is your favorite WordPress social sharing plugin and why?

You are reading WordPress Social Share Buttons and Follow Me Widget, an article first published on Build a Website with WordPress.

Even the latest hack attempts were not targeted to the software itself. It was an attack by sending brute-force password hack attempts for default users names and weak passwords. So make sure you don’t use admin as your administrator username and have a good strong password. If you want to learn more about those attacks, read WordPress Security Attacks and Solutions.

To secure your site there is one plugin that I highly recommend. It will check and monitor your WordPress website, it’s called Wordfence.

Wordfence Security Plugin

Wordfence is free and you can get it for your WordPress site by following these steps:

• Sign in to your WordPress website.
• Go to your “Plugins” menu and click “Add New”.
• Enter “Wordfence” in the search box.
• Install Wordfence and set your options.

To set the Options, go to the Wordfence plugin options choice.

In the settings screen you get large screen with a lot of options!

Start with the basics and set your email address and the option on How does Wordfence get IP’s. Save the changes.

Now lets see what else you need to set, most of the options can remain as offered by the standard installation.

There are only a few things that I change:

• Disable the Life Traffic View options
• Set Scan theme files and plugins files against repository to enabled
• Enable the Firewall rules and set the block fake crawlers option to active
• Under Other Options put in your own IP address to the Whitelist
• I choose not to set the option to Participate in the Wordfence Security Network, but that is just my personal choice

Save all the options you have set, and run a first scan.

Working with Security Alerts

After the scan is complete you will get some secuity notifications, especially if you have the scan plugin files against the repository option active.

You have several options on how to proceed with this notification.

It depends on the severity of the problem and on what kind of file it is.

In this case I only check to See how the file has changed to make sure it is just a minor change, if that is the case I choose to Restore the original version of the file. Wordfence will then get the file from the repository and overwrite your current file.

Most of these kind of notifications will be around readme files, so no problem there. After the check, do the restore to prevent a new notification next time the scan runs.

Since I do run Dutch websites I also get errors on language settings, in that case I will choose to Ignore until the file changes.

Check out the options and see if you want to use by the options mentioned before and run a scan on your own site. You will see that Wordfence will monitor your site and scan it once a day (free version) and send you an notification if somethings changes.

I even got a Warning: * Your DNS records have changed notification today after my hosting company replaced some servers and had to change the IP addresses…

Wordfence Drawbacks

So this Wordfence plugin sounds great, but is there a down side to it?

Yes there is, but its minor. It has to do with the database tables it uses. As you can see they can grow pretty large.

Here are the same tables after optimization with the WP-Optimize Plugin.

Still pretty large right? I did not see any performance problems though and I do think that these tables will improve over time.

Nothing to worry about directly, but certainly something to look out for and do preventive maintenance on your database. You can also choose to not back-up these tables if you run into trouble with your back-up files.

Despite this drawback I do recommend your install, configure and use Wordfence to secure your WordPress website!

You are reading Secure Your WordPress Website with Wordfence, an article first published on Build a Website with WordPress.

In the sidebar of your WordPress layout, you can place a lot of widgets.

However, what you really need in there are the things that will help your visitor to get a clear image about the topic your website is about.

Besides that it should show them how they can find what they are  looking for.

Basic Widgets for your Sidebar

For me, there are some basic widgets that you should always use.

Registration option for Updates

In order to allow your visitor to keep informed about new postings is your first widget.
Whether you have a mailing list via MailChimp, Aweber or Feedburner that you want to build, you do have to get this option to give your visitor an easy working signup form.

A signup widget in your sidebar is the fastest and ever-present possibility.

Site Topics Selection

A custom menu widget containing the main categories of your website is also a must.

Such a menu gives your visitors the ability to see what your site is about and gives them instant access to your most important articles on a particular topic.

Latest Articles or Recent Posts

I almost always use this to show that there are regular updates. If you build a static website, then replace this recent article widget with a custom menu widget linking to your main pages.

Another option that could replace the Recent Posts widget is a Widget with your most Popular Posts. There is a special plugin that gives you that ability http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-popular-posts/

Above widgets are the basics for about 95% of every WordPress site I do, perhaps you can take advantage of it.

Make sure in any case that you don’t show the following widgets in your sidebar, they just use space you need for better things.

• Meta widget – You know yourself how you can log in.
• Date based archives with month selection: This list can get very long if you have been blogging for a longer period of time. People are not looking at the article date but for a certain topic.

Social Media Widget

Not everyone has an extensive online social life, so it depends on your own situation if you want it. It will get increasingly important.

A good social media widget can provide you with many new followers on Twitter, get Facebook likes, Google+ connections and more.

Site Dependent Widgets

Other widgets you can think of, depending on the purpose of your site, are special text widgets like an About the Writer (Biography) widget.

In such a text widget, you can use HTML code to show an image or link to a special about or action page.

You can place an Ad widget to earn some money with your website.  You can use a plugin to help out like http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ad-squares-widget/ or http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ad-codez-widget/. Both will give you an opportunity to rotate banner codes.

A special call to action widget that is specifically crafted towards the main goal of your site. Like the direct link widget on my Dutch website www.wphandleiding.nl with an image to guide visitors directly to the download page.

Tag Cloud Widget usage depends on the fact how well you have created tags on your site; you do have the main navigation categories. Tags can provide good extra navigation options.

Last but not least you should consider a search widget. It depends on your theme lay-out if you need one in your Sidebar. Most of your visitors will be used to look for a search option in the upper-right corner of your site.

This is a selection of sidebar widgets and reasons why I use them. And what about you, what widgets do you always show in your sidebar and why?

You are reading Which Widgets to Use in Your Sidebar, an article first published on Build a Website with WordPress.

You will understand after your site has been running for a couple of days.

Comment spam is a black-hat tactic to getting back-links to a website. Most of those fake comments are done via spam-bots (small programs) that inject comments into the comment field of your blog articles. Others are done by outsourcing this back-linking to foreign countries like India or The Philippines.

The worst kind are comments that send you or your visitors to mall-ware sites.

Ways to Filter Comment Spam

There are a few ways to get rid of those pesky comments.

Uncheck the option that people can leave comments on your blog, very effective but not really visitor friendly. Go to Settings -> Discussion -> Uncheck all first three options.

Install Anti-Spam plugins to check if its a known spam comment so that the comment is put in the Spam reaction queue.

Install a anti spam bots plugin, that will block the comment bot and prevent the comment from coming into your WordPress system.

Set some rules in the Discussion section to make sure comments are moderated before they hit your visitor facing site. Is always good to moderate your comments. One tip: Trust nothing, check and double check.

Set the option that people need to register before they can comment, however this will drive off some legit visitors that want to comment as well.

A good sign of a spam comment is to check if the comment is really on topic and will have good value for you or other visitors.

If not? Delete it. No sure? Copy the comment and search it in Google between quotes. If it shows the extract term on several hits, delete it.

Anti-Spam Plugins for WordPress

The number one plugin used for fighting off comment spam is Akismet.

Akismet is installed with any new WordPress site by default. After activation you need to register for an API Key at http://akismet.com

Please make sure you read their Terms of Services so you can make a good choice on what plan you should pick.

If you only use Akismet on a personal non-business blog with under 20.000 visitors per month you can select the personal plan and slide the price slider to 0.

Note: This plugin costs $5 a month (per site) if you make any money from your site, such as through an affiliate link, ad, or paid service.

After you activate the Akismet plugin you follow the notification and put in your key.

Cookies for Comments

The cookies for comments plugin will first set a cookie on a random URL that is then checked when a comment is posted. If the cookie is missing the comment is marked as spam.

If its a spambot that tries to place a cookie, it will fail as they won’t accept that cookie.

You can find the plugin here http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/cookies-for-comments/

Growmap Anti Spambot Plugin

This plugin is my favorite. It blocks spambots by adding a client side generated checkbox asking the comment author to confirm that they are not a spammer. (Like you see on this website)

A check is made that the checkbox has been checked before the comment is submitted so there’s no chance that a comment will be lost if it’s being submitted by legitimate human user.

Given your visitor the option to just tick a checkbox is much more user friendly than a Chapta (which are sometimes very hard to read) or do some calculation.

You can find the plugin here http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/growmap-anti-spambot-plugin/

After you installed and activated the plugin go to Settings -> G.A.S.P to verify that the basic options are set or you want to change some text. You can configure extra checks like the number of links in a comment or the number of words in the commenters name field.

Combining Anti Spam Plugins

For me a combination of Cookies for Comments and Growmap Anti Spambot Plugin has reduced the number of spam comments to almost zero, maybe two or three manual spam comments, but that’s it.

Giving me more time to build sites and write articles on my own sites.

So how about you? Does your website still gets loads of spam comments?

You are reading Block WordPress Comment Spam, an article first published on Build a Website with WordPress.

With the latest versions, especially version 3.0 where the custom menu feature was introduced you can use it for any kind of website.

Using WordPress custom menu’s you can really create a good navigation for your website.

So how do you get from this:

To something like this?

WordPress Theme Layout

If you have your WordPress website installed, it’s now time to have it look like a regular website.

The first impression people will get when they visit your website is essential. They will either see a blog, or a website.

The way your site looks is determined by the theme you use and how you configured it.

Do you use a standard theme or a theme that has a special homepage layout?

Do you have a static homepage or do you show the most-recent posts?

There are several options for choosing a special theme for your WordPress website.

You can search the free WordPress theme repository right from within your own WordPress installation. Go to Appearance -> Themes. It opens with a search function that lets you select some search criteria. Upload your own, select one of the other options like Featured, Newest or Recently Updated.

The featured themes currently show:

There are themes like:

http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/responsive

http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/suffusion

http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/eclipse

http://demo.onedesigns.com/pinboard/

http://demo.onedesigns.com/esplanade

Or you can go for a, very affordable, premium theme from ThemeForest.net, ElegantThemes.com or my personal favorite, but more expensive, themes from StudioPress.com.

Most of these themes will start with a featured image or an image slider on the frontpage, make sure you capture your visitors and keep them on your site.

Some of these themes require an extra plugin to show a slider on your homepage. Those plugins could be wp-cycle or http://www.featuredcontentgallery.com/

There are several others, and you can find a good selection at http://speckyboy.com/2010/06/30/top-10-content-slider-plugins-for-wordpress/

Static Frontpage or Blog Posts

If you want to use a regular theme, you can still make you WordPress site look like a website.

The first thing you need to do is to create a page that will become your homepage.

Just one small warning, do NOT call this Home! If you call it Home it will create a permalink /home/ and that could become a problem.

If you ever want to switch to theme that does work with a special homepage layout. They will use a theme file called home.php and that might cause you real problems.

And please, don’t call this page Welcome or start with Welcome to my website! That is such a waste of your homepage function.

I might have searched the web and found your website, it might have been mentioned in an advertisement or was referred to my by a friend. So, unless you blocked you site for normal visitors, I know I am welcome.

Just give your visitor really good information about you, your service or your interest, tell them what your website is all about. Lead them into your site and show them where your most valuable content is.

Tell them what you want to tell them!

And don’t forget to show some good images, a good picture can make a difference. Your website visitors are more attracted to images than text. If they scan your website to get a first impression an image can help to keep them on that page so they start reading.

Your theme might show the option to get comments on that page, in that situation you need to un-check the comments and trackback functions. Look for these options.

If you don’t see those options active the Discussion and Comments check-box in the screen display options (upper-right corner of your edit screen, just above the Publish option).

Once you created that page, you need to make a separate one that will be used to show your posts. You don’t need to use posts, but it is a good thing to have your setup ready in case you want to start writing posts.

You can call this page anything you like. You can call it Blog or News or something that might add value to your website. Ramblings, Thoughts, Special Articles it doesn’t matter what you want to call it. Just name is so you can use it if you want to start using posts.

Now here is the best thing about this page: Give it the Title you want and publish the page. Do not write anything on that page! Leave it blank.

If you get those two pages done it’s time to configure WordPress so it will show your homepage and it knows where to show your posts (if any).

In your Dashboard go to Settings -> Reading and chose Front page displays option A Static page.

You can select the page you just created via a drop down menu when you click the left arrows.

Save your settings and check your website, you should see the intro page you created as the Frontpage of your website.

If you don’t see the new version, try to refresh your browser via Ctrl+F5. That will get the latest version of your site instead of the cached one that your browser might show.

Getting Your Sidebar in Shape

Once you get your site’s basic layout ready it’s now time to look at your sidebar.

Your default sidebar is very likely to show things like Recent Posts, Archives and Meta or it says Primary Widget Area. It all depends on the theme that is active on your site.

Now Recent Posts, Recent Comments, Categories, Archives and Meta are a dead give away that this is a WordPress blog. Yo you need to get rid of those widgets and replace theme with a good navigational menu.

You can read How To Use WordPress Custom Menu’s and create a good menu that will show the basic navigation items for your website.

Place that Custom menu in your primary sidebar via Appearance -> Widgets and drag the Custom Menu widget into your Primary Sidebar screen.

You can see below that it will warn you if you don’t have a menu yet and guide you to get one done. If you have one, you can select it.

The best part of these custom menus is that you can have several of them. I like to split my menu’s in two separate ones. The first one will contain the navigation into the meat of my sites and the second one contains informational links like the About page, a Sitemap, Contact page and a Privacy Statement page.

Where I want to show these Menu’s depends on the layout or the theme. You want your primary navigation menu on the most prominent place in your website. It should be the first thing your visitor can see if they want to browse through your website.

The second menu should not be hidden away in some obscure place, but it should be less prominent.

Once your placed this widget in your primary sidebar, the other widgets will disappear. Those widgets where there to act as placeholders to show you where your sidebar is located. There might be some widgets already in the sidebar, simply delete the ones you don’t want. Search might be one to leave active.

Your theme choice will also determine if your primary sidebar is located on the left side of your screen or on the right side.

Choosing Your Website Theme

For a blog it is most likely to show the sidebar on the right side, if your theme has that option to switch it to the left, use that. It will also make your WordPress site look more like a normal website.

If your theme does not support it via an option, your might need to change it in the index.php file or in its style sheet.

How you can change that is a completely different subject, the best option to get to know how to change that is to ask in the support forum of your theme.

For the website shown above I used the new default Twenty Twelve theme from WordPress with the plugins One Click Child Theme to make sure my customizations will stick after a Tweny Twelve theme upgrade. I also used a Custom Headers plugin because with this new theme, there is no custom header function for pages.

So now it’s up to you to get the layout that makes your WordPress website look like a website instead of a blog.

You are reading How To Make WordPress Look Like a Website, an article first published on Build a Website with WordPress.

These menus are very flexible and are especially usefull if you want to create a static website. You can have different custom menus to show different navigational elements.

For example you can create a menu with all the main pages and a seperate one for pages like Contact, Privacy Policy, Legal Pages etc.

To create such a menu go to Appearance -> Menu and first put in the name of the menu you want to create. Then push Save! this is important because you cannot place any links until you save the menu first.

Best practice for Menu naming is to give it the name where you want to use it, or what content you want to put in to it. I use Top Menu, Page Menu and Category menu’s for example.

After you saved your menu, you could get extra fields on the left hand side of the screen. If your theme supports it, you will see Theme Location Menu options like Primary navigation. You can have that new menu replace the theme default menu if you use that option.

Now you can add you pages or categories to the menu, select them on the left side and choose Add to Menu option. Hint: Under pages select View All first so you can select Home as well.

Once you added the page to the menu, you can sort them by dragging them to the right place and even drag them to a child page position. Click save when you are done and your first menu is ready.

Now create another menu for your categories and add the topics you like to show.

Showing Your WordPress Menu

You need to get your Menu’s into your layout and bring the navigation structure to the front of your website.

The menu’s you just created are shown via Widgets, so go to the Widgets page first via Appearence -> Widgets. Look for the widget that is called Custom Menu and drag that to your primary sidebar (or the widgets position you want to use).

If you open that widgets you can give it a title and select the menu you created from a dropdown menu.

You can use more then one Custom Menu widget on your site, just make sure you create a good navigation for your users.

If you want to make a WordPress website instead of a Blog, these custom menu’s are the way to go!

Special Custom Menu Options

In the custom menu creation screen you also saw another option called Custom Links. With custom links you can have a link in your menu that points directly to another website. Just give it a name, put in the hyperlink you want it to point to and add it to the menu of you choice.

You can also use this option to create a Non Linked menu item. A possible use could be that you want a section divider in your menu. To do this you use the custom menu option. Label it by using the Name you want to use and for the hyperlink you use http://# add it to your menu in the postion you want to show it. Save the menu.

Open that menu item and remove the URL option and save the menu again. Now you have a menu item that is not linked.

Title Attributes and Custom Menu Fields

With any Menu item you can edit some extra options, with the most prominent one being the Title Attribute. The Navigation label is the name that is shown in the menu, the title attribute is shown if you hover over that menu item.

If you create a page menu, you could have very long titles in you menu items. By reducing / renaming the Navigation Label you can improved the menu option and if you put the longer page title in the Title Attribute your have the best navigation for your visitors.

There are a few extra special options which are not shown by default. If you want to see and use them, use the Screen Options on the right hand top corner and select the extra options you want to see.

This will show you the extra options.

Most of use will not use these options, but its good to know they are there.

If you can think of other cool things you can do with Custom WordPress Menu’s that please share it in the comments below.

You are reading How To Set Up and Use WordPress Menus, an article first published on Build a Website with WordPress.

There are several great improvements in this release, like the theme preview function.

With this option, you can check how your website would look with a new theme, and you can change configuration options without activating the theme!

WordPress 3.4 Theme Preview. Read more on WordPress News

Besides this theme preview you also get better performance and better image handling with captions. You can now place HTML code like a link into the caption field.

Do I Need to Upgrade?

It is always a good idea to keep up-to-date with a new release, but make sure you first make a good back-up. You can then always revert back if you run into trouble with a theme or a plugin that is not compatible.

I will update some minor WordPress website first and take it from there.

Be Carefull, if you changed the standard Twenty Eleven theme, make sure you back it up. This new version will overwrite your changes!

If you want to read more on the new features, like the embedded tweet function, go to http://wordpress.org/news/2012/06/green/

Together with some good performance updates definitely a fine update, so go ahead and try the new WordPress 3.4 Green Release on your blog / website.

You are reading WordPress 3.4 Green Release, an article first published on Build a Website with WordPress.

The more you post on your WordPress website the bigger your database grows and the more plugins you install and uninstall Your database then gets bloated with uncleared settings. What can you do about that and what other measures can you take to get that initial install speed back into the site?

Initial Actions to Take

First of all you need to take three actions on your files and database:

• backup,
• backup,
• and BACKUP

Why this emphasis on creating a backup of your website and especially the database? Because you are going to work on that database.  Don’t worry you don’t need to learn MySql statements and queries (although some basic knowledge can help). You can do most of the work with plugins.

So, did you create a good backup and test it or at least check that it is done? You can create a backup via your providers CPanel or request it via a ticket if you don’t know how to do it yourself.

After your backup verification check your baseline by running a page check on http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/. Your goal should be to reach a score of at least 90/100.

Two Easy Plugins to Start

With the latest versions of WordPress you are filling your WordPress database with many revisions of your posts and pages if you go back into them and edit the content. These revisions  are rarely used and you can clean them out and prevent them from being created in the future and thereby reduce the number of revisions stored.

Revision Control is the first plugin you can install and you can change the settings to suit your needs.

Now that you have revisions under control you need to clean out the old revisions and with the next plugin you can do several things in one click.

WP-Optimize gives you the options to clean:

• all post revisions
• all auto draft posts
• marked spam comments
• unapproved comments
• and optimize your database tables

Just select your choices and click PROCESS to clean and optimize. In the configuration screen you will have a large overview of the tables in your database and it shows you if they need optimization or not.

Getting Closer to Your Turbo Options

There is a great plugin called Clean Options that can help you to find and eliminate old entries left by plugins you no longer use. This looks pretty easy but you must have some knowledge of which plugins you used before and which plugins you removed.

If you follow the instructions of this plugins documentation you will see a large list of fields that might be no longer in use, but please be careful and if you are unsure about one or more of them, don’t clean them out.

What you can look for are descriptions that are clearly related to old plugins. In my case these were entries like wp_insert and whydowork_.You might recognize others from plugins you stopped using.

Cleaning your images and reducing their size with Smush It.

Smush It is a plugin that reduces image file sizes and improves performance. It is simple to use and is easy to configure. .

Do I use it myself? Sometimes I do, especially if I am working on websites other than my own. I prepare all my images before hand by optimizing and, if necessary, resizing them via Irfanview.

Using a WordPress Cache Plugin

I have tried several caching plugins on my WordPress websites and the one that out performs the others for me is W3 Total Cache, but it requires the right configuration.

For your understanding, a cache plugin takes the result of a post request and stores it on a disc as static HTML. If the next visitor to your website requests the same page this cached version is shown. W3 Total Cache uses a mechanism for the temporary storage of your web document to increase performance. The cache itself is cleared after some time (you can set that time in the configuration).

Installing W3 Cache is easy. Just install it like any other plugin by searching a plugin from the back end.

The next steps are to configure it. If you get any warnings on these settings start by checking if your .htaccess file is writable during this configuration session.

The first action is to disable the preview option.

Next is to enable the settings for:

• Page Cache
• Database Cache
• Browser Cache
• Under Miscellaneous only check “Verify rewrite rules” and save all settings.

Click on the menu option titled Browser Cache and activate the options as shown below. This is not the standard setting and has a great effect on your site’s speed.

Save everything, exit out of this screen and then go back into it.

You will see some error messages in the top part of the screen.

Click the option auto-install and you will be fine.

Ready? Now go and check again on http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/ to see if your scores have improved. Note: Run the test twice because your cache may need to kick in.

If this has no effect, you either already had a good score or you need to look at your theme and plugins, but you will see that on the Pingdom tools page. The final option if nothing else helps is to look for a new hosting provider.

Below is the ultimate score of 100/100, but you should take that with a big grain of salt as this is a new installation with nothing posted yet, but with all the plugins active I mentioned above.

So what about your site, did you get better scores or do you have extra options and information that you can share that will speed up your website?

You are reading How To Speed Up Your WordPress Website the Easy Way, an article first published on Build a Website with WordPress.

WordPress is a very popular Content Management System and as such is always under attack by hackers and crackers.

Most of the hack attempts are not focused on WordPress core security holes but rather plugin or theme security weaknesses.

Basic WordPress Security

WordPress security starts with the installation of your website and these steps can help:

• choose a good web host
• create a cryptic database and database username for your MySql database
• create a highly secure password
• don’t use the standard wp_ prefix for ou tables
• don’t use the standard Admin user name but create a more difficult username and matching secure password

After installation use the permalinks option to create a .htaccess file in the root of your website.

Once the installation is done you can remove the following files:

• wp-config-sample.php
• readme.html (contains information on what version of WordPress you are running)
• wp-admin/install.php
• wp-admin/install-helper.php

Secure your files by changing the permissions on:

.htaccess to 404 (or 604)

wp-header.php tot 400 (or 600)

if possible move your wp-config.php file one folder up and set the security to 400 or 600 if your hosting company won’t allow 400.

WordPress Security Plugins

There are four plugins I always install on my WordPress websites:

WordPress Firewall 2 monitors web request to your website and blocks obvious attacks.

File Monitor Plus this plugin will send you an email if a file has changed on your website and which file(s) are changed.

WP Security Scan will let you know if you already are under attack and will give you extra tips and aids to block some standard attacks.

Login Lockdown looks at login attempts that fail from a certain IP address and shuts down login functionality for a certain amount of time for that address preventing further brute force attacks.

All of the above measures have helped me to secure my WordPress websites from attacks on several occasions.

WordPress 3 Cookbook

I also got a chance to read WordPress 3 Cookbook, a fun concept that gives you “recipes” that you can use on your own WordPress website.

Here is a short overview of the chapters in this fine book:

Chapter 1: The WordPress Cook’s Tools
Chapter 2: Installing and Customizing Themes
Chapter 3: Working with Plugins and Widgets
Chapter 4: Customizing Content Display
Chapter 5: Building Interactivity and Community
Chapter 6: Implementing Online Sales and Advertising
Chapter 7: Making an SEO Friendly Site
Chapter 8: Enhancing Usability and Accessibility
Chapter 9: Managing Maintenance and Improving Security

And yes this one has a chapter on security :-) but the rest of the book is also a very good read and gives you over 100 short practical articles that you can use.

I really enjoyed reading and implementing several of the recipes on my own WordPress websites and I really suggest you take a look at the WordPress 3 Cookbook
as it has some nice pearls in it … but that said you need to be aware that you should have a code editor and FTP program. I recommend PSpad and FileZilla

You are reading How to Secure your WordPress Website – The Basics, an article first published on Build a Website with WordPress.

Here is a short overview of the chapters so you can see what is covered in this book.

Chapter 1: A Blog Less Ordinary—What Makes a Great Blog?
Chapter 2: Introducing our Case Study—WPBizGuru
Chapter 3: Designing your Blog
Chapter 4: Images and Videos
Chapter 5: Content is King
Chapter 6: Search Engine Optimization
Chapter 7: Supercharged Promotion
Chapter 8: Connecting with the Blogosphere
Chapter 9: Analyzing your Blog Stats
Chapter 10: Monetizing your Blog
Chapter 11: Managing Growth

WPBizGuru a Case Study

After the first introduction of some great WordPress blogs and how blogs can be used Paul goes into a case study showcasing a new site on http://blog.wpbizguru.com/

In the following chapters he takes you from the basics of the design and changes to match you own ideas (don’t get scared by the coding!, it is not that hard..) up until how to write your content and using images and video in your posts.

What I really like in these first chapters is the way he helps you with ideas on how to create a blogging plan and how to implement is focusing on the real purpose of you blog / website.

The following chapters are about how to get traffic to your blog, how to measure that traffic and what to do with it.

The monetizing chapter is a bit limited on how to get the most of your blog traffic, but is surely a start in the right direction. Managing growth is not only about keeping the performance of your site but also about keeping up with comments and reducing spam in your blog.

WordPress Plugins

Paul mentions several plugins in his book that I think are very good, however there are three plugins he uses that I don’t use anymore for several reasons:

• Akismet = replaced by Growmap Anti Spam Plugin (I use the premium version which comes with Commentluv) because it works better and the free version is well.. free (Akismet is not free in many cases https://akismet.com/signup/)
• Super Cache = replaced by Hyper Cache if you want it simple or W3 Total Cache for the more techies among us.
• All-in-One-SEO = replaced WordPress SEO by Yoast, no not because he is Dutch like me, but the plugin just works better and is also free (AIOSEO has a premium version)

Conclusion

WordPress 3 for Business Bloggers is not just for Business bloggers, it is a great starting point for any WordPress blog or website you want to setup. Like I mentioned before I really liked the Blogging plan layout and the focus on the purpose of your blog / website.

One thing I missed was how to secure your blog against hackers, so I will write a blog post on that next because you really need to secure your site. The Backup and restore section of the book are mandatory for making sure you can get your blog back fast.

All in all, a great starting point for any new WordPress website owner that wants his or her website to succeed.

You are reading Book Review of WordPress 3 for Business Bloggers, an article first published on Build a Website with WordPress.

My favorite way is do to it is without any plugins by adding the special inclusion code from Youtube itself.

YouTube WordPress Plugins

But for those of you that don’t want anything to do with HTML codings, here a four af the best Youtube Plugins:

• Smart YouTube
• TubePress 
• YouTube Brackets
• WP YouTube

If you want simple, use one of the last two, want more options choose TubePress Pro (25 Dollar for One Year) with which you can create video gallery’s.

Smart Youtube might be the smart choice of you are going to embed more video’s in you blog postings.

Including YouTube HTML Coding

Like I said, I prefer to just included the HTML coding because I have very few video’s in my posts and I don’t want another plugin to slowdown the site.

When you see a Youtube video you want to include, look for the Share button below the video.

Not all video’s can be embedded, sometimes they are exlcuded because of copyrights.

If you can share it you will see the following code that you can copy and past http://youtu.be/NAc83CF8Ejk into your post and as you can see this is enough for your WordPress website. For me it works just by pasting the code (WordPress 3.2.1).

You can use the same code for inclusion with a plugin like the above mentioned ones, but if you want the inclusing code, use the embed button.

What you don’t want is the standard format unless your theme content size is just right…. for me it never is :-).

But you can easily change to the format you want by just setting the width you need and other options you want to set like the use of High Definition (HD).

Once you set the size, copy the code from the top box and save it in notepad or past it right into your post. Attention! before you paste it into you post, first switch to the HTML input screen!

In the HTML screen you can post the code right were you want the video to show.

Hope this will help you to live up you blog. Make sure you listen to some of the video’s that you see here!

Enjoy this beautiful  music before you get back to working on you WordPress site, Adele is one of the best singers at this moment!

Here are two of my other all time favourite video’s…

You are reading How To Include a Youtube Video in WordPress, an article first published on Build a Website with WordPress.

Here is a short breakdown of each chapter:

1. Getting Started: SEO Basics. Good introduction into the On-Page ranking factors that you need to be aware off, good in detailed information that you can use on your website before you get into link building. Using good keyword rich navigation is covered and in chapter 3 keywords are getting more attention, but I would have liked to have more information on the right structure for you websites topics. As said, Chapter 3 covers keywords, but a good website structure example would have been great, either here or in the keyword chapter. Definitely a great start of this book to get into the topic of SEO

2. Customizing WordPress Settings for SEO. This chapter starts by taking a step back and lets you look at the goal of your website, which is not always clear unless you write it down on paper and stick to it! If you look at the first few posts on this site you will see that I was guilty of that sin myself… The rest is about the strengths and weaknesses of WordPress as a platform.

3. Research and Working with Keywords. Keywords, keywords, keywords… for some this chapter will be an eyeopener, for others it will be tough to read, but Keywords are the corner stones of your website and Michael David teaches you how to lay the best possible foundation for your site. If you don’t want to read the whole book, don’t skip this chapter.

4. Understanding Technical Optimization. Don’t be scared for the term Technical is is not about the in depth technical mambo-jumbo that you think. This chapter will tell you how to use the basics of WordPress Title, Meta descriptions, Permalinks structures and Images to get the most of your website. I do suggest you try the alternative WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin instead of All-In-One-SEO and Google XML Sitemaps.

5. Creating Optimized and Engaging Content. Together with the keyword chapter you will learn a lot about what will attract visitors to your website and keep them coming, together with the search engines. Here you get some good information about writing content and how to structure you categories for optimal results. It has a Nice collection of plugins listed that can help your with your categories.

6. Link Building. Short chapter on Link Building which is good for me (I don’t do much link building). It is good to see how you can get inbound links, but I feel that Google’s PageRank is not a thing that you should focus on. If you want to start with basic link building this will give you some good hints.

7. Using Social Media. Social media is hot now, LinkedIn, Twitter, Social Bookmarking, Facebook and YouTube are all covered in this chapter. I love the Facebook section and how to setup a fan page! And maybe in the next version he can put in an extra section about the new http://www.google.com/+1/button/

8. Avoiding Black Hat Techniques. Hopefully you will never have to use the advice given to undo Google penalties, but it is good to know which things you need to avoid on your website. Here a just a few of them that are covered: Link Exchange, Website Submission Services, Offshore link building (I don’t like those emails) Autoblogging.

9. Avoiding SEO Mistakes. There are some things that you have to avoid if you want good rankings in the search engines, read through this chapter ans start your cleanup session, you probably will have some mistakes in place…

10. Testing Your Site and Monitoring Your Progress. Use the tools the search engines offer you, Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Central, Yahoo!Site Explorer and more. Learn how to use theme, but don’t go checking everything every hour. Use your time to write good content and build your site. Set aside a moment per day and an hour per week for analysis.

Appendix A: WordPress SEO Plugins. A WordPress book is not complete if it doesn’t have Plugin recommendations. There a definitely a few ones that I will be testing but I do think All-In-One-SEO is no longer the best choice, even in Beta WordPress SEO by Yoast is better (and it will soon be out of Beta)

Appendix B: Other SEO Resources. Very helpful list of websites and forums to get more information and to keep up-to-date with SEO in general.

Conclusion: If you want your WordPress website to get better ranking in the search results, this book covers all the basics and has good advice about content and technical improvements. And you did build your website to get visitors, right? Follow the advice in this book and it will help you to get those visitors.

For me this book will stay on my desk a lot longer than I thought it would.

Read Reviews

You are reading WordPress 3 SEO – How To Get Your Website To The Top Of Google, an article first published on Build a Website with WordPress.