These 20 videos make up the basic “WordPress 101” tutorial series.

1. NEW! What is WordPress?
2. NEW! WordPress.com or WordPress.org?
3. NEW! How to Install WordPress
4. The Dashboard
5. Create a New Post
6. Edit an Existing Post
7. Using Categories and Tags
8. How to Create and Edit Pages
9. How to Add Photos and Images
10. How to Embed Video
11. Using the Media Library
12. Managing Comments
13. How to Create Links
14. Changing the Theme, Header, and Background
15. Adding Widgets
16. Building Custom Menus
17. Installing Plugins
18. Adding New Users
19. Useful Tools
20. Settings & Configuration

Here are videos 16-20 of the series:

[Not to worry, my friend. Although the rest of this article is protected for Club Member - Free Content members only. You can easily join the Productivity Club or login to read the remaining content. Club Member level is always FREE.]

These 20 videos make up the basic “WordPress 101” tutorial series.

1. NEW! What is WordPress?
2. NEW! WordPress.com or WordPress.org?
3. NEW! How to Install WordPress
4. The Dashboard
5. Create a New Post
6. Edit an Existing Post
7. Using Categories and Tags
8. How to Create and Edit Pages
9. How to Add Photos and Images
10. How to Embed Video
11. Using the Media Library
12. Managing Comments
13. How to Create Links
14. Changing the Theme, Header, and Background
15. Adding Widgets
16. Building Custom Menus
17. Installing Plugins
18. Adding New Users
19. Useful Tools
20. Settings & Configuration

Here are videos 11-15 of the series:

[Not to worry, my friend. Although the rest of this article is protected for Club Member - Free Content members only. You can easily join the Productivity Club or login to read the remaining content. Club Member level is always FREE.]

These 20 videos make up the basic “WordPress 101” tutorial series.

1. NEW! What is WordPress?
2. NEW! WordPress.com or WordPress.org?
3. NEW! How to Install WordPress
4. The Dashboard
5. Create a New Post
6. Edit an Existing Post
7. Using Categories and Tags
8. How to Create and Edit Pages
9. How to Add Photos and Images
10. How to Embed Video
11. Using the Media Library
12. Managing Comments
13. How to Create Links
14. Changing the Theme, Header, and Background
15. Adding Widgets
16. Building Custom Menus
17. Installing Plugins
18. Adding New Users
19. Useful Tools
20. Settings & Configuration

Here are videos 6-10 of the series:

[Not to worry, my friend. Although the rest of this article is protected for Club Member - Free Content members only. You can easily join the Productivity Club or login to read the remaining content. Club Member level is always FREE.]

These 20 videos make up the basic “WordPress 101” tutorial series.

1. NEW! What is WordPress?
2. NEW! WordPress.com or WordPress.org?
3. NEW! How to Install WordPress
4. The Dashboard
5. Create a New Post
6. Edit an Existing Post
7. Using Categories and Tags
8. How to Create and Edit Pages
9. How to Add Photos and Images
10. How to Embed Video
11. Using the Media Library
12. Managing Comments
13. How to Create Links
14. Changing the Theme, Header, and Background
15. Adding Widgets
16. Building Custom Menus
17. Installing Plugins
18. Adding New Users
19. Useful Tools
20. Settings & Configuration

Here are videos 1-5 of the series:

What is WordPress?:

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WordPress.com or WordPress.org?:

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[Not to worry, my friend. Although the rest of this article is protected for Club Member - Free Content members only. You can easily join the Productivity Club or login to read the remaining content. Club Member level is always FREE.]

Title tags are important for SEO

The title tag is the most influential on-page ranking factor used by the ranking algorithms of most search engines to rank URLs for a particular keyword phrase. For this reason it is very important for search engine optimization.

The title is typically shown as the first line of your URL’s listing in the organic search engine results pages (SERPs). Since the title tag is the first thing about your page seen by users in the SERPs, it is an awesome opportunity for your web page to make a positive first impression.

Having a good title tag that accurately represents the topic of your web page can affect your URL’s click-thru-rate (CTR) in the SERPs. The title should be optimized in such a way that it conveys the main topic of your web page and lets the user know what to expect if they click on your link in the organic results.

Keyword analysis – the core of title tag optimization

The first and most important step in optimizing title tags is to perform keyword analysis. This will help you determine the keyword phrase(s) that will be targeted by your web page. Ideally this should be done before a single line of content is written.

Performing keyword analysis can be done free of charge on the web. All that is needed these days is a web browser. There are many free keyword analysis tools on the web to assist you with this task. Probably the most notable of these free keyword analysis tools is Google’s external Adwords keyword tool.

Keyword analysis can assist you in coming up with a topic for your new web page if you do not already have one in mind. Once you have decided on a topic, keyword analysis will help you determine for which related keyword phrases people most often search as well as how competitive those keyword phrases are.

The goal is to find a single keyword phrase (possibly two or three phrases if they are very similar) that sums up your topic, has a moderate amount of monthly search query volume, and yet is not highly competitive.

How to optimize title tags

Keyword analysis makes optimizing title tags a cinch! Your keyword analysis should yield a single keyword phrase (perhaps two or three phrases) that your new page will target. There are a few additional tips that you should consider before deciding on your web page’s title tag.

The search engines consider words that appear near the beginning of title tags more important than words appearing near the end of the title. This is synonymous to the way they consider content near the top of the page more important than content found near the bottom of the page.

Search engines also consider keyword density within a specific HTML tag important if that tag is considered a ranking factor by their algorithm. Since title tags are ranking factors for almost all search engines, you should always attempt to maximize the density of the most important keywords or keyword phrases within the title tag.

Although it is tempting to do so, it is highly recommended that you not include your site name in the title tag unless the page being optimized is an about us page or contact us page . It only serves to dilute the keyword density of the targeted keyword phrase(s) within the title tag making it harder for your page to rank well.

If you are targeting a single keyword phrase then optimizing your title is easy. Simply enter the targeted keyword phrase for your title tag’s value. However, if you are targeting multiple keyword phrases with a single web page then you should prioritize your keyword phrases.

Once you have prioritized the targeted keyword phrases, list them in order of importance in the title tag from most important to least important. The resulting title values should be “Primary Keyword Phrase – Secondary Keyword Phrase” or “Primary Keyword Phrase – Secondary Keyword Phrase – Tertiary Keyword Phrase” depending on whether your page is targeting two or three phrases, respectively.

After the title is optimized

As you can see, optimizing your title tag is very simple if you first do a good job of selecting your targeted keyword phrase(s) by analyzing the search frequency and competitiveness of commonly used phrases related to your topic. Once your keyword analysis has been completed and you have decided on the title tag for your page, all other on-page optimizations should reinforce the keyword phrase(s) from the title.

J Hodson operates Canonical SEO, a Charlotte, NC based SEO consulting and training company servicing clients throughout the US.

Visit our blog if you would also like to learn how to perform free keyword analysis.

Author: J Hodson
Article Source: EzineArticles.com

The “right” keywords, in this case, are those that are going to lead into a visitor performing whatever action it is that you want them to ultimately take, whether it’s purchasing a product that you are advertising, signing up for your opt-in newsletter or some other desired action.

Selecting the “right” keywords can be tricky, as anyone who has done any amount of PPC advertising will attest to. Ultimately, the process breaks down into two distinct steps. First is assembling the largest list of relevant keywords that you can and then secondly, actually testing them in your PPC campaign, tracking the results that you obtain.

To build a massive list of keywords can be a somewhat intimidating task. There are a number of ways to do it. You can use free tools like the Adwords keyword tool available at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal or the Overture keyword tool available at http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/.

The problem with using the free tools is that your competition is probably using them as well. In order to get a “leg up” you need to go one step further than that.

The process becomes much easier and more effective when you decide to perform your PPC keyword research with a “paid” tool and the one that I have had the most luck with is called “Keywords Analyzer”. Keywords Analyzer has been available for over three years now, with updates being made on a regular basis by its developers, Chris Lee and Goran Nagy.

In addition to generating massive keyword lists, Keywords Analyzer can be setup to display the number of ads that are shown for each keyword in both Adwords and in the Yahoo PPC network. It also displays the number of competing ads on Adwords and Yahoo, the maximum bid prices and much more. Keywords Analyzer makes your PPC keyword research much easier and more effective.

Because Adwords changes its algorithms so often, software applications must be updated on a regular basis to remain functional with the new changes and that is one area where Keywords Analyzer shines. The developers work hard at staying on top of their application, releasing updates whenever necessary to keep up with Google’s changes.

After you have generated your initial keyword list using the PPC keyword research tool of your choice, your keywords will need to be grouped into smaller lists. When advertising in Adwords or any other PPC program, the key to remember is “relevance”. Showing an ad designed for “Adwords software” to someone who has clicked on the keyword phrase “Adwords eBook reviews” is probably not the best strategy. You need to do more than your initial PPC keyword research.

Instead, arrange your keywords into groups that have at least one word in common. In the previous example, it would make sense to have all keyword phrases relating to “Adwords eBooks” in a separate Ad Group from those relating to “Adwords software”. This enables you to then create separate ads more closely targeting whatever it is your viewer is searching for. This will result in a higher CTR for your campaign and should result in a higher sales conversion rate as well.

PPC marketing is an art composed of many pieces besides PPC keyword research that are all woven together. All aspects of your Pay-Per-Click efforts need to be working together and one of the most critical ones is your PPC keyword research. Learning to do PPC keyword research more effectively will be reflected in an increase in your profitability.

John Mann has been a full time affiliate marketer for over three years using Google Adwords and Yahoo PPC marketing on a regular basis. If you would like more information on Keywords Analyzer, his recommended PPC keyword research tool, visit http://www.MannMadeSoftware.com/Keywords-Analyzer.html

PPC keyword research

Author: John Mann
Article Source: EzineArticles.com

There are many reasons why you should use WordPress as a CMS (content management system) in your new website. If the price didn’t convince you (did I mention it’s free?), maybe these other reasons will…

Unlimited Uses

WordPress has unlimited uses and applications. It’s the Swiss Army knife of knives. WordPress can be used to create a personal web site where you can write about your family and friends, share pictures, keep in touch with distant loved ones, and make all of this available from anywhere in the world at any time of the day. You can also use WordPress to create a web site for your business that will allow you to easily publish marketing materials on the Internet. You can also use WordPress to create a personal blog about yourself and use it to meet people that share your likes and dislikes.

Stand-alone Software

WordPress is stand-alone software. This means you don’t have to buy a copy of FrontPage or Dreamweaver to use it. Much less learn how to use any of these programs. Once you install it, you login to the ‘Admin’ page and set it up any way you like. You also use the admin page to publish new posts and articles to the Internet. You also don’t need HTML experience.

Open Source Software

WordPress is released as Open Source software which means that you are allowed to use it free of cost. You can use it for any type of personal or business website without having to pay a single penny for it. It is built on the PHP programming language and the MySQL database server (which is again Open Source), and are both Internet-standard systems that offer a high degree of security and reliability.

User Friendly

You don’t really have to be experienced to use WordPress for your website. Most of today’s web hosting companies give you the ability to install WordPress with a few simple mouse clicks. I highly recommend HostGator. Their administration section is easy to navigate and its even easy to add articles and web pages to your site.

Themes Support

Themes are templates (or layouts) that you can apply to your WordPress website to change the look and feel of it. You will never run short of themes when using WordPress. If you don’t like the themes that come with the default installation of WordPress, you can download different ones from this site. You will find hundreds of free themes on this web site that you can download and use for free. There are themes which can also make your website look like a news site, a personal blog, or a photo gallery.

Plugins Extend Functionality

WordPress plugins allow you to add functionality to your website. They can do just about anything that you want and can be installed in a few mouse clicks as well. For example, if you want to show funny quotes on your website, download the JPF Quotes WordPress Plugin and it will show your favorite random quotes along with a picture of the person saying the quote.

Standards Compliant

WordPress follows all the Web Standards and keeps your blog or website compliant with all the rules that define a proper website. What this means to you is that visitors to your website will not have problems accessing your content because of bad programming by lazy developers. The WordPress developers work hard to ensure that WordPress is 100% compatible.

SEO Friendly

Like it or not, the Internet is mapped by the three big search engines: Google, MSN, and Yahoo. Almost everyone goes to these search engines to search for websites by keywords. These search engines ‘crawl’ your website and then index your website in their system based on your content… this is a good thing. If your website is not indexed, it will never get found by people searching for your website, unless they type your URL directly in their browser. WordPress uses different techniques which optimize it to be search engine friendly, so it can be quickly and easily indexed. For example: sending pings to other sites, making categories, tagging your posts, and the use of h1/h2 tags, etc.

Large community Support

Recent statistics show that WordPress is used on more than 1% of the websites on the Internet in the world. There is a large user community supporting the development of this software. In case you ever run into a problem or want to do something more advanced with your WordPress website, you can go through all the available WordPress forums and communities and find answers for all your questions. More than likely, there are several WordPress users that have run into the same problem as you, or are already doing what you want to do, and they’re more than willing to help you out.

So if FREE and easy wasn’t enough, then hopefully all of these additional benefits of using WordPress have convinced you. If you can think of any other benefits, please visit www.WordPressThemesFor.me and post a comment and download our free WordPress themes.

Enjoy!

Choose from hundreds of WordPress themes and download them free at http://www.WordPressThemesFor.me

Author: Michael Rojas
Article Source: EzineArticles.com

• to get search engine traffic,
• to persuade people to act,
• to increase return on pay per click investment, and
• to analyze the demand and supply of a particular product/market

These “best words” are the words that potential users expect to find on a web page. These are the keywords. The more popular a keyword is with potential clients, and the less popular it is with webmasters the better.

Getting search engine traffic (search engine optimization)

When searching for information on the Internet, surfers (your potential clients, visitors, customers – whichever way you like to call them) use words to locate it using search engines. Search engines look for these words in the text of a web page, its indexable code and/ or in the links pointing to it. These are the words that are important to website owners and hence are known as keywords.

Knowing these keywords and optimizing your web pages accordingly, helps website owners to attract a lot of traffic through search engines.

Keyword research tools help you to identify these and any extra keywords that you may not have thought of by yourself. Not only that, a good keyword research tool should also be able to show you the competition for that keyword. A good example is a free [http://www.keywordenchanter.com]keyword suggestion tool [http://www.keywordenchanter.com] called Keyword Enchanter.

Persuading people to act (Copywriting)

Every web page is created for a purpose (at least we hope so ). Some pages are created to persuade people to buy certain products or services, some to give away things for free etc. To get people to do what you want, you need to demonstrate you can fulfill their needs. So how do you demonstrate this? We use words!

Use keyword research tools to find keywords that your potential customers are trying to use to find information that fulfill their needs. Then use those exact words to persuade them!

Increasing return on pay per click investment

• Pay per click advertising
  This is probably the second most popular use of keyword research tools. After search engine optimization, that is. Keyword bidding or keyword advertising across pay per click networks like Google AdWords is a popular form of advertising. It requires one to research keywords carefully if they are to maximize their return on investment.The more competitors bidding on a certain keyword, the higher the cost per click that keyword is likely to incur for you as an advertiser. In order to minimize costs, one would have to look for keywords that have less competition but enough demand to get the desired traffic.

  Hence we use keyword research tools to find keyword search terms that can minimize our cost per click and yet get us as many click throughs as possible.

• Pay per click publishing
  Publishers, on the other hand, use keyword research tools to find keywords that give them the highest earnings per click and as many click through rates as possible.

Analyzing the demand and supply of a particular product/market

Any serious marketer would tell you that it is very important to assess demand and supply before you dive into any market. When marketing offline there are various techniques one can use to gather this data. This is also true for Internet marketing. Keyword research is one of the tools one can use for gathering this data online. Assessing the number of searches done on search engines for a particular keyword can help us estimate the demand for a particular product or market. Though keyword research tools are NOT the only source of this information, they should not be ignored when carrying out this important research.

So, as you can see, keyword research tools are not only there to help you increase your search engine traffic, but also to carry out other important market research. It is also important to note that some keyword research tools are specific to certain research types.

Author: Rushmore Mushambi
Article Source: EzineArticles.com

Blogger.com (also known as Blogspot) and WordPress are the two most commonly used blogging platforms today. Blogger.com was a pioneer in the blogging industry, allowing users to set up accounts and blog for free beginning in 1999. Blogger.com was purchased by Google in 2003, which enabled it to grow using Google’s resources. Today, Blogger.com has an undisclosed number of millions of users blogging on their system.

WordPress began in 2003 as the successor to another (now relatively unknown) blogging system. It has since become the blog platform of choice for most blogging professionals. There are currently over two million people who are active users of WordPress.com, and there are millions of others who have downloaded various versions of the WordPress code.

Using the Blogger setup mandates that your blog be hosted on their servers. In comparison, blogs running on WordPress’ platform can be hosted at WordPress.com, or the WordPress software can be downloaded and used on your choice of web hosts. Below are some of the key features of Blogger.com versus the two versions of WordPress setups.

Blogger.com Features
Free hosting for up to 1 GB worth of space
Blog content is maintained on Blogger.com web servers
Ability to choose and customize templates (limited flexibility)
Easy to get started; easy to use
Upload and store image files and video files

WordPress.com Features
Free hosting for up to 3GB worth of space
Blog content is maintained on WordPress.com web servers
Ability to choose and customize templates (limited flexibility)
Easy to get started; easy to use
Upload and store image, video, and other (limited) file formats

WordPress Self-Hosted Features
Blog content is maintained on user’s preferred web host
Nearly unlimited ability to choose and customize templates and widgets
Takes some technical ability to setup and configure
Files support limited only by web server, which likely means virtually unlimited

Who Uses Which
A quick perusal of a few the various blogs running on the Blogspot.com domain versus those that use one of the WordPress setups (accounts on WordPress.com and self-hosted blogs using WordPress software) indicates that Blogspot.com is more commonly used for people who blog about their families, pets, and other personal kinds of topics. Compared to WordPress users, Blogger.com users are typically not “professional” bloggers, although there are plenty of Common Joe bloggers who monetize their Blogspot blogs and make a living doing it.

Self-hosted WordPress blogs lean more toward professional entities who have an IT person or department who handles their maintenance. They are often more formal. Because WordPress.com is similar in its functionality to Blogger.com, blogs using WordPress.com are similar to Blogger blogs in content, naturally more casual or personal than self-hosted WordPress blogs.

Cost
Blogspot accounts are free. So are accounts on WordPress.com. However, if you want to do any significant customization of your WordPress.com-hosted blog, you’ll have to pay to upgrade to their Custom CSS membership, which costs $14.97 per year. WordPress.com accounts can be upgraded to give you additional disk space($19.97/year for 5GB up to $89.97/year for 25GB), unlimited user accounts for your blog($29.97/year), and the ability to add videos (Blogger.com naturally has this support built in.) to your blog ($59.97/year). If your blog runs on the WordPress platform downloadable from WordPress.org, your costs are dependent upon your hosting account, which could cost as little as $5.00 per month or as much as hundreds of dollars monthly.

Flexibility
Because WordPress is open source software, it gives experienced bloggers much more flexibility when it comes to customizing a blog. When you download and install WordPress, you have full access to the database and the PHP, CSS, and image files that comprise the WordPress blogging platform. In contrast to Blogger’s platform, having development access to the entire system allows users to be as creative as they want to be. This flexibility does not exist to nearly the extent with accounts that are hosted on WordPress.com. One bonus that WordPress.com does provide is the ability to host files other than simply images. MS PowerPoint files, Word (.doc) and Open Office (.odt) word processing files, and PDF files can be uploaded and stored for use on a WordPress.com account.

Although Blogger allows and encourages users of their setup to customize their blogs adding Google gadgets and changing layouts, I’ve found that there is a lot of guesswork involved when trying to figure out how to manipulate their XML schema, which is used to customize templates beyond adding gadgets and changing layouts. When I customize blogs hosted on Blogger’s system, I often feel like I’m abstracted from their lower level setup. Some of Blogger’s XML tags are documented, but that documentation is sparse. When I’m customizing a Blogspot blog, it’s as if I’m throwing my work over a wall, and then checking to see what I get back. This interface can be frustrating.

A comparison that is noteworthy between each of these blog platforms is the ability to categorize posts. Greater flexibility exists with both WordPress.com-hosted blogs and self-hosted ones using the WordPress software than with Blogger.com. Categories are created using Labels on Blogger.com blogs. This setup does not allow for sub-categories on Blogger account. Sub-categories are a natural part of both WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress blogs.

Ease of Use
For the layman blogger, getting started with blogging on Blogger’s platform is the simplest of tasks. You simply create an account, choose a template, and start writing away. The interface is very straight forward for users of Blogger. WordPress.com are similar, slightly more complicated. WordPress self-hosted blogs require a user to download the software, upload it to a server, configure database settings, and run the installation program included with the software. This process is pretty straightforward for someone with IT experience, but for most other people it is a little intimidating.

Once a blog is setup with any of these platforms, using it is simple enough regardless of which one you choose. However, of all the interfaces, Blogger.com is probably the easiest to understand and navigate.

Security and Updates
WordPress has had a history of vulnerability to hacks. To minimize that risk, it is recommended that users of WordPress be vigilant about maintaining their sites. Specifically, WordPress blog owners hosting their own blogs are encouraged to keep up with current updates.

Blogger users can essentially allow the Blogger development team to worry about hacks. Because the blog data is kept on Blogger’s servers, there is much less likelihood that Blogger sites can be hacked.

Which One’s Best for Me
If your intentions are simply to publish your information to the world without hassling with intense customization and continuing updates, Blogger.com is the way to go. Because most run-of-the-mill bloggers fit into this category, Blogger has the largest number (although nobody knows how many that is) of blogs in the Internet today.

If you have the resources and desire to be more sophisticated in your blogging habits, WordPress is what you should use. Accessibility to the inner workings of WordPress allows it to be used for much more than just a simple online journal. I recently talked to someone who told me his company uses WordPress software as a content management system, performing many of the functions of a CMS such as Joomla.

Richard Robbins is one of the founders of WebsiteTemplateDatabase.com, a resource for blogger templates and website templates.

Author: Richard Robbins
Article Source: EzineArticles.com

Recovering from a WordPress Spam Injection attack is not fun, but you can regain your Google Search Results after being hacked by a spam injection attack. If you’ve been compromised, hopefully you have your website and WordPress blog backed up. It can be a pretty tedious process to go through every file and folder on your server locating and deleting spam files. I recommend backing up your WordPress posts and completely removing all files and databases from your server. Then do a complete fresh upload of your website and a complete reinstall of WordPress.

If you have already been removed from Google Search Results then you will want to notify Google immediately of what has happened. The best policy with Google is to be specific in your explanations. You will need to make sure that you have removed all bad files from your server and then contact Google again explaining what actions you have taken to resolve the situation and submit your “request for reconsideration”. In most cases where a valid site has been hacked Google will restore their sites rankings within two weeks. However, don’t expect any notifications from Google on their progress of reevaluating your website or WordPress blog. I am writing this article in hopes that it will help anyone from having to go through that processs.

What should you look for if you suspect a WordPress Spam Injection Attack?

The first thing you should look for is a list of spammy keywords showing up in your list of keywords located in your Google Webmasters Tools. If you aren’t using Google Webmaster Tools then you should definitely look into this. When your site starts showing up in weird looking search results, which can also be seen in Google Webmaster Tools under search results for your site, you need to act fast because at this point Google will act fast to remove your site from SERPS in order to protect others who may be at risk from visiting your website.

The key to detection is awareness. Be vigilant in monitoring your website and your website’s stats. Spam injections are a clever, effective form of hacking and show no outward signs of infection. However, If you do a Google Site Search for spammy key words like; {site:yoursite.com viagra} you will be able to see if your site is referencing spam keywords. You will not be able to see spam showing up on your site. In order to physically see spam tags in your site you must go to the “cached” version of your web pages and view them in “text mode”. If you’ve been infected you will now be able to see spam keywords, usually appearing as a footer.

What does a Spam Injection Do?

Spam Injection software hides spam keyword links in code that is usually encoded with a PHP function that effectively scrambles html to be decoded once safely embedded on your server, database, etc. You won’t see these files decoded, but the Google Bot and other bots will when crawling your site! Once the Bots access the code the spam injection software has done it’s work, effectively stealing your search index to improve their own pagerank.

These spam injection hacks are very hard to detect software injections inserted into your site, usually on a database level, via templates or plugins. This is part of the reason WordPress is such a target for these attacks. Plugins are what make WordPress so dynamic and cool, but they are an open doorway for spam injection software. For obvious reasons we should all focus our attention on prevention so that you don’t have to deal with detection.

What can I do to prevent a WordPress Spam Injection Attack?

I’ll start with the simplest things you can do to protect your WordPress blog or site from spam attacks first. . .

First: Update WordPress

Updating WordPress is the easiest thing to do, so why not do it? I usually wait a short period of time after a new release to make sure the bug fixes have been worked out. Please be aware that simply updating WordPress is NOT enough!

Second: Pick a good password

Pick a good password. Don’t use the same password on every site. If you’re really diligent you can also change your password regularly.

Third: Change the admin user name

The default WordPress user name is “admin”. This is just a guess, but I suspect that the majority of people never change this. Don’t give any information away. Hackers are clever, but like burglars they would rather move on to the easy score. You can change your admin by creating a new user and then deleting the admin user. You’ll be given the option to migrate posts to another user.

Fourth: Hide your WordPress Version Number

David Kierznowski of blogsecurity.net lately released a simple plugin to hide your wordpress installation version number.
The no version plugin is a simple plugin that will replace the version number with blanks, so anyone doing a view “page source” from the browser on your site will not be able to see your wordpress version.

Fifth: Protect your plugins

Plugins are the easy gateway way for hackers to access your blog. All WordPress files begin with (wp-) by default so, hackers can quickly discover which plugins you’re using by going to /wp-content/plugins/, if you haven’t renamed your database files. A quick remedy to block a blank index.html file in the wp-content/plugins/ folder.

More Complex Procedures:

First: Protecting your WP-Config file.

This file contains your database name, database username and database password. Obviously, you don’t want anyone to have access to something this valuable. If you don’t feel comfortable making changes to your config you may want to contact your hosting company for help otherwise you can add the following code to your .htaccess file:

PHP:

1. # protect wpconfig.php

2. {files wp-config.php}

3. order allow,deny

4. deny from all

5. {/files}

Second: Change your database names

Note: do not attempt this unless you are comfortable with PHPMyAdmin and making changes to MySQL. If you are not comfortable with this you should hire a professional to assist you.

Begin by backing up your database!

Many people have problems with the database table name prefix changing functionality of WP Security Scan. You can manually change your database names following the instructions below.

1. BACKUP your WordPress database to a sql file – you can do this in “phpmyadmin”.

2. You should Deactivate your plugins as a precaution before proceeding. You can reactivate them after you have finished.

3. Make a copy of the .sql file you created, then you can open the .sql file and use a text editor to find and replace all “wp_” prefix to “rename_”.

4. Now, drop all tables of your WordPress databases, but DO NOT drop the database.

5. import the (.sql) file that you have just edited into your wordpress databases.

6. Finish by editing your wp-config.php file and change the $table_prefix = ‘wp_’; to $table_prefix = ‘something_’;

I hope that this article will help someone avoid the fallout associated with a spam injection hack. I love the functionality of WordPress, but unfortunately, this experience has left me so cautious that my company no longer uses a WordPress Blog along with our corporate website. Maybe someday.

I am the art director for a highly rated Website Design Company, graphic design and packaging company. I have many years of experience in website design, WordPress Blog Design and I am security minded in my approach to web development. I truly believe that one of the greatest assets a company can have today is a well designed website combining good looks with intuitive navigation and easy to use functionality topped off with the right amount of search engine optimization and marketing.

Author: Chris London
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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