How do I upgrade my version of Wordpress?

Since Wordpress version 2.7 there is a built-in automatic upgrade feature that can be found a couple of ways.  First and most obvious is on the dashboard.  On the home admin page of Wordpress it displays the version of Wordpress that you are currently using and an option to upgrade if there is a newer version.  Second, click on the tools option on the left-hand side and then choose upgrade.  If you are running an older version than 2.7, which does not have the automatic upgrade feature, then read this.  Please don’t wait, upgrade immediately.

How can I tell if I’ve been hacked?

If the permalinks to your posts look like:

you’ve been hacked!

What do I do if my Wordpress site has been hacked?

First, upgrade Wordpress to the latest version.  Then, find if there are any “hidden” administrators.  If you don’t have lots of registered users the easiest way to find users is in the table “wp_users” (assuming you used the default “wp_” during Wordpress install) in your Wordpress database.  To validate that the user you found has admin rights take the number from the “id” column in your “wp_users” and then look for this id in the “wp_usermeta” and match it to the “meta_key” column.  If the “meta_value” contains administrator, then this user has administrator rights to your Wordpress blog.

I found another great article from Journey etc explaining a different way to find a hidden user.

Then, update your permalinks back to the way they were.  This should get your site functional again.  However, since you’ve been hacked and administrative rights have been compromised, I suggest you keep looking for other pieces of code that may have been inserted.

I also read a great article about this at Lorelle on Wordpress.

1. How to display a login button on Wordpress that doesn’t send users to the backside of Wordpress
2. How to display the logged in users first and last name

Step1

The default login page for Wordpress is http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin.  When you login to Wordpress using this URL it immediately takes you to the backside of Wordpress (not very user friendly).  The URL to allow a user to login and be sent back to the home page of your website is

 and the URL to allow users to logout and be sent back to the home page is

Step2

Now that the user can login/logout,  all that’s left is getting their First and Last name.  The code to get their name is

Conclusion

Now, to put all that together is

Of course, you can use any div name that you want instead of “menutop”.  Below is the CSS that I used for my div

BTW…I placed all of this in my header.php file.

Creating a brand name for your company is very important.  You probably spent a bit of time picking out the name for your company so that it was relevant to what you do, and possibly had a catchy sound to it.  People are used to sending E-mail to addresses that match the business that they are dealing with.  If they don’t match people become suspicious that they might be getting scammed.  It also looks more professional too.

HaggardHosting will direct your your E-mail to a hosted Google service that is free.  If you’re already familiar with Gmail, this is no different.  HaggardHosting is not allowed to sell Google hosted E-mail, however, the setup cost is part of the hosting fees charged.

Included is:

• 100 E-mail addresses with 7GB of storage per E-mail
• Each E-mail comes with a calendar with reminders via E-mail or SMS (cell phone)
• Google Docs – Create/Edit/Colaborate on Word, Excel, and Powerpoint documents online without the need for MS Office

The ability to update your website your self, without the need of contacting your website designer.  With the easy-to-use editor you don’t have to understand HTML or any other website language.  It’s similar to writing a document in MS Word.

• Add/Edit pages
• Upload pictures
• Update schedules/promotions
• Blog
• Change the URL of your pages

The power of marketing is amazing.  Humans get accustomed to seeing certain things (like logos) and immediately recognize and have a sense of comfort with that household product.  The favicon is an excellent branding tool.  Not only does it show up next to the address bar in your browser, but it also is displayed on each tab (assuming you are using a browser that supports tabs), and also in your favorites.  The human eye will focus on the icon as soon as it’s recognized and disregard the text.

To create a favicon you must first have an image that will be your logo.  The image has to be in either 16×16px or 32×32px size and either 8-bit or 24-bit color.  Once your image is selected to easiest way to get it to the proper size/format is to use a website the creates it for you.  Google for the word "favicon" and you will get many hits that will allow you to just upload your image and then you can download the finished result.  Here are a couple of examples:

http://www.favicon.cc/
http://www.html-kit.com/favicon/

Once you have your image upload it to your webserver.  Then, modify the your code between the <head> and </head> of your website with the following text:

If you are using Wordpress this will be in the header.php file within your theme.

I found a free tool that will save you so much time. 

http://www.crossbrowsertesting.com/

This website offers several different browser/operating system combinations.  I used this to find out that Internet Explorer 6 doesn’t support transparent background in PNG files.

Well, if you want your users to be able to click that image as a link to open another website or document it might put a blue hyperlink border around the image.  Most website images are designed that most people understand that it’s a link without the link border.  In fact, most people would consider it a bit old fashioned to see a link border around an image.  You might be using a theme for a CMS like Wordpress or Jumla that has already taken this into consideration.  If not, there are a couple of ways to remove it.

First, you can modify the HTML code directly.  Using the previous example it would look like this:

 Second, you can modify the CSS (Content Style Sheet) which is a much more efficient way.  Using an external CSS allows for all pages to be updated at once.  To use an external CSS you must call it out in the <HEAD> of your HTML.  If you’re using wordpress this is most likely located in the header.php file of your theme.  An example would be:

In Wordpress header.php:

<link rel=”stylesheet” href=”<?php bloginfo(’stylesheet_url’); ?>” type=”text/css” media=”screen” />

In HTML website:

<linkrel=”stylesheet” href=”http://www.haggardhosting.com/wp-content/themes/coolmist/style.css” type=”text/css” media=”screen” />

Then, once you have an external style sheet just add the following as a new line:

img a border:0;

Refresh your website and the border around all images should be gone.

]]> http://www.haggardhosting.com/website-design/removing-img-image-border-using-css/feed/ 0 http://www.haggardhosting.com/technical-instructions/how-to-change-mysql-root-password/ http://www.haggardhosting.com/technical-instructions/how-to-change-mysql-root-password/#comments Mon, 22 Dec 2008 22:00:27 +0000 Glenn Haggard http://www.haggardhosting.com/?p=145 I read a great blog today about SQL tricks for Wordpress and thought I would create an additional SQL blog about an issue a co-worker and I ran into a while ago…”How to change MySQL root password”.  This blog assumes that you have shell access to the server that is running your MySQL database.  If you only have C-panel access then you will just have to contact your provider.  Also, it’s important to understand that the root user for the operating system is not the same as the root user for MySQL.  They are completely separate accounts.

First you must SSH/Telnet to the host that is running MySQL and then type the following command:

$ mysqladmin -u root password NEWPASSWORD

]]> http://www.haggardhosting.com/technical-instructions/how-to-change-mysql-root-password/feed/ 0 http://www.haggardhosting.com/wordpress/wordpress-27-is-released/ http://www.haggardhosting.com/wordpress/wordpress-27-is-released/#comments Thu, 11 Dec 2008 21:52:09 +0000 Glenn Haggard http://www.haggardhosting.com/?p=186 The long anticipated Wordpress 2.7 was released.  It has a great new design to it’s admin page and lot of great new features which you can read about here.  Also, below is a video that you can watch that illustrates some of the new benefits.

]]> http://www.haggardhosting.com/wordpress/wordpress-27-is-released/feed/ 0 http://www.haggardhosting.com/gimp/5-easy-steps-to-create-a-web-20-icon-using-gimp/ http://www.haggardhosting.com/gimp/5-easy-steps-to-create-a-web-20-icon-using-gimp/#comments Thu, 11 Dec 2008 11:00:04 +0000 Glenn Haggard http://www.haggardhosting.com/?p=141 This blog will teach you how to create a button for your website that has a nice look and feel to it.  The contents of this post were created using Gimp version 2.6.2. So, the screens might look a little different than your version.  You can get the latest version and documentation from the Gimp website.  Please leave a message with your feedback about this blog, I’m curious to get others opinions.

Step 1 – create the canvas to work with

Create a new image that is the size of the button that you wish to create by clicking on File from the drop-down menu and then select New.  For this example I’ve chosen 200px by 100px.  I recommend a tranparent background so that your button with seamlessly integrate with whatever color website you place it on.  To set the backgroug transparent click on the “Advanced Options” and choose transparent from the “Fill with” field.  The default “Fill with” is background color (white) which will make your button have a white background even if you put it on a website that has a different color.

Step 2 – create the shell of the button

Before we get started with the button you need to create a new transparent layer and call it “Button”. From the drop-down menu Layer select “New Layer” and change the name to Button.

This will be for applying a shadow later.  Without this first additional layer the shadow affect will apply to the full canvas instead of just your button.  Now using the rectangle tool () create a rectangle.  Then, select the rounded corners option .  The higher the radius the larger the rounded corners will be.  You can move the slide bar left and right and watch the results on the canvas.  Now pick a color to fill your button with.  For this example I chose the color #FCAF3E which is the color of the banner of Gimp’s home page.  Choose the fill tool () and then click on the foreground () and set the color that you want by either pasting the HTML code or just picking from the color palet.  Now, just click in the center of your rectangle and it should look like this:

Step 3 – create glossy affect

Select the rectagle tool again and this time create a rectangle inside the rectangle that you already have.  Make the bottom of this new rectangle start around the middle of the existing rectangle and draw upwards leaving a little bit of room at the top like this:

Now select the gradient tool () and draw a line from the bottom of this new rectangle to the top.  This will create a fading affect from the colors that are in your foreground/background (). It will fade from the foreground (orange in my case) to white (in my case).  Now your image should look like this:

Step 4 – Add some text

Select the text tool () and draw a rectangle where you want your text.  This should be centered vertically and horizontally.  Don’t worry worry if you draw it wrong, it can be moved.  Now, type the text you want in your button.  There are several text options on the left panel that I’m not going to go into.  They are your typical MS word-like tools (font, colors, size, bold, italics, etc.) that allow you to put some pizaz in the text.  Now your button should look like this:

Step 5 – add shadow

Select the layer that you created in the beginning called “Button”.  From the filters drop-down menu select “Light and Shadow”, then “Drop shadow…”.

Now your button should look like this:

Here is an example of the button after saving as PNG and putting it to use on a website .

Here is a copy of my XCF file that I used to create this button.  You can download it and manipulate it within Gimp if you wish.

 

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