Are you one of those people who believe that every WordPress backup plugin is the same? If so, you are not alone. This is something that many people believe, for one reason or the next.

Although there are many options out there, some of which appear to have the same features, you need to realize that each one is unique in some way, shape, or form. In other words, no two backup plugins are created equal. If you don’t believe this to be true, if you simply choose the first one you find, you may end up disappointed with the end result.

There are many features that are important in a WordPress backup plugin.

• Reliability. Above all else, you need to find a plugin that is reliable. If you don’t believe that the plugin is doing its job, day in and day out, you are going to find yourself worried about what the future holds. And worse yet, if something does go wrong, and your worries of it being unreliable are accurate, you could have a big problem on your hands.
• Offsite backups. Are you interested in sending your backups to your Dropbox account, for example? How about your email? The ability to do so is very convenient.
• Simple restore process. It is one thing to rely on a WordPress backup plugin. While you hope you never have to use it, if the time does come you want to make sure the process is as simple as possible.

Now that you have a better idea of which features make for the best WordPress backup plugin, let’s take a closer look at two that standout in the crowd.

First, one of the best paid WordPress backup plugins: BackupBuddy

With BackupBuddy, you are able to do three things: backup, restore, and move (migrate).

While the backup process is what is most important, it is good to know that you can restore your site within a few minutes and a couple clicks of the mouse. For those who don’t know the first thing about WordPress site maintenance, this is a big benefit. Additionally, if you ever need to move your website to another domain or server, this is the plugin that makes your life much easier. Believe it or not, you can move your website direct from your WordPress dashboard. This is a one of a kind feature.

There are three pricing options, ranging from $80 to $150 depending on how many sites you have. For most the $80 option is all you need. If you are a web developer or manage other people’s sites, you may need to opt for the Business or Developer options.

Free WordPress Backup Plugin: BackUpWordPress

For those who don’t want to pay to backup their WordPress site, BackUpWordPress is the way to go. With this plugin, you can backup your entire site, including your database and all files, based on a schedule that works for you.

Some of the most desirable features offered by this plugin include:

• Simple to use with no setup required
• Can work with shared hosting
• Ability to use on both Windows and Linux servers
• Exclude files and folders that don’t need backed up
• Backups can be emailed to you upon completion
• Supports multiple languages

Not all WordPress backup plugins are created equal. There are many to consider, with two of the best being BackupBuddy and BackUpWordPress. When searching for a backup plugin, be sure to consider the most important features, as noted above, as well as any special requirements your website may have. $80 might seem expensive to you for a WordPress plugin, but consider how much work it might take to rebuild your site if it is hacked or your server crashes.

The post Proof that All WordPress Backup Plugins are NOT Created Equal appeared first on My WP Pro.

Think you site is too small to be bothered with? You are probably wrong. They are probably attacking it right now. Really. We are talking about a botnet of 50,000 machines or more attack millions of WP sites.

Here is what you should do right now.

Change you password to something strong.

• 8 to 12 characters long.
• Use upper and lower case letters.
• Use numbers
• Use special chanters (e.g. %, $, #, @ etc)

“TY6a&i$St” is an example of a good password. Do not use my example, make up your own! Write it down to remember it or use a good password manager like LastPass.

Install a plug to limit login attempts. I recommend one of these:

• WordFence – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordfence/ and enable the “”Ban on invalid login option.
• or you can also try, Limit Login Attempt plugin – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/limit-login-attempts/ which can also help.

In time you should also consider changing you administrative username if you are using the default, “admin”.

There are lesson to learned here.

1. If you have a WP site, no matter how small, you need to take security seriously
2. Using “admin” as your username is a serious mistake. Shockingly it is still the WordPress default!
3. If you get hacked, a secure backup in an off-site location is the best possible way to fix tour site.
4. While this attack is new, these sorts of hack attempts happen all the time. This is a time of increased activity not an unusual situation.

Take care folks, it is a dangerous Internet out there.

Update: iThemes, makers of the fabulous BackupBuddy plugin, has the best write up I have seen on this matter with an excellent write up on what to do if you are hacked.

The post Massive, worldwide WP attack happening now appeared first on My WP Pro.

Like I said, old.

Recently I was wrestling with a phpLD script that I have had for years and never did anything with. Version 5 was recently released and I figured I would finally set it up. phpld is nice but honestly I am so attuned to WordPress that I needed to check around to see if there was a viable option for it.

Although there are some free options available they did not seem up to the standard that I was looking for. In my search I also came up with a number of commercial directory WP templates and began hunting for reviews. After reading several I narrowed down my choices to Vantage or DirectoryPress which seemed the best of the bunch and had at least some decent reviews. I tried to avoid their sales pages so as to not get sold before I read more reviews.

One thing that didn’t occur to me was how relevant and current “local” has become. Remember I purchased phpld *years* ago and to me a directory is a bunch of business listings with contact info and a web site link. Old school, yes, I’m old.

Fortunately I was lucky enough to find this fabulous review (thanks Matt!) which straightened me out quite well. To be honest I still have yet to decide between the two options but only because I can see using both on different project.

I will write separate updates once I get a chance to work with these themes but don’t hold your breath, it will take some time.

The post Excelent Geo-Directory Review appeared first on My WP Pro.

Get me out of here!

One of the risks of using free, hosted services on the web is control and privacy. As has been seen time after time, changes in online platforms have violated users privacy and generally left them with little recourse to control uploaded pictures, comments and updates that they thought or once were private.

Some services for better of worse do not let you delete content or accounts for various reasons. In some cases they simply lack the mechanism to give users that control and in others, past content is purposely kept out of the control of the user. This is one of those cases where not reading those terms of service agreements (and who does?!) can come back and bite you.

In this case we are discussing WordPress.com. How do you delete your WordPress account? You can’t. For whatever reason they have decided that user will not be allowed to delete their account. Perhaps they are protecting themselves from having abusive users delete the traces of their misdeeds? Might be, but I suspect it is part of their business plan i.e. vendor lockin. Have you noticed all of their upsells?

So what to do? Here is what I suggest

1. Delete any blogs you have created. Instructions here.
2. Change your personal information to something made up. Think of it as your temporary pen name.
3. Create a new free email address at Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail or whatever you would like.
4. Use the email account you just created to replace your email address used in your wordpress.com account. Instructions here.

So at least now you have deleted any public content, removed your personal information and removed your real email from their system. Put it behind you and move on.

Two last thoughts.

Never use free accounts/services for anything important. If you are building a web site for a business or something important to you, pay for the service so that YOU have control over it. Free services are not free. Web hosting, storage and bandwidth costs money. There is a business reason that these services are being given away and it is not to serve you.

Be careful about what you post online. You never know when a security breech or change in privacy policy might reveal details you would prefer to keep private. As we have seen in the press people have lost their jobs over postings on social media – take care of yourself online.

The post How to Delete a WordPress Account appeared first on My WP Pro.

It is quite an old post but it still meaningful today.

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Fighting spam is Spy vs Spy stuff (if anyone is old enough to remember that).

Did: You see, Gaz? To defeat my enemy, first I must study my enemy, then become my enemy, then move in with my enemy, then wear my enemy’s clothes, then…
Gaz: You’re in my light.
— Invader Zim

So I set out to understand better how spammers do their deeds. Engineer by training, I crave understanding how things work. Let’s see if I can lay this out logically.

Acquire Target(s)
First spammers need targets. Not 1 or 2 or 10 – lots – hundreds – thousands. How do they find them? How do you find things? Google. Yeah. That is hundreds of millions of WordPress sites many of which will have insecure or at least ineffectively secured comment forms.

Lesson: Remove footprints. Does your site footer give you away? Fix it. There is a lot more to do here but changing the footer alone can make a difference.

Release the Hounds
Now that the targets have been acquired, the would-be spammer then goes to each site, scans the article, finds the comment form, types some stuff related to the article in with links to whatever and off to the next search result. Why a hard-working spammer might be able to leave a dozen comments an hour or more if they are really motivated!

HAHAHAHA yeah, right. Spammers will not be working so hard to leave a few comments here and there. Of course this has all been automated. Everything from registering email addresses, creating forum accounts, auto-responding to email confirmations, leaving comments etc all at the touch of a button.

But, but, but I have a CAPCHA!
That is great. Your are making your site hard to use for your visitors with poor vision, dyslexia or are simply not good at them. And you are still getting spam. So you decide you need to make the CAPCHA harder. Now your site visitors have no interest in leaving a comment at all and yet you are still collecting junk.

Sorry to tell you but the popular CAPCHA systems are dead. Honestly when I figured this out it made my head spin. Did you know there are outsourced CAPCHA solving services that make your word puzzle nothing more than an inconsequential speed bump?

Lesson: Don’t use reCAPCHA. Do use anything else. Set your CAPCHA puzzle to the simplest setting or use the simplest CAPCHA system you can find.

Not All Spammers Are Created Equal
It might seem like it is hopeless. It is.

Here are the facts. Good determined spammers will spam you. They have the smarts, the knowledge, the tools, and the labor.

Fortunately most spammers are not good at what they do, or determined, smart, knowledgeable, equipped or hard-working. These are the ones we can stop.

As I showed above, anyone can produce a list of hundreds of millions of sites to spam however that list is not so easy to use as it turns out. Here are their options.

• Hire an outsourcer. Turns out managing people is hard. Getting them to do what you want or understand what it is they are supposed to do is difficult. If you are paying them $2/hour that means they don’t know how to do it themselves. If you are great at managing people, why would you bother spamming websites?
• Buy a tool. The better spamming tools run $100+ per month to use. They come with frequently updated lists of targets, profiles that work around security measures and integrated CAPCHA solving. Content is spun (randomly rewritten) so it doesn’t leave a footprint and connections are made via proxies. You probably wont beat these sorts of tools but again there are not a lot of spammers who will afford these tools. The ideas and plugins in the WordPress Spam section will defeat the cheaper spamming tools. Those tools can only really effectively exploit insecure sites unless they are driven by the semi-mythical brilliant spammer.
• Use the side door. Software has bugs. Bugs can be exploited to do things that the authors did not intend. What if a simple programming script could go to those 400 million WP sites and on the vulnerable ones drop a link into an old post that linked to a malware download or other unsavory site?  It can happen. Many site owners do not regularly update their WordPress install to protect against these sorts of threats.

In conclusion, be Smart. Keep WP, plugins and themes up to date. Don’t use an annoying, broken CAPCHA system. Read my WordPress SPam section and do the basics to secure your site.

Want to learn more? Google the dark side. I am certainly not advocating the use of these products.

deathbycaptcha
senuke
scrapebox

The post Spy vs Spy – Reverse Engineering Spam appeared first on My WP Pro.

For example, I *used* to have a hosting account with a well-known provider. I noticed one day that my sites were loading very slowly (several seconds). Since it was a managed service I imagined a system administrator swat team swinging to action, repelling down the side of the building to the server rooms to sort the trouble out.

As it turns out, not so much…

The next day the sites were still loading slowly. So I tried to log into cPanel for my site which took ages to get into. From cPanel I could see that the server load was very high (way over 10). I submitted a ticket. And waited. And waited.

The next day my sites were loading ok. Not fast but not nearly as poorly as before. Still no reply to my ticket but I figured they worked out the issue and didn’t feel the need to respond.

So imagine my surprise when I did get a response the day after that, saying that the server load was fine and there is nothing to worry about. Huh? Did they even look into the issue or did it resolve on its own?

That is no way to run a business like web hosting and that is not a situation you want for your website. A slow loading website can mean loss of sales and a poor impression of your company’s image.

So YOU need to keep an eye on your site’s (or server’s) health. Fortunately it is easy! Although there are many server monitoring tools available, some do a LOT more than others. Take for example the simple uptime monitors. One of the best free ones (imho) is Uptime Robot.

Uptime Robot is a free service that checks the status of your website ever 5 minutes. If your site goes off-line, it will tell you. Although I only use the email notification, the site says “Get alerts by e-mail, SMS, Twitter, RSS or push notifications for iPhone/iPad.”

Uptime Robot is a wonderful free service, however, you can go a BIG step further even for simple website monitoring. CopperEgg is an amazing service with a generous free option. CopperEgg has inter-linkable services that monitor servers (RevealCloud) as well as websites (RevealUptime). You can use both separately but together they are a very powerful tool.

We do offer a developer plan, which allows you to monitor one server and two websites for free. No Credit Card is required. If you choose not to continue with a paid plan at the end of your trial, you can opt into the developer plan. Note, you will be responsible for removing any servers and websites that are over your the developer plan limit in order to see your systems in the UI and receive alerts. – CopperEgg website

I am sure I am sounding like I am selling these services – but I am not. They are just that good and the free plans are the best in the business in my opinion.

http://copperegg.com/

http://www.uptimerobot.com/

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http://hosting.ber-art.nl/wordpress-cheat-sheets/

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1. (white hat) SEO – If you have a keyword that you are promoting on your site, having pages link to a page optimized for those keywords can improve ranking. Basically you are telling the search engines, “If you are looking for keyword, it is on this page I am pointing to.” Inner linking on your website is a form of on-page SEO.
2. Utility – If you have pages on your site that explain something or give instructions to do something, linking related words to those pages can be a benefit to your visitors. One example might be if you have a glossary pages, automatically linking technical terminology to it would be nice. Another example you will see in a moment when I use the magic words, How to install  plugin.

SEO Smart Links – Tech Level: Intermediate Low – Risk: Low

Since you will be making changes across your site and using pattern matching, there can be unexpected results. So take a little care and everything will be fine. You can do any lasting damage, so go ahead and experiment.

So now you can see it in action when I say…

How to install a plugin

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