Recently there was a big security scare for WordPress users. A “worm” (a form of automated malicious software) was traveling around the Internet trying to break into unsuspecting WordPress users’ sites. Even high-profile bloggers like Robert Scoble were caught without adequate file and database backups in place. Scoble lost a bunch of posts, and said he felt less certain of WordPress as a result.

But the fact is, Scoble should have backed up his site. At the very least, he should have checked with his host to see if they create automatic backups. (You should do the same with your host. Why wait until after something goes wrong to find out?!) If you don’t know how to backup your MySQL database and the files in your wp-content directory, now is a good time to learn. Your web host should be able to help. If not, let me know. If your site is hosted on WordPress.com, no worries! They make backups for you. However, you might want to do a Tools > Export in the WordPress Dashboard (save the .xml file to your hard drive) just in case! Unless you have an explicit agreement with WordPress.com about backing up your data, don’t expect to hold them responsible for data loss on your site.

Here are two good posts about WordPress security inspired by the latest worm scare:

How to Keep WordPress Secure
by Matt Mullenweg - WordPress.org

Old WordPress Versions Under Attack by Lorelle VanFossen

The first thing everyone with a self-hosted (non-WordPress.com) WordPress site should do is this:
Create a new User account with a not-so-simple username. The default username that comes with WordPress is “admin”. That usually comes with a crazy-difficult password. Unfortunately, most people then change the password to something easy like “mydogname” or whatever.

Worms trying to hack into your WordPress site know to try “admin” as a username because it works probably 70% or the time or more! Then they just have to hack your simple password and they’re done.

So do yourself a favor. Login to WordPress. Go to Users (under Appearance) > Add New User. Use a difficult username, something with upper and lower case letters at the very least. Not something obvious. Then use a difficult password, something with upper and lower case letters, at least one numeral and one special character like * or ( or % etc. Don’t worry about the username displaying as your name on the site. You can enter your first and last name, and then use the dropdown menu to tell WordPress to use that instead of the username after blog posts and such. Be sure to note the email address you use for your site admin (under Settings > General). You can use a different email address for each new user account you create.

After you have created the new user account, log out and then login with the new account to make sure it works. After you have done that, you can delete the admin user account. That way, worms won’t be able to use that username to hack into your site.

Again, this is the simplest way to improve security on your WordPress website or blog.

The decision to shut down GeoCities rather than sell it or do something more creative like partner with another business to keep it going is short-sighted, and, in my opinion, sends the message that Yahoo! is willing to put profit before customer satisfaction. It’s probably driven almost completely by the desire to show a profit in the short term. That would explain why the best alternative Yahoo! can come up with is offering GeoCities users its paid hosting service.

There are many other alternatives like WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress that have - without setting out to do so - essentially replaced services like GeoCities.

Someone with vision and initiative at Yahoo! might have gone to a service like WordPress.com to see how they could partner to provide GeoCities users with - at the very least - a smooth transition to another platform or, even better, an arrangement that would let Yahoo! keep a connection with the thousands of apparently satisfied GeoCities users. Instead, they dump out the baby with the bath water hoping to cut their losses. Maybe they think no one will notice.

Matt Mullenweg gives an overview of the GPL and how it benefits WordPress, why WordPress is licensed under the GPL, how the GPL fosters innovation, affects themes and plugins, and creates value. Here is a directory of premium theme authors who support the GPL.

Laura Fitton has a new book for “beginners” - which is about 90% of us! Twitter for Dummies.

There are literally thousands of Twitter how-to’s online. Here are my favorites, in no particular order. I’m hoping to get your suggestions about more. Rowse, Brogan, Stelzner, Owyang, Walling of ReadWriteWeb - these are all some of social media’s best and brightest. Definitely follow them in one way or another.

ProBlogger: How to Use Twitter - Tips for Bloggers

Chris Brogan: 50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business

CopyBlogger: How to Use Twitter to Grow Your Business

ReadWriteWeb: How to Use Twitter for Business: An Official Guide Finally Arrives

Jeremiah Owyang: How I use Twitter, and you?

Here’s a taste from the review:

Today building an online brand is something anyone can do. In fact, even if you are not online, your brand is being created for you by the search engines and by other people who are. The tools that social media superstar Chris Brogan has used to create one of the most successful online brands ever are available to everyone, and most of them are free. In this new media ecosystem, some business strategies that used to work will now lead to extinction. We can’t expect old business models - like pushing ads out to thousands of subscribers – to have the desired effect on new channels like mobile phones. [Read more…]

Joel speaks from experience and, imo, he is right on target. Would love your comments. Let me know what you think.

At least for Google’s web search results currently (September 2009), the answer is no. Google doesn’t use the “keywords” meta tag in our web search ranking.

He notes that the “description” meta tag is used to determine what a page is about, and it is also used as the short summary that is part of a web page listing when it appears in a Google search results page.

Matt Cutts: Google Does Not Use Keywords Meta Tag

The “description” and “keywords” meta tags usually appear at the top of the HTML for a web page. They are not visible in the web browser unless you select View > Page Source or View > Source.

Google will display the contents of the “description” meta tag as part of the information in a search results page listing when it is useful information for human visitors. If there is no description meta tag or the information is not especially relevant, Google may use information from the visible web page instead.

For the McBuzz.com home page, Google uses the contents of the “description” meta tag in the search results listing.

http://www.wordcampseattle.com/2009/09/ignite-at-wordcamp-seattle/

You’ll find a link that says “View Poll”. Click there to take the poll. Estimated time required: 60 seconds. Estimated brain power required: 0.01 calories.

I’ve got an opportunity to present at WordCamp Seattle (a conference for users and developers of WordPress), and voting is open to members of my social network.

My topics are:

The Untimely Demise of the Webmaster, a Historical Journey, as Told by Stephen Colbert

and
WordPress and the Social Web

Thank you!

The first one is called “Mr. Redundant”. It’s the guy - or gal - on Twitter that feels the need to tweet more than a couple times about his latest amazing blog post. Apparently, the first couple of tweets didn’t drive much traffic. It’s best to concentrate on reading other people’s blogs for a while and commenting there, golden rule-like.

The second installment is called “The Gratuitous Autogenerated ‘Thanks for following’”.

Here’s another: The “Hey, look, someone really likes me” retweet.

What are some of your favorite missteps on Twitter? Share ‘em up (in the comments below or anywhere else you like) and I will post them!

Here’s “The utterly self-absorbed, Don’t-you-wish-you-knew-what-I’m-talking-about? tweet”

“The Unintentionally Redundant Double-Followed Tweet”

and “The ‘I will retweet to win’ tweet.”

You can find new recipes using a search engine that gathers material from all over the Web. The site is particularly good at helping you cook meals with leftovers. You can post and rate your favorite recipes with other cooks around the world. And you can download award-winning recipe software for Windows and the iPhone!

They have been getting press coverage that most startups would give their eyeteeth for. Read more on Steve Murch’s blog, and check out this short TV piece about BigOven on ABC Evening News Los Angeles.

Here’s the best overview of the new features in WordPress 2.8 that I have found.

WordPress 2.8 - Introducing New Features

WordPress version 2.8 introduces a ton of great new capabilities, in many cases incorporating things you used to have to install plugins to do. In version 2.7, it became possible to install plugins using the Dashboard - no more FTP required. Now in 2.8, you can browse and install themes the same way: directly from the Dashboard.

In both cases, you need to be using the “full”, “WordPress.org” version of WordPress on a third-party host. (You can’t add plugins or themes to WordPress.com sites.) And, to my knowledge, it’s not possible to install premium themes using the Dashboard. You still have to use FTP for those.

There are many more great features in 2.8. It is truly amazing that this software is free, and you can customize it any way you want.

One of the coolest features of WordPress version 2.8 is that you can now have more than one instance of the same type of widget in different sidebars. This makes widgets even more versatile than before. In fact, the possibilities are almost unlimited.

What do I mean? Well, as a simple example, consider the fact that you used to be able to add the “Blogroll” widget (now called the “Links” widget) only one time, into one sidebar. You could create multiple link categories and custom links for each category, but you could only have a single instance of those links in your sidebar, which displayed all the categories together. I have tutorials that show how to do this:
How to Make Menus of Links Using the Blogroll
How to Make Menus of Links Using the Blogroll – PART TWO
(These tutorials use an older version of WordPress - the now outdated v 2.3 - but the technique is still the same.)

Now in version 2.8, you’ll notice that you can drag the Links widget into the same sidebar more than once, and then select a different category for each instance. You can also put a Links widget into your second sidebar (if you have more than one sidebar), and if you have a theme that allows for different sidebars on different pages, you can have different custom links on every page! This is huge. (If you wanted to do this before v 2.8, you had to hack the PHP for your theme!) I need to do a video tutorial to show you how all this works, but if you try it, you will quickly see how powerful it is.

And that’s just one example using the Links widget. You can have multiple instances of any widget, not just Links.