WordPress Guides and Stuff

Currently, in my sidebar, there is a link to two of my favorite all-time authors. Brandon Sanderson, and Jaime Buckley.

Jaime Buckley just released a new novel, Wanted:Hero – Race to Til-Thorin. I specifically mention this because, in addition to being an awesome writer, Jaime is also a huge WordPress fan. If you’re looking for a good read, I’d encourage you to pick up the Wanted Hero series.

As a matter of fact, if you want to test it, please just contact me via a comment, or through my email on the About page and I’ll send you a preview of any of his books which I’ve purchased.

Actually, if you read it, please come back and comment about it here. I’d love to know what others think. If you loved it… say so! If you hated it… say so! For each good review I get from you, I’ll provide a bit of free WordPress or BlueHost support. Not that I’m a magical guru who can fix anything… But I can usually give some pretty good advice if nothing else.

As for Brandon Sanderson… He doesn’t use WordPress, but his stuff is still awesome! If you haven’t read it, read it! For the amount of gripping entertainment that the works of these authors provide, I’d say their works rank right up there with J. R. R. Tokien, J.K. Rowling, Terry Brooks, Robert Jordan, and Neil Gaiman. (Disagree?… Tell me so.)

Here’s a little teaser/preview:

And some images of just a few the characters:

I spoke a bit ago on WordPress hacks and security. I’d like to address the same topic very quickly and simply here.

In my years of experience I have noticed that the number one thing that causes WordPress sites to get hacked are outdated plugins and themes. People would save themselves a whole lot of headache if they would simple follow these following rules:

• Don’t keep any plugin/theme, etc., that you aren’t actually using. It will get out of date and, even if it’s deactivated, hackers can still exploit it. Delete anything and everything you can afford to get rid of.
• Be safe and smart on your plugins/themes. Feel free to try out anything you want but, when you’ve decided which ones to keep, be sure to keep them up to date with the latest versions as they come out. (Of course this means keeping WordPress itself up to date too)

That’s the simple checklist… Only two things. And if you can do those two things, you’ll find yourself a lot more likely to be able to keep your site running safely and happily.

With that said there has been one other major issue that I’ve seen causing hacks lately, and that is: insecure passwords.

Please save yourself the trouble by going through and updating your passwords now. Make sure the password to your hosting account, your email addresses, your FTP accounts, etc., and especially to all your WordPress sites (and non-WordPress sites if you have any) are all strong, secure passwords.

Okay… So they haven’t added it yet, as of this post, but I just came across this fancy page which shows that they are going to add it: https://my.bluehost.com/cgi/comingsoon

If you register in advance there’s a price reduction bonus.

We don’t know much other than what’s on that page there, but they say to expect VPS/Dedicated options sometime early 2013.

(Happy Holidays!)

Hackers are everywhere on the internet. WordPress is one of the more secure pieces of software that is available, but when it is the most popular site-builder in the world today, it is also a desirable target for hackers.

Security is very important! For anyone who has ever been hacked and had their site compromised, lost data, offended readers with content they didn’t put there, etc., you will understand how important it is.

For those who do not understand this… You should just believe it.

Okay… So you believe it? Now what?
Head on over to http://www.wpsecuritychecklist.com/ and download the WordPress Security Checklist.

Don’t be afraid that it looks a little long. It’s not too terribly difficult to understand and, even if you don’t understand it all, you’ll learn valuable things from it!

Happy safe blogging (Or whatever else it is you do besides blog).

Some say that their Contact Form-7 plugin won’t work on BlueHost, but it actually will work if setup properly. Here’s how to fix your Contact Form-7 to Work with BlueHost.

There are two rules:
1) You MUST use an email address that exists in your “Email Accounts” icon in your cPanel. If you didn’t create the email address in your cPanel, it won’t work. (Note that, even if BlueHost isn’t handling your mail/MX, this will still work as long as you create the email address in the Email Accounts icon)

2) You MUST specify the above-mentioned email address in your FROM header in the “Message body” section of Contact Form 7.

By default, the setting is:

FROM:  [your-name] (your-email)

Setup an email account in your cPanel, and then replace [your-name] (your-email) with any name you desire, and the email address you have created.

In the image below, notice how I set my From to be:

From: Eddy <steady@wordpress.shadowlantern.com>

As long as your From uses a valid email address which exists in the Email Accounts icon in your cPanel, then your form should work properly.