Block a Country

If you are finding that your is benefiting from countless unwanted, undesired visitors from certain governmental jurisdictions, there is something you can do about it.  Actually the solution is quite simple and is explained in excellent detail at Block-a-Country. Rather than fight these undesireables a single IP at a time… the instructions on Block-a-Country.  It took me about 45 minutes to block three countries on 20 sites.

I apologize to anyone from one of the countries I’ve blocked, if you are one of the good guys.  But certain nations seem to think that the Internet is a place to abuse the good graces of … well you get it.

Keep your and information a bit safer; you can do it.

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If you are a Linux user like I am (Ubuntu is the distro I use), this brief tutorial may be of some help to you. In order to Tomboy so it publishes to your  BLOGS via ATOM do the following:

  • Use Synaptic to install the Post note to your
  • restart Tomboy if it was running so that the loads
  • go to your
  • Open Settings >>Writing and place a check (tick) mark next to the item labeled “Enable the Atom Publishing Protocol.”
  • Open Tomboy go to Edit >> Preferences >> Add-Ins >> >> Post note to your >> Preferences and use your , URL; your URL should look like http://<blog_url>/wp-app.php/posts

If this does not work you may need to update your .htaccess file.  Mine looks like the following:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

# BEGIN
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

# END

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For those of you out there interested in seeing a genealogy built using ‘mostly’ , please visit ManyRoads.  Obviously the is one of mine (my family genealogy).  However, I think it provides a pretty decent example of what you can do to slice and dice a ‘bunch’ of information into a ‘pretty useful’ format.

I have tried to use a for the genealogy database backend (TNG).  remains a problem for that , in that it does not work for me.  However I do have a single set of logins between the two systems and databases when used in the manner seen on the . As is likely obvious, the ManyRoads uses a large number of plugins including (Revised list as of 29 January 2010):

  • Akismet - Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You need a .com API key to use it. You can review the spam it catches under “Comments.” To show off your Akismet stats just put <?php akismet_counter(); ?> in your template. See also: WP Stats .
  • All in One SEO Pack - Out-of-the-box SEO for your . Options configuration panel | Upgrade to Pro Version | Donate | Support | Amazon Wishlist
  • AStickyPostOrderER - AStickyPostOrderER lets you customize the order in which posts are displayed per category, per tag, or over-all, in 2.3+ . Useful when using as a Content Management System. Now with pagination of post lists.
  • AVH First Defense Against Spam - This gives you the ability to block spammers before content is served.
  • Bad Behavior - Deny automated spambots access to your PHP-based Web .
  • Category Order- The Category Order allows you to easily reorder your categories the way you want via drag and drop.
  • cforms- cformsII offers unparalleled flexibility in deploying contact forms across your . Features include: comprehensive SPAM protection, Ajax support, Backup & Restore, Multi-Recipients, Role Manager support, Database tracking and many more. Please see ____HISTORY.txt for what’s new and current bugfixes.
  • Collapsing Blogroll- Output the built-in blogroll where the shortcode [collroll] is placed in the post/page. The categories can be collapsed.
  • Count Per Day- Counter, shows reads per page; today, yesterday, last week, last months … on dashboard and widget.
  • Dagon Design Sitemap Generator- Generates a fully customizable sitemap
  • EG-Series- Better organize and highlight your posts by grouping them into series.
  • Enhanced Links- Allows to get better control over the links listing. Also provides a widget view of the links. Please make a donation if you are satisfied.
  • Enhanced Recent Posts- A for which enhances the built-in “Recent Posts” widget. Please make a donation if you are satisfied.
  • Exclude Pages from Navigation- Provides a checkbox on the editing page which you can check to exclude pages from the primary navigation. IMPORTANT NOTE: This will remove the pages from any “consumer” side page listings, which may not be limited to your page navigation listings.
  • Flexi Pages Widget- A highly configurable sidebar widget to list pages and sub-pages. User friendly widget control comes with various options.
  • Global Post Password- Enables you to define a global password for all password-protected posts. Click here to change the password.
  • Google XML Sitemaps- This will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com to better index your .
  • Hana Flv Player- The best way to embed Flash Player and Flash movie in your . Includes GPL Flowplayer and OS FLV player. Usage: [hana-flv-player video='/source_video.flv' /]
  • Hungred Feature Post List- This is design for hungred.com and people who face the same problem! Please visit the page for more information.
  • Just One Category- On a category’s archive page do not show posts from that category’s children categories unless those posts are also a member of the original category in question. Based on Front Page Categories by Ryan Boren.
  • List category posts- List Category Posts allows you to list posts from a category into a post/page using the [catlist] shortcode. This shortcode accepts a category name or id, the order in which you want the posts to display, and the number of posts to display. You can use [catlist] as many times as needed with different arguments. Usage: [catlist argument1=value1 argument2=value2].
  • My Page Order- My Page Order allows you to set the order of pages through a drag and drop interface. The default method of setting the order page by page is extremely clumsy, especially with a large number of pages.
  • NextGEN Gallery- A NextGENeration Photo gallery for the Web 2.0.
  • OpenBook- Displays a book’s cover image, title, author, and other book data from Open Library.
  • p2pConverter- This allows you to easily convert a post to a page and vice versa through an easy to use interface. You may either click on your Manage tab in Administration, and you will see a Convert option under Posts and Pages sub-tabs, or click Convert while editing a post or page in the bottom right side bar. A p2pConverter role capability prevents unwanted users from converting pages (i.e. only Administrators and Editors have this ability), which can be adjusted by using a Role Manager .
  • Page Links To- Allows you to point pages or posts to a URL of your choosing. Good for setting up navigational links to non-WP sections of your or to off- resources.
  • pageMash- Manage your multitude of pages with pageMash’s slick drag-and-drop style, ajax interface. Allows sorting, hiding and organising of parenting.
  • PollDaddy Polls- Create and manage PollDaddy polls and ratings in
  • RB Internal Links- Link to other posts and pages without specifying the full URL. Uses a UI to ease finding the post or page you want to link to.
  • Redirection- Manage all your 301 redirects and monitor 404 errors
  • Secure - Little basics for secure your -installation.
  • SEO Smart Links- SEO Smart Links provides automatic SEO benefits for your in addition to custom keyword lists, nofollow and much more.
  • SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam- Adds CAPTCHA anti-spam methods to on the comment form, registration form, login, or all. This prevents spam from automated bots. Also is and BuddyPress compatible. Settings | Donate
  • SidebarTabs- sidebarTabs allows you to easily widgets into Tabs
  • Simple Tags- Extended Tagging for 2.8 and 2.9 ! Autocompletion, Suggested Tags, Tag Cloud Widgets, Related Posts, Mass edit tags !
  • Snazzy Archives- Snazzy Archives is a visualization for your which creates completely unique archive pages.
  • Social Bookmarks- Adds a list of XHTML compliant graphic links at the end of your posts that allow your visitors to easily submit them to a number of social bookmarking sites. Use the options under Dashboard > Social to configure it.
  • Subpage Listing- Displays a directory-like listing of subpages where <!–%subpages%–> exists in the content of pages. It will be displayed if a page is blank. txfx_wp_subpages() can be used to display subpages in the sidebar. See this ’s for details.
  • TNG Integration- Integrates TNG (The Next Generation of Genealogy) with .
  • Topsy Retweet Button- Provides a Twitter retweet button powered by Topsy.
  • -- Way of making Internet and Intranet information easily accessible
  • Visitor Maps and Who’s Online- Displays Visitor Maps with location pins, city, and country. Includes a Who’s Online Sidebar to show how many users are online. Includes a Who’s Online dashboard to view visitor details. The visitor details include: what page the visitor is on, IP address, host lookup, online time, city, state, country, geolocation maps and more. No API key needed. Settings | Donate
  • Download Monitor- Manage on your , view and show hits, and output in posts. If you are upgrading Download Monitor it is a good idea to back-up your database first just in case. You may need to re-save your permalink settings after upgrading if your stop working.
  • WP-phpMyAdmin- Provides phpMyAdmin from the console
  • WP-PostViews- Enables you to display how many times a post/page had been viewed. Modified by David Potter to include options for when and where to display view counts.
  • WP-Print- Displays a printable version of your ’s post/page.
  • wp-scanner activator- This adds <!- wpscanner -> to enable wp-scanner to scan your .
  • WP-SpamFree- An extremely powerful anti-spam that virtually eliminates comment spam. Finally, you can enjoy a spam-free ! Includes spam-free contact form feature as well.
  • WP Render Blogroll Links- Outputs your Blogroll links to a Page or Post. Add [wp-blogroll] to a Page or Post and all your links/Blogrolls will be rendered. This extremely simple plug-in enables you to create your own Links page without having to write a custom template.The output can easily be styled with . Each category with its links is encapsulated in a DIV with a classname called “linkcat”. All the links are attributed with the class “brlink”.
  • WP to Twitter- Updates Twitter when you create a new post or add to your blogroll using Cli.gs. With a Cli.gs API key, creates a clig in your Cli.gs account with the name of your post as the title.
  • YD Zoomify- This allows for simple insertion of a Zoomify zoomable web image in a post content, page or template.

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Of late, it has come to my attention that someone is stealing this ’s (my) content.

I guess I should be honored that I am writing something that someone finds useful.  On the other hand, it offends my sensibilities that these folks did not have the common courtesy to request the right to reproduce my content — which by the way, I would have granted– or provide a link to or mention of my original posting. Afterall as a publisher I want people to read my materials.

Anyway I found a wonderful posting on Lorelle’s that provides a brief how-to guide on dealing with content theft. I highly recommend you read Lorelle’s  articles/ post s on the subject (and there are quite a few).

As for my journey into this realm, I’ll add brief notes of what I have done in this post (so watch for updates here):

  1. My first activity was to send the offending a Cease & Desist demand (you can find on how-to write these by searching the web).  In the demand, I allowed that even at this late stage I would grant them permission to use my content if they met certain conditions such as asking me for permission and providing links to the original pages. This action was not as easy to accomplish as you might think.  Their has no contact page… so I posted the cease and desist demand as a comment to every posting of mine that I could easily find as a Comment.

more soon….

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One of the handy items worth doing with a website is highlighting specific content.  It turns out that there are a number of plugins available capable of doing the work, to one degree or another. However, for me there is one that stands above the crowd:

=== d13slideshow ===

The beauty of this tool is that it does what most of the others can but it does not conflict with the plugins I use.  If you want to see the in action you may view it on two of my personal sites:

Each provides a slight variation on use of the … but you’ll get the idea. It is worth noting that the does require a small addition to your theme code. But the change is truly small and not very hard to accomodate; plus accurate instructions are provided with the .

This is a real winner.

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There are numerous actions a prudent web can take to make their more secure. In an effort to place the key safety precautions you can employ on a I have gathered a number of actions from multiple sources and placed them here.

Please note that this posting is not original content, rather it is a merged aggregation from the references listed below.

Item 1.

Always Upgrade to the current version of

Upgrade your as soon as possible. Most releases patch loopholes, fixes which are essential for your continued protection.

Item 2.

Change Default Passwords

That is the first thing to do, if you are still using the default 6 lettered password which is sent to you via e-mail. Give a tight and secure password with numbers and letters and symbols jumbled up so that granny’s bruteforcing technique doesn’t cost you your . Don’t be too concerned about loosing your password and choose a simple password as you can always change your lost password.

Item 3.

Remove ‘version string’ in your theme files

1. Go to dashboard, click on presentation -> edit -> header.php
2. Find and remove this. bloginfo(‘version’) Save the file.

Explanation: Hide the version number of your such that it will be hard for hacker to find loopholes for the specific version of .

Item 4.

Place empty ‘index.html’ file in the plugins folder

1. Open a text editor ’save as’ and save the file as index.html (be sure to change the filetype from text files to all files if you are running in windows)
2. Upload the file to wp-content/plugins folder in your web server.

Explanation: Hide the plugins used by your . It uses the same concept as above which is to hide loopholes in the plugins.

Item 5.

Upload a copy of .htaccess file in the wp- and wp-includes folders

1. Using FTP program or your webserver file manager, go to the root folder of your server and download .htaccess file (set ’show hidden files’ first if you’re using FTP program such as FileZilla)
2. Go to your wp- folder
3. Upload the .htaccess file you’ve downloaded from the top level directory.

Item 6.

Use SSH instead of Telnet, SFTP instead of FTP

For real use ssh to access your instead of ftp which is inherently insecure and open to snooping of your account details as the authorization details (login & password) are transmitted in clear over the internet. With ssh you can use secure ftp protocol like sftp to do anything you can do with ftp. Similarly you can use ssh instead of telnet to securely connect to your Linux / Unix server

Item 7.

Create a robot.txt to place in your top level directory

Recommended contents include:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin
Disallow: /wp-
Disallow: /wp-includes
Disallow: /wp-content/plugins
Disallow: /wp-content/cache
Disallow: /wp-content/
Disallow: /trackback
Disallow: /feed
Disallow: /comments
Disallow: /category/*/*
Disallow: */trackback
Disallow: */feed
Disallow: */comments
Disallow: /*?*
Disallow: /*?
Allow: /wp-content/uploads

References:

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As many of you may have noticed, I have been working on improving the ‘noticability’ of my sites using select Plugins. I can say with certainty now that the following plugins have had a very positive impact on my SEO rankings but more importantly on my traffic. The plugins I refer to are:

  • YARPP- Yet Another Related Posts - I use this with customized settings (variable per and my business objectives) to improve cross-linking of information on my .  This not only improves some of the ratings in Google but seems to have a positive impact on whether or not people stay on the and look at additional related information.  AND.. since I am in the business of providing information to people, this serves a very improtant function. (Similar functionality can be made available via Simple Tags– although I find this superior.)
  • All in One SEO- This is very useful in improving what Google and others see when they examine my web-pages. The one dependency I have observed in using this is to load the same keywords I use/ generate in Simple Tags in the Home Keywords area of this .  This seems to provide a higher hit rate on my pages when the search engines come by.  It additionally appears to have a positive impact on making relevant pages available to search engines.
  • SEO Smart Links- I use this for much the same reason as YARPP.  The big plus is that this places hot links within the body of Posts/Pages to facilitate cross-navigation around the .
  • Simple Tags- is possibly the key to everything.  If you are like me and often forget to tag things this makes it easy to augment and re-tag your entire at will. If you keep the tag list in this as your master, it also makes it easy to cross-link and cross-reference all your SEO data across the .
    • Be certain to look at the function for this tool because you can invoke the following key functions:
    • Related Posts- cross-linking of posts where content is similar (similar to YARPP)
    • Related Pages- cross-linking of pages where content is similar (similar to YARPP)
    • Relevant Tags- listing of the tags used on the Page/ Post

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In order to better understand the relative merits of from NoFollow to DoFollow, I have begun a test on this .

Basically I am using two new (for me) plugins.

The basic notion is that Lucia’s LinkLove allows for an automatic reset of the default NoFollow for comments to DoFollow, after pre-determined number (determined by me) of approved comments have been added by a given user to this . The NoFollow Reciprocity module sets and/all comments to NoFollow if the receiveing has their set to NoFollow.

Hopefully this test will demonstrate an uptick in this ’s ratings and traffic without a significant additional burden in SPAM.  I’ll post the results of my test, as they become obvious.  If you have ideas of other plugins that I should add to this mix, please let me know.

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Updated:11 April 2009

Updated: 15 April 2009

Like many of you, I am always in search of excellent for my existing and new sites.   Also, probably like most of you, I seem to be constantly searching the web for them.  In order to help consolidate my list of useful sites (eliminating many I find either to expensive or of too poor quality, here is my list:

Reviews

If you have other ideas or suggestions please be sure to let me know and I’ll add them here.

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eirenicon llc is pleased to announce that we now support and create symbiotic web communities for use by our clients. If your community, group or organization is interested in presenting a cohesive, yet unique, face on the world an eirenicon Symbiotic Web Community may be the answer. These sites, modeled on and using software from .com, are readily available and extremely affordable. This website provides an example of a -MU based symbiotic Web Community from eirenicon llc. Feel free to tour this to see examples of how this style of Web Community might support you and your community needs.

See a demonstration of an eirenicon Symbiotic Web Community!

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