Learning How to Use WordPress

WordPress 101 for Boomers Several years back I realized it’d be quite helpful for a business owner to have their own website. Not necessarily a blog, I thought blogs were online personal diaries, and why would I want my private ramblings public? My own personal website though would be cool.
So I checked into making a website, not knowing anything about websites, hosting services, etc. To make a long story short I fell in love with WordPress.
I had to click on all the buttons, learn what they’re for, down to editing the graphics and layout of a site to make it do whatever I wished. Yet I remember back when I first started and I put WordPress away to learn to build a site because I couldn’t get mine to work right. I spent countless hours, googling directions, etc. to simply change the main logo-like image on my website. Nothing worked. Later I learned it was because my wordpress installation was missing some files.
I learned to talk to my webhost, to ask questions to those who knew much more than I, even if I didn’t know the right words, I searched much online. In the end, putting these things into practice, creating my own WordPress site is how I learned to use WordPress.
WordPress has improved much since then. I’ve learned much too. So I created these free WordPress tutorials for those who’d like to learn how to use WordPress.

  • Not sure how to get started with WordPress?
  • Don’t even know what WordPress is?
  • Do you need a blog. or even a website, but not sure where to start?
  • Someone hack your website?
  • Better yet, learn how to protect your WordPress site from hackers
  • If you’d like to learn WordPress or brush up on your skills, visit my newer site WordPress 101 for Boomers. If you get stuck and have a question, be sure to ask. Someone else may have the same question. See you there!

Adding Photos to Your Blog

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Creative Commons License photo credit: seyed mostafa zamani
Three years back I wrote a post about why you shouldn’t grab images from google images and post to your blog.

I love photos, both taking my own, and viewing the work of others. I’m amazed at the talent out there. Love that through flickr we have images we have permission to use through creative commons. (Not all Flickr images, just ones which give permission.)

Yet, it is extra time to find the images, upload them to my post, add proper credits and I’ve been wishing for a plugin to do such, just hadn’t taken the time to search for such before now.

Enter Photo Dropper. You can search for it under add new plugins in your admin panel, install, activate. With you mouse wherever you want to add an image, scroll down, way below where you type in your post and you’ll find photo dropper browse photos. Better yet, click on the photo dropper icon by your other add media buttons.

Type in your keyword, photos pop up, pick one, click on what size you want and it is inserted into your post. Viola! Couldn’t be easier!

Do go to settings after you install your plugin, then photo dropper. Make sure the for commercial use button in checked.

Thank you photo dropper, now if only the photo was uploaded to my media library instead of linking through flickr, so the thumbnails would show up in certain themes which do such.

Free WP Theme Warning

WordPress is a great tool, at least until it is hacked. One reason to keep your sites updated.

WordPress themes are great fun, like a wardrobe for your website, change themes and you change the look and feel of your site. There are premium themes (ones you pay for, and should have customer support to help you with issues) and free themes. Both are OK, but use great care where your themes come from.

You can now upload and add themes from your wordpress admin panel. Those are checked for issues, I’ve not found any not safe to use.

What is sad is when you search online for free wordpress themes, you find many sites, several of which add spammy or malicious code. Adding these themes can even spread the bad stuff to your other themes, blogs. I look at the files before uploading. If I find encrypted looking stuff, I do myself and others a favor, don’t use it.

2 theme sites to avoid: I was wondering if they were just the themes someone sent me or all the themes on their sites. Not finding a theme without malicious encrypted code, I searched online to see if others also found such to be true.

Yep, finding the same issues. Do not use, link to or even visit wordpresstemplates.com See Malicious code in wordpress template. Nor use freewordpressthemesbase.com, see WordPress php injection spam.

Protect your sites, don’t add mal themes to your webhost.

Panning for Gold

As our blogs age, content gets buried in our archives. I suggest going through your older posts and find your favorites (find the gold) and pull them up for your audience. Your reader base has grown and many haven’t seen your older posts. I’m featuring a different post each week as I go through my older content. While doing this I ran into this timely advice on using the SEO Smartlinks wordpress plugin by Jack Spirko. I especially like his explanation on using custom links for your affiliate programs. I decided to make custom links for each featured older post as I replace it with a newly featured post. See the video.

Are Free WordPress Themes Really Free?

Are free WordPress themes really free?

Well, that depends. No upfront cost to you, but did the last person to modify the theme add anything nasty to it?

Now I don’t have a problem giving credit to a theme’s designer for their work with a link. I do object when they add some kind of Javascript where they control what links show up at their say so, even if the links are invisible to your average visitor, they aren’t invisible to the search engines.

Even worse is when some kind of spyware code is hidden somewhere in all the theme’s files, code which could say anything, do anything. You have no idea unless you decode what they’ve hidden.

Real life example:

http://www.free-wp-themes.com/wordpress/Andreas04/

DO NOT DOWNLOAD and use this theme without rewriting the entire footer.php file.

It contains some code which starts with

eval(gzinflate(base64_decode

and continues with a bunch of jumbled up letters and such. What does the code do? I don’t know, I’d have to decode it to find out but since it is code often used by hackers/spyware I don’t want it on any of my websites. So Do Not Download and use this theme as is from http://www.free-wp-themes.com/

In fact, I’d check any of the themes on their site very carefully before using, better yet, not use them at all. I checked out another theme they provide and found the same eval code in that footer too.

WordPress gets better all the time, you can now download free themes inside your wordpress admin panel under appearance. Next time you want a free theme, check out those. I’m not saying everyone that offers free wordpress themes embeds bad stuff into the code. Use caution, use trusted sources. I’d check out themes listed on Smashing Magazine, again, do your due diligence.

Another option is to pay for a premium theme from a trusted source such as the Arthemia Premium theme from Colorlabs and customize it for your needs. Check out WeMagazine for Women as a cool example.

Free isn’t always free. Use caution, use trusted sources.

Yikes! My site has been hacked!

No one wants to wake up in the morning (afternoon, evening or even middle of the night) and find your website now says “Hacked by . . .” or that their sites fail altogether. Worse yet your site may be hacked and you not even know it. There may be hidden links, not visible to you, but they are visible to the search engines. You wonder why google no longer likes your website? All kinds of sneaky tricks.

Tomorrow, Nov. 11 join us on this free conference call to learn what you can do to protect your websites.

——————————-
Join us this Wednesday at 11 AM EST. for WordPress Security: Covering Your
Assets.

Join Heidi Caswell of Connect Simply www.ConnectSimply.com and Heidi Richards
Mooney of Women in Ecommerce as they chat about what to do when your WordPress
sites get hacked. They will discuss the importance of upgrading, added security
and more!

To join us for this Complimentary Teleconference call (641) 715-3840
At the prompt enter Participant Access Code: 361467#

See you there!

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Adding Tweet This Plugin to WordPress

I created a video to show some friends how to add a tweet this button to their blog posts (on wordpress). Tweet this adds a button to the bottom of your posts, making it easy for your readers to tweet what you say. It can be set to shorten the url’s, add facebook, digg, stumble upon, plurk etc buttons.

There are many, many twitter tools, some of which are wordpress plugins. Plugins add functionality to your website. I think they are very cool. Only add and activate plugins which you want to use on your website. Sometimes a plugin may have a conflict with another plugin. So I prefer adding one new plugin at a time, making sure my wordpress website still works, etc. Some plugins, too many plugins may slow down the load time of your site. Have the plugins you use serve a purpose.

Twitter Plugins for WordPress

Auto Tweet Your Posts

Adding Tweet This Plugin to a WordPress Blog (and you can do the same thing to add other plugins–a fun thing to do).