Redesign for myself!

June 9, 2013 By Leave a Comment

I figured it was about time for the doctor to go to the 'doctor' and get a new look! And I'm not stuck on this design, it was just a quickie thing.

But don't get excited yet, it doesn't mean that I have time to take on new business. It just means that I got sick of my 6 year old design, LOL! I will let you guys know when I can get back to creating custom WordPress sites… until then, I plan to do more articles and WordPress 'How-To' videos.

Hope you like the new layout.

Filed Under: Announcements

WordPress under attack…

April 12, 2013 By 1 Comment

Sounds ominous, doesn’t it? I am seeing articles that are saying that these new attacks exploit WordPress installations–anywhere. But there are a few things you can do–because the exploits being taken advantage are include your basic username and password combination. Ahhhhhhh!!

What can you do:

  • CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD. If WebsByAmy (me) set up your username/password for your WordPress dashboard, the username is NOT ‘admin’ and your password is upper and lowercase letters and a few numbers. However, if you’ve changed that or added an administrator or if you currently have a text based password you ‘use for everything,’ CHANGE IT NOW. READ THIS article for some tips.
  • UPDATE YOUR WORDPRESS.  Are you updated to the latest version of WordPress? On your Dashboard, you’re told if you are not. Follow the directions to upgrade. What about it saying ‘back up your configuration’ before you do this? If you host with me, I have nightly backups, I can take you back to yesterday. If you don’t host with me but your hosting gives you cPanel–OR if you host with me and want your OWN personal backup of your entire installation (mailserver settings, etc.) watch this video.
  • UPDATE YOUR PLUGINS (actually do that before you upgrade WordPress). EVEN the ones you aren’t currently using… sometimes plugins have security exploits so even if they aren’t active, they need to be updated–so just delete unused plugins.

If you have any questions, drop me a line.

Filed Under: Announcements

Is your content being stolen?

January 27, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Last year, I had a client contact me regarding her articles showing up on someone else's site. She was confused as to whether her security was breached somehow with her site, etc. and was very frantic to fix it.

Congratulations, you've been robbed… and strangely, it wasn't a competitor, it was someone who had a 'purely' affiliate based income site who was stealing from many different authors in order to drive traffic to his site in order to sell from his affiliate links.

Before I go on, I saw this excellent article that you might want to read regarding this issue.

I was in that position several years ago. I have some WordPress 'how-to' articles on my site and a scraper grabbed them (videos and all) and put it on a 'Wordpress How-To' site that was pretty much 100% stolen articles embedded in an affiliate link laden site. I found it because my dashboard showed 'incoming links' to my site from theirs.

I posted a 'comment' on his site, demanding he remove my article or give me credit (no shocker the post went into 'moderation' never to be seen) and emailed the 'WHOIS' contact. After a day or so, I went on WordPress.org and published a link to my article and then to his article (he didn't even take out my example link that linked back to my site, LOL!) and in all innocence asked for help. Well, the internet hath no fury like this type of thing happening. Apparently according to the responses I got on WordPress.org, his entire site was scraped articles.

I was THEN (within hours of publishing the complaint) contacted by the site owner who claimed he paid someone to build traffic and removed the article HOWEVER he was being bombarded with angry comments from WordPress.org… could I please remove my complaint (or the link). Well, guess what? WordPress.org reserves the right to allow editing and removal of posts… after a certain point, I was not able to remove it and he ended up taking his site down (probably moved it). I don't know if he would have bothered responding if I hadn't, but I really only posted to get advice.

Don't you love it when you are around to witness Karma in action… it makes you want to take the day off!

Filed Under: Announcements

What the new Facebook ‘Graph Search’ means to your privacy

January 24, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Small things you share–even as a joke–in your profile, might classify you in a search that you don't want to be in. Ah Facebook, we love it, we hate it–but it is here to stay!

Here is an article that I believe was meant to be funny/scary and it worked to actually (in this order: made me laugh… then made me concerned):
actualfacebookgraphsearches.tumblr.com

You may be confused or choose to ignore this new 'Graph Search' feature, and that's fine. But take a minute to check your privacy settings again–and do a good looking over at your 'likes' and your profile* information about your religion, political views… especially (if like me) you tend towards the humorous approach (in languages I used to have 'Fluent Gibberish,' why? because I could…).

"Privacy?! But I set them already…" well they aren't a 'set once' and let go, you need to keep checking them because with many 'roll outs' of new features, your privacy settings can be changed without you knowing it. And who really are your Facebook friends? If you don't know them well, OR your Privacy settings are share with 'friends of friends' that means that you no longer are only sharing between friends (READ: you've locked the front door and your back door is wide open). And remember, the 'friends of your friends' include their slacker siblings or creepy uncle (I know mine do!).

The article above on the Facebook 'Graph Search' above is something done by a Tumblr user, but I first saw on Mashable is what brought this to my attention today. My favorite line is something my grandmother used to tell me (because I was a mouthy teenager, LOL):
"If you wouldn't want it published in Newsday, don't put it out there…" 

So, here is what got me going this morning:
http://mashable.com/2013/01/23/actual-facebook-graph-searches/

I have helped clients who want a Facebook 'business page' make their personal profile completely private (no personal information, no friends and 'unsearchable') so that they can just use Facebook pages (which requires way less in the way of creepy interaction).

Okay, I've wrecked your coffee–sorry! Well, to show that  I'm not just rabble rousing today, I can offer up an article from one of my favorite sites that published information on privacy just this month –read the article here on Lifehacker.com.

Filed Under: Announcements, Social Networking

WebsByAmy on Facebook

July 22, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Like My Facebook pageI have created a Facebook business page that you should click to 'Like' to view not only the articles that I publish here, but also in the case (such as yesterday) that there is a server failure, you can get status updates.  [Read more...]

Filed Under: Announcements

Important WordPress Update Required

December 30, 2010 By Leave a Comment

While you should always be updating your WordPress installation, there are times (like now) that it is absolutely critical that you update your site, because it corrects a security issue.  WordPress 3.0.4 is a security update.  You can read the official article here.  It took me literally seconds to update my 5 sites I have (and I filmed one of them below).

FOR MY HOSTING CLIENTS:

In regard to backing up your installation first:  if you are hosted with me, backups occur every day between approximately 1 am & 4 am (it varies).  If you upgrade your installation and something goes wrong, I can restore it from last night's at no cost–contact me asap (READ: before the next daily backup!).

You can also make a back up your entire site yourself at any time, CLICK HERE for a short video on how to use the backup option in your cPanel.  Of course I would have to restore the site for you anyway, but if you are doing big changes to your site, you may wish to keep a copy from a particular date. Remember to download and delete that backup from the server though!

Filed Under: Announcements, Maintaining Your Installation

Planned Server Outtage – Fri., Dec. 31

December 29, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Upgrades to both of my main hard drive and also the backup drive are anticipated to take place on Friday, December 31st beginning at 7:00 pm Pacific/10:00 pm Eastern and the downtime could be as long a 3 hours.  Not only with all sites be offline, but any mail associated with your site will not work temporarily.

This is a necessary expansion for me and I will be doubling the capacity of both my hard drive space as well as my backup.  Almost exactly 2 years ago I moved to a large dedicated server and the good news is that it appears that I have outgrown it.

While growth is always good, I am hoping that I have chosen a size that will last another two years.  If you have any questions or concerns, do not hesitate to contact me.

READ:  Take New Year's Eve off and drink too much (and stay away from your computer, in case it takes 4 hours…)

Filed Under: Announcements

Out of Town until May 3rd

April 24, 2010 By Leave a Comment

I am leaving for the Southern Caribbean but I will still be available via email.  If you have a support question, please include your domain and login information as well as explicit details of the problem so that I can duplicate it.  If you are clear enough, I can most likely fix it before I get back to you.

SU Demos:  I have already done the May widgets and specials pages however you are not supposed to put this information on your site until May 1st (company policy).  So Members Login on May 1st to update your sites.

I have set a post to publish on May 1st (automatically) that will have two sidebar widgets (both Summer Mini & May Scrap Specials) for Americans and Canadians.  I have had no luck with 'future' publish features but I'll also remember to force it to publish if it doesn't (when I remember on May 1st!).

Updates for my 'managed' hosting customers will occur on May 1st as always thanks to my trusty assistant Jen.

Filed Under: Announcements

Planned Service Interruption

November 7, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Tomorrow morning, at approximately 4am EST, the server will be down for about 15 minutes to swap out the backup server that has been experiencing issues this week.  Again the issue has been with the ‘backup’ disk, not the main server your site is hosted on.

FYI, the last successful ‘daily backup’ of your site was Thursday at 1 am EST, so if you are planning big changes on your site (and then regret them), the last backup we can restore is the Thursday at 1am.

Of course you can make a backup of your site at any time through your control panel (see a short video here).  I suggest that you only keep one on the server at a time or you will fill up your disk space.  You can download the backups to your hard drive if you want multiple copies.

If you have any questions or concerns, do not hesitate to contact me.

Filed Under: Announcements Tagged With: