Don’t Get Hacked:
Google Bot Trick!

Justin’s blog was hacked and he didn’t notice for a while. Why not? The hack made blog look normal to everyone except Google. This caused Justin’s blog for dropping out of Google’s index- which results in a major loss of traffic.

If this happened to Justin, you can bet it could happen to you! Luckily there are steps you can take to could protect yourself both from getting hacked, or failing that, at least discover if you have fallen victim of this sneaky hack!

How to protect yourself

1. Periodically change passwords you use to access by FTP. This is generally done at the account web host gives you. If you don’t know how to do this, ask your host!
2. Protect your wp-admin area using htaccess. Hacking into wp-admin is a common tactic. I discussed the steps you can take to protect that area of your blog in Blog Security: htaccess block.
3. Periodically look at your pages through Google’s eyes:
   • Install the FireFox User Agent Switcher
   • Create a Googlebot user agent.
     Do this buy pulling down “Tools” -> User Agent Switer ->Options ->Options.
     Next click “User Agents” then “add”.
     An entry box will appear. Enter Googlebot 2.1 for “Description” and “User Agent”. Don’t worry about the other boxes; leave them blank.
     Save these settings.
   • Switch to the Googlebot user agent by selecting “Tools->User Agent Switcher”. You’ll now see “Google bot 2.1″. Select that.
   • Turn off BadBehavior (or the next step will fail.)
   • View your blog. If should look the same when viewed with the Googlebot user agent and when viewed normally. If you see something horrible, you have been hacked. (Sorry, I don’t tell you how to fix that here. The ‘fix’ will depend on precisely what the hacker modified. )
   • Reactivate BadBehavior (to protect you from malicious ‘bots.
   • Head on back to “Tools->User Agent Switcher” and pick “default”.
4. Back up everything: Just in case protecting your ftp and wp-admin areas fails, be sure to periodically back up your blog templates, database, and Wordpress files (including images etc.) Backing up won’t prevent you from being hacked, but it lets you recover if someone does hack you. I back up my database daily using WordPress Database Backup.

   I back up the whole blog by saving the entire domain as a zip file and emailing to myself from time to time. (No, not every day.)

Hey, it’s Saturday. That’s as good a time to back up as any. Good luck and safe blogging!

Tags:.htaccess Blog Hacks blog security blogging plugins WordPress

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Twitter: Rampant self promotion works!

About two weeks ago, I installed the “Twitter Updater” plugin to figure out if pinging Twitter brings traffic. Turns out, it does. Pinging Twitter doesn’t bring a lot yet, primarily because I am totally new to Twitter and the blog about blogging niche. So, it goes without saying I don’t have many Twitter followers. The first week, I got zero Twitter hits, I’m now getting 2-3 hits a day.

I just checked Twitter page and I now have 5 followers — and when you consider that I am entirely incompetent when it comes to Twitter, that’s not too shabby. With luck, more people who like Twitter will enjoy my posts and stop by. (I also need to devote some time to visiting my Twitter followers. After all, if they are following my blog, it’s likely they blog on topics that interest me!)

Can you create link juice at Twitter?

Unfortunately, you can’t. As Andy Beard noted, Twitter Links are nofollow. That holds for the self-promotional ones you create by pinging from your blog, and also editorial links to other blogs that might interest people. So, if you like someone else’s blog, it’s fine to mention them in a Tweet, but link them at your blog too.

Then is it worth the time to ping?

Yes! Traffic is traffic. Traffic from followers is a really good type of traffic. Twitter gives them a way to follow you.

Mind you, if pinging Twitter took any time, it might not be worth the effort. But the fact is, once you install “Twitter Updater” plugin on your Wordpress blog, it pings Twitter automatically when you publish.

I now need to find a plugin that lets me show my tweets here at my blog. I need it to help publicise the fact that I can be followed at Twitter, but the one from Twitter often loaded slowly. Also, since Twitter nofollows my links, I feel that, in fairness, I need to nofollow my links to their site.

I now think of using Twitter the way I use feeds. Some people want track posts on Twitter instead of RSS; so make it easy! (Oh, and by the way, in fairness, I should tell you I got the idea of pinging Twitter by observing Jason Calacanis, who has been pinging Twitter for a whilenow. He seems to be a master of publicity; when you see him using something, you can guess it works! )

Tags:plugins Social Networking twitter WordPress

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Dreamhost up and down!

Dreamhost is up and down today- just like yesterday. When these sorts of things happen, I am always I glad I automatically backup my database using Wordpress Database Backup. It’s frustrating enough to deal with the on again, off again host. It would be worse if I were worrying about losing posts! Tags:Dreamhost plugins WordPress

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