When someone tries to hack one of my websites — as happened this morning — the plugin immediately alerts me (via email) of the URL (like a .php file) that the person was trying to access.

When I see that email, I know that I should double-check my site, change my password to something truly garbled, and make sure my security software is up-to-date.

Of course, there is no total defense against hacks into a WordPress site, though WordPress Defender (the book, as well as the free video course) can help.

I also recommend saving your files regularly, via Tools > Export in your dashboard.  Also use the free WordPress plugin, WordPress Database Backup, just in case.

Until now, the names of the Categories was missing from the selected category sections in the right column.

(Looking at the homepage, that’s actually in the middle of the page, but the far right column is called the sidebar.)

1. Open Appearance > Editor

2. Choose Main Index Template (index.php)

3. Change the code so it looks like what’s in the yellow box in this screenshot:

(All you’re doing is changing the word from “false” to “true.”)

4. Save the changes, and you’re all set!

Two points:

1. Though this now makes my “Sites that Soar!” book valuable again, I’m not going to charge for the eBook.

I am putting the printed version back into Amazon.com, for those who’d rather not print out all 150 pages.

2. If the compiler of Branford Magazine really knew what he was doing, he’d have been able to tell us about this fix in about five minutes.  Sadly, this confirms my worst suspicions.

It is a 150-page PDF that includes instructions for magazine-style WordPress themes, including older (free) versions of Branford Magazine.

Sites that Soar features over 100 screenshots to show you exactly how to work with WordPress and magazine-style themes.

Though this book was most effective with WordPress 2.7 – 2.9.x, many of the tips in it will also work with WordPress 3.0.x and beyond.

Sites that Soar is still protected by copyright.*  However, you can download a copy for your personal use.

For your free copy, visit

http://www.ziddu.com/download/11013429/SitesThatSoar3-Mar2010editionL.pdf.html

*If you’re not sure about copyright law: You may not post this book’s content elsewhere in any format, claim that it’s your book, or distribute all or part of my book, alone or as part of another product.

My most useful posts — the ones that aren’t Branford-specific — are at this site (and they’re at the archives).  I’ll be adding more articles here, related to website design, maintenance, and doing business online, in general.

If you’re looking for Branford-specific information, you can visit BranfordMagazine.com or SitesThatSoar.com/Wordpress for additional information.

The price of the printed book (150+ pages) has been reduced as low as possible at Amazon.com.

Though my book is still protected by copyright,  you can download it right now, free of charge.

Past

For nearly three years, I happily used Branford Magazine WordPress theme, and actually wrote a couple of books about customizing it.

When WordPress 3.0 came out in June 2010, my favorite theme (an early version of Branford Magazine) lost its homepage category headings.

With no easy patch in view, and since the designer of Branford Magazine only supports his “Pro” version, I immediately stopped selling my books.

Present

This website is transforming into a more generic website about ways to make your website look better, easier to use, and more popular with visitors and with search engines.

Generally, I write from a non-technical viewpoint. Though there may be better options (and there quite often are), I write for someone like me: I’m bright, but the Internet isn’t my life and I don’t know much code beyond basic HTML.

I need quick, effective tips and solutions that don’t require an advanced degree in computers… or full-time maintenance outsourced to a team in China or India or something.

Future

I’ll be writing about tools, websites, reports and books that I rely on.  Some will be free.  Some will cost money.

Generally, my recommendations involve a shoestring budget.  Frankly, if you could spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on your website, you probably wouldn’t be reading this.

For additional information about the Branford Magazine theme, and free theme downloads, see my other website, BranfordMagazine.com

I’ve been using E-junkie for over two years now, and I’m still delighted with them.  They handle all of my digital products for me, and they’re the most reliable company I’ve worked with.

In addition, they’re still the least expensive option I’ve seen for file storage and digital product fulfillment.  Currently, I pay $5 a month for their services.  That’s all.  No commissions.  No surprise charges.  No hidden fees!

Unlike Clickbank, E-junkie doesn’t charge me a per-sale commission or anything like that.

E-junkie stores my files, handles my sales and pays me immediately via PayPal, and it keeps track of my customer lists, in case I need to send update notices or announcements.

If I was selling CDs or DVDs — which I plan to do, in the future — E-junkie will even interact directly with my CD fulfillment service.  Orders could be placed and products created & shipped, and I don’t have to do anything.

If  you’d like to set up your own affiliate programs, E-junkie does everything except issue the monthly payments.  However, even that can be managed with one click (via PayPal) for the entire set of payments, using the specialized list format that E-Junkie provides for this purpose.

At any point during the month, affiliates can see how well they’re doing at their own E-junkie page.  In addition, E-junkie creates and maintains a list of your affiliates so you can send them messages and updates, as well.

They have options for physical products, too.   So, I could create an affiliate program for tee-shirts or posters or artwork… or anything that I’m making on my own.

E-junkie is designed for smaller businesses.  So, if you’re doing tens of thousands of dollars in business, monthly, they may not offer all of the features you need.  (Ask them.  They’re nice people and may create what you need.)

For a home-based business like mine, E-junkie is perfect.  I tried several other programs, and they either cost too much or they had too many problems… or both.

I put my products at E-junkie and I don’t have to think about them again.  Delivery is reliable.  I’m paid instantly. The whole thing costs my $5 per month.

My customers are happy, and so am I.

Here’s what it says on the E-junkie website:

E-junkie provides shopping cart and buy now buttons to let you sell downloads and tangible goods on your website, eBay, MySpace, Google Base, CraigsList and other websites using PayPal Standard, PayPal Pro, Google Checkout, Authorize.Net, TrialPay, ClickBank and 2CheckOut. For merchants selling downloads, we automate and secure the digital delivery of files and codes. If you are selling tangible goods, we automate the shipping calculation and inventory management. Our shopping cart has a built in sales tax, VAT, packaging and shipping cost calculator. You can sell ebooks, sell mp3 tracks and albums, sell software, icons, fonts, artwork, phone cards, event tickets, cds, posters, books, t-shirts and almost everything else you want to sell. E-junkie has no transaction limit, no bandwidth limit, no setup fee and no transaction fee.

Their website may not be as polished as Clickbank and similar services. However, E-junkie doesn’t charge the same fees as Clickbank… not even close!

And, I’ve had only excellent results with E-junkie.  No complaints at all!  (And, since I’m very picky, that’s saying a lot.)

I highly recommend E-junkie.  I am an affiliate for them, but I’d recommend them to anyone (and everyone) anyway.

Click the button below and see what they offer.  I think you’ll be impressed.

You’ll probably be relieved at how easy it is:

• no programming is needed
• no complicated shopping cart software (it’s just a normal link)
• there are no start-up fees, and
• you can even try it for a week, free, to see if you like it.

(After that, the basic plan — which is plenty for me, even with about 20 digital products and affiliate programs when I used them — is $5/month… period.)

Free WordPress plugins

Usually, you’ll download these via your WordPress dashboard Plugins > Add New.  Most of them are available at the WordPress.org website.

1) Akismet is one of the most important free WordPress plugins.  It removes most spam comments from your website, automatically.  Be sure to activate it with your WordPress API code.  (You’ll get that from http://en.wordpress.com/api-keys/)

Akismet usually comes with your WordPress installation, automatically.  Activate it and it runs on auto-pilot.

2) All in One SEO Pack handles the tedious side of making your WordPress website interesting to search engines.  If you want to be on Google’s first page for your niche, you need this plugin.  It’s free.

3) Dagon Design Sitemap Generator creates a clean sitemap for your website, and updates it automatically.  It’s one of my most-used free WordPress plugins. [Link]

4) Google XML Sitemaps not only creates the XML sitemap that Google’s looking for, it updates your sitemap regularly and tells Google when you’ve added fresh content.

5) Contact Form 7 is free and easy. I’ve had mixed results with other contact form plugins.  Contact Form 7 seems to work well for every website.

6) Secure WordPress keeps the worst malicious headaches off your plate.  It won’t resolve all nuisances.  Someone hacked this site — yes, the person behind it wasn’t concealed (or a surprise) — but the damage was minimal, thanks to Secure WordPress. [Download link]

7) Delink Comment Author removes those pesky, spammy links from comments left at your website.  You can keep the comment (as long as it isn’t too stupid) but lose the link.  Free WordPress plugins like this make comment maintenance a breeze. [Download link]

Broken Link Checker makes it easy to keep links in posts up-to-date.  I deactivate it most of the time (so WordPress runs at maximum speed), but when I use this plugin, it saves me hours of tedious link repairs. [Download link]

9) WordPress Database Backup (aka WP-DB-Backup) saves the information that simple “Export” doesn’t include from your WordPress dashboard. [Download link]  I don’t keep this running all the time, just when I’m doing a routine backup.

10) A good video plugin for YouTube, etc.  Right now, I’m using Smart YouTube.  I’m very happy with that, but I may explore others to see what bells & whistles they offer. [Smart YouTube website]

And some not-free plugins I rely on:

11) WPSyndicator reduces my workload by hours, every week.  It saves me money, too: It creates backlinks and re-posts at my other major blogs and social networking sites.  Click here to learn more about this brilliant plugin.

12) SEOpressor helps me figure out how to write my articles so Google understands my main points… and places my site on the first page in the appropriate niche.  Frankly, this completely changed how I write my articles for the Internet.  [Website]

For now, that’s my entire list.  Though I experiment with other plugins from time to time, and often use a few specialized plugins for particular sites, these 12 are the ones I rely on for nearly every website I own.

Have your own suggestions?  Leave your comments below.  I’m always interested in other great, free WordPress plugins.

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Privacy Policy for our website

If you require any more information or have any questions about our privacy policy, please feel free to contact us by email using our Contact form, linked from our homepage.

At our website, the privacy of our visitors is of extreme importance to us. This privacy policy document outlines the types of personal information is received and collected by our website and how it is used.

Log Files

Like many  — perhaps most –  other Web sites, our website makes use of log files. That’s partly for security, so we can identify any problems before they occur.  The information inside the log files includes internet protocol ( IP ) addresses, type of browser, Internet Service Provider ( ISP ), date/time stamp, referring/exit pages, and number of clicks to analyze trends, administer the site, track user’s movement around the site, and gather demographic information. IP addresses, and other such information are not linked to any information that is personally identifiable.

Cookies and Web Beacons

Our website does not use cookies.

Advertising

This website is partially funded through our generous sponsors and advertisers. We use as little advertising as we can, and — when it’s necessary — only to cover our hosting and maintenance expenses. We avoid advertising programs  with any privacy risks.  In fact, we avoid advertising, period.

DoubleClick DART Cookie

.:: Google, as a third party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on our website.

.:: Google’s use of the DART cookie enables it to serve ads to users based on their visit to our website and other sites on the Internet.

.:: Users may opt out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the Google ad and content network privacy policy at the following URL – http://www.google.com/privacy_ads.html

Ads that may appear at our website

Some of our advertising partners may use cookies and web beacons on our site. Our advertising partners may include Google Adsense, Commission Junction, Clickbank, Amazon, and other resources that offer useful products or links that seem to interest our website visitors.  (If we see a lack of interest, we discontinue the program.)

These third-party ad servers or ad networks use technology to the advertisements and links that appear on our website send directly to your browsers. They automatically receive your IP address when this occurs.   That’s used, in part, to identify which country you’re from, and which languages your ads could appear in.

Other technologies ( such as cookies, JavaScript, or Web Beacons ) may also be used by the third-party ad networks to measure the effectiveness of their advertisements and / or to personalize the advertising content that you see.

Our website has no access to or control over these cookies that are used by third-party advertisers. However, we urge you to disable cookies on your computer if this is a concern for you. That’s controlled in your browser, usually in the Options tab related to privacy, security, or general settings.

Or, you can regularly use a free program such as SpyBot or AdAware by Lavasoft.  They can safely clean old tracking cookies off your computer in a matter of minutes.

You should consult the respective privacy policies of these third-party ad servers for more detailed information on their practices as well as for instructions about how to opt-out of certain practices.

Our website’s privacy policy does not apply to, and we cannot control the activities of, such other advertisers or web sites.

If you wish to disable cookies, you may do so through your individual browser options. More detailed information about cookie management with specific web browsers can be found at the browsers’ respective websites.

Here are links that can help you, if you want to reconfigure your browser.  If the links aren’t current, use the search form at the respective site and look for “cookies.”

Firefox – Internet Explorer – Opera

Here’s a spam comment at a blog that I set up but didn’t fill in, yet.  Yes, these people are commenting at the default WordPress post that says it’s a sample post.

Hi there,
Not sure that this is true) but thanks

Jinny

Here’s another one:

Hi.
It’s better to put reference link
Good Luck!

Steve

And another:

Hi there.
It’s uncommonly, very interesting thoughts

Thanks.  Anne

What do they have in common?  The phrasing is a little odd. These comments don’t add anything helpful to the conversation.  Also, despite different names, all of the commenters’ homepages are the same website.

They may have been posted by the Internet equivalent of sweatshop workers.  Or, they may have been posted by a computer program that randomly posts comments at WP blogs on a specified list. Then again, some eager spammer may be posting these by hand, on his or her own.

Why would people do this?  Simple:  They know that WordPress allows people to post comments (that appear immediately) if you’ve already approved a comment or two from them.  So, future comments are likely to be obvious spam… which you may or may not notice, if you’re as busy as I am.

So, when in doubt, don’t approve a comment.  Well, not unless you have time to check every comment before it appears at your website.

Also, use Akismet and keep it current.  It’s included with WordPress as a plugin.  It catches at least 90% of spam at my sites.

You can also add a list of spam words to your WordPress control panel.  If Akismet doesn’t block the spam, this list will.  It’s at the WordPress Codex. [Link]

The following is an article by Robert Plank, whose WordPress Search Engine Optimization article I recommend in my book. I’ve tried the following sales page technique and it works, if you’re selling multiple products through one Clickbank account.

Clickbank is a great third-party system for selling your products, but it’s not perfect. The most noticeable problem is that, even though you have the ability to offer up to 50 different products, you can only have one landing page.

This means that when an affiliate promotes your URL, you can only take the user to the sales page of a particular product. (Either that, or take them to a page with a link to every single product — bad idea — too many choices for the user to make.)

Luckily there is a PHP solution. Clickbank lets you add extra stuff to the URL, which can be passed to a PHP script. Then, this script can easy pass the user along to any page you like.

A typical Clickbank hoplink looks like this:

http://hop.clickbank.net/?AffiliateID/SellerID

Where “AffiliateID” is the ID of a Clickbank affiliate and “SellerID” is the ID of the seller whose product you are promoting.

I’ve recently been in a situation where I was selling an e-book, and wrote a second volume. I wanted to be able to offer an affiliate program to the following types of resellers:

1.) Those whose lists contained many people who already purchased Volume 1 from them as an affiliate, and were satisfied enough to buy Volume 2.

2.) Those who hadn’t bought either e-book before, and were willing to pay the full price for both Volumes 1 and 2.

3.) Those whose lists contained “freebie seekers” who would be more comfortable buying only Volume 1 for starters.

This meant I needed 3 sales pages, but I wasn’t comfortable with wasting another $100 to setup two new Clickbank accounts. I also didn’t want to have to login three different times to check all my stats. (And cash three separate checks, and so on.)

So, I gave affiliates a link like this:

http://hop.clickbank.net/?AffiliateID/SellerID&x=volume2

That extra part at the end said, set the query string variable called “x” to “volume2.” That “volume2″ can be any value you want, by the way.

When Clickbank does the redirect to your site, they pass along two things: the affiliate ID, and any stuff you add on to the end of that URL.

So, if your sales page was something like: http://www.example.com/index.php

Then Clickbank would send the user to: http://www.example.com/index.php?hop=AffiliateID&x=volume2

See what it does? It sets “hop” to the affiliate’s ID and then says that “x” is equal to “volume2.”

Here’s where it gets fun. Let’s create a new file in your text editor, like Notepad (this will actually be a PHP script). Copy and paste this in:

{{?php

$redirects = array(
“volume1″ => “http://www.example.com/volume1.html”,
“volume2″ => “http://www.example.com/volume2.html”,
“volume3″ => “http://www.example.com/volume3.html”,
“jv” => “http://www.example.com/special/index.html”
);

$x = $_GET["x"];

if (array_key_exists($x, $redirects)) {
$go = $redirects[$x];
header(“Location:$go”);
die();
}

?}}

* Don’t forget to change the {{ to the less-than sign (hold down SHIFT and press the comma key on your keyboard) and the }} to the greater-than sign (hold down SHIFT and press the period key on your keyboard.)

Change all those rows (volume1, volume2, etc.) and their URLs to your own URLs. They can be anything you want and you can have as many of them as you want. If you want more lines just copy the lines exactly as they are, but the last line doesn’t need a comma, as you can see above.

Save this file as something like “redirect.php,” and then change the extension from the landing page of your site to a PHP extension. For example if your landing page is “http://www.example.com/index.html”, it has to be changed to “http://www.example.com/index.php.” Change the URL in your Clickbank preferences if it needs to be updated to reflect this change.

Almost done. Now in your newly renamed landing page, add in this code:

{{?php include(“redirect.php”); ?}}

MAKE SURE that line is at the very very start of that page. You can’t have anything before it, not even a carriage return or a space. If you put that line of code anywhere than the top of your HTML document the redirect just won’t work.

* Don’t forget to change the {{ to the less-than sign (hold down SHIFT and press the comma key on your keyboard) and the }} to the greater-than sign (hold down SHIFT and press the period key on your keyboard.)

And there you have it. If that special code is added to the end, for volume3 or even the “jv” section, the user will be properly redirected. Or if no special code is entered at all (just a regular Clickbank hoplink) the landing page will just be shown normally without any sort of redirect.

You can now have more flexibility when giving out special offers. You can’t give JV partners a bigger commission (you’d need another Clickbank account for that), but you can:

• Offer a bunch of bonuses for JV partners.
• Have a different product link on that page where people can buy for a reduced price.
• Have a different product link where buyers are sent to a special signup form that shares their e-mail address with the referrer.

Now you can promote multiple products through Clickbank without multiple accounts, and without needlessly paying for a costly script that does very little.

Experienced PHP/JavaScript Tutor Solves 19 Of Your Most Frustrating Direct Response Sales Page Hang-Ups http://www.salespagetactics.com/

(Go see what he’s offering. It looks like a very good deal if you’re selling products online.)

Note: The above article may be copied as long as the resource box is included. You may rebrand the above URL with your Clickbank ID however.