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[Download] WordPress 3.0.4 Important Security Update

December 30, 2010 by bharath

WordPress has probably rolled out the last update for the year 2010, WordPress 3.0.4, an important security update for the popular CMS. In a blog post about the release of the update, Matt Mullenweg, founder of Automattic, the company behind WordPress, has termed the latest update as “critical”. The update apparently fixes a core security bug called KSES found in WordPress HTML sanitation library.

WordPress 3.0.4

To keep your website or blog managed by WordPress CMS, it is strongly advised that you immediately update it to the latest version. You can either choose the automatic update mode or download the file from the links below and extract to your server using an FTP client.

Download:

WordPress.zip (3 MB)

WordPrress.tar.gz (2.7 MB)

[Download] WordPress 3.0.2

December 1, 2010 by bharath

WordPress 3.0.2 is now available as a mandatory security update for all the earlier versions of WordPress.

WordPress 3.0.2 release fixes a moderate security issue identified in WordPress that could allow a author-level user to gain access to some administrator related features of the site. The update also fixes as many as 9 minor bugs and also packs some security enhancements. For full list of updates in the versions 3.0.2, read at WordPress Codex.

WordPress 3.0.2 Update

To update your blog to to the latest version of the WordPress, either download 3.0.2 version or use the automatic update feature from Dashboard > Updates menu from the administrator’s area in your blog. It is highly recommended that you download this update immediately even if you think your site hasn’t got any untrusted users.

[How To] Disable All In One SEO Additional Columns From Posts Editing Page

October 14, 2010 by bharath

If you have just upgraded the All In One SEO plugin today for your WordPress based blog, you might have noticed three new columns being added to the post editing page (SEO Title, SEO Keywords and SEO Description) as shown below

It’s very much annoying as the the post title column gets longer due to this and make it difficult to read it as you need to scroll down. These columns added after upgrading the All In One SEO are not actually needed considering the fact that they take significant amount of your screen space. So I quickly dug into this to find out how we can remove, and realized that it was quite easy after seeing a tweet from Micheal Torbert, the developer of this great plugin. Here is how you can remove the additional three SEO columns in posts editing page (no code modification required):

1. Go to All In One SEO plugin configuration page (Can be found under Settings menu in your dashboard).

All in one seo link in sidebar

2. Look for “Custom Post Types for SEO Column Support” filed in the settings page. By default, the settings would be enabled for both post and page editors as shown:

Custom post types SEO Columns checked in All in One SEO

3. Hold Control key and uncheck the post and page options as shown:

Custom post types SEO Columns unchecked in All in One SEO

4. Click Save the Options and go back and check the post and page editing page in your WordPress dashboard, the extra columns should have been removed now.

WordPress.com To Be The New Blogging Platform For Windows Live Users

September 27, 2010 by bharath

So here is some big news, Windows Live Spaces is dead ! All the Windows Live Spaces users (bloggers) will now be shifted to the WordPress.com, which is going to be the default blogging platform for all Windows Live users.

This was announced by Dharmesh Mehta, Director of the Windows Live Product Management at the TechCrunch Disrupt.

All the existing users need to upgrade their current Windows Live Spaces blogs (there are 30 million of them !) to WordPress.com. This collaboration means that you can use Messenger Connect, to share your blog content with friends over Windows Messenger, each new post will be sent via notification to your friends in Windows Messenger.

WordPress and Windows Live Messenger

The migration may be a bit tricky as it changes your current URL and redirects it to the new WordPress.com URL (there won’t be significant traffic loss though). You can start the migrating process right now at the moment by visiting your Live Space blog. For more information about, read the official post from Windows Live Blog.

[How To] Install WordPress On Your Local Computer

August 12, 2010August 12, 2010 by bharath

wordpress logo

Are you a web developer or admin of a network of blogs with WordPress as CMS? Want to test some new features offline before implementing them on your original server online ?

If your answer is “yes” to the above questions, perhaps you have landed on the right page. WordPress is an amazing Content Management System for blogs and it makes everything easy even for not so tech-savvy people. However if you own blogs, you might well be knowing the importance of testing the features like testing some enhancements to your current themes, testing plugins or even testing some third-party scripts on your WordPress blog. At Techrena, which is set to become a network of blogs sooner or later, we understand the importance of this testing. We do a lot of testing on our local computers before finally taking them online. We thought it would be useful if we share how actually we do this kind of testing on our local systems using WordPress. Here we are coming up with a detailed tutorial on installing WordPress on localhost via two methods.

1. Using Xampp Server

2. Using IIS server (on Windows only)

Before we start, while we try to give every detail while posting this please do note that in some cases, we do take things for granted in the sense that we assume that you know some basic things if not more. Let’s get started…

Using Xampp Server:

Requirements: i) PHP latest version (check here) ii) MySQL Database latest version (check here)

Although, PHP 4.3+ version and MySQL 4+ version is sufficient enough to run WordPress, we recommended you to use the latest versions always. One good thing with WordPress is that, it always notifies users when their database version is outdated. So this helps you keeping the updated database version.

Step 1:

Download the XAMPP local server. Run the installer and make sure that the XAMPP server is running on your tray.

Step 2:

Open the XAMPP Control Panel from the system tray, check the first box (Apache) and click on the “Start” button to start the Apache web server on your local machine.

Xampp control panel start Apache

Step 3:

Now that the local server has been installed we are now left with installing WordPress on our server. Download the latest WordPress zip file and extract the “WordPress” folder to the htdocs folder inside the “xampp” server installation folder.

htdocs in xampp WordPress in htdocs

Step 4:

Now you need to create a database table which can be used by WordPress. Go to http://localhost/phpmyadmin/ and create a new database. If you are not able to login to the phpMyAdmin page, go to http://localhost/security/xamppsecurity.php page and edit the MySql SuperUser details and try again.

Enter the new database name (something like “wordpress”) and click “Create” and the new database will be created. Now we need to notify WordPress about this database in the next step.

New database in phpMyAdmin

Step 5:

Go to WordPress folder and open the file called “wp-config-sample.php” in any text editor.

editing wp-config-sample.php file

Make the changes to the file and rename it as “wp-config.php” and close the editor.

Step 6:

Now type http://localhost/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php (the path of the URL may change depending on what name you chose for site or the name of the folder under “htdocs”)

WordPress install page

Choose your local WordPress blog title and leave your email address in there start page and click “Install WordPress”. You will now be given username and password to login to your new blog.

2. Using IIS Server:

Microsoft has made it easier to install WordPress on your Windows based computer just like installing Windows apps, all you need to do is to do a few clicks.

Requirement: You need to enable and run IIS server on your computer. Read our tutorial on how to activate IIS on your computer.

Step 1:

Download and run Microsoft Web Platform Installer. This is a free software from Microsoft developed to make installing web apps easy for Windows users.

Step 2:

Go to Web Applications > Blogs > click “Most Popular”, select “WordPress” and click Install button. Other tools that are required by WordPress like PHP and MySQL will automatically be included in the download. You need to accept the licence agreement and then proceed to the download. The total download size should be less than 90 MB in most cases.

Web platform installer for wordpress

Step 3:

Once the download and installation gets over, you will be asked to enter information about your site in a series of steps:

i) Admin Password for MySQL: By default the database administrator username would be “root” and you need to select a password for the administrator, click “Continue” button once you are done.

MySQL dayabase admin password web platform

After you enter this, the download resumes for sometime and you will be then asked for some more information about the site.

ii) Application information: You need to enter the Database admin password (which you have set in the above step) and WordPress database password. You will also be asked to enter passphrases to secure your passwords, but the default option here is to leave them blanks and in any case this is not mandatory. You can however change it if you would like to change it.

WordPress IIS application info

ii) Site information: In this step you just need to enter the WordPress application name. You might not want to change the other details which are set to default already. Click “Continue” button and let the Web Platform installer install the application for you.

Step 4:

This is the last step of the installation. You will be shown the list of product installed on the window.

WordPress_web_platform_install_done

Click “Launch WordPress” to launch your WordPress blog. You can alternatively access it via http://localhost/wordpress/. You can find the WordPress installtion usually inetpub> wwwroot folder.

Still facing any problems during the installation ? Let us know through the comments.

Note:

1. The above two methods have been tested and found to be working well on Windows 7 machines.

2. While the method 2 is relatively simpler and quicker, we have however found that if you delete some sites from your IIS Manager, the WordPress installation getting corrupted. It may not be the same case for all but surely for some. We hence advise you to not to touch anything inside Internet Information Service(IIS) Manager unless you are sure about what you are doing.

WordPress 3.0 Available For Free Download

June 19, 2010 by bharath

WordPress developers has today officially released the latest version of their popular Blogging and CMS(Content Management System) platform WordPress 3.0 (code name ‘Thelonious’).

WordPress 3.0 is the thirteenth major release of WordPress software and and is also the first major release of WordPress since the version 2.9.

The following are the major updates in WordPress 3.0.

1. Admin Username during the installation:

WordPress 3.0 allows you to give your own Username instead of default “admin” during the installation of WordPress.

Admin_username_wordpress_3
2. New look:

The Dashboard has been made a little lighter in color for better appearance.

WordPress_3_new_screenshot
3. Bulk Updates:

You can now upgrade multiple WordPress plugins simultaneously.

plugins_bulk_update_wordpress_3
4. Twenty Ten Theme:

A new sexy Twenty Ten theme replaces the classical Kubric theme which WordPress had for years

Twenty_ten_theme_WordPress_3
5. Custom Backgrounds:

change background in WordPress 3.0

Change the background color or upload a new image for background
6. Custom Headers:

You customize the header by uploading your own images
7. Custom Menus:

You can now add menus to your blog..as easy as 1 2 3..You can choose the order/hierarchy in which they should appear. This is very good for SEO prospective.

Create_menu_WordPress_3

Custom_menus_Wordpress_3
8. Custom Post Types:

You can now choose custom post types for your blog like if you manage a big organization, you can have custom post types like “Products”, “Contacts”, “Employees”, “Newsletters” etc.

Post_types_Wordpress_3
9. Shortlink Support (Built-in):

WordPress now supports a default in-built URL shortener (shortlink generator) right from the post editor itself.

Shortlink WordPress 3 post

10. MU + WP = 3.0:

Now you can run a millions (virtually !) of blogs with a single WordPress installation.

Installing WordPress 3.0 In Your Blog:

You can either download WordPress 3.0 Zip file or you can use the Upgrade from your dashboard to upgrade the WordPress automatically to WordPress 3.0.

Bing 404 Plugin For WordPress

June 6, 2010 by bharath

wordpress official logo

If you are looking for a plugin to manage 404 error pages in a more better way in your WordPress blog, here’s a plugin “Bing404” for WordPress by Microsoft. Even though WordPress has a default 404 template which avoids otherwise a dead “Page Not Found” error, you might still want to handle 404 error pages better so that you won’t loose your visitors landing your 404 pages accidentally. Bing 404 plugin shows a list of possible pages on your domain via search results based on the keyword (you may range of domains to narrow down the search).

Follow these steps to start using this in your blog:

1. Download the Bing404 WordPress plugin

2. Upload the plugin to your blog and activate it.

3. Get the Bing App ID using your existing Windows Live ID.

4. Configure the plugin by entering the Bing App ID and you can also customize other settings.

Bing404 plugin configuration

The plugin includes a 404 page, if you check the option to use this 404 page that came with the plugin, it should work without any code modifications. However, if you want to use this plugin with your own 404 page, you may have to add the following code to your template’s 404.php

<?php if(function_exists('bing404_search_bing')) { echo bing404_search_bing(); } ?>

Now that you have implemented the plugin, check the 404 pages yourself. You can learn more about this plugin at thus post by watching the video below:

Watch this video to learn more:

[How To] Easily Embed MP3 File Into A WordPress Blog Post

June 1, 2010 by bharath

Embed Mp3 into WordPress post

This tutorial deals with how to embed a Mp3 audio file into a WordPress post so that it can be played right inside the post in players like Quicktime.This saves the time for your readers as they need not download the file to listen to it. Follow these simple steps to learn how you can do it.

Steps:

1. Star composing a new post by clicking on “Add New” under posts section. Next to Upload/Insert option, click on the music icon to add (upload) audio to the media library.

Upload audio file to the WordPress media library

2. Click on the Select Files and chose your audio (mp3) file and click Ok.

Add media files from your computer to the WordPress media library
Wait until the upload gets over. Copy the link URL to notepad.

3. Now go to back the post editor, and click on the small video file like icon (see in the screenshot). New “Insert / edit embedded media” popup will open.

Click on this to embed media into the WordPress post
Under the File/URL filed, enter the URL that you have just copied to the notepad in the previous step. You can now customize the Quciktime player by setting your preferred dimension (I had chosen 300 x 15 in the screenshot). You can preview the audio file by playing it under the “Preview” section.

insert_embedded_media

4. Now go to Advanced tab and uncheck “Auto play”. Auto play, if checked plays the audio file automatically when the page loads, many of us may not want this, hence it’s better to keep it unchecked. Click Insert to embed the audio file into the post.

Uncheck Auto play in embedded media settings

5. The audio file (mp3) will now be embedded into your post and this is how it looks like in your WYSIWYG editor.

Mp3 file embedded in WordPress post editor

6. Publish the post and you will now see the mp3 file embedded into the post as shown in the below screenshot:

Mp3 embedded into a WordPress post

Implement Google Adsense For Search In WordPress Blog

July 1, 2010May 29, 2010 by bharath

Google adsense for search in wordpress self-hosted blog

Adding Google Adsense for search (AFS) for self-hosted WordPress blogs is a bit tricky.In case of a blog hosted on Blogger, it’s enough if you place the codes wherever you want as long it lies within the <body> section of the HTML source.Coming back to WordPress, even though there won’t be much difficulty in adding the code for displaying the Adsense search box, showing search results is the hard part.This requires you to create a separate page for displaying the search results.

Here we are coming up with an exclusive full tutorial on how to add Google Adsense site search in your WordPress blog.Follow the steps carefully to learn add Adsense site search feature on your own.

What Do We Need ?

– We need a standalone WordPress page to show search results

– We need a separate WordPress page template to embed the search results

– Codes for generating Adsense search box and Adsense search results

Procedure:

Step 1: Creating page template

We are going to generate a WordPress page template in this step.

Open any text editor and copy paste the below code into it and save it as something like googlesitesearch.php.

Code:

<?php
 /*
 Template Name: google site search
*/
?> 

<?php get_header(); ?> 

<!-- Your Adsense serach result code goes here --> 

<?php get_sidebar(); ?>
<?php get_footer(); ?>

Note the template name that you have given here (google site search), we make use of this in the next step.You may have to upload it to your WordPress theme folder to use it in the next step.

Step 2: Creating WordPress page

This is much simpler step, you just need to create a new WordPress page (Go to Pages> select “Add New”). Give it some name like Google Site Search.

Important: On the right side pane, select the page template that we have created in the first step (google site search).

Publish the page and note down the URL of the page (ex: www.techrena.net/google-site-search).

Step 3:

In the second page of the AFS wizard, enter the above URL from the above step in the text box under “Open results within my own site” option.

Finish the AFS settings wizard and now you are ready with two separate codes, one for generating Adsense search form and another for generating search results.

Adsense for search code

Step 4:

Copy the Search Results Code and paste it into the page template file (googlesitesearch.php), save it and re-upload it to your current WordPress theme folder via FTP. Now this is your final page template that loads the search results.
You are done and the sample result page will look like the following:

techrena AFS results page

Let us know, if you face any difficulties in implementing Adsense for search in your WordPress blog.

[How To] Stop or Disable Hotlinking and Bandhwidth Theft using .htaccess file

May 11, 2010May 11, 2010 by dennis

We found out that many of our copyrighted popular posts have been copied by many of the bloggers. But with so many traffic hungry bloggers around, it is impossible to track and warn each of the bloggers.

Now, our main concern is that many of our copyrighted images are not only copied to other blogs but also hotlinked. This is a serious issue with every popular blog where hotlinking results to bandwidth theft. Now if you are having similar problems of hotlinking or not, you should disable hot linking for sure.

What is Hotlinking or Inline linking?

Inline linking (also known as hotlinking, leeching, piggy-backing, direct linking, offsite image grabs) is the use of a linked object, often an image, from one site into a web page belonging to a second site. The second site is said to have an inline link to the site where the object is located.[wikipedia]

This is when you insert an image to your blog from an image URL of someone else’s site instead of uploading the image to your server. Many people with limited server storage size tend to do this.

How to stop Hotlinking and Bandwidth theft using .htaccess file?

In order to disable hotlinking follow the steps below:

1. Open your .htaccess file by saving it.

.htaccess file is present in the public_html folder of your blog. This can be accessed by using the ftp client like FileZilla. Hope all webmasters know this. Save the file and open it using notepad.

2. Add the code to disable hotlinking of your images

Add the following code to your .htaccess file and save it back to your public_html folder.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(.+\\.)?yoursite\\.com/ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteRule .*\\.(jpe?g|gif|bmp|png)$ http://imagehostsite/warning.jpeg [L]

Change the orange colored code according to your need as shown in the example below.

Example: [Click to Enlarge]

The RewriteCond can be added according to your purpose. If you have any other blog where you want to use the images, then add another line with the site’s address as we have done in the example.

Important notes:

1. Backup your .htaccess file before doing the changes.

2. in the RewriteRule line, you cannot use a warning image uploaded to your site because the warning image itself will be blocked. So upload the image to some other servers like blogger or other image hosting sites

3. The RewriteCond can be added according to your purpose. If you have any other blog where you want to use the images, then add another line with the site’s address.

Now after performing the changes, you can check the other site where your images are hotlinked. An example is given below where our most popular post Reset Windows XP, Vista, 7 Password Using USB Drive or CD was copied.

Hope you have seen something like ours. Any feedback will be appreciated.

You can also see how to protect your wordpress internal files using .htaccess.

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