That is unless you want to leave your blog open to being hacked. If you are using an older version of Wordpress, your blog has security vulnerabilities. Thankfully, these security loopholes have been fixed in Wordpress.

If you don’t think this can happen to you, think again!

One of my websites which is based on a Wordpress blog and was running on version 2.0.9 got hacked a while back. I would never have found out if not for Google Webmaster Tools.

So if you have not signed up for that yet, better do so asap as they have some very good tools which will help with optimizing your website/blog.

Once you are signed up check the link in the sidebar: Your site on the web > Keywords

This section shows the most common keywords Google finds on your website.

For me I was getting adult related keyword results which were not on my website. On checking the website source, I could see nothing. On checking the cached version at Google, I found the source had a zillion links to websites using these keywords.

I searched all over for an answer, I checked my files and database as much as I could but could not figure out where the links were coming from.

My Solution

In the end the best solution, albeit a time consuming one, was to re-install WP 2.8.4 with a new database and a new database user. Here’s how:

1. Created a new database, a new database user and installed WP 2.8.4 in a sub folder called Blog.
2. Replicated WP settings and started installing and setting up the plugins.
3. Uploaded the old theme from my computer where I had a clean copy.
4. Started copy/pasting the pages and posts content manually.
5. Once the whole thing was set up exactly how I wanted it, I deleted the files in the root folder.
6. Next step was to move the files from the blog folder to the root folder.
7. Next I deleted the old database and any users associated with it.
8. Just to be safe also changed the hosting and FTP passwords.

Now the true test – waiting for Google to crawl my website again to see if it will pick up the clean version or if the hack is still there. I will update this post as soon as I have that information.

Upgrading Wordpress

If you’d like to upgrade to the latest version of Wordpress and you are using WP 2.7 + then upgrading is simple. You can upgrade from within WP control panel by clicking Upgrade Now.

However, if you are using an earlier version which was installed manually, then it will have to be updated manually as well.

If you want I can do that for you. The options are:

$47 for the basic upgrade
$97 for the basic upgrade plus plugin upgrade.

Hire Me to upgrade your Wordpress and avoid getting hacked

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Post from: ErumMunir.com.
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Wordpress Blog Hacked!

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However, sadly most of the comments turn up being the ‘Thank you for this post’ type comments, while others don’t even bother with that and just copy an old comment that made it through moderation. Even worse are those that are not even relevant to the post.

No Follow to Do Follow to No Follow

Due to these tactics, a lot of do-follow blogs have decided to go back to being no-follow blogs. Although, this blog is still do-follow, I am seriously considering that option if the quality of comments keeps deteriorating. It can be very time consuming to wade through the spam to get to the real comments and sometimes they get missed out on or get delayed in posting.

What’s Happened to Akismet

Another issue for us bloggers is that Akismet is no longer working at an optimal level. It is letting through some very blatant spam. And when I say blatant, I mean adult related spam that should never get past any spam filters.

Thanks to the comment moderation option, these comments never make it to the blog. May be it is time to add another spam comment removal plugin.

Anyway…
….the point is that if you want blogs to remain do-follow and keep sending their page rank and link benefit your way, make sure to write comments that add something to the discussion. It goes without saying that please read the post before commenting.

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What’s With The Spammy Comments? Seriously!

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One reason is you have to give the plugin authors time to update, if any are needed on their plugins. The second advantage to waiting is that all the security bugs get ironed out. In case you noticed, WP 2.8 was followed by 2.8.1 up to 2.8.4 pretty quickly.

I finally upgraded at 2.8.4 and all the plugins seem to be working flawlessly and I haven’t even updated all of them as yet so that is step number two.

Now for the new features:

More Screen Options

Starting with your dashboard, you will find new screen options including choosing the number of columns you want on the page (this is pretty neat btw). The screen options have been enhanced for every section.

Manage Your Themes

What a relief! You can now not only activate but preview and delete the theme right from your theme management page. It was great to have this functionality with plugins. It is just as good to see it come to life with the themes.

Install New Themes

And if you think managing themes is a breeze, wait till you check out the new install theme option. You can directly upload a theme in zip format or choose from the zillion free ones available.

Theme Editor

One very nice change in the editor is the new function name lookup option.

Managing Widgets

If there was ever a section in urgent need of improvement, it was the widgets. And that is exactly what it got. This section has had a page lift and dragging and adding widgets to your sidebars has never been easier. One widget you will love is the text/html widget. You can now add it multiple times to your sidebar to add any text/html you may want to in between all the other widgets. Pretty useful!

There is also an inactive widgets section. That is if you want to deactivate a widget but not remove its settings.

Comment Management Made easy

In the edit post area, there is a new section for every post. And this is the comments section. Here you can view, edit, delete and perform any function related to comments for that post. Yes you can add your own replies, too.

Adding Tags

Not only can you add tags, tag slugs, you can also add tag descriptions if you so wish. Find this under Posts – Post Tags.

TimeZones

This can be found under Settings – General. It allows you to choose a city in the same time zone as you. Daylight savings is also taken into account with this new change.

A worthwhile upgrade from WP 2.7. Now time to see what 2.9 will bring.

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What’s New in Wordpress 2.8.x?

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If you are also using the Semiologic do-follow plugin, you might also have noticed that it is no longer working.

SOLUTION
Look in your plugins to see if you have a Google Analyticator plugin. Just deactivate it and everything will be back to normal.

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My last version was WP 2.5.1 and I finally upgraded to 2.7 last night. It was more or less a painless task since all of my plugins still work with 2.7. At most I had to update them via the one-click plugin update (it is more like 2 clicks but who’s counting ).

However, it did require some changes in my theme. I could have lived without these changes as my theme did not break … I just wanted some of the new features to work.

So here’s the low down on some of the main changes in Wordpress 2.7 and how to deal with them:

Admin Interface

This has to be the biggest and best change yet. The admin interface has improved threefold. It is so much easier to get to the section you want to open. It is just faster and easier to use not to mention it looks great.

Dashboard Changes

Personally I always thought the dashboard real estate was always wasted. Not anymore. It now displays a hoard of important info including recent comments, drafts, statistics, etc and also lets you add a quick post directly from the dashboard.

Write/Edit Posts and Pages

You can now choose the boxes you want displayed on these pages as well as drag them around to suit your preference.

Posts Index

You can choose which columns to display. Mouse over a post to display menu options like Edit, Quick Edit, Delete, View.

Quick Edit brings up some basic editing options for the post. Among other things you can change categories, add tags, edit the title, slug, etc as well as make a sticky post.

Sticky Posts

As mentioned above, the quick edit option lets you mark a post as sticky so it stays at the top of your blog. However, one small change needs to be made to your theme regarding this.

Find your post loop in index.php, archive.php, category.php. Look for the starting div … something like this:

<div id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>" class="post">

Change this to:

<div id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>" <?php post_class(); ?>>

You can also add one or multiple classes to this as follows:

<div id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>" <?php post_class('class1 class2'); ?>>

The classes need to be separated by a space.

Better Comment Management

There are a lot of improvements related to comments. Not only can you perform bulk actions like marking as spam, deleting, etc, but you can finally reply to comments from within the WP admin interface. About time this feature got added. The only thing I miss is a threaded reply feature here.

A menu pops up when you mouse over a comment giving you the option to reply, edit, delete, etc.

Threaded Comments and Comment Pagination

These two much needed features have been added to the core WP installation. No need for plugins to do either.

Go to settings and then discussion. Here you will find the option to set pagination and threading on along with the settings. You can choose the number of comments to display as well as how deep the threading should go.

Now for the harder part. These two features require a change in your comments.php file. This is all you need to display your comments:

<div class="navigation">
<div class="alignleft"><?php previous_comments_link() ?></div>
<div class="alignright"><?php next_comments_link() ?></div>
</div>

<ol id="commentlist">
<?php wp_list_comments('type=comment'); ?>
</ol>

<div class="navigation">
<div class="alignleft"><?php previous_comments_link() ?></div>
<div class="alignright"><?php next_comments_link() ?></div>
</div>

You also need to add this line to your header.php file:

<?php if ( is_singular() ) wp_enqueue_script( 'comment-reply' ); ?>

This is just the basic comment code which works with pagination and threading. You can style the basic code or add a call back function for extreme styling or in other words your own custom comment design.

I will try and cover that in another post.

Logout

If you have a logout option in your theme, make sure to replace the logut url with:

<?php echo wp_logout_url(get_permalink()); ?>

So these are…

…some of the changes in WP2.7. The goods news is that your old theme from WP 2.6 and 2.5 will still work as will most of the plugins. You only need to make the changes if you want to add the new comment features.

You can get WP 2.7 here.

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Upgrading to Wordpress 2.7

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Saved from two upgrades. Phew!

Here’s the lowdown on why you should upgrade to 2.6.2

It is most important for those of you who allow open registrations on your blogs. Of course there are some bug fixes, too. So best to upgrade.

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So here goes…

Plugin Compatibility

CForms is now completely compatible with three of the most used comment plugins.

• Subscribe To Comments
• CommentLuv
• WP AJAX Edit Comments

First Step is to install the above mentioned plugins and activate them.

Next… adding Subscribe To Comments and CommentLuv

When you add the comment form you will notice two extra fields: Subscribe To Comments and CommentLuv. Adding these will make sure that the two plugins now work seamlessly with CForms. Yes it really is that simple!

And … WP AJAX Edit Comments
This is the simplest one to work with as all you need to do is upgrade to the latest version of this plugin. The plugin authors of both CFORMS and WP AJAX Edit Comments have worked together to make sure the plugins are compatible. So hats off to them.

Comment Template

When you post a comment using the CForms comment form, you might not get to see the comment posted until you refresh the page. This is because there is one last setting that needs to be adjusted.

1. Click global settings.
2. Next select ‘WP Comment Feature Settings’
3. The most important setting here is ‘Parent Comment Container’. Your comments are wrapped in an ol tag. Whatever id is set for that must be added to this field. Example:

   <ol id="commentlist">

   In this case the ‘Parent Comment Container’ will be ‘commentlist’

4. Next we design the look of the comment template to match the one in comments.php. This can be done under ‘New comment HTML template’. If you click on Supported Variables you will see a list of all that you can use. The good news is that there is now a gravatar option. Also if you use the Default Template as the starting point, it also has the option of alternating the class.

   <li class="alt" id="comment-{id}">

5. Lastly you can also set the gravatar size to your liking.

You should now be able to preview your comment without re-loading te page plud have the option of editing it if yo are using the WP AJAX Edit Comments plugin.

Troubleshooting

There are some problems you might run into.

1. You might note that your first comment needs refreshing while the follow-up comments can be easily viewed without a reload.

   There is a reason. Your most probably have your comment code like this:

   If Comment {
   <ol id="commentlist">
   <li>
   Comment Here
   </li>
   </ol>
   }

   Note that the ol tag is only displayed if there is a comment. Your blog doesn’t know there is a first comment until the page is re-loaded. Since the ol tags are not used, CForms cannot show the comment. If you have them outside the ‘if comment’ and the ol tag is rendered regardless of whether there is a comment or not then Cforms can work its magic.

2. You might find that you can no longer access your Wordpress admin or that pages go blank after you save settings. Check to make sure that cforms.php in your plugins/cforms folder does not have any empty spaces at the end. If the problem persists, then it can be a PHP memory issue. This can be set in your php.ini file if you run your own server or you can ask your host to increase PHP memory to say 32 or 64.

Enjoy the new version of CForms … I’m sure this plugin will continue to improve. In which case there will be a part 3 to this tutorial someday.

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Surprisingly not everyone is facing this problem.

A client of mine has the exact same configuration on his blog (give or take a couple of plugins) as mine. However, he faced the broken image problem while I did not. Of course we have blogs on different servers so that might have something to do with it.

The Fix

The fix is pretty simple. It’s just finding it that takes time

1. Browse to your Wordpress admin settings.
2. Click on Miscellaneous
3. The first field there is ‘Store uploads in this folder’ and most probably contains the folder wp-content/uploads. The second field ‘Full URL path to files (optional)’ is most likely blank. It is this field which you need to fill up. Add the full path to your uploads folder as follows (assuming your upload folder is wp-content/uploads).

   http://www.yourdomain.com/wp-content/uploads

   Your images should now upload without a problem.

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What’s the solution?

Separate the two, of course.

But How?

That’s a good question. You will find plugins that do this but if you can manage something in the theme design, it is best to do so rather than install plugin upon plugin. Plugins are best used where you cannot achieve your objective without touching the core Wordpress files.

In this case all you need to work with is your theme’s comments.php file.

Step One – Counting Comments and Trackbacks

Since the normal comment count includes both the comments and trackbacks, we first need to get a separate count for each.

Find this line in comments.php

<!-- You can start editing here. -->

Add the following code under it

<?php
$numTrackBacks = 0;
$numComments = 0;

foreach ($comments as $comment) {
$comment_type = get_comment_type(); 
if ($comment_type != 'comment') { $numTrackBacks++; }
else { $numComments++; }
}
?>

Basic gist:
First we set $numTrackBacks and $numComments as 0. We then check the database and loop thru the comments and trackbacks. If the record retrieved is not a comment then a number is added to the trackback count otherwise the comment count is increased.

Step Two – Showing the Comment Count

Next we need to show the comment count before we display the comments.

Find this line

<?php if ($comments) : ?>

and add this code after it:

<?php echo $numComments;?> 
<? if ($numComments = 1) :?>
Response
<? else : ?>
Responses
<? endif; ?>
to &#8220;<?php the_title(); ?>&#8221;

This will spit out the comment count in this format:
1 Response for ‘Post Title’
5 Responses for ‘Post Title’

Step Three – Displaying The Comments

Next we have to display comments. Look for this line:

<?php foreach ($comments as $comment) : ?>

And add these two lines after it:

<?php $comment_type = get_comment_type(); ?>
<?php if($comment_type == 'comment') { ?>

What we are doing here is checking to see if the record retrieved is a comment.
If so then we display it.

Since we have opened a loop, we also need to close it.

Find the line

<?php endforeach; /* end for each comment */ ?>

and replace it with:

<?php } /* End of is_comment statement */ ?>
<?php endforeach; /* end for each comment */ ?>

We have successfully displayed our comments without any trackbacks or pingbacks.

Step Four – Displaying Trackbacks and Pingbacks

Time to display our trackbacks and pingbacks.

Add this code right after you finish displaying the comments (in most themes it would be after the /ol tag):

<? if ($numTrackBacks != 0) :?>
<br />
<h3>Trackbacks and Pings 
(<? echo $numTrackBacks; ?>)</h3>
<? endif; ?>
<ol>
<?php foreach ($comments as $comment) : ?>
<?php $comment_type = get_comment_type(); ?>
<?php if($comment_type != 'comment') { ?>
<li><?php comment_author_link() ?></li>
<?php } ?>
<?php endforeach; ?>
</ol>

You can change the styling and format to suit your site. However, this basic code will show your trackbacks and pingbacks separated from your comments.

–

Now there is no excuse to not clean up your blog and organize your comments.

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Separate Your Trackbacks From Your Comments

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A friend asked me why this was useful and why anyone will want to see their comment twice?

My answer: If your comment is pretty long, the textarea will start to scroll and you won’t be able to look at your entire comment in on go. The preview on the other hand shows the comment in its entirety. This way you can see how it looks and proof read with ease before you post.

I have gotten this technique from the Rockatee Blog. So a big thank you to Maleika.

1. First things first. You need to download jQuery. Lets just name it jquery.js and place it in your theme folder.
2. Next download this file and place it in your theme folder.
3. Now open header.php from your theme and add these lines in the head area:

   <script type="text/javascript" src="<?php bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>/jquery.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="<?php bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>/preview.js"></script>

4. Last step is to add the following code to you comments.php file wherever you want the live preview to show up.

   <div class="comment-preview"> <h3>My Comment Preview</h3> <p class="live-preview">Add some instructions - this text will get replaced by the comment preview.</p> </div>

5. You can use the class p.live-preview to style the live comment preview.

See that was simple and you have your own comment live preview.

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