Even if you are really up on security for your website it is possible that your site could be hacked, if the server your site is on has been compromised. So, the first thing you do is panic but then what are the next steps?

The first thing I recommend doing is contacting your web host to see if they will assist with the issue. Some hosts will restore your site from a backup, others will help for a fee, and others will say “it’s your problem, not ours.

I do know, however, from personal experience that Hostgator will assist you, which is one of the reasons that I recommend them as a web host and use them for some of my sites. If your host fixes your site for you, change all of your passwords afterwards. If you don’t and the hacker has login access, the hack will immediately return.

If you host won’t help, you can hire someone to assist you. I’ve fixed a number of hacked sites but have started to refer people to Sucuri. This isn’t because I can’t or don’t want to do it but Sucuri can take care of the problem faster and you get a lot for your money.

Sucuri will fix your hacked site within 4 hours during regular business hours. In my experience, it is frequently fixed within that time frame even during non business hours. And during business hours, it is usually fixed in much less time.

Sucuri, in addition to fixing your hacked site, will fix it again and again over the course of the year. Hopefully, it won’t happen more than once (or at all) but they will be there for you if you need them all for the same annual fee of $89.99. After fixing the site they will notify you that it has been corrected, send a list of items you should do to keep the site secure, and will notify google, which is important if your site has been blocked as spreading malware.

Additionally, they will monitor your site for any changes or new hacks so if something happens, it is likely they will let you know before you even realize there is a problem. For example, my domain name registrar changed recently. Now, in this instance, I’m the one who changed it but a little bit later I received a notice from Sucuri that that change had occurred. If it had been something more nefarious or if I hadn’t been the one who had made the change I would have found out really fast.

Sucuri also has plans for multiple sites and for developers. For example, you can get 10 sites monitored for $289.99/year. For most of us, however, the single site plan is sufficient and costs less than $2/week. I think it’s well worth it to have peace of mind for your online business.

Note: I am an affilate of Hostgator and Sucuri. And I’m only an affiliate because they are products that I use and am super happy with.

photo credit: dantaylor

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

What To Do If Your Website Has Been Hacked?

I’m in a bit of a posting pickle. I’ve stuck to the same posting schedule for well over a year now – Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and a list of links on Sunday. Usually, I write a number of posts in advance and the schedule isn’t an issue. But the last couple of weeks and especially this week I’ve been writing them at the last minute and am desperately trying to stick to the schedule.

Now, it’s a little bit of my own fault that I’m behind. I had some downtime last weekend and could have easily have written all of the posts for the week. But it was really hot and humid and I felt lethargic and lazy. So, in the mornings I did some client work and in the afternoon I played Tomb Raider ;-)

I know, I know. Playing a video game may not have been the best use of my time but it used to be one of my main hobbies and I’ve barely played anything in the last couple of years. And as much as I enjoy what I do to earn money, there should also be some downtime.

And then after not being so very busy I am incredibly busy this week. The feast or famine nature of freelancing is hard for someone like me to adjust to who typically schedules everything down to 15 minute blocks. But it’s all good because I want to get ahead before I take a mini-vacation next month.

I have a lot of ideas for posts but most of them will take more time to write-up then I can manage right now.

So here’s a post about not having time to write my posts (because of some laziness and then super busyness).

Today I’ve been wondering if it’s better to not stick to the schedule if I don’t have something worthwhile prepared. It is very hard for me to NOT stick to a schedule though …

But, I’m pretty sure it’s better to miss a day then to simply churn out something not all that interesting just for the sake of posting something … anything. Although, I could post some of my cat videos – most everyone loves stupid cat videos ;-)

What do you think?

photo credit: CatDancing

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

Stick to a WordPress Posting Schedule … Or Not?

Recently, I came across a Firefox add-on called Capture Fox, which creates quick and easy screencasts of your screen or browser area.

In the past I’ve used Jing but I wanted to try this add-on since I don’t need to go to another site to use it.

Of course, one of the best programs for screencasts is Camtasia but I don’t make enough videos to justify purchasing it at this time.

1. Install the add-on like any other add-on for Firefox and restart your browser. If you don’t know how to install an add-on, there are instructions here.
2. In Firefox you can go to Tools > Capture Fox > Settings or click on the icon in the status bar.
   
3. You will then have the window for the settings.
   
4. I left the settings at the default except for the Capture Area. I changed it to Browser Region and selected the part of the screen that I wanted to record. I did this because on my first test I had the whole browser and when the video was uploaded to youtube the screen wasn’t clear after yourtube resized the video. One thing I like about the Capture Area / Browser Region setting is that the area is retained until you change it again.
5. I made a quick video about the Media Settings in WordPress (because I didn’t really have a topic to make an actual video about), uploaded it to youtube and embedded it below.
6. The quality is pretty good considering it was created by a free Firefox add-on. Enjoy all the uhh’s and actuallys that came out when I attempted to talk and record myself in the early morning.

photo credit: ericbegin

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

CaptureFox – Make Quick and Easy Videos with a Firefox Add-On

I don’t like it when I click on a link and a new window or tab opens in my web browser.

This might be because I’m a bit of a control freak and I want to decide when new windows and tabs open rather than have code decide for me.

There is also another issue. I already have so many tabs open that one more just might be the one to crash the browser. ;-)

A link will open a new tab or window if target=_”blank” is added to the link code. For example,

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/kwbridge/" title="Flickr"
target="_blank"> My photos </a>

and
My photos

On a PC can decide if I want to open a new tab by holding down the Ctrl key when I click on a link. On a MAC I believe it’s the command key. When I want to open a new link but also keep the current page open this is how I do it and I use it frequently. I don’t need whether a new tab opens or not decided for me.

Some people argue that if the link doesn’t open a new tab the visitor will be leaving the page and might not come back. Ok – maybe so. But I would prefer to lose that visitor rather than alienate the one’s who don’t want new windows spawning all over their screen. And if there really is some information on my site that that person wants, I’m sure he will find his way back.

So now I’m curious. How do you feel about this issue? Does it bother you when new windows open, do you want new windows to open, or are you completely indifferent? Did you know you could hold down the Ctrl key while clicking on a link to open a new tab?

photo credit: Pieter Musterd

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

Opening Links in New Windows and Tabs Using target=_blank: What is Your Opinion?

I just realized that this blog is a year old. My first post was May 19, 2008 although I didn’t really get going until June. I tend to think of the blog starting in the summer.

So, in order to commemorate this event I am going to list my 5 most popular posts of all time based on page views in Google Analytics. One of them I know without even looking it up. On most days it gets the most traffic, it rarely gets a comment and it makes me laugh.

1. 4 Sites To Help You Decide What Book To Read Next – This article was also featured on my 5 most popular articles of this year post. This is one of those articles that got stumbled and stumble visitors continue to visit. Who knew that deciding what book to read was such a hot topic.
2. How to Make an Animated Gif from a Video Clip – Last summer Jim found a funny video clip and thought it would make a cool animated gif. Being the curious dork that I am I decided to figure out how to do this and wrote it up for this article. It’s received very few comments except by people who have trouble with the instructions. My guess is that this a favorite of people who want to make really annoying forum avatars.
3. Extract Audio from YouTube Videos – This is the one that I knew would be in the top 5. I wanted to do this so I could have funny sound clips like Bill O’Reilly screaming, “we’ll do it live”. I think though that most people are using it to get songs off of music videos. This, to me, is incredibly lame. The sound quality isn’t going to be very good and most songs can be purchased for .99 cents. Maybe they are using it the way I do … I’m not sure. It just amuses me.
4. How to Exclude Pages from the WordPress Navigation Bar – This is a relatively simple code tweak that doesn’t require the use of a plugin. It would appear that a lot of people want to know how to do this. This is the article in this list that I am most happy about receiving traffic. It’s what I enjoy working with and writing about.
5. Qwitter: Find Out Who Has Stopped Following You on Twitter – While I originally wrote this article to be funny, it seems that many people want to know who has stopped following them and are searching for a tool. Unfortunately, Qwitter has become unreliable at best. I never did stop the service and I rarely receive notifications that someone has stopped following me. Then I’ll wake up on a particular morning to a full inbox because I have received weeks worth of unfollows. It’s annoying – somehow I have still not been annoyed enough to unsubscribe although I really should. I have put a note on the top of the article to let people know that the service doesn’t really work anymore but I guess that doesn’t stop them from finding it with a search.

While I know that what I value differs from what other people find important, only one out of the five most popular articles really matters to me. I wasn’t surprised by these results because anytime I look at stats these 5 articles are always at the top.

photo credit: PPCC Antifa

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

5 Most Popular (Anti) Social Posts of All Time

Last November my page rank dropped from 3 to 0 overnight. I was completely bewildered because I wasn’t buying text links, writing paid reviews or doing any of the google no-no’s.

This article quickly became my most commented. Some people offered advice and others stopped by to commiserate telling me that the same thing had happened to them.

I intended to write a follow-up to that article but never did. I decided to try not to care about page rank and got distracted by much more important things.

A week to 10 days after I lost my page rank I submitted a reconsideration request. I figured it couldn’t hurt but I didn’t expect to hear back or for anything to come from it.

At the beginning of the year Ajith emailed me to let me know that my page rank had been restored. It was kind of like a New Years gift.

Note: I am told there was a page rank update on New Years so my ranking probably came back because of that, not the reconsideration request.

I am only assuming that the reconsideration request made a difference because there wasn’t an update in rankings at that time. But like I said, I never heard anything back from google about the request.

At the end of last week Google posted a video with tips on submitting a reconsideration request, which I have included below. I think the information is valuable although the reading of the script from the laptops is annoying.

So, if you’ve had ranking or indexing problem I would recommend submitting the reconsideration request. It can’t hurt. Just don’t expect to hear back. But maybe you’ll be lucky like me and will get your ranking reinstated.

photo credit: yewenyi

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

Google Page Rank and Indexing Reconsideration Request

Two weeks I encouraged you to spring clean WordPress by making backups, upgrading, removing unused plugins and more. I have finally decided to take my own advice and have done some (Anti) Social Spring Cleaning.

I hate to admit it but I often give advice before I actually follow it myself. But there, I’ve admitted it. Between writing articles and working on other’s sites, maintenance on my own site often falls to the bottom of my todo list.

So, here’s a list of the the spring cleaning I did here at (Anti) Social Development.

1. Upgrade to 2.7.1 – I was still on 2.7. I wanted to upgrade but the auto-upgrade doesn’t work with my host and I didn’t have a block of time to do a manual upgrade until recently. It’s really nice to not be looking at the upgrade notice at the top of my WordPress screen.
2. Removed Unused Plugins – I had a couple of plugins installed that I wasn’t using. I kept them around because I thought that I might need them again but finally decided to delete them.
3. Upgraded All Plugins – I had 5 or 6 plugins that needed to be upgraded. One of them was cforms – I always put that one off because it just seems like too much work. I had two plugins that didn’t want to be upgraded through WordPress so I upgraded them manually. Well, cforms was also upgraded manually – it’s the best contact form but it’s fussy.
4. Updated my contact page – I added a little bit of text above the contact form and social networking icons and links. I think it’s more user-friendly now and prettier.
5. Updated sidebar on blog – I have different sidebars on my blog and on my services/about/portfolio pages. I updated the blog sidebar to include social networking links and icons in the Get (Anti) Social area. I also added a Facebook badge, which I’m not sure I’m going to keep. I still want to do more to this sidebar but, again, can’t decide on what exactly that is.
6. Updated other sidebar – I updated the sidebar on the services/about/portfolio pages. I added 2 new reviews of my work and changed the colors of the review block. I’m still not happy with it but can’t seem to make a decision.
7. Bookmarking Links – I removed the Sociable plugin and added the Tweet This plugin to the bottom of my posts. I decided to use the buttons for Twitter, StumbleUpon and Delicious because those are the networks I am most active on. Feel free to use them ;-) I’m thinking about adding Facebook Connect but am still mad at the new facebook.
8. Portfolio – I added two sites and testimonials to my Portfolio page. (I also removed one because the link to the site was bad). I’ve been doing work for Manshu at OneMint since last fall. He wrote an awesome review for me so I added him to the site. I also completed one of my biggest projects to date at Socialize Mobilize. Lisa also wrote a really great review so I just had to add it.
9. LinkedIn – I did a little bit of work in my LinkedIn profile, added new contacts, and got three new recommendations! Feel free to connect with me.

This reduced my site todo list considerably. There is still a lot I would like to do but I am pleased with what I’ve accomplished so far.

I also found solutions to some annoying WordPress problems that I’ve been having. But those are just SO special you’ll have to wait for the individual articles.

So, what about you? What WordPress spring cleaning did you do on your sites?

photo credit: sidewalk_story

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

(Anti) Social WordPress Spring Cleaning

• Enhance your blog posts with free high quality images – A guide to the best free high quality stock images.

• Grief Counseling for Bloggers – David Bradley wrote this article when I was complaining about losing my page rank. It’s a humorous look at how bloggers react when events, such as lost passwords, dropped page ranks, and a decrease in RSS subscriptions, occur.
• Car Free Mondays: A Series Featuring Car Free Women in LA – Siel, at Green LA Girl, has been writing a series about women who live in LA and don’t own cars. I don’t own a car, but I live in a big city with good public transportation, and it’s fascinating for me to read how women are living car-free in a city where supposedly everyone drives.
• Top Ten List of People to Unfollow on Twitter – Many lists of top 10 users on Twitter have been written – 10 Ten in Social Media, Top Ten Environmentalists, etc. In this article, Shannon Whitley lists the top ten types of people to unfollow on Twitter. It’s funny and true.
• Contact Commenters WordPress Plugin – Our friend Ajith has released a new plugin called Contact Commenters. This plugin provides an easy way to email your commenters based on a variety of different criteria such as All Commentors on a Particular Post, All Commentors in last X number of days, etc. I helped Ajith test the plugin and it works great!
• 40 Ways to Deliver Killer Blog Content – Chris Brogan wrote a great list of tips and suggestions for writing better articles for your blog.

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

(Anti) Social-Lists 12/7/08

I’m not that bright

I will be the first to admit that I am ignorant about SEO, backlinks, page rank and all of these important things that assist in getting indexed by google and a good position in search engine results. I didn’t know anything about this sort of thing until September when Ajith wrote, Google Page Rank update – DollarShower.com is PR3 now!, and I discovered that I had a PR3. I then became slightly more interested in the topic and became a regular reader of his site. I also started emailing him questions. I also installed the Firefox add-on Search Status, which tells you the PageRank and Alexa Rank of any site I am visiting.

And much like Twitter, rankings don’t really matter to me. But I liked being a PR3 and was hoping to move up to 4. And PageRank seems to matter from a monetization point of view and I suppose it gives a site credibility.

PR Drop

Last Friday I still had a PR3. Late that night, however, I dropped to PR0. I don’t have paid links or write sponsored reviews. As far as I can tell I haven’t done anything on the google no-no list. I have not been blacklisted, am still indexed by google, and am getting the same amount of traffic from google that I am accustomed to.

Panic!!!

The first thing I did was panic. I even felt sick to my stomach. I emailed Arjith and he took a look and said the only problem he could find is I am not using nofollow and am allowing my rank to leeched out (my words, not his). It never occurred to me that I should use nofollow. I did some research about this and read Matt Cutts on Nofollow, Links-Per-Page and the Value of Directories. Apparently Matt Cutts is the go-to guy for this issue. I wish I knew him. I have started following him on twitter, @mattcutts, but don’t really expect a follow back.

Don’t Panic

I then encountered ProBlogger’s article from two years ago, What should you do if your Google Ranking Falls and you lose all your traffic?, where a similar thing happened to him but in his instance he did lose search engine traffic. His first piece of advice was “Don’t Panic” so that calmed me down some. I read the rest of the article and realized that no one is immune to this happening.

Additionally, a big PageRank drop happened a little over a year ago. Again, ProBlogger was impacted by this and he wrote, ProBlogger – PageRank 4. Could something similar be happening again?

Reconsideration Request?

I am signed up for Google Webmaster Tools and other than the nofollow issue I haven’t found any problems.

What I can’t decide is whether I should submit a Reconsideration Request or not. ProBlogger recommended to sit tight but that is a two year old article. Should I wait a little bit or should I submit it immediately?

As anyone, who isn’t writing paid reviews or buying links, had this happen recently? And does anyone have the ear of Matt Cutts?

photo credit: kevinsteele

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

Google Page Rank – A Sudden 3 Point Drop!!!

• 30 Exceptional Gimp Tutorials and Resources – Last week I posted a tutorial for Photoshop and Gimp. Ajith mentioned that he wanted to learn Gimp so I located this list of resources in my bookmarks. If you want to learn all kinds of special effects with this free open source software, this is the place to start.
• 8 Common Sense Tips For Writing Clean WordPress Blog Posts 8 Tips for Using the Visual Text Editor in WordPress. This is an awesome guide and one I know I’m going to refer people to frequently.
• Is Blogging Keeping You Poor – Copyblogger discusses how hard many bloggers work for little reward. Possible solutions are partnerships and delegation.
• 10 Things You Need To Know About WordPress 2.7 Aaron Brazell, from Technosailor, takes a comprehensive look at WordPress 2.7, which is due out at the end of the month. This is the best guide I’ve encountered so far as all of the pertinent information is included in one location.
• 145 MUST READ free business related eBooks A great selection of free ebooks. There is something for everyone here.

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

(Anti) Social-Lists 11/23/08