Jammed: Full into Capacity

My upcoming graduation and recent site suspension have kept me out-of-loop from the latests in blogosphere. It was only now that I learned about the latest huge hacking exploits on WordPress 2.3.3. The script (a Trojan horse) has infected over 6 thousand WordPress 2.3.3 bloggers (as of today). It creates a directory in your wp-contents folder named “1″ and creates a directory of list of “search engine-friendly” gambling, porn, and other illegal sites. Currently, solutions are yet to be formulated.

To know if you have been infected with this malware, you can check your wp-content and look if there is a directory named “1″. You can do it through FTP or through your file manager or simply check your website at http://yourdomain.com/wp-content/1/. If you are infected, you will see a list of those illegal sites.

How does the virus affect your website?

Google has flagged some of the infected sites as harmful. Unfortunately, if you were affected, it may cause significant drop to your traffic because a “this website may harm your PC” message will appear below your link warning visitors not to come to your site (take the case of BonTB who were one of the firsts to discover this exploit).

It may also affect your SERPs and PR since you are “hosting” illegal sites. You may also be suspended from your host since you will be violating their terms and conditions.
Read more…

Tips, WordPress, WordPress Plugins, WordPress Themes Trojan Horse, WordPress Exploits, WordPress Hacking, WordPress Virus

I’ve been out of the blogosphere these past few days because of 2 reasons: graduation and account suspension. Our graduation rites and ball will be tomorrow and on Sunday, respectively. So I’ve been busy looking for a graduation dress and attending the rehearsals. I had to do boutique-hopping to find a suitable one. I need three dresses and the budget is tight so I have to carefully consider the price.

I was so busy with my graduation that it was already late to notice that my site has been suspended by my host due to CPU overload. This was the second time it happened. The suspension was primarily due to increased blog traffic and some WordPress plugins and scripts eating up the resources. This has always been a case with poorly scripted plugins. I already did some minimization steps but apparently, it was inevitable due to the overwhelming traffic I was getting these past days. Gladly though, the technical support of WebHostingBuzz (my host) has been very helpful to assist me solve my problem. They were kind enough to transfer my account to a high-resource server free of charge. It has cut me from spending much on VPS or dedicated hosting. I hope this does not happen again.

Personal CPU Resource Abuse, Graduation Ball, Graduation Rites, RAM Overload, Site Suspension, WebHostingBuzz

The number of digital mobile phones worldwide, enabled with full internet access, outnumbers televisions and PCs combined. Hence, website owners are finding ways to target the mobile users to expand their readership. Recently, .mobi domains have made it possible for website owners to create a user-friendlier mobile content because they have been optimized to work with internet phones.

How to create a mobile version of your blog?

You can either purchase your own .mobi domain (now available on several registrars) or you can take advantage of free services offered online:

1. FeedM8: Mobilizing Your Blog

Features:
- You can customize your mobile page, change the link colors, background, etc.
- You can set how many entries should appear on your homepage.
- A description about the articles is shown and you can set the length of the description.
- You can monetize your website. The Feedm8 team will find advertisers for you, optimize the ads, and handle payments.
- Your mobile URL will look like: http://feedm8.com/yourpreferredname.

Take your blog mobile and earn more

2. WireNode: The Mobile Websites Creator

Features:

- Your mobile portal has a unique URL on their wirenode.mobi domain.
- You can create a free mobile website using their mobile page editor.
- You can upload pictures for your mobile sites.
- They have a rating section for mobile portals in their directory. Portals with best score appears in the Top Three section on the main page.
- You can customize your mobile page with components like a header, a text message, or a widget (message of the day).
- The latest 5 entries from your blog are displayed on your mobile home page with a link to your previous articles.
- They have promotional banners and widgets to promote your website.
Read more…

Blogging, Internet, Online Tools, Webmasters Tools, WordPress Plugins Free Online Mobile Tools, Mobile Blogging, Mobilize Blog, MoBlogging, WordPress Mobile Plugin

Just how great a blog is? It is really great, in the sense that you are allowed to show the world what you want to show. You just have your blogging account, sign in, locate your blog name, click a new post, put your title, web page link, and some parting shots from you, and publish your blog. Very easy isn’t it?

In addition, it is also good for online business entrepreneur. By the power of video blogging, you will be able to post advertisement of your products through blogs. You can also meet new people who can be your potential clients later on. The good thing is, you can do all of this for free!

In other words, blogs are not just bunch of online diaries where you post your experiences and feelings. It can also be used to talk about business trends and other related topics. Either way, here are some of the valuable tools to make your blogging experience a lot easier.

Tool No.1: Blog Building

Building a blog involves deciding how you want to host it. You have two options: If you are not inclined on the technical details involved in blogging, you have the option to sign up for a free account on a blogging site. If you are the other way around, you might as well consider building your own one.

Tool No.2: Blog Editing

If you are conscious of how your blog will look like after posting, blog editing is just right for you. It has a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor which means you can write and edit at the same time. In addition, you will be seeing exactly what you blog post looks like as you are writing.
Read more…

Blogging, Online Tools, Webmasters Tools Easy Blogging Tips, Free Blogging Tools, Tools for Easier Blogging

I was reading a CNET article a while ago and found out about FriendFeed thought to be as the new Twitter.

I will disagree however. Although it has similar feature like Twitter where you are able to know what’s your friends been up to (in fact, Twitter is one of the shared sites), it has a lot better functionality than the latter.

FriendFeed lets you share your favorite website, whereabouts through Twitter, YouTube video uploads and favorites, del.icio.us bookmarks, Stumble Upon reviews, etc to your friends. So it is basically social media and web 2.0 sites rolled into one.

Similar sites include Plaxo and Iminta.

Internet, Online Tools, Social-Networking, Webmasters Tools Bookmarking Sites, FriendFeed, Social Media Sites, Social-Networking, Twitter, YouTube

Previously, I posted several online tools that can help you create your advertising banner. One particular tool that had my attention was BannerSketch.

BannerSketch.com is an English interactive website with the possibility of designing your own banner. According to the owner you can make beautiful banners and put them directly on your website. This all without a trademark and completely free of charge!

What catches our eye is the clear and user-friendly website. There is a manual on the homepage and a direct link to the generator. The first thing we have to do in the generator is choose a size of the banner. After this choice our creativity is put to the test with making the appearance of the banner.

As an extra BannerSketch.com provides the possibility to make avatars and headers with a similar system. There is a variety of standard samples available which can be justified to your
own taste. For the more advanced user there is the possibility to start from scratch and upload an own background.
Read more…

Webmasters Tools Banner Sketch, Design Your Banner Ad for FREE, Free Banner Advertising Design, Free Online Tools