TechNama

Being a blogger, i am sure everyone is well aware of the wordpress engine as almost 5317360 bloggers are using it to run their blog sites. Even TechNama is powered by WordPress engine and we are very much satisfied with their services. Recently, i came across a news at TechCrunch that Wordpress has been facing a serious security threat to its older versions and hence all users should immediately update their current version to any version above 2.8.4 since all versions uptil 2.8.4 are vulnerable to the said security threat.

Things that you should know about this attack are following as per lorelle:

1. Reports are that this attack impacts ALL versions of WordPress up to 2.8.4, the most recent release.

2. What Version Am I Using? If you are using a WordPress version after 2.7, the nag screen on the WordPress Administration Panels will alert you to upgrade. If you are using an older version, upgrade now.

3. Use a WordPress Plugin for Protection: Do not rely upon a WordPress Plugin to protect you. There are many reports of Plugins that will “help” in the comments. While they might help in other ways, please upgrade now. That is the only solution if your site has not been impacted.

4. WordPress is Not Secure: WordPress is incredibly secure and monitored constantly by experts in web security. This attack was well anticipated and so far, WordPress 2.8.4 is holding. If necessary, WordPress will immediately release a update with further security improvements. WordPress is used by governments, huge corporations, and me, around the world. Millions of bloggers are using WordPress.com. Have faith they are working overtime to monitor this situation and protect your blog.

5. Fear of Upgrading: This attack is serious enough to overcome all your fears of updating. If older WordPress Plugins are holding you back, update them to the latest version or replace them with new. If your Theme might break, contact the Theme author and update or replace it. There are thousands of free Themes to choose from, probably some better than what you are using. If you are using a recent version of WordPress, updating is as easy as clicking a couple buttons. If you are using an older version, download the most recent version and upgrade now.

6. Other Issues? Whatever your issue is that keeps you from updating WordPress, get over it and update now to protect your site.

To find out if your site has been attacked or not you can check for the following as mentioned by Lorelle:

There are two clues that your WordPress site has been attacked:

First, there are strange additions to permalinks, such as example.com/category/post-title/%&(%7B$%7Beval(base64_decode($_SERVER%5BHTTP_REFERER%5D))%7D%7D|.+)&%/. The keywords are “eval” and “base64_decode.”

The second clue is that a “back door” was created by a “hidden” Administrator. Check your site users for “Administrator (2)” or a name you do not recognize.

There is no other alternative to this problem so better update your version before you face much bigger problems or lose all your effort and data to some exploiters. We have done in our case and we hope our readers will also follow suite. Do give us your feedback and comments in case you have any further info on this case.

Wordpress has already launched its app for Blackberry but it has recently launched the latest Wordpress Beta 0.9.0.134 for blackberry users. This new version has fixed some of the bugs identified in the previous version. The wordpress app for blackberry is not fully functional since its in beta phase and i am sure the final app will be very helpful to its users. The current version has the following changes.

* XML-RPC discovery upgrade
* Fix for the category field not being focusable
* Added a paste option to the link assistant
* Added menu item to check if there is a newer version of the app
* Big improvements on how the app handles images. App can now work with jpeg and png image, without format conversion.

You can find out more about the Wordpress for Blackberry as well as the Download link at their official blogsite

[via intoMobile]

Today when I downloaded wordpress 2.8.1 to set it up locally and test a theme for blog pro-pakistan I got an error that was probably because of an upgrade where as all of my settings remained the same. I searched for this all over the web but couldn’t find the solution so tried myself to find a work around. I am not sure if this is the solution but this definately is the wrok around and it worked for me. Note that this error occurs the first time user sets up the wordpress 2.8.1.

So here is the work around:

• Open the pluggable.php (it is present in your wp-includes folder). You can simply open it in notepad
• Now search (Ctrl+F) the keyword that his highlighted in error. You can search the word ‘deep’ or the full phrase i.e. _deep_replace

• Now  delete the line “ $location = _deep_replace($strip, $location); ” from your file and save it
• Upload the file to your host server if this is not your localhost.
• I experimented another thing with this problem and that worked too: i replaced my old file pluggable.php from the 2.7 version.
• So you can choose any workaround that works for you.

If you have experimented to find a novel work around for this teasing problem, do post your comments or simply give your feedback if you were able toovercomethis issue.

WordPress has finally released the much awaited newest version of their famous blog software WordPress 2.8 “Baker”.

The new blog software platform has added a notable option of playing around with the themes from inside your dashboard. So with their new theme Browser, you can choose the color you want, the number of columns in the theme and also decide fixed or flexible width. Once everything is done, you can finally install the theme from inside the Dashboard. That will make life much easier for everyone of us.

Beside this, they have also improved the widget installation tab and claims that the new Wordpress 2.8 is much more faster then its previous version. They also reported to have fixed 790 bugs found in the previous version. You can download the new wordpress blog software by clicking here.
Watch the demo video below:

Whats Statpress?

The first real-time plugin dedicated to the management of statistics about blog visits. It collects information about visitors, spiders, search keywords, feeds, browsers etc.

Once the plugin StatPress has been activated it immediately starts to collect statistics information. Using StatPress you could spy your visitors while they are surfing your blog or check which are the preferred pages, posts and categories. In the Dashboard menu you will find the StatPress page where you could look up the statistics (overview or detailed). StatPress also includes a widget one can possibly add to a sidebar (or easy PHP code if you can’t use widgets!).

How To Add This Plugin?

Step 1: Go to Wordpress Website – Click Here

Step 2: Sign in or register to get your username and password and sign in.

Step 3: Search for Statpress in the search bar.

Step 4: In the results, click the top one named Statpress – Make sure the autor is Daniele Lippi.

Step 5: Click the Download button located at the right side of the page. (Downloading it to your desktop is fine, but making a folder for all your plugin downloads is a good idea because it keeps them all organized in case you have a problem with your blog. Remember to extract all the files using any extractor software)

Step 6: Upload the downloaded plugin into the wp-content/plugins/ in the control panel (cPanel)of your webhosting file manager. Be careful you have to upload files in the same format format as they are in the downloaded statpress folder , make all subfolders etc. Would take about 15-20 mins.

Step 7: After uploading , go to you website/blog, log in , click plugin (left side panel) and click activate statpress by Daniele Lippi.

Step 8: Finished, and you would have a Statpress icon , on the left hand panel of you web admin panel. If you have any problems, please contact us, and would help you out.

In this post we will show you how to insert favicon for your wordpress blog. So if you are at this page, you already coming from Google, Msn or Yahoo, and know what a favicon is ! so no need to explain it. Will directly move to the instructions and tutorial;

1. First in order to have a Favicon, you need to have an image, normally its a logo or Initials of your web or any image that you want to showcase.
2. Go to this web page as they make free favicons : Chami
3. Upload the image by clicking ‘Browse’ button and click ‘Generate Favicon’
4. Check your new Favicon and download it via the link provided by Chami
5. Unzip the contents you have just downloaded and upload the favicon to your webhost (”public_html” in most cases).
6. Now log in to your wordpress account, and locate Header.php , mostly under Appearance/Editing.
7. Insert the code anywhere in the header.php coding mode; to be safe insert it somwhere in the middle and update. You are finished.

<Link rel=”shortcut icon” href=”favicon.ico”/>

Important Note: You have to Insert the URL address in “favicon.ico”, in the above code. For example, for our website technama the code looked like this;

<link rel=”shortcut icon” href=”http://www.technama.com/wp-content/favicon.ico” />

Hope this helps, if you have any problems or queries Technama is here to assist you.

To start with,  your articles appearing in search engines are in this format: (Default Format)

Blog Name >> Blog Archive >> Title Post

i.e. Technama – Blog Archive – How to Place Title First In Wordpress Title Tag Code

Now you want to change it to this format (Remember i am not necessarily saying that this is an SEO technique).

Title Post >> Blog Name>>Blog Description

i.e. How To Place Title First In Wordpress Title Tag Code – Technama – TN is for Technology

So follow these and it will get you to your destination;

• Log into the Wordpress account.
• Click on Presentation.
• Now click the Theme Editor Link.
• Now locate Header.php link (right side), and click it.
• Now you are in the ‘Editing Header’ mode. Locate the following code;

<title><?php bloginfo(‘name’); ?> <?php if ( is_single() ) { ?> &raquo; Blog Archive <?php } ?> <?php wp_title(); ?></title>

This code presents your current format which is :

Blog Name>>Blog Archive>>Post Title (Article)

• Now delete the above code and copy the code below:

<title><?php
if(is_home()) {
bloginfo('title');
echo ' - ';
bloginfo('description');
} else{
wp_title('');
echo ' | ';
bloginfo('title');
echo ' - ';
bloginfo('description');
}
?></title>

• Replace the old code with the above code.
• Click the Update file button and you are done here.

Now assuming you have followed the steps correctly, the format has change to this

Post Title>> Blog Name>>Blog Description

Hope you are satisfied with this tutorial. If you have any problems or queries and if you want a customized code, please feel free to tell us.