Design, Develop, and Grow
For those of us who are term-challenged (like me) or want to pretend like they know what they’re talking about, there is a Graphic Design Glossary that is being hosted by Lauren at Creative Curio.
Something like this is very useful as a reference, but I doubt it’ll help the non-techies. I still roll my eyes when I ask for something in a PSD, and the person replies back, “A what?”
Be sure to check out the Graphic Design Glossary and let Lauren know how you like it.
For those of us who like to run polls on our site, there are a myriad of options. For example, with WordPress there is WP-Polls. But what about for non-WordPress bloggers? Or perhaps a blogger that wants to create a one-time poll and be done with it? That’s where PollDaddy comes in.
Setting up a poll is pretty easy. Just create an account and create a new poll or survey. Below is an example of me entering some questions for a poll attached to the end of this post.
For a complete feature set, please check out the PollDaddy Version 2 features. Some features I think others will enjoy are:
There is also a pro account, but for my use I think $20 a month is a bit much. See below for a sample poll created using PollDaddy.
Today while at work I was browsing my feeds when I stumbled across a very odd headline: You got h4ck3d!
I thought it was a joke. So I went to the website.
As you can see from the image, the hack is legit. The author promptly removed the post within a few hours and it was like nothing ever had happened.
The way the hacker got in was through the “wp-config.php” when it was readable as plain text. From that, the hacker can get your database name, and your database username and password. This could’ve have easily been prevented, even if the hacker could read the “wp-config” file.
Josiah Cole wrote a nice htaccess tutorial on modifying your .htaccess to protect the wp-config.
Here’s the code he used:
[php]
# protect wpconfig.php
order allow,deny
deny from all
[/php]
Now one can move the wp-config to an unpredictable location and change the code in the source, but that would be a pain to do with every WordPress upgrade.
How about creating a separate PHP file in a non-WWW accessible location and use the WP-Config to include that file.
Say for example that your web include path for your server was /home/yourname/public_html/. You can actually save a file in the /home/yourname/ area and it won’t be web accessible. Meaning that even if somebody were able to read your wp-config, they wouldn’t get anything valuable.
Here are the steps that I took.
Within this config.php file I included the following:
[php]
[/php]
I uploaded this file to a non-WWW readable location. Normally this should be the directory before “public_html” or “www”.
I then modified the “wp-config.php” file to include the file. If somebody were to somehow read the contents of my WP-Config, all they would see is this:
[php]
[/php]
Please note that the include paths change from server to server, but hopefully you get the idea. Save your sensitive information in a non-WWW location, and have the WP-Config file read it in. This way you won’t have to change anything if you have to upgrade WordPress.
If a person with malicious intent finds your WP-Config file and can actually read the contents, your website is exposed. Devlounge wrote an article earlier today that revealed how easy it is for a hacker to change your password (and get admin access to your blog) using phpMyAdmin.
You can never be too careful about these things, so protect your WP-Config and make sure you have a recent database backup.
If there are any more ways to protect the WP-Config that I didn’t already mention, please feel free to add them in the comments.
With WordPress 2.3 about to be released, I had to update some code I used to correspond with the new taxonomy schema.
For another blog I run, I have a feature where I show only the categories that have recently been posted against. For example, this post is being published under the category ‘Sidenotes’, so sidenotes would be the first category shown on a list.
For the new schema, I had to write a new query. I thought I’d share my query in case others find it useful or want a real example of a query using the new taxonomy schema.
[php]
terms t, $wpdb->term_taxonomy tx, $wpdb->term_relationships tr, $wpdb->posts p where t.term_id = tx.term_id and tx.parent != 0 and tx.taxonomy = ‘category’ and tr.term_taxonomy_id = t.term_id and tr.object_id = id and p.post_status = ‘publish’ group by term_ids order by id desc limit 5″;
$results = $wpdb->get_results($query);
foreach ($results as $result) {
$catPermalink = get_bloginfo(‘url’) . “/category/” . $result->slug . “/”;
?>
[/php]
I was recently on the hunt for some social bookmarking icons. I found a couple of resources, but all of the icons were for a particular background color. And then I stumbled upon a resource with some icons with the beloved transparent background.
Both icon sets are from the same site: http://www.vikiworks.com/
For the code to implement some of the icons, please check out the Life Rocks! 2.0 icon page.
