Things I Wish I Knew Before Starting My First Blog

Posted on October 23, 2015October 25, 2015 by sitemanager

You Can Schedule Posts for Future Publishing We all know the importance of publishing new blog posts on a regular basis -- well, most people know this, at least. But what if you are unable to log into your blog to create a new post every couple of days? Thankfully, WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, and other popular blogging platforms have a post scheduling feature. Using this feature, you can schedule your posts to be published at a later date, eliminating the need to manually log into your blog to publish them. Visitor Comments Matter Blogs are unique in the sense that they place an emphasis on...

Help! My Blog Has Been Hacked

Posted on October 13, 2015October 18, 2015 by sitemanager

It's estimated that roughly 30,000 blogs and websites are hacked each day. As a blogger, it's downright frustrating when you invest your time and energy to building a successful blog, only for some hacker to take control of it. Regardless of who has access to it, though, it's YOUR blog, which is why it's important to follow some basic steps in the aftermath of an attack. Check Your PC According to the official WordPress website, the first thing you should do in the wake of a hack attack is to scan your local computer/PC for infections. Use a virus scanner like AVG or Microsoft Essentials (or...

How to Identify (and Stop) Comment Spam

Posted on September 5, 2015September 6, 2015 by sitemanager

Allowing visitors to comment on your blog's posts and articles is a great way to promote engagement while creating free, unique content in the process. Each time a visitor leaves a comment, it creates additional content for your blog -- content that search engines love. However, the downside to enabling visitor commenting is the potential for spam. Spammers will exploit this feature to promote their products, services and websites, all while watering down the quality of your blog. So, how do you identify and stop comment spam? Why Comment Spam is Bad Let's first go over the reasons why co...

How to Secure Your Blog Against Hackers

Posted on July 16, 2015July 16, 2015 by sitemanager

Are you doing enough to protect your blog against hackers? It's frustrating when you invest countless hours of hard work into building a blog, only to discover that it's been taken over by a hacker. The good news is that you can reduce your chances of being attacked by following some simple steps to secure your blog. Use a Strong Password A strong password is your blog's first line of defense against hackers. Sure, it's easier to remember "myspace123" (note: that used to be the most commonly used password), but that also means hackers can infiltrate your blog more easily. A better and more s...

Is Google Planning Another Panda Update?

Posted on June 5, 2015June 6, 2015 by sitemanager

Panda. Those five little words have struck so much fear into the hearts of webmasters and bloggers. When Google launched its first Panda update back in 2011, many people saw their sites' rankings drop overnight. But now there's talk of another Panda being released, it may happen sooner rather than later. What Is Panda? In case this is your first time hearing about Google's infamous Panda update, let me explain: "Panda" is the name given to a series of search ranking algorithm updates implemented by Google. The Mountain View company uses hundreds of different factors to determine where and ho...

WordPress Releases Critical Security Update

Posted on April 24, 2015May 10, 2015 by sitemanager

If you have one or more websites running WordPress, you should check to make sure they are updated to the latest version. Vulnerability in Version 4.1.1 and Older Earlier this week, the WordPress security team identified a vulnerability in versions 4.1.1 and older that could be exploited by hackers to access websites. According to the security team, the security issue was attributed to a cross-site scripting vulnerability that allowed anonymous users to compromise a website. They didn't provide any specific details on how this vulnerability works, which is a probably a good thing since you d...

Security Vulnerability Spotted In Yoast SEO Plugin

Posted on March 13, 2015March 30, 2015 by sitemanager

A critical security vulnerability has been identified on one of the most popular and widely used SEO plugins for the WordPress content management system (CMS). Yoast SEO suffers from an exploit which allows hackers to modify the server's database using a method called blind SQL injection. And failure to fix this vulnerability could have disastrous consequences. Yoast SEO features a wide range of tools designed to help webmasters and bloggers optimize their sites, including an XML sitemap generator, RSS enhancements, on-page content analysis, custom titles and meta tags, breadcrumbs, canonic...

Computer Security