Some critical #WordPress #SecurityUpdates went out yesterday, so its best to update now.

Blue WordPress logo
Blue WordPress logo

The title pretty much says it all. According to WordPress.org article “WordPress 4.2.1 Security Release“, “This is a critical security release for all previous versions.” Details about the vulnerability were released shortly after the update went out, so there isn’t any time to waste.

WordPress has started doing automatic updates in the last couple of major releases, but I noticed one site had not yet updated. It would be a very good idea to go out and check all of your sites.

In #OddTechNewsoftheWeek, the local channel 9 news site posted “Colorado Springs police: “Man kills his computer” with gun“.  I have been frustrated with my computer and other technology many times.  Actually, look at the tagline of this site!  I’ve had to deal with more than a handful who were at their wit’s end and totally frustrated dealing with tech as well.

Of course, he didn’t actually “murder” his computer, which is not possible, but the headline is humorous.

Nevertheless, don’t be that guy.  Drop me a message if you’re in the Denver area, and perhaps we can save your wits and your computer both. 🙂

 

Tightening up on #WebsiteSecurity should be the next priority for your #WordPress site.

If your WordPress site has been up more than 2 hours, you’ve probably already collected a bunch of spam attempts.  There are several tools out there to help you out with spammers and hackers, but few do better in protecting against the former category, IMO, than Anti-Spam by CleanTalk.  Straight up, it is not free, but they have a short demo period that will likely impress you.  On top of that, it is only $8.00 per year. Continue reading “Tighten Security to Finish WordPress Site Migration”

Forget installing Dovecot, Postfix, blah, blah, blah, just do it.

At least twice I read about how to not setup an email server using iRedMail because you need to learn the innards of your server.  Given the intracacies of email and all that can go wrong, it makes a certain amount of sense.  Normally, I would agree with that advice.

Here’s the problem: I tried four different sets of instructions claiming to get you up and running with Postfix, Dovecot and SpamAssassin, and not a single one worked!  I mean, these were detailed by the step instructions, yet I constantly hit a roadblock somewhere where I could not attach to the server at all from outside (if I got that far, which one set of instructions did not).

Just follow “How To Install iRedMail On Ubuntu 12.04 x64“.  I followed it, and there really is only one problem on it in that he has you define the domain in mydestination and the virtual domains both.  One comment on Howtoforge‘s article “Error: Postfix – do not list domain example.com in BOTH mydestination and virtual_mailbox_domains” states that making mydestination to be “localhost” only fixed that error.

So many options!   #CreateADigitalOceanDroplet without a lot of fuss for #WordPress.

Creating a WordPress droplet on Digital Ocean is not hard. In fact, it is downright easy. That is, the actual creation of it is. Deciding how to create it took me longer than actually doing it, as I found myself creating it, messing up, destroying it, recreating it, and so on.  Once out the door, however, it wasn’t all that difficult.
Continue reading “Creating a WordPress Droplet on DigitalOcean”

Before you move, evaluate why you should so you avoid making a costly mistake.

As a business grows and/or its needs change, it isn’t unusual to begin to ponder changing hosting companies and/or even the topology of the arrangement.  However, nothing comes without drawbacks, and it is useful, and less costly, to ponder those before making a decision.
Continue reading “Before Moving WordPress to a Droplet”

It’s nice to let your users know what is going on whenever an #ApacheServer needs to go into #MaintenanceMode.

No one likes it when a site goes down, but it is worse when there is no feedback as to what is going on. A maintenance page displayed during the downtime is most helpful.
Continue reading “Creating Website Maintenance Mode on Apache”