October 31st, 2007 WordPress Security Candy

To make a short post (maybe) for today, I thought I should talk about WordPress security.

Now, I’m no guru or anything. I don’t know PHP or MySQL, and I haven’t been using WordPress for too long a time. Actually, only since the beginning of this month have I been using WordPress, and not to it’s full potential (home-brewed theme, anyone?).

So why am I talking about security if I don’t know crap?

Well, the little that I do know makes me a bit worried.

Did you know that you could access your Includes folder from any browser? It’s public.

Not to bash WordPress or it’s developers and community, because I’m practically in love with the script and everyone in involved, but you would think the script could handle permissions like this automatically through the install. It’s such a popular and amazing script, I’m sure they could’ve handled this.

“Well, it’s not a big deal if people can access my Includes folder.”

No. It IS a BIG deal. Just imagine if your blog was popular enough, some scumbag hacker could wander in and screw you over. I’m not sure how exactly, but I’m definitely sure this isn’t safe practice.

Talk about a bad Trick, huh? (relating poorly to Halloween, blah)

So, if you’re on an Apache server and have access to .htaccess files, you can fix this problem right up. Here is where I was alerted to this little issue and where you can find the fix (this same article is linked through your WordPress Dashboard as well, for the lazy out there).

Again, this is by no means me attacking WordPress or the people involved. This is just me expressing my “!” or surprise at something like this. It’s very surprising for me, honestly.

Posted in Webbie, WordPress | 1 Comment »


October 30th, 2007 Stop blogging so much

Just a little note to myself. Ever since I installed WordPress I’ve been spitting out blog posts like my life depended on it.

My back has been absolutely killing me lately. I started having pains late Saturday night after spending the day with Velma and thought it’d go away. The slight pain usually goes away after a nice sleep.

But it didn’t.

It’s actually getting worse. I can’t stretch, sneeze, cough, bend down, turn.. Can’t do just about anything without my back feeling that sharp pain. Blah.

I feel like an old lady.

I simply just want to forget about everything, go home, play with Simba and go to sleep.

Posted in Life. what Life?, Simba | 1 Comment »


October 29th, 2007 Working on Alternatives

I thought I should make it public that I’m working on a new subsection of this domain called Alternatives. It’ll be listed under the Visitor / For you section.

What’ll this be about, exactly?

I’ll start universally with this. Over the years you need free and useful scripts and programs (because face it, you don’t want to pay for something you can technically get for free). I want to write a section that (at first) will list common popular scripts and places to use free, better versions.

So for example, you need a remotely hosted guestbook for your website.

Ditch the crappy Bravenet guestbook you have for something better, like Zeroweb’s guestbook service or Getstring.

And from there I’ll go on to self-hosted scripts, and programs for Windows. Then for Mac OS X. And maybe if I feel frisky I’ll hit up sections for Linux.

I’ve been thinking about this for a while. Sounds fun. Alternatives pages will be comment-able, by the way. So if you have suggestions you can drop them in and I’ll edit my pages as needed.

Edit: I had no idea that the WordPress team made a forum script, too. Very cool.

Posted in Webbie | Comments Off


October 29th, 2007 Things I like about WordPress

There are a lot of things I absolutely love about this blog script. I no longer hate it (yes, I used this word up until recently for it), surprising as that may be to some of you.

To make a random little note to myself, I shall write up what I like and love about it! Why not, you know? I’ll also write what I don’t like about it, too.

1) Plugins
Plugins are a God-send, honestly. CutenewsRU had them, of course. But not nearly as many or as useful as WordPress plugins
2) Compatibility
Since everyone and their granny uses WordPress, a lot of websites, scripts, services and programs work with the script. Take FeedBurner for example, and Windows Live Writer as well.
3) Friendliness
As far as I’ve seen, everyone that uses WordPress tends to be very friendly and willing to help WordPress noobs (like me).
4) Development
WordPress is always going through updates, it seems. Which makes me extremely happy, because if there’s a lot of progress it usually means people love what they do. And if they love what they do, only good can come of it.

What I don’t like about WordPress
1) Theming
It’s pretty scary when you want to make your first theme. As a WordPress Theming Virgin, I have generally no clue what I’m doing. I’m going bit by bit and thankfully using online guides. Hopefully I’ll master it in no time.
2) Dashboard
The Dashboard itself is wonderful. It’s the theme I dislike. It’s very boring. Sorry WordPress devs, but you’ve been using the same Dashboard design since I first attempted to use the script about two years ago!
3) Loading
It’s a very minor complaint on my end, really. The script in itself I feel takes a bit of time to load. Especially when logging in.

As you can see, the goods outweigh the bads. As it should be.

Thanks for a wonderful blog / CMS script, WordPress devs. If you can turn me to your script, imagine who else you can turn!

Posted in Webbie, WordPress | 2 Comments »


October 26th, 2007 Young people and their driving

Not that I’ve ever had a chance to drive, but young people are pretty stupid.

At least the ones I know.

My brother got a ticket yesterday for running a red light. And today he comes back early from college, a tow truck outside.

“Hey, what happened to your car?!”
“Car accident.”
“No shit. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“Okay. Dumbass.”

My mother’s furious enough about the ticket yesterday. Now he missed class and wrecked his car some more. Oy vey, my brother.

Edit: Updated to Wordpress 2.3.1 with total ease thanks to the very, very useful Wordpress Automatic Upgrade plugin.

Posted in Life. what Life? | 2 Comments »


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