I’m going to try and post any time there is a new Wordpress version release, just so I can keep you guys up to date and on the ball when it comes to making sure your blogs run smoothly.

Here is what Wordpress.org says about 2.8.6:

“2.8.6 fixes two security problems that can be exploited by registered, logged in users who have posting privileges. If you have untrusted authors on your blog, upgrading to 2.8.6 is recommended.”

This may or may not apply to most of you, but it’s better to be safe than sorry, especially with all the hacking going on these days. I know some of you (yeah, you know who you are) are in dire need of an upgrade and probably don’t know it. The best way to find the version you have installed is to look at the footer section of your admin panel. If you have anything below 2.7, you really need to upgrade but may not have the built-in upgrade utility or plugin to do so. If that’s the case, you can request an upgrade from me.

I know it’s been a while since I’ve featured a blog. I’m really excited about showcasing this one, because I think it came out so beautifully. Pam Cooley came up with the layout herself, a combination of soft, subtle colors and an elegant custom font, and building it turned out to be very fun, albeit challenging at times. The galleries showcase her beautiful work, so make sure to check them out.  Thanks Pam for letting me work on this with you!

Click image to view website:

Argh, really if you haven’t found out by now, there are blog hackers out there really screwing things up.  I’ve had quite a few old and new clients coming to me for help because their blogs are suddenly “missing”.  Luckily I’ve gotten them all back and running.  Oddly though, they’ve all been Bludomain customers.  Hmmm…wonder why?  Well, (among other things) Bludomain is notorious for recycling passwords for their hosting customers.  I have no idea if they instruct their customers to change the passwords for the cpanels and ftp sites, but apparently a lot of people don’t bother changing them.  If you host with Bludomain and are just hearing about this for the first time, please please PLEASE CHANGE YOUR PASSWORDS.  You’ll thank me for it later (although obviously not paying me to fix your hacked-into blog…hmph).  Maybe you’ll remember that I was kind enough to post this little PSA and will hire me to do a little work on your blog in the future (wink wink nudge nudge).

While I’m on this mission to save-everyone’s-blog-from-biting-the-dust, I wanted to remind ALL of you (yes, I mean you, not just Bludomain customers) to have a database backup plugin running on your blog on at least a weekly basis.  ALSO, it’s a good idea to do a FULL BACKUP of your site’s content.  Depending on your hosting company, this can be done through your control panel and/or your ftp site.  Why a full backup of the content?  Well, because a database backup only saves the blog’s content in code, but not all the zillions of  image files, videos, etc… that you undoubtedly have attached to your blog and you may very well lose in case of a server failure, which your host should take care of with their own backups, but it’s good to be safe.

M’kay, my job is DONE.