Website Pre-lauch checklist

http://www.gatopanda.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=54:pre-launch-checklist&catid=36:management&Itemid=59

cool list to go through, i love checklists!

why blogger is better than wordpress (self hosted) for beginner bloggers

beginner bloggers, i think should use blogger.com or wordpress.com

self hosted wordpress.org is a whole other kettle of fish

heres some learning curve of topic ive been googling since setting people up on wordpress... joy...

-apache

-.htaccess (you dont want to know)

-server file and folder permissions (ditto)

-security (ditto)

-regular updates. youve GOT to update everything at least once every 3 months, but your better off doing it the DAY that the update is released.

-phpmyadmin

-php. you really cant get far without learning how to say and, not else all of that stuff, unless you find a paid theme that is exactly what you want. mainly, menus and image galleries have required the most investigating. plugins usualy only get you half way there.

-css, but you need that on the other platforms too if you want to change your theme drastically.

basically, hosting something yourself means that you are now the IT GUY, and YOU have to investigate any incompatibilities between wp and your host.

hosting on blogger and wordpress.com, you'll never even think about it.

HOWEVER, if you have money you can pay a web designer to build and install a theme and test it all before you start, with all the features and plugins you need. BUT, you'll probably want to pay them a retainer to keep it all updated.

random wordpress and seo links

about meta descriptions

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/09/improve-snippets-with-meta-description.html

about meta tags generally

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=79812

seo plugins for wordpress

also theres all in one seo but gregs sounds good right now

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/gregs-high-performance-seo/screenshots/

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/404-plugin/installation/

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/light-seo/ evolution of all in one apparently.

http://yoast.com/wordpress/meta-robots-wordpress-plugin/

random 101

http://www.pandia.com/marketing101/3-html-code.html

funny article about photo websites having poor seo.

http://blog.photoshelter.com/2009/04/is-your-web-designer-full-of-c.html

i would counter all this by saying that one client actually didnt WANT to be found on google, because they didn't want 'randoms' contacting them. (such as work experience students, clients with no budget, people after 3 quotes etc etc.)

i sort of agree, theres something premium about not NEEDING web traffic, even not NEEDING a website. it says, im so good, im not desperate for work, etc etc. it communicates exclusivity or something. also, i think it looks a bit desperate and spammy to have proper seo title tags with all those keywords your targeting and so on. for certain industries and services, i dont think its always appropriate, and the correct branding and tone of voice implied by all those little details of content needs to be considered. seoers forget that not everyone NEEDS to be found, they already have loyalty and credibility and their site is sometimes just a portfolio to easily present to clients, an exact replacement for the old heavy book ones, that they personally showcase to clients and agents, but not the entire world. who wants to pay for all that bandwidth anyway for some students too browse or something?

yes designers should be learning seo implications of their work, but web designers shouldnt be over pedantic and forget the brand message of their client, which might include not needing to rank highly, as good 'customers' never come from an online channel, or there is nothing online to 'convert' anyway.

All about Wordpress permissions and security

Im finding it hard to get a straight answer on what is the step by step best ever settings for wordpress install folder and files permissions.

Whe i try and use the wordpress media uploader i get this error message:

"The uploaded file could not be moved to /xx/xx/xx/wp-content/uploads."

Im running into problems on a new host where even though everything seems to be 755, its not letting me upload images, and is asking for the ftp password everytime i install or delete a plugin. Im guessing this is a host specific permissions problem.

While I'm solving this problem, I also want to set all the files and folders to the best most secure permissions so its ready to go when launched.

permissions info generally

http://codex.wordpress.org/Changing_File_Permissions

I tried to change permissions from dws ftp and it dosnt do anything. so now i have to find out how to cmod

http://www.washington.edu/computing/unix/permissions.html

brief look and my files seem to be 644, and folders 755... config is 644, so is ht access. i notice it dosnt have execute access which is probably why wp couldnt write to it??

(whats weird is, the exact same wp installation worked on the old server, has this new server changes the folder permissions??? i dont get it... how? it is the exact same files...

weird uploads in 766, which makes me think i changed it to that, but i try and change it again and it dosnt seem to work, does it take a day to implement?? i change it back to 755, but it not work...

ok so i look in hosts control panel, and the permissions changes i made in dws ftp HAVE taken effect, just dosnt show in dw for some reason!!

Steps I have taken:

1/ I tried making a new folder and ftping it called media and uploading to that rather than uploads. dosnt work right away, i check the permissions and it is 0. even if i make the folder in the ftp program, it is still 0. so, i doubt it should work, need to figure out this chmod thing since dw dosnt seem to change the permissons.

2/going into the hosts cpanel and seeing if i can do any permissions stuff there. yes, and actually, i see that permissions HAVE been changed from dreamweaver, but dreamweaver dosnt show it.

3/ so, i try and upload images to my new media folder which have 777 permisssions. it works. but 777 bad, so i remove and test. 755 - dosnt work. 766, dosnt work.

wordpress forums:

very helpful read reply by SanchoPancho http://wordpress.org/support/topic/253778?replies=39

Directories should have, at most, permissions of 755. If you have a directory that is 777 then that can be written to.

Files should be, at most, 664. If you use the WP editor, you might need these files to be 666 but you really should revert them back to 664 after making any changes. You must never ever have ANY file at permissions greater than 666 unless you are directed specifically to do so.

777
Some hosts will only allow you to upload images (using WP) if the images folder is 777. That leaves your site at a certain level of risk. Email them and check what the minimum permissions are. Despite what they first say, this is NOT a WP issue - it's a security issue.
If your host insists that 777 is the only number, start looking for another host. 755 can be done by hosts (my directories are all 755) that take security seriously.

from wordpress forums:

http://wordpress.org/support/topic/362098

set the wp-content and folders below it to 777 just for the upload, then change them back to 755

should try this first, just to get past this probelm so can at least get photos in.

also if it turns out only 777 works... see

http://wordpress.org/support/topic/361512

Host is ok. They changed php rules for this account so that group can write as 775.

Basic links -use these to compile my own summary to go through

http://www.noupe.com/how-tos/wordpress-security-tips-and-hacks.html

http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/20-wordpress-security-plug-ins-and-tips-to-keep-hackers-away/

http://socializedsoftware.com/2009/07/13/securing-wordpress/

http://www.antezeta.com/blog/top-wordpress-security-tips

From here changing the table prefix to something obscure
http://semperfiwebdesign.com/documentation/wp-security-scan/change-wordpress-database-table-name-prefix/

For some people the database table name prefix changing functionality of WP Security Scan doesn’t work. In that case you may use the following instructions to change it manually.

1. backup your wordpress database to a sql file (you can use phpmyadmin)
2. open that *.sql file (make another copy first) using text editor, then find and replace all “wp_” prefix to “something_”.
3. now, drop all tables of your wordpress databases (don’t drop the database)
4. import the *.sql file which has been edited before into your wordpress databases.
5. and lastly, edit your wp-config.php file and change the $table_prefix = ‘wp_’; to $table_prefix = ‘something_’;
6. you may find that your plugins are deactivated automatically when this happens, so you’ll want to activate them again if that’s the case… I’d recommend deactivating them prior to doing this anyway as a precaution.

SEO - google ignores the meta keywords tag, but others don't...?

As far as google is concerned, keywords in meta tag are out. But, theres still other search engines and indexing services that use them, probably. so dont disregard them just yet, but dont spend hours agonising over them either.

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/09/google-does-not-use-keywords-meta-tag.html

Description meta they say isn't really used either, except for snippets in the search results, which I read when I search, so better to make them snappy and inviting because they are seen by people. descriptions should be unique to the page.

Whats also scary is that I read that google now takes page load time into account in rankings.... uh oh for large image heavy sites. but hopefully competitors sites are also of similar size, eg photographers would all have big images, right?

wordpress as a cms - dont load parent link in menu, go straight to sub menu item

code is here

http://www.wprecipes.com/wordpress-page-template-to-redirect-to-first-child-page

you make a page template, and use that page template for your parent page, which is just a redirect. i like this neat redirect style, not plugin based, and your url still has the right heirachy but you dont end up on any boring inbetween pages, or have to use jquery to open and close the menu.

this is a function for use thats a bit smarter, for wider use, such as doing a certain thing if your a child of a certain branch of content...

http://css-tricks.com/snippets/wordpress/if-page-is-parent-or-child/

Moving wordpress to a new host and to a new domain name tips

Finally worked this out, and was able to move entire wordpress with all posts and settings intact from one host and domain name to a new host and new domain name. It's the first time I've really used phpmyadmin for exported/imported databases aswell.

I wanted to practice moving the whole thing over, so I know what's involved for next time if theres a big mission critical site. Previously I had been just doing fresh install to move sites from testing to live, adding theme / plugins and settings manually, as there usually aren't posts etc for new sites, its still fiddly going into each admin setting page for everything page by page.

Basically I followed the process described here 'Moving wordpress to a new server'

http://codex.wordpress.org/Moving_WordPress

Here's things that tripped me up:

1/ Old server .htaccess: With the downloaded entire wordpress install folder, I also downloaded the old servers .htaccess file and uploaded this to the new server, which caused some funny error where the browser wanted to download the .php file of the page - very dodgy. The .htaccess file was obviously for the specific server that it came from, so it had to be deleted.

2/WP config file/new database setup: Then I got an error when trying to visit the site. Something like 'can't contact database'. In the wp-config.php file, I had used the wrong db user name. On the new server i created a new database, and imported everything using phpmyadmin, but the new server automatically adds a prefix to that username I made, which i didn't realise, so adding the prefix in the config file made it work. I simply hadn't looked in the hosts sql manager to look at the databases listed and their users, and how they were written.

(Also used fantastico on the new server to install wordpress as a test, just incase the server was bungling wordpress, rather than my settings. When it worked via the fantastico install, I downloaded the wp-config.php file and look at the settings it used. This also gave me a hint about the prefixes the server was adding, but mainly I wanted to check that HOSTNAME variable was set right aswell, I had guessed localhost, but some hosts have a special setting.)

3/Permalinks: All my plugins and everything seemed to be there, just as it was, but when i tried to navigate around the site, i get 'not found', because permalinks is screwed. Go to settings > permalinks and you see a helpful little note that your .htaccess file isn't writable. (actually it dosn't exist because as I said I deleted it before). So I make a new one and upload the code from that message and presto, its all working. Also, I see that the offending line then in the old .htaccess file I deleted must have then been "AddHandler php5-script .php"

Its still saying its not writable, so maybe later, look at the correct permisions to set on it, and the other files. http://codex.wordpress.org/Changing_File_Permissions

4/ File download time: The process of downloading all the WP core files twice and uploading took about 4 hours and made the internet slow. I should have done some zipping thing, so the files are zipped before downloading, I'll look up how to do that next time.

Another way to do it, is just to export the wordpress posts etc using the export / import feature in wordpress install. But this dosn't keep ALL settings, so it may or may not be faster/easier (so you do new install on new server etc) http://wordpress.org/support/topic/284535

Depends really. Personally, I just export the XML from dev environment and import to WP install in client's server. Upload customized theme along with a couple or so plugins in new server. Arrange settings and options for plugins as needed and you're done in 30 minutes or so.

In some cases, database export and import is required and I follow these instructions

Further stuff to do when moving domain names:

Also, if the site your moving was a live site , with lost of backlinks to it from out there on the web, you'll loose all those referers unless on your old server you... (from: http://www.wptavern.com/two-wordpress-migration-tips )

Redirect Old domain to New domain (htaccess redirect)

Create a .htaccess file with the below code, it will ensure that all your directories and pages of your old domain will get correctly redirected to your new domain.
The .htaccess file needs to be placed in the root directory of your old website (i.e the same directory where your index file is placed)

Options +FollowSymLinks


RewriteEngine on


RewriteRule (.*) http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

.