What I Have Learnt This Week

The past 7 days have been eventful and full of learning, some good and some bad. First off I turned 41 last Saturday, although right now it feels years ago, I learnt that although I thought I would self explode actually I didn’t. I was spoilt rotten and realised actually how thoughtful both my children are. I of course take full credit for this trait in them.

I learnt how the value of a good community can pull together or pull apart. I belong to various online communities, some are actual networks others being the mum bloggers (or blogger who happens to be a mum). Now if you’re not a blogger you may be wondering what this strange mum blogger thing is as I haven’t written about bogging before. There aren’t any special initiations to be had or anything half as fun, there are various sites you can join to find other mums but mainly it knows each other on twitter and facebook. This week I have watched arguments happening that really make me ashamed to say I am a mum blogger and left me with the urge to slap people but on the plus side I have seen the mums pull together and work together and make me want to run around hugging people.

On a more serious note I learnt that having 9 sites hacked in 24 hours can have its good points, turn a normal person rather twitchy and increase coffee intake beyond sensible guidelines. You may know I do this www thing as a living.  I create websites (serif and wordpress), host them and generally look after them. My lesson this week was not to get complacent with security. Any customers reading this please note that after writing this I will be going outside and beating myself.

So any other wordpress readers learn from my complacency.

• Back up – there are plugins that do all that magical stuff for you. But it’s all very well having the plug-in but learn how to use it. If you unsure the very basics you could do is export all your stuff. It’s in the admin under tools. It exports all your posts, pages and comments into a neat little file that if the worse does happens you can import again. Learn how to use ftp and copy your media folder too.
• Up-to-date – as boring as it is every time you see the ‘update available’ notification, pay attention and update. Make sure your wordpress version is the latest; plugins are updated including the ones that are inactive.
• Chmod 0755 – sounds a bit nerdy and it is. Make sure your root directory is set to 0755. To do this in ftp right click root directory (…/) and set permissions to 0755. There are a few others that you should check too while you’re there.
• Wp-includes, wp-content/themes wp-content/plugins, wp-admin and wp-content should all be 0755

Lastly through another network I learnt that the phone call scam that my mum was subject to is still doing the rounds. Basically it’s a phone call from someone saying they are from Microsoft, Windows or Google telling you that you have a problem on your computer. Now no matter how convincing they are or how polite and lovely voice (my mother) they have, Microsoft, Windows and Google are far too busy with world domination to worry about your little computer. It’s a scam. Firmly and politely tell them no and put the phone down. If they keep calling ask them to contact your computer chap who can be found on 999…

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