Shea Laughlin

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Weekly Review – 04/24/2016

April 24, 2016

Weekly Review - Coffee

Hello from Texas!  Living Mile by Mile is now in progress.  Over the past few weeks, I haven’t posted in awhile in preparation for this adventure.  Also, I’ve been pondering about what I want to do with the blog – more updates soon!  Until then, here are some interesting reads.

  • Keurig Is (Still) Full of Shit [Article] – “100-percent of K-Cup®pods will be recyclable by 2020.”  I’m pretty sure this is a problem that could be fixed within a year…
  • Watch this old Zuckerberg interview from when Facebook was all about Solo cups and keg stands [Video] – Listen to that young Zuck…
  • You can predict city gentrification through check-ins and tweets [Article] – Very interesting… Assuming that people actually use Foursquare and Twitter…  Additional data points would be a plus.
  • Let’s Encrypt free HTTPS certification push exits beta [Article] – I just implemented this on two WordPress sites running on DreamHost in under 5 minutes.  Easiest SSL cert ever used!
  • TSA spent $47,000 on an app that just randomly picks lanes for passengers [Article] – Pretty sure that this is something that I could have developed.  I’d take the $47K too.

Filed Under: weekly review Tagged With: coffee, social media, wordpress

Weekly Review – 05/24/2015

May 24, 2015

 

Weekly Review - Coffee

Most of you will probably be reading this on Monday (Memorial Day).  Please take a moment to remember what this day is about…  Ok, back to our usually scheduled programming.

  • How To Change Mac OS X Screenshot Location [Article] – If you use multiple Mac computers, this might be useful.  I used a Google Drive folder as the location the files could be accessed on any device.  On a side note, I had to remove the tilde “~” in order for the terminal command to work.
  • How to Test Your WordPress Website for Responsive Design [Article] – Building a new website or revamping one on WordPress?  Make sure it works on mobile!
  • Turn Burger Patties into Edible Bowls for the Ultimate Bunless Burger [Article] – Nom Nom!  Enough said.  Should only be clicked on by carnivores.
  • Cracking the Coffee Code: What Happens Behind the Scenes at Dunkin’s Test Kitchen [Article] – Coffee addicts unite!
  • Dance on the circle. [Video] – This was circulating on Facebook last week and it’s absolutely mesmerizing.

Filed Under: weekly review Tagged With: caffeine, coffee, productivity, wordpress

Weekly Review – 11/18/2013

November 18, 2013

It’s a gloomy and dreary day here in MN.  Might need some vitamin B12 or something to go along with today’s daily dose of caffeine.

  • “Someday” Is A Disease | Vagabonding | Tim Ferriss [Video] – Let’s start off the week with a little day dreaming and inspiration.
  • 25 Ways To A More Interesting Life [Article] – No so much a more interesting life but more of a fulfilling and inner peaceful life.
  • Guy Builds Ten Weapons With Products Purchased After Getting Through Airport Security [Video] – Pretty scary but I’m not really surprised.
  • What’s Coming in WordPress 3.8 (Features and Screenshots) [Article] – Looks nice!  Not as drab as the current grey, white, and blue.
  • I Never Knew How Much Caffeine Was In The Coffee I Drink Every Morning Until I Read This [Article] – Coffee!

Filed Under: weekly review Tagged With: caffeine, location independence, vegabond, wordpress

WordPress iOS App – Ugh!

August 6, 2013

This last weekend, I decided to join a blog challenge to see if I could write a blog post about an unknown topic for 30 plus days.  I started writing these posts using the WordPress iOS app on my iPhone5 and was thunderstruck again with angst.  I now remember why I dreaded writing with the WordPress iOS app…

  • Poor interface for creating bulleted lists/formatting text
  • Setting links to open in a new window requires you to know HTML
  • Tags do no auto populate
  • Preview doesn’t utilize your current theme

I wish it was more like Evernote…


Filed Under: productivity, wordpress Tagged With: evernote, iOS, wordpress

WordPress Security

April 3, 2012

Source: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/better-wp-security/

Symptoms of Malware

Over the past few weeks I’ve noticed a few WordPress sites that I host (on Dreamhost) and manage were magically infected with some malware. In my case there were a few signs that this happened.

  • Random redirects while watching the files load in the browser.
  • The WP dashboard lost all of its styling
  • Google Chrome would not load the site because it contained malware
  • SLOW

Manual Remediation

  • Changed the FTP owner for all files.  You could take this one step further and create an FTP user for each one of your domains.
  • Changed the WP database password.  This has to be changed on my host and wp-config file.
  • Created new Authentication Unique Keys and Salts.
  • Changed the permissions of certain directories and files.  The .htaccess is a must change!
  • Enabled SFTP for editing and transfering files.  You could always get an SSL certificate for an additional layer of security.

Activated the Following Plugins

  • Exploit Scanner – Scans your WordPress site for possible exploits.
  • Password Reset Removed – […] want to remove the password reset/change option from WordPress, then this is what you have to do.
  • WordPress Firewall 2 – This plugin intelligently whitelists and blacklists pathological-looking phrases, based on which field they appear within, in a page request (unknown/numeric parameters vs. known post bodies, comment bodies, etc.).
  • Limit Login Attempts – Does what it says.

After writing the draft of this post I found another blog post from wplift recommending Better WP Security and coincidentally, it does everything that the above plugins do  (with the exception of Password Reset Removed) and more!

Better WP Security – My Favorite Features

  • Scheduled database backups.  Backups can also be emailed!
  • Email notifications for file changes.
  • System status dashboard.
  • Easily activate new features with a simple check of a check box.
  • Intrusion detection and email notification.

Better WP Security – My Least Favorite Features

  • Tons of options – this can be overwhelming at first.
  • A lot of red text warning you that activating a certain feature could impact your theme or other plugins.
  •  I wasn’t able to get the “Hide Backend” feature to work, oh well.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jveq2H4bZJY&w=580]

Additional References and Resources

  • Dreamhost Discussion Thread – “Sites Hacked“
  • WordPress Security: Best Practices, Free & Premium Plugins
  • Sucuri Security – I used this to scan my website and narrow down my search for malware

Filed Under: wordpress Tagged With: wordpress, wordpress plugin

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