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WordPress Security Measures – Updating Secret Keys

Enhancing wordpress security for your site by updating WordPress Secret Keys is a simple thing to do and should be done as frequently as you change your passwords.  It is also one of the security measures recommended at WordPress.org if you suspect that your site has been tampered with or immediately following an attack on your site.

For some internet users, malicious behavior is a way of life.  There are many cyber vandals who spend hours seeking out and exploiting back doors left in applications or on your hosting servers.  While we can criticize these punks for what they do, your best defense is a good offense. 

This short video will show you how to update your WordPress Secret Keys.

The topic of WordPress security is vast and my short tutorial is not intended to cover all the bases.  Stay on the lookout for more helpful content on this topic.

If you are considering setting up a new site and want to hire a WordPress Website Design expert, you can look me up on Skype, call the number at the footer of this page, or use the convenient contact form at this site to discuss your project with me.

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Eliminating Blog Spam on Your WordPress Website

The longer your wordpress website is online, the more pages that are listed in search engines.  Getting pages listed is good for your business, for sure, but it also makes it easier for blog spammers to target your site in their efforts to get links to their own sites.  One method of doing this is referral spam.  Perusing some of the comments blocked naturally by Akismet, it is fairly clear that they were not written by a human.  Even though some of the malformed subjects and content created by spinning tools can become a source of amusement, having to manage your blog spam queue is a PIA and waste of time.

To keep your site healthy, you have to learn something about how things work and keep code up to date.  Another term for this is website maintenance.  Over the years they have been online, I have tried several things in my efforts to overcome my blog spam at GetIncomeBlog.com and my WordPress Website Development business site.

Within this post, I offer some alternative solutions and details about the one that I’ve settled on which is working perfectly for me. 

Disabling New Comments

Within the WordPress dashboard, under Settings –> Discussion, there is an option to automatically close comments on articles older that a user definable time frame.  This is probably the easiest counter-measure against blog spam but I’ve never enabled that option because most of my content is not time sensitive and I don’t want to disallow comments for people who might find it weeks, months or years after the post has been published.

Plugins

For a while, I used the Antispam Bee plug-in.  It was effective against blog spam but it didn’t allow me to review comments that had identified as spam.  Because there have been times when I’ve found comments from people that I know which have been marked as spam by Aismet, I didn’t want to risk it.

Referral Blog Spam Comments

Referral blog spam is generated by software and used by people who are looking for links back to their pages.  These people are banking on the fact that their blog spam will land on blogs where comments are automatically approved.  I’ve never set up a site that way and I’ve never allowed any of my WordPress Website Development clients to do so either.

The biggest headache for me was referral blog spam.  Recently, I implemented some changes.  After 72 hours of testing, I’m satisfied that I’ve found a solution that is worth sharing.  Bona fide comments are still delivered and there been ZERO referral spam comments.

What a gift!

Eliminating Referral Blog Spam

The  technique that I used involves three things:

1. WordPress configuration
2. Modification of .htaccess
3. Captcha plug-in
4. A little vigilance

WordPress Configuration

First, here is a screen shot of how my Discussion settings are configured at all of my sites:

Some of these are defaults but others are not.  I do not automatically approve comments from people whose past comments have been approved.  By way of explanation, the reason that I only request notification when a comment is held for moderation is because that second email that comes after I’ve looked over a comment and approved it was redundant. 

.htaccess changes

To completely eliminate referral blog spam, you must add a few lines of code to your .htaccess file.  This is a file that resides on your server and was created at the time you installed the wordpress application.  It is critical that you retain a backup copy of this file because your site may become non-operational if you do not get it right the first time and you need to recover quickly when things go wrong.

# DENY ACCESS TO NO-REFERRER REQUESTS

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} POST
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} .wp-comments-post. [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !.*YOURDOMAIN. [OR,NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ ^http://YOURDOMAIN.com/your-page/ [R=301,L]

These lines of code are placed just above the line that says # BEGIN WordPress. You will need to customize the code to agree with your domain names and destination URLs. This post does not endeavor to teach you the function behind the above code but, in summary, what it is doing if diverting comments that are not originated through the comment form on your site and, if someone’s software is trying to do that, they are directed to a page on one of my other domains that counts down the time until Christmas.  Granted, referral spammers will never see that page but it gives me a way to track their attempts when I review statistics that are logged by the Statpress plug-in.

You can use any text editor to read and modify the .htaccess file.  When you are saving the file, you must use double quotes so the file extension is not “.txt”.

Captcha plug-in

After a little trial and error, I decided to use the SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam plug-in.  All that I can say about my choice is that this one did not require any additional coding and it accomplished the task.

Vigilance

WordPress also incorporates the ability to blacklist commenters.  You can bar a comment that contains user defined words in its content, by commenter’s name, by URL, by e-mail, or by IP.  For those referral blog spam comments that slip through the cracks for any reason, this will be the final authority on whether or not you have to manually handle their unwanted comments.

Caveat

There is one caveat to my preferred anti-referral blog spam method.  It will only work with a self-hosted WordPress website.  In other words, if your blog is hosted at WordPress.com, you will either have to put up with referral spam or install one of the available plug-ins through your dashboard.

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Related Posts

1. Good Website Design and Search Engine Optimization are not Mutually Exclusive
2. Website Copyright: It Matters!
3. Website Conversion Tactics

Life Coach Website

This project didn’t result in a testimonial when the final payment was delayed by the client.  After all the confusion ended, I wrote about the experience. Regardless of the confusion at the end, it still is a completed item for my portfolio.

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Sunset Home Inspection

I want to comment on the re-design you did for my website. Everyone who has seen it says it is much more attractive than my previous site.

But that’s only part of the story. There are a lot of website designers, but working with you has a distinct advantage for me. I know you have had a business exposure in sales. That’s important to me because you discuss business issues rather than just concentrating on a design. You ask for the information first and then build a website around that information. And because you have a knowledge of sales, you know what questions to ask.

I would say that is a very effective way to produce website results, rather than just a website design. I’m like a “one stop” kind of person. I had no idea you had so much extensive knowledge in website  maintenance. It’s the maintenance issue that becomes so important.

Your ability to use search engine optimization is crucial to have people visiting the web site. And the same holds true even more for the blog link you created on my site. Your methods definitely drive traffic to the site.

And with all our conversations, you have insisted I write valuable content for visitors. That’s a challenge for me because it forces me to ask questions that a typical person would ask when they begin a search. You have really increased my internet visibility. I would not hesitate, not even for a nanosecond, to recommend your talents to others.

Thank you,
Bernie Rubin, President
Sunset Home Inspection, Inc., Scottsdale, AZ

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Get Income Blog – Virtually Marj Wyatt’s Blog

Having suffered a severe writer’s block and knowing the importance of having fresh and original content on a blog, I decided to see if interest would be renewed by re-theming Get Income Blog.

My idea worked in ways I couldn’t have imagined.  I applied the face lift less than a month ago.  Since finishing this project, I’ve acquired three new accounts.  I’ve also been experimenting with different ways to drive traffic to my content there with remarkable success.

If you’d like to know more about how to energize your online presence and drive traffic to your blog, I am available to help you.  Complete the Contact Form.  I will respond to your request within 24-hours.

Virtually Marj and FancifulFandom.com

I met Marj in a Skype room and found her introduction appealing.

We set up a time – being in two different timezones – that was convienient for both of us and talked about my ideas of what I wanted.

She immediately went to work. My new site was up and running in no time, way faster than I had anticipated. It took me a while to add the content and make other decisions which had nothing to do with her.

I had a friend design the logo, and Marj immediately implemented it on my site, my vision came to life.

She’s been always around and ready for my questions. She surely did more than what I paid for. It felt like working with a friend than with someone you pay.

Xarah Arnet
FancifulFandom.com

Virtually Marj and BesensualDesigns.com

Marj Wyatt is a spectacular web designer. I began my project using another designs source and was very unhappy.

With Marj, I gave her an idea of what i wanted and some of my priorities and what I thought I wanted to see as a finished site. She just picked up the ball & ran with it.

She has allowed me to be as involved as I wanted to be, even if that meant extra work for her. She has been very patient, informative and supportive with me, allowing me to express my thoughts and make changes over and over again. She lead me every step of the way from the beginning to the end of building my site.

She is enthusiastic and fun to work with. I am very impressed with Marj’s technical knowledge, there was nothing she couldn’t do and she is fast.

Another thing that impressed me with Marj was her ability to resource additional free add ons that worked with my theme and gave my theme the ultimate look I desired.

My site is an Ecommerce store front with over 15,000 products, this was no easy project and I can tell you now, I would never have wanted to take on this project with out Marj Wyatt.

Thank you Marj, for all your hard work, your patience, your talents and, above all, your friendship. It has been a pleasure working with you and I will reccomend you to everyone who is interested in building a website.

I look forward to working with you in the future on the SEO portion of my site, I know you are also extremely knowledgable in that area and have a great deal of up to date resources and programs to ensure maximum SEO Optimization.

YOU ARE JUST AWESOME!

Sincerely,
Cindy Silver

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Virtually Marj and Vibrazion.net

My Name is Sebastian Saldarriaga from Vibrazion.net and I want to thank Marj for her amazing work on my new site! She is someone I would recommend to anyone that needs a new site or work on a current one. She will be able to capture exactly what you want and need on you project and bring it into conclusion!

Thanks Marj!!! Will continue to work with you on my future projects!

Sebastian