All credits go to the original designers and people from Touchality and 99designs.

Update:

Patrick Yong shared a working copy of wordpress theme in his blog. You can download it from this link if you like the screenshot below.

I got this error below as soon as I enter my link in yours. Look at the screenshot. How bad is that? Your development team didn’t create the overlay message properly and your QA failed to find out about it.

I’m sure you can’t even read your own message so I posted the text below.

Stop right there criminal scum!

This page may be a forgery or imitation of another website, designed to trick users into sharing personal or financial information. Entering any personal information on this page may result in identity theft or other abuse

It’s not the first time that you treat my site like a spam site, Digg! I will show you the email history that I and your support team had a couple of months back.

Digg Support – Nov 18

Hello mchlsync,

We use the Google Safe Browsing API to help prevent spam and malware from getting submitted to Digg.com. It appears that Google has flagged that domain. For more information please check the link provided below:

http://code.google.com/apis/safebrowsing/

I went to Google Web Master tool and checked my site. I found no issue, Digg!

I replied to your support with this screenshot.

Digg support team – Nov 19~

Hello,

We’ve contacted our development team who are investigating the issue, and will fix it as soon as possible. Please don’t hesitate to contact us should you have any further questions.

For more information, please see Digg’s FAQ section (http://about.digg.com/faq).

Follow us on Twitter! http://twitter.com/digg

After a few hours on the same day, they asked me to try again.

Try again now, it should work. Let us know if you’re still having problems

When I checked it again, I found that the issue has been fixed.

But today, the issue show up again. I’m not sure how you guys are handling the regression issue but it’s not cool if this issue keep on coming back again and again.

So Digg! do something about it!

I received a notification from that plugin saying that it’s suspecting some viruses on my blog this morning so I quickly logged in and scanned my current template manually on dashboard. I found one new file called backwp.php inside the theme folder.

I’m guessing that it might be the back-up file of Twently Eleven them but I couldn’t find any information from theme download page so I posted a question about that file on forum and am still waiting for the answer. Let me know if you have any idea about this file. For the time being, I deleted this file and tested my blog. It’s still working. I think that it’s very safe to delete that file.

Another weird thing which is happening since I started using “Twently Eleven” theme is that I’m getting this error often when I’m playing around in dashboard area. I tried contacting with people behind this theme and no reply from them.

This theme is awesome and it was created by the official wordpress.com team but after using it for a while, I realized that this theme comes with quite a few problem as well.. Maybe, it’s time for me to look for new theme..

The attacker was targeting the footer.php file in the current theme that I’m using. The following script was injected in footer.php file.

The Injected Script

Fig 1: The injected script

Analyzing the Javascript

By looking at the script, I knew that that person was using Javascript function “unescape” to decode his encoded string. But I couldn’t say what he wrote in that encoded text. So, I used the online JavaScript Escape/Unescape Converter tool to decode the string.

I copied the whole text and paste it in “escape text” textbox and click on “Complete Unescape” button.

Here is what I got for the first conversion.

Fig 2: The decoded script - part 1

As you can see, the text was encoded twice so I copied the text between unescape brackets and converted it again in converter webpage.

Here is the second part of the decoded script.

Fig 2: The decoded script - part 2

But there are some % and number (e.g. %62 ) in the URL but it’s very easy to figure out what it is.  I went to the “HTML URL Encoding Reference” page and I got the ASCII character for four numbers.

• %20 = {whitespace}
• %62 = b
• %65 = e
• %63 = c

The purpose of this script is that when user access my blog then it will show this site below in iframe. But luckily, this site is in black list so the most of browser will warm you or refuse to show that site so the attacker will not get what he wanted.

Fig 3: Black website

I thank to him for not deleting any data or etc. It encourages me to take good care of my site even I’m very busy. :)

What did I change to prevent this?

I changed the following things but honestly, I have no idea whether it will work or not. I will have to wait a few months or year to see the result. I’m posting this because if you are facing the same problem as I had and you don’t know what to do then you can probably try doing the same thing like I did. Please feel free to let me know if you have any better idea or suggestion.

Tips

1. Ensure WordPress and all plugins are up-to-date.
2. Delete all unnecessary plugins or themes that you are using in your blog. If you have other extra files in your host, do delete them as well.
3. Disable unused accounts in your host and change the password of current account that you are using.
4. Use auto-backup software or plugin or etc to back-up all files (including images, samples) and database.
5. Double-check the security setting of your blog (You can read the best practice for WordPress Security in this link Hardening WordPress ) If you are not familiar with those things then you should ask your hosting provider to help you or get someone to do this.
6. Install some security plugins. I installed the following plugins for security in my blogs
   • AntiVirus – By Sergej Müller
   • Login LockDown – By Nicolas Zimmer
   • WP-MalWatch – By OrangeCast
   • WP Security Scan – By Michael Torbert

Well, That’s all that I did. Like I mentioned, let me know if you have any better way to secure the wordpress blog. Thank you all for reading.. :)

Related ~

• WordPress FAQ: My site was hacked
• How To Completely Clean Your Hacked WordPress Installation
• Old WordPress Versions Under Attack

Executable : WpBulkDownloader-Alpha-Executable.zip
SourceCode : WpBulkDownloader.zip

Contents

• Introduction
• Background
• Software Requirements
• How to use
• How it works
• FAQ

Introduction

This is a tool that helps you to download all of your images that you posted in your blog. This tool is created especially for WordPress.com users but it will support all other blogging softwares in future. You will definitely need this tool when you want to move your blog from wordpress.com to self-host.

Background

My blog was hosted on WordPress.com last year. I had too many images uploaded in my free space. When I wanted to move my blog to self-host, I noticed that there is no way to bulk-download all of my images from WordPress account to my local disk. I didn’t want to copy each and every images manually so I wrote this tool that can scan each and every urls from my blog and create the directory based on the URL. And then, download them into my local harddisk. It’s just 2 hours program that I wrote at that time. So, I’m sure that there won’t be all features that you want in this program. But don’t worry. Just drop a comment in this post. I will add the feature that you want in next release.

Software Requirements

• Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5

How to use it?

The steps are very simple.

• Configure your blog in Bulk Image Downlader. Click “Options” and fill your blog URL, user name and password as picture below.

• Click “OK” button to save your configuration and close the dialog
• Click “Get Files” button to get the list of image URLs from your blog. (You may need to wait a few minutes while retrieving the list of images from your blog.)
• After retrieving the list of Image URL, you can click “Download” button to download the images to your local disk. (You may need to wait a few minutes while processing. )
• After that, you can check all of your images in “Downloaded Images” directory.

How does it work?

Note: This is for those who like to read the sourcecode and want an explanation about codes. If you are just a normal user, you may skip this section.

Firstly, the program will read the user name, password and blogurl from config file. It will append “xmlrpc.php” which is the standard XML RPC interface for WordPress at the end of blogurl string. Then, it will invoke getRecentPost() API of wordpress. I used opensource XML-RPC.NET library in this sample. As there is no getPosts() API in xmlrpc.php, we have to use the alternative method (getRecentPost() API) for retrieving the posts from the blog. The max number of posts is set to 1000 in the program. If you have more than 1000 posts in your blog, you probably need to change the default value.

If the authenticating is successful then we will get the list of posts from the blog. So, we have to filter the URL of images from the contents. Initially, I was thinking to filter <img> tag from the content. But there are some cases that we used big image in <A> tag and small images in <img> tag. So, I decided to filter the <img> tag and <a> tag from the contents based on the extensions (*.jpg, *.png, *.gif) by using regular expression. After that, I shows the list of URLS in ListView.

When the user clicks “Download” button, I start downloading the image one by one. (Note: I used C# downloader class which is written by Shailen Sukul in this example. ) Based on the URL, the program will create the directory accordingly. For example, If the image URL is “http://your.wp.com/2009/09/image1″ then the program will create the directories like “09″ folder under “2009″ folder under “/Downloaded Images/” folder. So, you can easily upload all of your images to your new host via FTP.

That’s all about how Bulk Image Downloader works. If you have any question, please let me know.

FAQs

1. Can you make the better UI for this program?

Yes. Of course. I’m thinking to change this Windows Form to WPF version so that you will definitely get the better UI for this program.

2. The form is freeze while downloading the images. Why?

Sorry about this issue. For the time being, all processes are running in single thread so that UI will be freeze while processing. I will separate the UI and logic into different thread in next release.

3. Can I request new feature?

Yes. Of course. This is the main reason why I released it as alpha. Feel free to drop a comment in this post. I will make a list of feature requests and will be added in next version.

1. Host and Blogging Software

• My blog is shifted to Dreamhost on 11st October, 2007. Luckily, I got a lot of discounts from them because they were celebrating 10th Birthday at that time.
• I started using the standalone WordPress from WordPress.org. ( The one that I used earlier is WordPress MU (WordPress Multi-User). )

2. Plugins

• WordPress.com Stats : This is a stats system that I’m using for more than 1 year. I still love this plugin so I use it here too. (But it doesn’t allow me to take my previous stats from my old blog. :( )
• Akismet : The greatest spam-fighter on the net.
• Feedburner FeedSmith : It will redirect your own site feed (i.e: http://michaelsync.net/feed/) to your feedburner’s feed (i.e: http://feeds.feedburner.com/michaelsync/).
• Google XML Sitemaps : It is just for Google Webmaster Tool.
• Subscribe to Comments : This is the best way to keep in touch with my readers.
• SyntaxHighlighter : This makes my sourcecode looks cool.

Which plugins are you using on your site?

3. Theme

Yeah. I’m using my modified version of “Unsleepable Widget-friendly” theme for now.

4. AdSense

This might be interesting topic for you all. I have started using the Adsense from the following service. I wanna share some of my experiences… I promise that I’m NOT going to use the most annoying ads in my blog. All ads will be placed on the sitebar or under the comment box . I hope that it would be okay for you. Frankly speaking, I’m not going to blog for money. I have no plan to make money with my blog.. Why ads here? Because as my blog is on self-host, there are some costs for it. I like to cover those things. And also, I would like to run some programming or blogging contests on my blog..

• Google AdSense : I think Google Ads is the best adsense service on the net. They pay for impression, clicks and actions.
• AuctionAds : This is also a nice ads service after Google Ads. I start using it last 10 or something.. I got 4703 impressions, 4 clicks and 1 referral. I got free $25 bucks for signing-up with them. I’m not very sure whether this promotion is still available or not. You may try here if you want.
• Chitika : I think that Chitika is “Pay-per-action” service that didn’t work well from me. So, I have removed it.
• BidVertiser : I signed-up on that site today. It allows you to sign-up as both advertiser and publisher.

If you are also using Ads on your blog, please share some information with me. Which Service are you using? How many impressions and clicks do you get for a day? How much have you earned? Thanks.

Stats

• PageViews : 17618 PageViews for 20 days ( it doesn’t include my own visits.)
• Technorati Rank : 32,510 ( My rank dropped too much this month. My rank was 25,703 on 1st October. :( )
• Google PageRank : 5 (I got it on 26th January this year. it has been nearly 1 year. I think the PR of my blog should has been dropped this time because this is fashion for now.. a lot of pro-bloggers are shouting about Google PR drops for their blogs.. )
• Technorati Authority: 182
• Bandwidth : 3.684 GB

The answer is simple. You need to make a few minor changes in the code of widget plugin. Don’t worry if you are not programmer. It is very simple and everybody can do it… I will show the steps how to change and what to change the source code of widget plugin. Actually, there are only 3 lines to change so you just follow all those steps carefully and get it done.. :) Don’t forget to backup your code.

Note: Widget.php is located under wp-includes if you are using Wordpess 2.3. (Why not in plugins folder? Because the widget plugin is natively supported by wordpress started from version 2.3. ) To edit this file, you have to download this file to your local machine and have to upload it back after editing. You can’t use the plugin editor to edit this file.

Steps to follow ~

1. Download widget.php file to your local machine and open it with your favorite text editor
2. Find “wp_widget_text_setup” function. Change “9″ to “the number of text widgets you want” in this line “if ( $number > 9 ) $number = 9;”

   

3. Find the “wp_widget_text_register” function. Change “9″ to “the number of text widgets you want” in this line “if ( $number > 9 ) $number = 9;” and “for ($i = 1; $i <= 9; $i++)”

    

   

4. Find “wp_widget_text_page” function. Change 10 to the number which is one higher than the number of text-widget you want in this line “<?php for ( $i = 1; $i < 10; ++$i )”. (For example, if you want 20 text widgets, set 21 in that line. )

    

   

Finally, you can upload this file to your host after editing.. (Thanks to “Syntax” for this post. I got those steps from his post in wp.org forum. ). That’s all about adding the extra text-widgets. Let me know if you have any problem with those steps that I mentioned in this post. Thanks.

Reference ~

• Support: Additional Text Widget

Links ~

• WordPress Widget

Download : Unsleepable Widget-friendly Theme

What is Unsleepable “Widget-friendly” Theme ?

Unsleepable “Widget-friendly” theme is the modified version of Unsleepable Theme created by Ben Gray for wordpress.org. As this theme is widgetized, you will be able to customize the sidebars of your blog in very simple way. If you are moving your blog (which is using “Unsleepable” theme) from wordpress.com to self-host, you may probably wanna download this theme.

Why did you want to modify this theme?

Actually, there are some differences between the “Unsleepable” theme from wordpress and the original “Unsleepable” theme created by Ben Gray. When I moved my blog to Dreamhost, I downloaded the original theme and started using it for my blog.. Unfortunately, the original theme is not widget-friendly and not like the one that I used in wordpress.com. So, I modified the way I like. :)

What changes did you make?

Here is the list of changes that I made ~

• Make it “widget-friendly” : This is the main reason why I modify this theme. It helps people to customize the sidebar of their blogs in very easy way.. just drag and drop.. and done!
• Show the title of blog instead of “Unsleepable” theme : The original image looks good but the name of our blogs is not “Unsleepable”.
• Make a lit bit wider : According to the stats report of my blog, the most of visitors are 1024×768 resolution so I make this theme a lit bit wider.
• Remove “Social bookmarking” : As I widgetize this theme, the images for social bookmarking are no longer available.
• Remove “Live Search”
  
• Remove “BottomBlock”
• Remove “two logos” from footer
• UPDATED on 20th Oct, 07 : Enabled the comment for page. (The original theme doesn’t show the comment for pages by default. )
  
• UPDATED on 20th Oct, 07 : The UI for K2 Option has been removed.
  

Did Ben Gray, the original author of this theme, know about your modified theme?

Yes. Of course. I have informed him and got his permission to make my modified theme downloadable. (Thanks a lot, Ben.)

What would you like to say about your modified theme?

Well, Thank you so much for reading my blog and downloading this theme. I would like to say “sorry” if my modification is not so good. (I’m not PHP guys and I know nothing about WordPress APIs. ).

Feel free to let me know if you have any comment or suggestion. If you like this theme, thanks to “Ben”.

using System.Data.Linq;
using System.Data.Linq.Mapping;

[Table(Name = "Customers")]
public class Customer
{
[Column]
public string CustomerID { get; set; }
[Column]
public string City { get; set; }

public override string ToString()
{
return CustomerID + "\t" + City;
}
}

static void Main(string[] args)
{
DataContext db = new DataContext(
@"Data Source=.\sqlexpress;Initial Catalog=Northwind");
db.Log = Console.Out;
var results = from c in db.GetTable<Customer>()
where c.City == "London"
select c;
foreach (var c in results)
Console.WriteLine("{0}\t{1}", c.CustomerID, c.City);

}

The most of tech bloggers including me are very happy with this new feature.

What about for self-host wordpress bloggers? Is there any plug-in for syntax highlighting?

UPDATED: Please check the updated information at the bottom of this post.. Thanks

Of course! Yeah. There are a lot of plug-ins for syntax highlighting. But if you wanna use something looks exactly like the one from wordpress.com then you may probably check-out the plug-in called SyntaxHighlighter that uses javascript syntax highlighting library which is used by wordpress.com to implement that new feature.

Where can I get “SyntaxHighlighter” plug-in?

Download from this link “http://erik.range-it.de/wordpress/plugins/syntaxhighlighter/“. (Of course! it is free.)

How to install and configure “SyntaxHighlighter” plug-in?

• Extract the zip file (“syntax.zip” for now)
• Copy all files and folders (syntax.php, [Styles] and [Scripts])
• Paste them under wordpress/wp-content/plug-ins/
• Open the browser and Go to Plug-in page (eg: http://localhost/wordpress/wp-admin/plugins.php)
• Activate the plug-in
• Go to “Options” tab in the admin panel
• (There will be new tab called “Syntax” in Options panel.) Go to this tab. You will see a lot of options for syntax highlighting as picture below.

• You can specify the languages of your sourcecode that you are going to post on your blog. For example, if all codes that you post on your blog are written C# or Javascript then check the C# and Javascript checkedboxes in this page.
• then, click “Update Options” button.
• finally, you can start posting the sourcecode on your blog.

How to post the sourcecode or How to use this plug-in?

Well. this is very simple.

• Copy the code that you wanna post and paste them within [sourcecode]…[/sourcecode]
• Specify the language of your code. (eg: [sourcecode:javascript]…[/sourcecode] )
• Done!

What is the differences between SyntaxHighlighter plug-in and the one from WordPress.com?

Firstly, I don’t work for wordpress.com so I’m not sure how they implement this plug-in for wordpress MU. But I believe that both of them are pretty much the same since they are mainly relying on javascript syntaxhighter. I found only two differences as below while I was testing those plug-ins.

1. You can’t specify HTML, XSLT as a language in WordPress.com.

2. You can’t disable some languages that you are not using in your blog.

Last but not least (Performance)

This link said,

SyntaxHighlighter uses regular expressions to parse the text. It’s not extremely fast, in fact, it’s pretty slow. If you are trying to highlight a few dozens lines of code, you won’t see any problems. Trying to highlight 10kb worth of text will result in JavaScript being aborted because of long execution time.

Other wordpress plug-ins for syntax highlighting

• Wp-syntax (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-syntax)
• iG:Syntax Hiliter (http://blog.igeek.info/wp-plugins/igsyntax-hiliter/)
• WordPress (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/syntaxhighlighter/)

UPDATED: I found the original plugin which is written Matt for WordPress now. This plugin also called SyntaxHighlighter. Here is a link if you wanna download. As this plugin uses the same tag format like wordpress.com, you don’t need to change anything in your post to highlight the correct style.

Introduction

I was having a conversation with one of my friends about our blogs, blogging and etc last night. He gave me one comment that I’m going too far from one topic to another in my blog. I should probably post the dedicated topic about something. It is not good if I’m posting a lot of different topics in one blog because it made my readers to confuse about what they should expect from my blog. For example, some people may like about programming things. Some may like about Jokes. So, those people who like about programming might not wants to see the jokes all the time because they are not coming to my blog for having fun. They wanna get something useful for their technical expertise. The same way might happen for those who likes about Jokes instead of technical things.

But there are some reasons why I do like that.

1. My blog is based on what is happening in my real life.

Does it sound funny? :) but it’s true. My blog is going as same as how my life’s moving. I don’t mean that those are completely the same but almost. For example, if I’m working for ASP.NET 1.1 then the most of posts that I wrote at that time may be about ASP.NET 1.1 only. If I’m working with SmartClient or .NET 2.0 then the most of topics that you read here may probably be about SmartClient or .NET 2.0.

There might be some cases that I may post about some topics that I currently interest (eg: SliverLight, Orcas, LINQ and etc) even I’m not working with those technologies.

Plus, I may express my feeling in my blog (eg: like that) too. ( It make me feel better. u know?)

And it is also possible that you can know whether I’m very busy or not by checking the upcoming posts of my blog. :)

2. My blog is a place where I keep all of my favorite things.

This is the another facts why I don’t launch the dedicated blog. My blog is not a blog about blogging (eg: problogger or john chow or lorelle or etc). My blog is not a blog about technical website (eg: CodeProject). My blog is just a place where I keep all of my favorite things in one place. My favorite things could be Jokes, some pieces of codes, opensouce tools, thoughts, blogging tips. It could be anything. I’m not sure whether you are gonna like them all as like me but I would say that those things are pretty cool. (at least for me. )

3. Time is not enough to manage the multiple blogs.

Time is an issue. Everybody has their own life to serve. So, we have to work for serving our life. Sometimes, I felt very tired when I come back to my home after work. At that day, I don’t even wanna boot my computer and I don’t want to think about technical things. so, it’s sad to say that I’m not able to come up with new post everyday.

While running within very short time, it’s not easy for me to launch the dedicated blogs (eg: blog for Joke, blog for Ajax, blog for blogging and etc)? My time will be over while trying to log-in in many blogs.

Conclusion

Yeah. Those are the reasons why I’m blogging the different topics in one blog. But I believe that it will be more convenience for readers to read the dedicated blog instead of aside blog like mine. Because things that they expect and things that is coming up will be the same. So my conclusion is that the dedicated blog are good for reader but not for blogger. What do you say??