How to, Web Development, WordPress
Have you ever come across this error message after updating a few things in your WordPress Dashboard?
Well don’t panic, there is an easy way to clear this, and get your website back online.
First you need to launch your FTP application. Some use FileZilla or maybe even Dreamweaver. Either works fine, or you can use your hosting providers File Manager to access your server files. Once logged in and you can view your files on the remote server, you’ll need to navigate to the root directory of your website.
Once there scroll up and look for the .maintenance file. It won’t have an extension.
I highlighted the file in red. You’ll just need to click that and choose a delete option to remove it from your server. Once removed navigate back to your website and refresh your page. You should be able to get back to your WordPress Dashboard like normal.
Product Reviews, Web Design
We understand that in the business world, having a website enables your organization to reach a larger audience at a marginal cost and in 2014, it’s an absolute must. But what about God’s business? Many people don’t think the two are related (or maybe that they should be), but they are. We are a digital and mobile device generation! Most of our kids have them right along with us and sometimes even before us! We want and often need accessibility to ease our busy lives, hearts and minds as well. Since the goal of most church ministries is to evangelize the Word of God and promote biblical teaching and doctrine, a website is a wonderful and essential way to do just that. In this blog, I submit the Top 5 Reasons of why your church needs a website, as well as the ways it can contribute to the higher calling.
1st Stay in touch ~ For most churches, they limit their “marketing” to handing out Sunday bulletins or posting newsletters on the bulletin board to keep members informed of meetings and publicize events. However, many of your members may forget to pick up a bulletin or lose it sometime during service and miss out on key information. By having a website, you can post that information and so much more with just the click of a mouse day or night. Therefore, a website is a great interactive way to stay in touch with your members , whether they’re at home or on-the-go with a mobile device.
2nd Casting a larger net & being fishers of men ~ In 2014, it’s imperative to reach out and impact the the world for the kingdom of God in as many ways as you can. We see this in the diversity of music – contemporary, traditional and even Gospel Rap. If His Word is not intended to “return to him void,” then use this medium coupled with faith to accomplish the goal. A website can also provide you with a wonderful opportunity to let others know what your church is all about and what they can gain from attending your services or joining.
4th Championing the cause ~ If there is a particular area of focus for your church, let’s say in eradicating homelessness or missionary work in other countries, a website is a great way to let the world know and solicit others assistance. Many large organizations (such as World Vision) utilize their website to bring a greater awareness to the causes they champion, while offering ways to be a part of a mission or collect donations online to assist those efforts.
5th The lost sheep and those in need ~ If one of the primary purposes of the church is to help people, then a website is a fantastic tool to do so on a global scale. There are people in this world that are hurting, who may be at a point in their lives where they need encouragement or may be in real, desperate straits. What a great testimony of kingdom work you’ll create by extending yourself beyond your physical address to someone in another state or even a different country. You can offer inspiring messages, videos, music and other helpful products such as books and inspirational home accessories.
The Wrap Up: If the sky is the limit and the ultimately desired destination, why not embark on this journey of faith for your ministry and church? If you believe that the bible was written by man and inspired by God, is it possible that the internet can be used as a tool to reach out to the hedges and highways for His purpose?
Send me a comment and let me know your thoughts on this tool for growing your ministry.
All Posts, Security, Web Design, Web Development, WordPress
Probably a phrase that no one in the community ever wants to utter. I bet you’ll probably stop reading this post temporarily just to take a look at your website to ensure that it is still up and in-tact. Some of you may even clear your cache and refresh to be double sure. Does this type of thing happen often, yes! Does this happen to anyone or just you? If you’ve been hacked before it sure feels like it was just you out of the millions of active websites on the interwebs. You can’t feel too bad about it, it was probably bound to happen if you have never thought to make the necessary steps to keep your website secure.
So what do you do now that your staring at some ugly graphics and text that reconfirms the obvious that your website has been hacked? Check out this list of options below:
Contact Your Hosting Company
Inform them that your website has been compromised so that they may be able to take steps to isolate the problem to a specific server or files before it spills over into your neighbors yard. Most websites operate on shared servers. This means on any given server there could be multiple websites of all types sharing space. Kind of like the electrical box outside your house.
Protect Your Own Computer
Once you’ve learned that your website has in fact been hacked, trying to navigate around it may not be wise as files may be compromised. Clicking on links or images may unload spyware or malware to your local computer that may wreak havoc on your home/work network and systems.
Pull Up A Backup of Your Database or Website
This of course is considering you set a plan for backups to your website on some type of regular basis. We use a plugin called WordPress Database Backup from Austin Matzko, however that plugin hasn’t been updated in a while. So I’d suggest BackWPup by Inpsyde. There’s a host of options including backing up to your Dropbox account. You can also perform your own backups by heading over to the Tools section, then clicking on the Export option and saving that to your local computer. Now if you do have a backup, you’ll be using the same plugin for backing up (in some cases) and choosing the import feature, or using the native import feature through the Tools section in your WordPress dashboard.
Get A Fresh Copy of WordPress
Go to WordPress.org and get yourself a fresh copy of whatever current version is out at the moment. There are a few files however that you’re not going to want to alter as they will consist of vital data pertaining to your website.
- wp-config.php (contains your database, host, password, and more)
- wp-content (FOLDER) (this is where your themes and plugins are stored)
There are a few files that you should delete regardless if your site is new, hacked, or not:
- wp-admin/install.php
- wp-admin/install-helper.php
- wp-admin/import.php
- readme.html
- wp-admin/upgrade.php
- wp-admin/upgrade-functions.php
If you’re not sure, make a copy while your in your FTP to your server side and rename the parent folders to :whatevername.old” or “whateverfile.php.old”. This way when you upload new files you won’t overwrite the preserved ones and you’ll still have fresh files loaded where compromised ones may have been.
Change Your Database Password
This same password is listed in your WP-CONFIG.php file so you’ll need to go through your host control panel to edit your MySQL database to edit this. Once updated to something WAY more secure and different, edit the password in your wp-config.php file and re-upload that to your server. I shouldn’t stress that this shouldn’t be the same password as your Dashboard user login.
Speaking of users, be sure that you are NOT using the default “admin” account to login to your site. If so please create a new login with a better username like your nickname plus favorite 5 digit number, add in some spaces and a few capital letters while you’re at it. Brute force attacks on WordPress sites are common and over 90% of the time they are trying under the “admin” username.
Be sure you’re using the most udpated version of PHP. Could be 5.2 or 5.4. Check with your hosting company as well as your theme to be sure you’re where you need to be.
Login to WordPress and Check Around
See if there are any new users accounts (especially administrator ones) that you know shouldn’t be there. Update the passwords on the remaining ones you know are authorized. See if there are any new pages, posts, media files, etc that you know you didn’t load. Remove them too. If you did preserve some files or folders, you may have to reload your theme(s) and plugins. Not a big deal since you’ll easily be able to see them from your preserved files/folders.
Keep Up To Date
Be sure to keep in-step with security updates from WordPress. If you ever see a 3.x.x update, chances are is a vulnerability update and it will be an update to patch something that someone from Automattic or the WordPress community has discovered. Also check in on your plugins and themes to see if they have updates. Most theme houses like Themeforest or WooThemes will contact you via email whenever there are updates pushed by the submitting developers. If not, take some steps to stay up to date on your own. Beware of some free themes you find on the net too. There usually is no accountability or liability should that theme go un-updated for months or years yet still be available as free. Or worse yet, repackaged and loaded on other sites as a free theme yet its now loaded with malware.
Install Preventative Security Plugins
While there are a host of plugins you can choose from, some free, some premium; GET SOME! I’m more of a fan of premium plugins from respectable developers versus free ones because truly, you get what you pay for. The level of responsibility from premium developers to ones just starting out is quite noticeable and to be respected. So what should you use? Here are some suggestions:
Have you had a site get hacked? Have more ways to prevent a site from getting hacked? Share in the comments below!
Some useful links and further tips:
Hardening WordPress
Product Reviews
The stock photography industry started in the 1920s, by H. Armstrong Roberts . At that time, it was primarily a way for professional photographers to market the duds from commercial photography shoots. But since then, it has taken off and many people (including me) frequently use these high quality photos for professional use on print collateral, blogs and websites. Images most requested are common landmarks; conceptual and major events that can be used and reused for commercial design purposes.
There are several sites that provide these photographs in a multitude of categories. Each site has a repository for these various categories that allows for creative design assignments. The compilation of this repository reflects just how important imagery is to every medium. Here are just a few of the top, highly-used sites that will surely fulfill all your stock photography needs.
Thanks to Top Ten Reviews from TechMedia Network, showcases the 2013 Stock Photography Service Comparisons and what they offer its consumers.
Although this listing is quite helpful, these are my top picks due to availability, quality and pricing.
A leader in digital multimedia resource that includes:
- royalty-free stock photography;
- editorial images;
- video; and
- music.
Image pricing depends on what type of licensing you want and prices for royalty-free images, footage clips, etc. are based on file size. They have a broad range of editorial images as well.
Shutterstock is one of the leading global image marketplace headquartered in New York City. They have an extensive library of royalty-free stock photos, vectors, and illustrations available by subscription and a la carte. You can browse the library for free. This great news as Shutterstock adds over 100+ images to its library each day.
Known for the Internet’s “original member-generated image and design community,” reputation iStockphoto offers millions of royalty-free photographs, vector illustrations, video footage, audio tracks and Flash files from over 70,000 worldwide artists. Talk about impressive. And the smaller photos you need for blogs or as thumbnails on a document, can be as low as $1.oo!
Yes, we all know that 123rf boasts about their 19,484,862 Royalty Stock photos! But what most people don’t know is that there’s a fairly large, evolving database that houses several images FOR FREE! They have a wide variety of commercial and editorial images, video footage, audio clips, logo designs and illustrations that are easy on the eyes and your wallet.
All Posts, Content & Copywriting, Marketing, Social Media, Typography
Writing content for different platforms requires a varied approach for websites, social media platforms, and print collateral. It requires a certain level of skill to know the difference as well as what ways are most effective. What should remain constant however is that your content be reader-driven and “actionable” to keep readers engaged, educated (i.e. informed) and entertained.
Writing for Social Media
Set the Hook Quick -More concise writing in social media (SM) is the key. Most people are on the move while on SM platforms so it’s imperative that you set the content hook quick with strong points up front and in a pronounced way. There’s so much content out there so this a key way to stand out, engage and create a faithful reader. This ultimately affects the breadth of your audience and long-term followers.
The Risk Factor – Social Media social graces aren’t the same as traditional forums. So feel free to take a risk every now and again. If you have a quirky yet innovative way to capture an audience, SM platforms like Facebook & Google+ are the places to do it. Feel free to mix your SM writing with audio sound-bytes or other platforms like YouTube to really engage and entertain.
Writing for Websites
Standing Out – What ever the main point is of your content, it should be conveyed in a standout way that doesn’t require a lot of upfront reading or navigation. Using bold or differential typeface, different color fonts, graphs, images or infographics allows the reader to get the “gist” or the most important information in 1 minute or less. Make sure these standout points:
- include bold statements about your business;
- engages the audience visually; and
- encourages them to act.
Write Easily Scannable Content – Don’t expect people to pour over your every word on your website. Scannable content is engaging content that allows readers to understand the general basis sweepingly, at a glance. It is easier to read than word-for-word and it allows readers to easily digest the primary information nuggets.
Writing for Print Collateral
Be Promotional & Motivating – Most web and social media content has to appear more informational than promotional. Subtle promotional content requires a certain finesse and is not overly stated or extremely brazen. A great print piece conveys to your clients that you take pride in your business, products or services. Your print collateral should persuade prospects and inform them that you have something valuable to offer them. Ultimately it should showcase your talents and strengths while clearly motivating to purchase your product or service.
The Bigger Picture Copy – Print collateral does so much more than explain your product or services. The quality of our product should be exemplified in your content copy and the copy should reflect in-kind. To me, sloppy copy conveys sloppy business. Remember once in a prospective client’s hands, you have the chance to make not just a client out of them, but hopefully a long-term advertiser via word-of-mouth.
Tail End Tip: Make sure all your content flows smoothly to minimize boredom, confusion or frustration.
Well don’t panic, there is an easy way to clear this, and get your website back online.
