Check out some good common sense blog security tips

Image: Hacker Inside LogoI couldn’t have said it much better myself, so I decided to link to this article rather than write my own version of it. Although, I might write a follow up that gets a little more in depth or something. However, that’s for another day, for now check out this post on the site “Spice Up Your Blog” where the author goes over “5 Ways Your Blog’s Design Is Making You Susceptible To A Hacker”.

Now this isn’t just for server operators, it focuses on things that also make a difference to those that run their own blog too. This is because a “Hacker”, or maybe a visitor with malicious intent, can wreak havoc on your blog even without touching the rest of the server. If they can get access to your database for example, you can kiss all of your posts, pages and pretty much everything else goodbye if they are feeling especially destructive. Even if they don’t destroy your data, they can post things on your blog that you don’t want, like advertisements; porn; we own you messages; what have you. Even worse, is when your site gets compromised and no one knows it. In these cases the hackers can do all sorts of fun things. One especially nasty trick I have seen is when they plant a virus alongside your sites files and then append a small bit of code to your pages so that your visitors get infected, talk about your reputation plummeting faster than a stone tossed out a window.

With all this in mind, take a look at the following page and see if any of the things they talk about there sound like they might be up your alley. It pays to be careful, I hope this helps!

5 Ways Your Blog’s Design Is Making You Susceptible To A Hacker

 

Mobile Blogging With iBlogger

Here’s another application tidbit that I ran across and just have to share.  If you are like lots of other folk in that you manage or contribute to any number of blogs out there in cyberspace, and although the majority of your writing and editing time is spent at the PC, you’d love to have the option of firing up your iPhone and tapping out a blog post right there on the spot if the desire so moved you.  Now, unfortunately, this post isn’t going to help people that don’t have or use an iPhone, at least not today.  I would expect though, that the app I am going to talk about will get ported to other platforms, especially popular ones (read: droid/googleOS).

OK, for those iPhone users though, there is an app that so far seems to rise above the rest of the crowd.  It’s called iBlogger and in my time with it has been quick, nimble, easy to setup and use and generally makes blogging from my iPhone an almost effortless experience.  The app supports many different blogging platforms, here is a short list that covers the major ones: Blogger, Expression Engine, MovableType, SquareSpace, TypePad, WordPress.  They claim that more are being added all the time, so if your favorite isn’t listed now, you might see it before too long.

Some of the other features that I like are, for example, I can setup multiple blogs and easily post to different ones, you are not locked in.  You can upload pictures pretty easily too, either taken on the spot or from the Camera Roll.  It seems that there is a limit of one pic per post as of this writing, but again I bet that gets fixed soon.  To sum it up, this is a nice little blogging app, and from what I have read and comparing it to other apps that I have tried that supposedly do the same thing, it is light years ahead of the competition.  It’s not free though, so that could be a drawback for some folk.  When I purchased it recently it was going for $9.99 and so far it has been well worth it.

Now, there is one last tidbit I want to share.  This is for anyone that already has this app, or is planning on getting this app.  There is one thing that would happen when I made a post that really annoyed me, and that was when the application would insert an unwanted advert link at the bottom of the post.  You know what I mean, one of those “Posted by iBlogger blah blah blah” links that took people back to their home page.  Now, I don’t mind supporting an app, when I find something good I want to share it with people like I am doing with this post.  But I don’t want a link like that at the end of each and every post, especially when I didn’t know it was going to do it in the first place.

So now I want to share with you how to make the application not do that.  It’s actually really easy to do, but it wasn’t that easy to find, so I want to make sure all of you know about it right up front.  It’s an option setting like it should be, but it’s not an option you get to from inside the application.  Go to the main Settings section for the iPhone itself, and scroll down till you see a link to iBlogger settings.  Click on it and you will see only two options, one for editing the footer and one for turning off the insertion of said footer.  It’s just that easy!

*Note: No compensation or consideration of any kind was received by Solarum for this post/review.