• Don’t Abandon the Public Option!: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/535664121 #
• http://twitpic.com/tk0ax — A pretty cute 404 page. #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

• Sometimes clients are cryptic. #
• A nice post summarizing WordPress premium theme sites: http://bit.ly/4XsZFt #
• New Coworking Space Roundup, http://bit.ly/6SzlOf #
• Ooh, it’s a free online regular expression testing tool. http://gskinner.com/RegExr/ #
• http://www.wpquestions.com/. #
• RT @dhstatus: (DreamHost) Network Outage. Yep. #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

A recent mass-hacking at MediaTemple has highlighted the fact that WordPress installations can be vulnerable, and as WordPress gets ever-more popular, it becomes a bigger deal to keep your site secure. Here’s a summary of some good posts and things to do.

Now, exactly how much of this you really have to do, I don’t know. And, security is a mysterious business, where there are really no absolutes. But … these are certainly interesting.

WP Security Scan plugin

The WP Security Scan plugin does a bunch of things to improve your site’s security, including:

• Analyzing the site file permissions for vulnerabilities
• Renaming the default database table
• Check for current version of WordPress
• Etc., etc.

This thing is a little bit new, but not a bad thing to have. They plan all sorts of cool stuff in future releases, too.

WordPress File Monitor

Monitors all kinds of stuff about your file system, to see if anything has changed in a bad way, and reports back if there’s something wrong.

How to Secure Your WordPress Installation. This is an excellent article, that goes into great detail about this subject.

13 Vital Tips and Hacks to Protect Your WordPress Admin Area

Protect Your Admin folder in WordPress by Limiting Access in .htaccess If you really want to get fancy, here’s something else to look at.

Bookfresh (www.bookfresh.com) is a great online system for allowing clients, or potential clients, to book time with you, without your having to undergo a tiring back-and-forth, or otherwise waste each other’s time scheduling an appointment. It is a beautifully designed, intelligent system.

However, I have had some real issues with it, and after many months, I finally decided to put them down in an email to them, which I repeat here:

—

Hello. I would like to provide some feedback that I hope will be helpful.

I repeatedly find that I wish I could make use of your service — although, at this point, I would only like to use it 2 or 3 times a month, at this point. I believe I will grow, and could want it more in the future.

So, obviously I have a free account. However, like many people I use Google Calendar to manage my appointments.

My main feedback is this:

Because the free account does not allow me to sync with Google Calendar, I cannot use your service in any way that would really simulate the experience of actually saving me any time.

If the free account synced with Google Calendar — even if I were only allowed a few appointments a month — I could have the experience of sending someone the link, and JUST FORGETTING ABOUT IT, which would make me so happy, and knowing they would pick whatever (damn) time they wanted to to make the appointment, and it would all work out perfectly.

So what I am saying is that your free sample version of your product does not give anyone the actual experience of what it would be like to pay for the product. You want to make your free sample be an ENTICING TASTE of the actual, paid product.

Not allowing the Google Calendar syncing seems like a form of being “too cheap,” to use a phrase. Shooting yourself in the foot is another, sorry if I am being blunt.

Now, if I were using the service 2 or 3 times a month, even your full, actual service, you wouldn’t really want me to pay 20 bucks for it, would you? Perhaps you would just give it to me for free, knowing I would rave about it — as it would save me so much time, and make my life better — and hope I would later grow until I wanted to use it more.

Or, you might charge me 5 bucks, or something like that. Or, a dollar per appointment. I’d be happy to pay that, which is actually quite substantial.

But — and I am sure I have OVER-hammered my point here, at this point–is that, currently, with my free service, I will never have an experience of how wonderful your service could be.

Secondly, I think you are missing out on an entire category of users who don’t have massive appointment setting businesses like hair stylists or something, but nevertheless would LOVE to stop having to waste their time playing phone or email tag with clients, just to set up a bloody appointment. I.e., they are not $20 customers, but they could still be customers. For people like me, the leap between free and $20 is simply far too high.

Thanks!

I don’t expect you will call me about this, but you’re very welcome to. I am a web developer and consultant in Santa Cruz, CA. My phone number is (831) 435‑9053. I would be happy to give you more feedback, if you like.

I hope this has been helpful. I do consider that, out of the dozens of systems I have looked at, yours is the CLOSEST to the one I would ACTUALLY want to use, and that is why, after dozens of times of coming back to the site, and having this feedback, I have finally decided to actually write this.

Sincerely,

Chris Burbridge

• Bizarre. Rodney Allen Rippy, famous child star 4 Jack in the Box, has a site trying 2 make $ on intl calling cards. http://bit.ly/8kSZ4b #
• jQuery has spawned a whole mini-industry, and what’s interesting is it’s ess Javascript, + a good UI. Give JS a good UI, and it changes e/th #
• Oooh, HackBook video, http://bit.ly/7Jfj9 #
• Green California Schools Summit Coming to Pasadena http://bit.ly/7wOfpj Inspiring #sustainability #california #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

• Bizarre. Rodney Allen Rippy, famous child star 4 Jack in the Box, has a site trying 2 make $ on intl calling cards. http://bit.ly/8kSZ4b #
• jQuery has spawned a whole mini-industry, and what’s interesting is it’s ess Javascript, + a good UI. Give JS a good UI, and it changes e/th #
• Oooh, HackBook video, http://bit.ly/7Jfj9 #
• Green California Schools Summit Coming to Pasadena http://bit.ly/7wOfpj Inspiring #sustainability #california #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

• Bizarre. Rodney Allen Rippy, famous child star 4 Jack in the Box, has a site trying 2 make $ on intl calling cards. http://bit.ly/8kSZ4b #
• jQuery has spawned a whole mini-industry, and what’s interesting is it’s ess Javascript, + a good UI. Give JS a good UI, and it changes e/th #
• Oooh, HackBook video, http://bit.ly/7Jfj9 #
• Green California Schools Summit Coming to Pasadena http://bit.ly/7wOfpj Inspiring #sustainability #california #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

• Jest went through 1 month+ worth’s of Google Reader posts. #
• 15 great places to showcase your WordPress site. We gotta do this. http://bit.ly/2xWwpy #
• More WordPress security tips — http://bit.ly/2sz4M9 , http://bit.ly/2hZQC5 #
• WordPress File Monitor plugin, for hacker monitoring, http://bit.ly/5a5fVs #
• WordPress wins 09 Open Source CMS Awards. “A landmark 4 us… marks shift in pub percep fr blog sw to full-feat CMS.” http://bit.ly/P7Ur2 #
• RT @binaryage FireQuery http://tinyurl.com/nrno4y #
• Not good. @office abandons web standards, using Word to render HTML emails in Outlook 2010. Visit http://fixoutlook.org and RT #
• In WordPress 2.9 you’ll have category-specific template like category-<slug>.php, not just -<id>.php. http://bit.ly/64phwo #
• RT @hongkiat 30+ (More) Most Wanted Wordpress Tips, Tricks and Hacks | Wordpress http://bit.ly/8YO45 #
• RT @hongkiat 30+ New Useful WordPress Tricks & Hacks | Wordpress http://bit.ly/1631IW #
• RT @hongkiat 40+ Most Wanted Wordpress Tricks and Hacks | Wordpress http://bit.ly/1ysOVV #
• RT @hongkiat 20 Best Wordpress Typography Plugins To Enhance Readability | Wordpress http://retwt.me/1lNkO #
• RT @TheNextWeb Chat with the 17 year old hacker who hacked my blog http://tnw.to/5Lai #
• Just watched The 40 Year Old Virgin on regular TV. What a great movie. Catherine Keener is amazingly awesome, not to mention Steve Carell #
• The previous tweet was a glitch-I am developing a WordPress Cookbook — for now, it is here: http://bit.ly/4oPI8F . #
• RT @ryancarson: My new favorite video: The Matrix in Lego http://bit.ly/6qfb4Y (thx @micah) #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

• Jest went through 1 month+ worth’s of Google Reader posts. #
• 15 great places to showcase your WordPress site. We gotta do this. http://bit.ly/2xWwpy #
• More WordPress security tips — http://bit.ly/2sz4M9 , http://bit.ly/2hZQC5 #
• WordPress File Monitor plugin, for hacker monitoring, http://bit.ly/5a5fVs #
• WordPress wins 09 Open Source CMS Awards. “A landmark 4 us… marks shift in pub percep fr blog sw to full-feat CMS.” http://bit.ly/P7Ur2 #
• RT @binaryage FireQuery http://tinyurl.com/nrno4y #
• Not good. @office abandons web standards, using Word to render HTML emails in Outlook 2010. Visit http://fixoutlook.org and RT #
• In WordPress 2.9 you’ll have category-specific template like category-<slug>.php, not just -<id>.php. http://bit.ly/64phwo #
• RT @hongkiat 30+ (More) Most Wanted Wordpress Tips, Tricks and Hacks | Wordpress http://bit.ly/8YO45 #
• RT @hongkiat 30+ New Useful WordPress Tricks & Hacks | Wordpress http://bit.ly/1631IW #
• RT @hongkiat 40+ Most Wanted Wordpress Tricks and Hacks | Wordpress http://bit.ly/1ysOVV #
• RT @hongkiat 20 Best Wordpress Typography Plugins To Enhance Readability | Wordpress http://retwt.me/1lNkO #
• RT @TheNextWeb Chat with the 17 year old hacker who hacked my blog http://tnw.to/5Lai #
• Just watched The 40 Year Old Virgin on regular TV. What a great movie. Catherine Keener is amazingly awesome, not to mention Steve Carell #
• The previous tweet was a glitch-I am developing a WordPress Cookbook — for now, it is here: http://bit.ly/4oPI8F . #
• RT @ryancarson: My new favorite video: The Matrix in Lego http://bit.ly/6qfb4Y (thx @micah) #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

• Jest went through 1 month+ worth’s of Google Reader posts. #
• 15 great places to showcase your WordPress site. We gotta do this. http://bit.ly/2xWwpy #
• More WordPress security tips — http://bit.ly/2sz4M9 , http://bit.ly/2hZQC5 #
• WordPress File Monitor plugin, for hacker monitoring, http://bit.ly/5a5fVs #
• WordPress wins 09 Open Source CMS Awards. “A landmark 4 us… marks shift in pub percep fr blog sw to full-feat CMS.” http://bit.ly/P7Ur2 #
• RT @binaryage FireQuery http://tinyurl.com/nrno4y #
• Not good. @office abandons web standards, using Word to render HTML emails in Outlook 2010. Visit http://fixoutlook.org and RT #
• In WordPress 2.9 you’ll have category-specific template like category-<slug>.php, not just -<id>.php. http://bit.ly/64phwo #
• RT @hongkiat 30+ (More) Most Wanted Wordpress Tips, Tricks and Hacks | Wordpress http://bit.ly/8YO45 #
• RT @hongkiat 30+ New Useful WordPress Tricks & Hacks | Wordpress http://bit.ly/1631IW #
• RT @hongkiat 40+ Most Wanted Wordpress Tricks and Hacks | Wordpress http://bit.ly/1ysOVV #
• RT @hongkiat 20 Best Wordpress Typography Plugins To Enhance Readability | Wordpress http://retwt.me/1lNkO #
• RT @TheNextWeb Chat with the 17 year old hacker who hacked my blog http://tnw.to/5Lai #
• Just watched The 40 Year Old Virgin on regular TV. What a great movie. Catherine Keener is amazingly awesome, not to mention Steve Carell #
• The previous tweet was a glitch-I am developing a WordPress Cookbook — for now, it is here: http://bit.ly/4oPI8F . #
• RT @ryancarson: My new favorite video: The Matrix in Lego http://bit.ly/6qfb4Y (thx @micah) #

Powered by Twitter Tools.