Why You Cannot Push a Pig Through a Keyhole Building an effective responsive design website entails much more than simply designing a responsive theme. The primary purpose for using a responsive design is to have one website that works with all viewing devices, from desktop monitors down to small smartphone displays. Unfortunately, a theme may be mobile ready, but the web … [Read more...]
Design Considerations With Responsive Design Websites
Responsive design mobile-ready websites--also known as fluid designs--can solve a range of issues and will increase the mobile usability of your website, but there are some issues to consider if you want to site to be effective with a wide range of mobile devices. Most site owners build a responsive design website primarily because of the compatibility with smaller screen … [Read more...]
About WordPress Updates
The WordPress team recently introduced version 3.8.0 or their very popular flagship product. I have used it on a few sites and it appears to be stable, but a bugfix update almost always follows the release of a major version. Expect to see that very soon. If you recently updated to version 3.7.0 or 3.7.1, these versions introduced an automatic update feature. This feature … [Read more...]
Where Does Missing e-Mail Go?
The problem with missing e-mails that someone sent to you but you never received, or those you sent but were not received by the recipient, can be perplexing. Here are some of the explanations we have seen for missing messages. E-mail is an unusual web service because messages can literally vaporize and disappear forever if the proper connections are not made between the … [Read more...]
Brute Force Attack Attempts to Hack WordPress Admin Password
A huge worldwide brute force attack is hitting WordPress sites. The attack appears to be using a large botnet of infected PCs and servers in an attempt to break into the administration area of WordPress sites. The attacks involve a wide range of over 90,000 IP addresses from all over the planet, which points to a large numbers infected PCs and servers. The goal of the … [Read more...]
What Happened to the Links Section in WordPress?
If you have updated your WordPress sites to version 3.5.x, you probably noticed that the Links section in the admin area has been removed. Actually, it wasn't been removed for all sites because it is still there if you were using it prior to updating your web site to the new version of WordPress. In other words, if you were using that feature, it is grandfathered in. The … [Read more...]
Found a [email protected] User Account? You Have Been Hacked!
I just found a sysadmin administrator account set up with an e-mail address of [email protected] in a new client's WordPress site. This is happening more often recently and some people appear to think that WordPress is creating these accounts. WordPress is not creating these accounts. If you just found this account, the chances are pretty good that your site has been … [Read more...]
Netbeans Error: Invalid jdkhome specified, Cannot locate java installation in specified jdkhome
A few years ago a friend told me about Netbeans, the freebie Java-based code editor that is designed to work with Java, PHP and a range of other languages. At that point it was time to retire Homesite, my favorite editor for over 10 years that was no longer sold or supported, and was showing signs of incompatibility issues with Windows updates. I have since found Netbeans … [Read more...]
Simple WordPress Hack Reveals Admin Login Names
One of the first security rules when configuring WordPress is to never use the default administrator name, 'admin'. Always change it to something that you can remember, but is hard for someone else to figure out. When you use the default name, a hacker who wants to try to break into your WordPress administration area has half of what he needs to get in. The other half is the … [Read more...]
Shopping Cart Patents Voided in Court Case
If you own an e-commerce site that uses a shopping cart, you may not be aware that you could have been liable for paying a licensing fee to a group of attorneys who claimed the rights to three patents that literally gave them the rights to the technology used in all shopping carts. For several years this group of attorneys battled large e-commerce sites in court and managed to … [Read more...]