Blog

  • What is your login username to your WordPress website?

    You’re not going to tell me right…of course you’re not!

    But did you know unless you’ve taken the necessary steps (or your hosting company/web developer has)  a hacker can find out what your username is in a few seconds?

    By simply adding the string /?author=(number) to the end of you domain will result in your username being displayed if not protected. Most sites have no more than 2 registered usernames so botnets typically search up to 10 numbers e.g. 

    https://mywebsite.co.uk/?author=1

    https://mywebsite.co.uk/?author=2 

    https://mywebsite.co.uk/?author=3

     

    etc.

    In the screen grab below I’ve added the extra string…

    Capture1

    I press enter and… tadaaarr! As if by magic the username ‘test1’ appears in the URL string!

    Capture2

    Try it out on your own WordPress website, you may need to keep going up in numbers depending on how your website was built, but it should be under ten. A sure sign that this hole has been patched up by your web dev is that you get nothing back, or an error message or even locked out of that site.

    We’re protected

    I wouldn’t bother trying on our website, as we are protected and you will find yourself blocked from our website for a month and don’t try it on anyone else’s website without permission, as hacking is illegal and your intentions may be misunderstood.

    You’re not protected – now what?

    OK so you’re site isn’t protected – anyone can find out what your username is, so what?

    Did you hear about the botnets attacking WordPress sites with the username ‘admin’ in the news? Once they have a username half the battle is won, they can run scanners like https://wpscan.org/ – to try hundreds of variations of popular passwords in minutes, once they’re in – it’s not worth thinking about.

    Fix it

    This hole can be plugged, it’s important that it is fixed as your website is at risk, ask your web developer they should be able to to help – if not get in touch and see what web design Surrey can do.

    Our clients are protected as it’s one of a number of security services we provide.

  • Adding Text and Image Links to WordPress Posts and Pages

    A question often asked is can I add links to sites other than my own?  With WordPress this is very easy and like everything, it is even easier if someone shows you how.

    I have created a short video demonstrating adding a text link and also a image link to a page or post within WordPress 3.6.

    It shows how the link can be created and also how to set it so the link opens in a new browser tab. It is always recommended that when send a visitor of yours to another site that a new tab is opened, that way the visitor can find your site again more easily.

    Take a look at the video.

    Wordpress adding links to pages and posts video

  • Adding YouTube Videos to your Posts and Pages

    Adding an embedded YouTube video to your WordPress pages and posts on a Locally site is nearly as simple as adding an image.

    The first step is to get the image you want to display for the user to click on, this could be a still from the video or anything else you fancy. You may want to embellish the image with a ‘play now’ type of button, using your favorite image editor.

    Here are a couple of play buttons you could use.  Right click and select ‘save image as’ on one if you want to download it.

    media_play play

    Then use your favorite image editor  (we like paint.NET, it is free and well supported, you should be able to find the download here )

    You can see it all in action on a video we put together using the techniques described below.

    So first you need to prepare the image that you will use  as the still from the video. you could use a screen grab of the actual video or anything else that is relevant, and then overlay your ‘play button’.

    Then using the standard WordPress ‘add media’ button, upload your image and put it in your post or page where you want it to be, just like any other image.

    Next you need to find your YouTube video and its ’embed’ code, you can find this under the video, if you click on the ‘share’ link and the ’embed’ link. We don’t want the whole ifra

    finished-capturescreenme code, just the URL, copy that and go back to your WordPress image editor and replace the link. What you are looking for is  something like ‘www.youtube.com/embed/CbtGMqLZUdA’ and you put an ‘https://’ at the front to give you ‘https://www.youtube.com/embed/CbtGMqLZUdA’

    There is one more thing that needs to be done to the link, essentially to ensure the video plays when it opens up and runs in HD. We need to add “?rel=0&wmode=transparent&autoplay=1&hd=1” to the end of the URL.

    So the final link you will have is along the lines of  ‘https://www.youtube.com/embed/CbtGMqLZUdA?rel=0&wmode=transparent&autoplay=1&hd=1‘ except that string in the middle will be different and should be your video’s id.

    The last step is to go to the ‘advanced settings’ tab of the image editor and scroll down to the ‘advanced link settings’ and give the ‘CSS class a value of ‘youtube’.

    Save the image and update your post and page, then view it and check it all works, if you got it right the video should pop up and run when you click on the image.

    (note to WordPress user that are not using Locally, this won’t work for you without a couple of technical changes to your WordPress theme)

  • WordPress 3.6

    One of the many benefit business members of Locally get is their WordPress powered website gets updated in the background by us.  Several times a year WordPress release a new version of software which includes security and functionality releases. We at Locally test each new version of WordPress and when we are happy that it performs correctly we role it out to our Locally business level members’ WordPress based websites.

    On 1st of August, WordPress release 3.6. This was a release they called ‘Oscar’ in the honor of the jazz pianist Oscar Peterson. 3.6 is mainly a ‘features’ release which means that it contains mainly new functionality and easier to use features.

    The main features of this release are:

    • Revamped Revisions. When looking at page or post revisions it is now easier to compare side by side the versions, making it easier to select the right one if you need to step back to an earlier version. I would add that the revisions are still displayed in HTML, which while is technically a precise way of comparison, we look forward to the day that we also have the choice of visually rendering the revisions.
    • Augmented Auto save and Post Locking.  Not many of our members will see a benefit here, as this mainly applies to sites that have multiple people working on the same content, but it is nice to know that the risk of losing edits in this situation has been dramatically reduced.
    • Built in HTML media player. This means that you can now upload and  preview  Audio and Video on the Media edit screens (normal upload file size limits apply) and easily add and Audio player or Video Player into your pages or posts. For videos, we still recommend you use YouTube, as there are definitely traffic advantages to that, but now you have the option to upload small Videos.
    • The navigation menu editor has now been made easier to understand and use.

    And over 700 technical improvements in the background.

    WordPress 3.6 was rolled out to the appropriate Locally websites on 13th August 2013.

  • Web Design Surrey

    No one can believe where the time has gone since we launched the Locally web design brand last October.  Before becoming Locally we were Roibot Ltd a two man internet marketing company, but we found there was a pressing need in Surrey for a web design company that catered for start up and small businesses. At first we thought the best way to provide affordable web design services to these companies in Surrey, around Woking & Guildford was to provide a set of tools so that they could build their own sites.

    What we learnt very quickly was that small companies are too busy to allocate the time to learning skills that we (as experienced web professionals) take for granted.  So we realigned ourselves so that we would build the sites using our own tools and frame work and create a  form of website members club, where a monthly subscription gives them all the technical and website support they need.

    It is difficult to compare us with a traditional Surrey web design company, there are a lot, and they all offer different variations on solutions for their clients. Over the last few months our reputation as a trust worthy web design company has passed by word of mouth and of course we are very happy about that, the best form of marketing is referrals.

    Our process to develop websites is documented on our own website, and it is light weight and fast, a process designed to align with our customers. Larger companies will want a web design agency that goes through wire-frame mock ups, graphical mock-ups, then converting these into code, this process is great and necessary if you are commissioning a multi-thousand pound website, but our clients, local businesses in Surrey and indeed across the UK, need a process that delivers in hundreds not thousands of  pounds.

    So far we have met and produced websites for a great bunch of people & small businesses, and we very much looking forward to helping them and many more businesses with their on-line presence.

  • Adding new email accounts and email aliases to your domain

    If you are hosting your e-mail with us you can easily setup new email accounts or aliases.

    Generally speaking you should set up one email account per real person, and then use aliases for generic terms for example sales@mydomain.com.  An alias is an email address that receives emails and redirects it to a full email account.

    When your domain was set up on Locally you should have received an email containing your master account name and password.

    Follow the instructions for logging in to your control panel using your master username and password.

    The main options you will need to use on your control panel are

    1. Edit Users

    and

    2. Edit Mail Aliases

    Edit Users

    This is where you can add, change and delete email accounts.  When you set up an email account you can control individually the amount of disc quota each account has, if you have many individual accounts you may want to set this up to stop one account using up all the space.

    Edit Mail Aliases

    This is where you can add, change and delete email aliases

    You will find that at least 4 standard aliases have been setup and set to forward to the email you first provided to us, you can change where there are forwarded too.  The aliases abuse, hostmaster, postmaster and webmaster are pretty standard and you are advised to keep these aliases pointing to a working email account.

    You can optional forward aliases to every one or just a list, and if you like you can add a courtsey auto response.

    The number of email accounts or aliases may be limited by your plan.