WordPress File Monitor monitors your WordPress installation for added/deleted/changed files. When a change is detected, an email alert can be sent to a specified address.

Features:

• Monitors file system for added/deleted/changed files
• Sends email when a change is detected
• Multiple email formats for alerts
• Administration area alert to notify you of changes in case email is not received
• Ability to monitor files for changes based on file hash or timestamp
• Ability to exclude directories from scan (for instance if you use a cacheing system that stores its files within the monitored zone)
• Site URL included in notification email in case plugin is in use on multiple sites

So far, all the alerts I’ve received have been changes resulting from things I’ve done – just like they’re supposed to be. But I read every one I get, just to be sure. And I really like the fact that I see a notification when I log in to my site, too, (because we all know email can get jacked up 6 ways ’til Sunday.)

So, if you could do with a little peace of mind where your WordPress site is concerned, use WordPress File Monitor to alert you to changes at your site.

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3. Get a Measure of Your WordPress Security Level with the WP Scan Tool

Here’s what you do:

1. Download the wp-scanner activator plugin. Install and activate it on your site. (Plugin installation instructions here.)
2. Run the scan here. Just enter your site’s URL (make sure you include the http:// at the beginning), type the security code and click the ‘Start Scan’ button.

The objective here is to get a clean report, which means no output. If you get output, you’ve got issues to address. But hey – at least you know what issues now. If you need assistance interpreting the scan results, don’t hesitate to contact me.

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Some of your readers may prefer full text feeds, while others prefer a summary. So which group do you defer to? Publishing a summary feed forces people to click through to your site to read the entire post, which of course, helps your traffic stats, but might irk some of your readers. Conversely, publishing the full text of your post in the feed is one of the ways content scrapers get hold of your stuff. (Though, you can use FeedEntryHeader, a plugin that adds a copyright notice to the top of your feed to help deter the scrapers.)

Why not allow your subscribers to choose whether they want a full or summary feed? Now you can offer both formats by using the DualFeeds plugin.

DualFeeds works with ALL the feeds at your site, not just posts and comments. If you’ve set up feeds for categories, tags, authors, etc., DualFeeds will handle them, too. There’s a sidebar widget with links to Full Post, Summary and Comments feeds and the option to add links to Full Post, Summary & Comments feeds after each post. Feed requests for each of the three feeds can be redirected to the appropriate FeedBurner URL (use it with or instead of FeedSmith.) Note: The ?Full text? option must be selected in Settings -> Reading.

Give your feed subscribers the benefit of a choice between full or summary posts – they’ll be happier and you just might get more of them!

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These lazy bloggers who steal content from other sites are called scrapers, and they most commonly get your content through your RSS feed and put it on SPAM blogs (called ‘splogs’), usually in the hopes of earning income through AdSense installed on the splog.

So, what should you do? Can you stop them?

Most ‘splogs’ don’t have contact information on them, so contacting the owner of the splog is usually an effort in futility. (However, if you catch your content on a site that does have contact information available, by all means – contact the blog owner and tell them to take your content down!)

Should you stop publishing a feed? No, that hurts your readers and subscribers who rely on your feed to bring them the information you publish. So, what then?

Use the FeedEntryHeader plugin to add a copyright notice at the top of your feed, along with a statement of where to find the original publisher of the content.

I just installed this plugin over the weekend, and here’s what my feed now looks like:

Now, if any of my posts get picked up by one of these scrapers, at least this notice will go along with it, and it will be much more apparent to anyone reading that post that the content came from somewhere else.

Install and activate the FeedEntryHeader plugin on your blog and know that you’re doing your part to “out” the content scrapers of the world.

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MySQL is the type of database WordPress uses, and while it’s a great database, sometimes it doesn’t clean up after itself too well, and left unaddressed, you could end up with the same sort of problems as you have if you don’t defrag your hard drive regularly.

The phpMyAdmin interface in your hosting account might intimidate you a bit because of all it’s options. That’s ok – there’s quick, easy, one-click way to tidy up your database without having to use phpMyAdmin: a plug-in called Optimize DB.

Go ahead and download it, and then install it following these directions. Once installed, it’s just one click on a regular basis to keep your database clean, tidy and running efficiently.

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At the request of one of my clients, I went on a hunt for a plugin that would allow me either more choices in color schemes or to define my own color scheme for the admin interface. Eureka! I have found it! Only one problem: it is not compatible with WP 2.7…yet. According to the plugin author’s blog (in a comment dated 1/6/09), he is about 80% of the way done with the upgrade to the plugin and expects it to be available “very soon.” Hallelujah!

Easy Admin Color Schemes is the name of the plugin, and it’s available in the WordPress Plugin Directory. You can choose from two (or more, who knows yet?) color schemes, or create your own!

My recommendation: Go download and install it now (here’s how), but DO NOT ACTIVATE it until the upgrade is available. Just let it sit in your inactive plugins list, until you get that handy little notification that there is an upgrade available for it. Then, UPGRADE it, first, and INSTALL it! By downloading and installing it now, you won’t have to hunt it down again, and you can capitalize on the fact that WordPress lets you know when upgrades become available for plugins. As soon as v3.0 is out – upgrade and activate that baby and give your ol’ eyeballs a break!

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As with every other area of life, make sure you only compare yourself with yourself. Anything else is not fair to you and counter-productive. (By all means, look at other blogs/sites and learn from them and use them to help you set goals, but don’t be using them as your yardstick, k? Ok.)

Introducing the Blog Metrics plug-in by Joost de Valk. This is a handy little plugin that plays by my rules – meaning it compares you to you…period. It is based on the blog metrics Avinash Kaushik proposed in this post (which I strongly recommend you read, btw.)

This plug-in helps you compare how you’re doing now with how you’ve done in the past. And really, that’s the only measurement that’s useful to you, that you can do something with, right? (RIGHT…!) So, if you see progress being made in your 30 day numbers as compared to your overall numbers, then celebrate! And if not, then hey – you know what you need to work on.

Remember: PROGRESS (NOT PERFECTION!) is the goal.

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At the very thought, I’m transported back in time to the most horrific temp job I ever had: locked away in a window-less room full of filing cabinets tasked with filing purchase orders 8 hours a day. I lasted 2 days.

Fast forward 20 years later, I store everything I possibly can digitally. (I currently do not even have paper loaded in my printer.) No amount of hard drive space is safe near me, as a result. Here in my office, I have only a two-drawer filing cabinet which holds the papers I absolutely HAVE to print out and file and I still have room in it! This works for me.

Imagine my delight when a new Twitter friend @RobertaHill tweeted about the Eco-Safe Merit Badge, a really cool way to save or share blog content without printing! I checked it out immediately. About 3 minutes later, I had it installed here.

Try it out! You can email this post to yourself or a friend, you can email a PDF of this post to yourself or a friend or you can download a PDF of this post. If I had a magic wand, every blog I read would have the Eco-Safe plugin installed.

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In honor of Thursday Thirteen, here are 13 WordPress plugins that I use and love:

1. WordPress Automatic Upgrade: allows you to automatically upgrade your WordPress installation to the latest one provided by wordpress.org using the 5 steps provided in the WordPress upgrade instructions.
2. All In One SEO Pack: out-of-the-box SEO for your WordPress blog.
3. Feedburner Feedsmith: detects all ways to access your original WordPress feeds and redirects them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber.
4. Google XML Sitemaps: generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO.
5. Nofollow Case by Case: allows you to selectively apply rel=?nofollow? to your links.
6. Zemanta: contextually relevant suggestions of links, pictures, related content and tags will make your blogging fun again.
7. CommentLuv: show a link to the last post from the commenters blog in their comment. Just activate and it?s ready. Will parse a feed from most sites that have a feed location specified in its head html.
8. PhotoDropper: lets you add Creative commons licensed photos to your posts from Flickr.
9. Contact Form 7: simple but flexible contact form complete with CAPTCHA.
10. Ad Rotate: a simple way of showing random banners on your site with a user friendly panel to manage them.
11. Broken Link Checker: checks your posts for broken links and missing images and notifies you on the dashboard if any are found.
12. Coming Next: shows the next scheduled post with a brief description.
13. No Self Pings: keeps WordPress from sending pings to your own site.

What are YOUR favorite plugins?

Which plugins really float your boat? Tell me in the comments below.

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One of the more common complaints I hear from my clients is, “I want to use pictures on my site, but I don’t know where to get them for free…legally.” To their credit, every last one of my clients who’ve asked me about adding more photos and images to their sites has voiced concern about adhering to copyright laws.

Well, kiss that problem goodbye by installing the Photo Dropper plugin!

Now you can easily add Creative Commons licensed photos – images that are licensed for shared use – to your posts – right from your dashboard with just 1 click. (If you’re running a commercial blog, read this article to make sure you’re clear how Creative Commons works and what you’re allowed to do with Creative Commons photos.)

It’s a pretty cool plugin for a couple of reasons:

1. You can search for photos using keywords related to your post content, making the process of finding relevant images for your posts a breeze.
2. You can choose small, medium, or large sizes, just like at Flickr. A couple of clicks and your picture’s in your post!

You might have to play with your image alignment a little bit, depending on the size of the image you choose, but other than that, it’s a great tool for adding relevant images to your posts!

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