Free Technology Tutorials

How to Edit WordPress Theme Colors Using Gimp

figaro — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 23:37:02 +0000

In the following videos I demonstrate a simple technique to change the color scheme of the WordPress Arjuna theme using Gimp–free image editing software. The technique I show here can be used on any image-based theme and shows a real simple technique using layers, color, and opacity to change the overall theme color scheme.

Part 1 of 2:

Part 2 of 2:

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Moodle — 1990’s LMS Technology in 2010?

figaro — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 21:16:46 +0000

Moodle should make my life easier, not harder. I do appreciate what it allows me to do—post course content without having to fashion an entire course web page on my own, include RSS feeds from other sources, have one central location for grades and hand-ins and such—but I feel that sometimes it is more lacking for power users than for beginners. Good software should accomodate beginners, advanced beginners, power users, and experts equally well, and in this sense Moodle fails.

Source: http://acdalal.wordpress.com/2010/01/11/my-moodle-wish-list/

A very good summary. Moodle is good for beginners who really only need a place to upload some docs, have an online gradebook–if they can figure out how to use it–, and allow students to upload assignments. It does have those features and a few others–essentially the same features it had 5/6-years ago. Hard to believe? Download and install Moodle version 1.5 and look at what it had in 2004/2005 vs what it has today.

http://download.moodle.org/stable15

All the core features are pretty much the same…could explain a lot of the frustrations felt by power users. Yea, Moodle is cheaper than Blackboard, like a Mule is cheaper than a Mercedes. Until, of course, the vet bills (1, 2, 3, etc…) start coming in…then the cost of the Mercedes doesn’t seem so high and it’s a heck of a lot nicer ride without leaving a trail of manure behind it

Of course, Moodle 2.0 has been in the works for about 2 years now and promises to deliver a revolution to the LMS world once released. Moodle.com has opted out of the Google summer of code this year because 2.0 development demands all their time/energy. So, who knows, maybe 2.0 is what power users like the one quoted above have been waiting for…we’ll see.

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WordPress 2.9.2 Released — Bug Fix

figaro — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 00:35:46 +0000

WordPress 2.9.2 was just released and addresses a bug where logged in users can see trashed posts belonging to other authors. So, if you have sensitive files in the trash and multiple user accounts on your site, you should probably upgrade soon. Related posts:WordPress 2.9 — A Video Demonstration of New Features In the following video [...] Related posts:

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Locate & Remove SPAM Accounts from Your WordPress Blog

figaro — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 15:15:24 +0000

Are you getting bombarded with SPAM accounts being created on your WordPress blog? Well, there are several techniques to find and remove them, the more complicated involves creating and executing queries in the database, but one simple technique is available right in the WordPress admin. This video illustrates a simple technique for finding and deleting SPAM accounts from your WordPress blog.

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Moodle Security, Censorship, and Trust — An Observation

figaro — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 18:28:15 +0000

It’s no secret that Moodle, the open-source learning management system, has suffered from some very serious security problems recently. And those security problems aren’t limited to individuals who simply buy a cheap, $5 hosting account, install Moodle using Fantastico, and try to set up an online class when they really don’t know what they’re doing.

In fact, some of the biggest Moodle security problems have impacted customers of some of the largest professional Moodle hosting providers–Moodle Partners–commercial companies endorsed and certified by Moodle to provide professional, enterprise-level services.

One example of this is the Moodle porn spam issue that impacted millions of Moodle sites all over the world–and still impacts an untold number of sites today. This issue received world-wide attention when Primary School Moodle sites, provided by a certified Moodle Partner, were found to be infested with vile pornography.

Source: Primary schools hit by porn hackers
Source: Porn infecting ‘thousands’ of e-learning (Moodle) sites

Another example is the huge security hole first reported here just a couple months ago demonstrating how any teacher on any Moodle site in the world could download the entire user database table and have access to all user information–usernames, passwords, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, etc., for every user on the Moodle site. Professional Moodle partners all over the world got caught sleeping at the wheel…again.

Source–just one of many: Groot gat in open source e-learning cms Moodle

One would think that an open-source “community” with problems as serious as Moodle has had recently, would invite open and honest communication about its products and services, but you would be wrong.

I don’t know many things for sure, but one thing I do know is that Moodle has not seen the last of these types of problems. The closed, arrogant, intolerant, atmosphere that has been cultivated on moodle.org by the Moodle lead developer will continue to ensure that there is no shortage of people just waiting to expose the next big hole…it’s not a matter of “if” there is another big hole…it’s only a matter of “when” it will bite Moodle (ergo Moodle users) in the rear.

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WordPress Blog Hacked — Now What?

figaro — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 15:46:24 +0000

Note: The following is made available under GPL from http://codex.wordpress.org/GPL. It has been edited significantly from its original form. There is no guarantee this information is accurate…use at your own risk.
—————————————————–

My WordPress blog has been hacked; or at least I think its been hacked. What do I do now?

The WordPress Exploit Scanner plugin can help detect damage so that it can be cleaned up. Other things you should do:

Change passwords for all blog users, including your own, with a role higher than Subscriber
If you upload files to your site via FTP, change your FTP password
Change your web hosting control panel (such as Cpanel) password
Completely remove all current WordPress core code and re-install the latest version of WordPress
Make sure you are only using trusted plugins and themes–those from wordpress.org or a trusted commercial developer
Remove all unused themes and plugins
Make sure all of your plugins and themes are up-to-date–it’s best to install new, clean copies of each theme and plugin
Update your security keys in wp-config.php
Search your entire web-directory (public_html directory, not just the WP directory) to ensure no other files are infected
Check directory and file permission on your server. Typically, directory permissions should be 755 and files should be 644, but this will depend on your particular server environment.

If all else fails, contact me and I will quote you a reasonable price for fixing your site for you…I only work on Linux systems with Cpanel, or an equivalent control panel.

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Customize WordPress Post Revisions

figaro — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 19:52:14 +0000

In a default install of WordPress, each time you edit a post or page, WordPress will automatically save your previous posts/pages allowing the possibility of reverting to a previous version of that post or page. This is a cool feature, but it can get a little ridiculous when you have dozens of previous versions sitting below the post–and taking up space in your db. As you can see in the following screenshot, with just a couple of edits to this post, I’ve already racked-up 4 revisions…by the time I finish editing, I’ll probably have a dozen or so…

Each of those revisions requires a separate record in the db. So, although this is a cool feature, it can significantly add to db bloat. If you don’t really care to have all those revisions sitting around, or if you want to limit the number, WordPress does provide an option to change the default behavior allowing you to either disable revisions completely or allowing you to limit the number of revisions saved. To make these changes you do need to edit your wp-config.php file directly…currently, there is no option for doing this in WP admin.

Disable Post Revisions

To completely disable the revisions feature, add (or if already present) edit the following code to your wp-config.php file. The word (false) disables this feature.

define('WP_POST_REVISIONS', false );

Specify the Number of Post Revisions

If you want to keep the revisions feature, but limit the number revisions saved, then use the same code as above, but change false to the number of revisions you want to keep. In the example below, WordPress will keep the latest 3 post or page revisions.

define('WP_POST_REVISIONS', 3);

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WordPress 2.9.1 Released — Fixes Scheduled Post Problem

figaro — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 15:43:10 +0000

WordPress version 2.9.1 was just released and should fix the annoying scheduled post problem. The problem was scheduled posts weren’t being published on some 2.9 installs — including a couple of my own installs . Instead, when you looked at the list of posts you would just see errors reading “missed schedule” or something similar. There is a way of fixing the problem by editing a core file, but no need now…just upgrade to 2.9.1 and all should be well. Remember…backup, backup, backup before pressing the upgrade button–chances are you will have no problems, but if you do, will be glad you backed up.

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WordPress 2.9 Trash Feature — How to Customize

figaro — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 02:51:41 +0000

In WordPress 2.9 one of the new features is the ability to send posts, pages, and comments to trash instead of simply deleting them as in previous versions.

One thing about this new feature that is not so obvious, is that by default, items in trash are automatically deleted after 30-days. Of course, this could be a good thing as long as you know about it, but it could catch some by surprise who don’t know about this auto-delete feature in trash. I would imagine there are some who will use the trash as a holding place for posts, pages, or comments that they may want to remove from public view, but keep handy for possible future use. In the past, you may have just changed the status of a post or page from “Published” to “Draft” or simply “Unapproved” a comment to achieve the same result. The difference is, your draft posts/pages and unapproved comments were never deleted unless you deleted them–not so when you send something to trash. The 30-day delete time is defined in wp-settings around line 570–see screenshot below.

Of course, now that you know this, if you wanted to change it, you could open wp-settings and edit it there–changing the 30 to 60 would auto-delete items after 60 days. However, there is a better way to accomplish this so that you don’t over-write your changed during an upgrade, by defining this variable in the wp-config.php file. So, if you want to increase, decrease, or even disable this feature, you should open your wp-config.php file and include a line somewhere just like you see highlighted in the screenshot above. A good place to add the line would be directly below where the table prefix is defined in the wp-config.php file. The screenshot below shows wp-config.php edited to auto-delete items in the trash after 120 days.

But what if you want to completely disable the new trash feature? Changing the value to 0 (zero) will do that for you. The screenshot below shows how to edit wp-config.php to completely disable trash so that when you delete an item it is automatically deleted just as it was prior to version 2.9.

But note, if you disable trash, then when you click to delete something you will NOT be prompted to confirm…when you click Delete the item simply gets deleted and there is no getting it back without a backup.

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WordPress 3.0 New Features

figaro — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 23:06:40 +0000

WordPress 3.0, due to be out around mid-2010, will be getting a new default theme. So, if you love Kubrick, I’m sure you will still be able to use it and customize it, but it won’t be the default with the next release–at least not in its current form. If you would like to provide input on what the default theme should be, look like, features it should have, etc., then be sure to stop over at WP.org and post your 2 cents.

http://wordpress.org/support/topic/342819

Since I don’t participate in those forums any longer, I’ll just provide my thinking here.

In a nutshell, I don’t really care what the default theme is. The first thing most people do once they get WP installed is change to a custom theme anyway. So putting a lot of thought and effort into what is the “default” theme may be important to WP and its image or brand, but it’s not important to end users…in reality, the default theme is really nothing more than just one of over a thousand GPL themes anyone can install in just a few seconds through the theme installer in the WP admin.

Now don’t get me wrong…I’m not trying to throw a wet blanket on the theme initiative and I’m sure it’s important for WP to show that they are staying “up to date” and on the cutting edge. Simple fact is, WP is hands-down the best blog software (and fast becoming the best CMS software) available today–open source or proprietary. So, best of luck with the default theme initiative, but I’m far more interested in how WordPress MU will be incorporated into WordPress–which is also due to happen in 3.0.

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