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Filed under: Security, Blogging, Web services, Web

WordPress Exploit Scanner helps you keep your install clean

WordPress Exploit ScannerWordPress has become a victim of its own popularity. The blogging-based content management system powers a huge amount of websites, and has become a target for hackers. Site hacks have been around for a long time, but recently they seem to have evolved.

In the past hackers would gain control of a site just to prove that could, then typically post a quasi-incoherent message on the site to prove their hacking prowess and illiteracy. Now hackers have become more advanced, and hacking has become financially motivated. Hacks include embedding links (some hidden, some not) for the purposes of gaming search engines, and instead of crowing about their conquest, hackers are now trying to hide and cover their tracks as much as possible.

This means that site owners are losing their confidence that their sites have not been compromised. With recent highly publicized exploits that allowed hackers to take control of out-of-date WordPress installations, it became even more important to make sure your site is clean.

If you're running a WordPress site on your own server, one step you can take to make sure that it is clean is to install and run the WordPress Exploit Scanner plugin. Beware, the exploit scanner is very thorough, and it will likely report a lot (and I mean a LOT) of false positives. It essentially reports any hiding behavior, which some of the plugins on your site might be doing for very normal reasons.

Even with the false-positives, the WordPress Exploit Scanner is a useful tool in any blogger's toolbox.

Filed under: Developer, Internet, Features, Linux, Open Source, How-Tos

Flipping the Linux switch: Linux web tools, Pt. 2 - Using LAMP for testing

small apache2 install graphicThere was a toss up this week about whether it would be better to dig right in to the Linux HTML editors, or to wax poetic about setting up LAMP so that those choosing to go the content management system (CMS) route could test any changes they made with such editors on their local machines.

We ultimately decided to tackle setting up a LAMP testing ground. This will certainly not be necessary for every single person out there who just wants to put up a web site. If your site is not using PHP-driven content that interacts with or requires a database backend, and you just plan on designing static web pages, there is absolutely no need to do any of this.

If you are perfectly content to upload your site and integrate any supporting elements (once again, things like databases) live and on the web and make changes there, where it is possible that everyone can see your style sheet testing or things may be temporarily broken, you don't need to do this either.

Some people, though, really like to get things on their CMS tweaked to near perfection before releasing their content on the world. Other people need to know exactly what a dynamic site is going to look and act like before it goes live. The combination of Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP (LAMP) makes this possible.

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Filed under: Design, Developer, News, Linux, Blogging, Web services, Open Source, Unix

Drupal 5, a major update to a major player

The field of Content Management Systems (CMS) mirrors what my grandfather always said, "Cream rises to the top." Scores of open source products jockey for position among the field and only a very few rise to the occasion. Joomla (formerly Mambo), Typo, and Drupal stand out among the field and, of those, Drupal mostly wins the overwhelming support of the FOSS community. Drupal can be seen in action at sites like OurMedia, SaveThe76Ball, and Spread Firefox, all of which receive regular traffic poundings.

Michael Stutz of Linux.com has taken Drupal 5 for a thorough test drive and put together a medium-depth look at installation, changes to the new version, Drupal's new CSS caching engine and other wide ranging upgrades.

It's an impressive overhaul, over 500 developers submitted 1000 patches to the popular framework. The final verdict? Drupal is easier but, still not easy. Stutz writes, "Installing and running Drupal is fairly easy now, but configuration of a first-class site still takes work and ultimately a programmer's hand -- you have to know your PHP and CSS, and you have to spend time learning how it all interacts in Drupal." Fortunately for the brave souls tasked with developing first-class CMS backed websites and web applications, Drupal's community is strong, and very helpful.

[Thanks Dolores!]

Featured Time Waster

The World's Hardest Game 2.0 - Time Waster

So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do. Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game. The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...

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