In that entry I talked about how although I didn't really want to change themes yet again I did take an instant liking to Midnight. I've always been a sucker for a bright and crisp looking theme but at the same time I've slowly been developing a fancy for the darker variety. When I saw Midnight it was love at first sight.

WPCanada ran with Midnight for a couple of weeks but alas I started to miss News. Truth be told I put a lot work in to News. I made extensive changes to not only the styling elements but to the code running behind the scenes. As such I just couldn't throw it all away that easily.

The problem for me is twofold:

1. I like a new paint job every now and then
2. StudioPress has too many great designs to choose from

What's a theme junkie to do?

So the bottom line is that while my little fling with Midnight was fun while it lasted it's time to come home to News.

This site, WPCanada, has also fallen prey to my never ending desire for a new and fresh look. In fact, since its inception in 2009, this marks the 5th time I have changed the look of this site. Prior to the spiffy new duds that now adorn WPCanada this site was dressed up in the News child theme by StudioPress. The Genesis Framework ran things behind the scenes. Below is a screencap of that theme.

For earlier versions of WPCanada check out the post WPCanada Now Running on Genesis.

The Genesis Framework by StudioPress still powers things under the hood but the front end is now wrapped up in the new Midnight child theme, which by the way was released by StudioPress just a couple of days ago.

I purchased the StudioPress Pro Plus All-Theme package near the end of November of last year and I couldn't be happier. The package gives me not only the Genesis Framework but every child theme in their inventory. What more could a theme junkie like myself want?

Actually I was quite pleased with the previous theme. I spent nearly a month customizing not only its appearance but the code behind the scenes. As such I was in no hurry to dump it. That was until I laid eyes on this one. As soon as I got a look at Midnight I knew I had to have it. Damn you Brian Gardner and crew.

This theme is my first foray into the world of dark themes. Normally I'm a sucker for a crisp and clean looking theme but I've been slowly developing a taste for the darker variety. Midnight does feature a light content area so it is not completely dark but rather a hybrid. I think the contrast looks fantastic.

In fact I enjoy its appearance so much I barely tweaked the style sheet. This is rare for me as I usually strip down a new theme to its basics then rebuild it. Not so with Midnight. Although I changed a few things under the hood I won't be going with a new paint job. I love the way it looks right out of the box.

How long will Midnight adorn this site? Hopefully for a while but I never know when the urge to purge will strike. Resistance is futile indeed.

As the popularity of social media grows by leaps and bounds many businesses are considering using it as yet another promotional tool. And why not? These powerful tools are free. But how does one use them effectively? That's where Jill and her company come in.

Jill is no stranger to social media or even the internet for that matter having designed her first web site in 1993. However it wasn't until 1996 that she received her first paid gig. From there she moved on to hold various positions such as system administration, web site administration and domain name administration to list a few. In other words, if you can think of an internet/web developer position Jill has probably done it.

Social Media Marketing Podcast

She recently launched a brand new podcast called Social Media Marketing Podcast in which she discusses, you guessed it, social media. Although the podcast is aimed primarily at her own clients, everyone who has a social media presence will find it of interest. The podcast is currently 2 episodes in and I listened to both earlier this evening.

The first episode, which runs about 6 minutes or so, is basically an introductory broadcast in which Jill introduces herself, talks a bit about her history and experience and explains what to expect from future episodes. In episode 2 she discusses the various strategies she uses for herself and explains how you can do the same with great results. It runs about 12 minutes.

There are several ways to catch the podcast:

1. Go to the main site and listen to it via the embedded audio player
2. Subscribe to the RSS feed
3. Subscribe via iTunes

Facebook

On 10 Feb 2011, Facebook introduced 2 major changes to its business page feature. As an added bonus, Jill put together a great video explaining those changes and how you can use Facebook business pages to your advantage. Give it a look - it's worth it.

If you'd like to connect with Jill and learn more there are several ways you can do so.

• Visit WebGrrl Enterprises
• Follow on Twitter @TheWebGrrl
• Connect on Facebook
• Subscribe to the YouTube channel

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Unable to edit the post in question or even publish a new one he contacted support. A few hours later he received the following reply,

Hi,

Our apologies – the system should not have done that.

We have removed the warning and we are very sorry for any concern it may have caused.
–
Anthony
WordPress.com

Pleased that his blog was restored but unhappy with what transpired he mused,

It's curious how "Anthony" said the "system should not have done that." Apparently, WordPress has some sort of program that mines all the millions of blogs posted each day in an effort to flag various posts over "concern about some of the content." I thought this was America. I thought that I could write an intelligent article on a highly controversial musical artist like Lady Gaga. After all, I was only pointing out what Lady Gaga was doing, nothing more. Should we then begin censoring music?

Todd seems to have 2 problems:

1. the censorship of his blog
2. the fact that WordPress.com monitors content

Censorship

Let's deal with point #1 first. Todd's blog was not censored. Yup, you heard that right. The blog was not censored, it was temporarily frozen – an important distinction. Censorship involves the removal of information. The only thing removed in this case was his ability to edit the post or publish new ones. At no time was information currently on his blog removed or even altered.

His statement "I thought this was America" is, in my humble opinion, hyperbole. He wasn't censored by the state. And even if he was censored by WordPress.com he should remember that WordPress.com is a privately owned entity. If you want to post information to their servers you play by their rules. Freedom of speech does not extend to privately owned websites.

Content Monitoring

On to point #2. Todd seems to be surprised that WordPress.com "has some sort of program that mines all the millions of blogs posted each day in an effort to flag various posts over 'concern about some of the content'".

I have no idea if WordPress.com utilizes such software or not but it certainly wouldn't surprise me if they did. At the very least they may monitor tags attached to posts. These are the tags Todd used in his original post: baphomet, evil, gay, lesbian, luciferianism and the occult. Would not such tags raise a red flag?

Would not a responsible webhost somehow monitor the content being posted to its servers? Let's not forget that on Dec 30 of last year WordPress.com suspended a blog called bootislam.wordpress.com for the posting of hateful material in contravention of its TOS.

Sure, if you come across a blog violating their TOS you can report it but with millions of blogs hosted by WordPress.com the odds of finding such a blog are slim. WordPress.com may be taking a proactive approach and by doing so nip a potential problem in the bud.

Todd did nothing wrong. The fact that his blog was restored after being reviewed is proof of that. By the same token, WordPress.com did nothing wrong either.

Tossing around words like censorship only serves to trivialize real cases.

Stephanie of sillybean.net has released a plugin that will import your Delicious bookmarks in to your WordPress powered site. The plugin gives you the option to import the bookmarks as posts, something you will probably want to do if you have many of them. It also handles private bookmarks and thus will import them in to your site as private posts or links.

To complement the plugin she has also released a theme called Twenty Links. Now that you have decided to create a Delicious archive and have installed the plugin you need a theme to properly display the posts. That's where Twenty Links comes in. It not only displays your posts as a bookmarking site would, with a few CSS tweaks you can even achieve a Delicious-like appearance.

This has to be one of the coolest uses for WordPress I've seen yet.

For as long as I can remember, local radio station CJOB 68 has been running a promo called It Feels Like Christmas. The promo, which starts at the beginning of December and runs through the holiday season, features a series of short 1-2 minute vignettes. The short stories are played throughout the day and night at various times.

I recall the first time I heard one of these vignettes I was mesmerized. There was something in the story teller's voice that captivated me. As each Christmas season drew closer I looked forward to hearing those magical stories on the radio once again.

About three years ago I decided to research the man behind these short tales. It couldn't be that difficult I thought. He concluded each tale with "I'm Gib Forrester, have a Merry Christmas." A simple Google search should tell me everything I wanted to know. It didn't. The problem was I misunderstood his name - it wasn't Gib Forrester.

Each Christmas for the last three years I traveled the information highway on the internet looking for information on this elusive figure but I failed. I tried different variations of Gib Forrester to no avail. As the Christmas season ended so did my search - until next year.

Now here we are, Christmas 2010. Once again the It Feels Like Christmas series is playing on the radio. I thought to myself this is it. This is the year I'm going to find this remarkable orator if I have to sit at my computer all day. I hit a royal flush in about five minutes.

I thought to myself perhaps his last name is Forster and not Forrester. I'm sure I tried it last year but what the heck I mused. I'll try it again. I typed Forster in to Google and the first hit on the page was this link http://newventures.ca/my-time/2007/11/24/gipp-forster. Home run!

It turns out the site NewVentures.ca is a treasure trove of information on the man known as Gipp Forster. I finally know his name. Amusingly, Rick of NewVentures.ca engaged in a similar search for a few years as he too couldn't quite recall his name. In a post entitled Merry Christmas, Rick shares some of the links he has found on Mr.Forster. Great stuff.

As a little treat for readers of WPCanada, as well as those of you reading this at Planet WordPress Canada, here is a sample of It Feels Like Christmas with Gipp Forster.

Merry Christmas all.

The WP Swag Store is the successor to the old WordPress Shop that used to be located at shop.wordpress.net.

While the old WordPress Shop had very little to offer in the way of merchandise I did manage to wrangle a WordPress hooded sweater from it. That was about two years ago.

More recently, a couple of items caught my eye when perusing the new WordPress Swag Store, namely the Footed WordPress Bistro Mug and the Code is Poetry Long Sleeve Tee. I promptly placed my order with credit card in hand. That was Dec 02, the very day I wrote the original post.

Well today was the big day as my goodies finally arrived via Canada Post. Yes, Christmas came early to the WPCanada ranch. A few photos for your amusement. (click images to enlarge)

Footed WordPress Bistro Mug sitting on an old dresser.

Footed WordPress Bistro Mug sitting on my computer desk. It's going to spend a lot of time there!

Footed WordPress Bistro Mug with the WordPress Hoodie I purchased a couple of years ago.

Me looking rather suave and debonair in my new Code is Poetry Long Sleeve Tee and holding my new mug! In the background is my trusty ole WordPress hoodie.

If you'd like some WordPress swag of your own check out the WordPress Swag Store.

In this post, I'll list some plugins that can help provide you with an extra layer of security. Some of the plugins mentioned below are even active on this very site.

Before we begin please note that I have not included any anti-spam plugins in this post. Although there are some very fine ones out there including the king of anti-spam itself Akismet, I wanted to focus more on the traditional meaning of security. For the same reason I haven't listed those plugins which perform backups of your database. In my personal opinion those type plugins can be best categorized as anti-spam and maintenance respectively. I'll do a similar post covering those in the near future.

AntiVirus
AntiVirus for WordPress is a smart and effective solution to protect your blog against exploits and spam injections. Once activated navigate to Settings > AntiVirus. You can manually choose to scan your theme files or enable the automatic daily scan. It comes with an email notification option. [download link]

AskApache Password Protect
You can set up Password Protection for your blog using HTTP Basic Authentication, or you can choose to use the more secure HTTP Digest Authentication. Once activated navigate to Settings > AA PassPro to begin a series of tests. Once completed, you have a wide array of options to choose from such as Password Protect wp-login.php, Directory Protection and Forbid Proxies to name just a few. [download link]

Blackhole
In five easy steps, you can set up your own Blackhole to trap bad bots and protect your site from evil scripts, bandwidth thieves, content scrapers, spammers, and other malicious behavior. An interesting plugin in that it behaves unlike any other I have seen. The concept is simple: a link to a robots.txt forbidden file is included somewhere on your site. A naughty bot comes along, ignores the rules of the robots.txt file, crawls the link and is caught by the script. The script then executes a whois lookup and bans the naughty bot. [further info and download link]

Bad Behavior
A set of PHP scripts that block malicious bots from accessing your site by analyzing various metadata such as IP and HTTP headers to name a couple. A must have. [download link]

Chap Secure Login
Encrypt your password during login without SSL. Uses the Chap protocol. Very interesting. [download link]

Content Security Policy
Content Security Policy prevents content injection attacks by allowing admins to specify which sites they trust to serve JavaScript and other types of content in their site. Very simple to use. Once activated navigate to Settings > CSP where you can create your policy. [download link]

HTTP Authentication
Allows you to use existing means of authenticating people to WordPress. This includes Apache's basic HTTP authentication module and many others. Once activated navigate to Settings > HTTP Authentication and start adding users to WordPress. [download link]

Login LockDown
Login LockDown records the IP address and timestamp of every failed login attempt. If more than a certain number of attempts are detected within a short period of time from the same IP range, then the login function is disabled for all requests from that range. Pretty self-explanatory. Note: Although the plugin says compatible up to WordPress 2.8.4 I've used it on a number of site running 3.0.3 (including this one) without a problem. [download link]

Secure Files
This plugin allows you to upload and download files from outside of your web document root for security purposes. In other words, you can create a secure download area. Once activated navigate to Tools > Secure Files. Here you can create a directory outside of your web document root for storing your Secure Files. *Plugin no longer in Repository

Theme Authenticity Checker
TAC searches the source files of every installed theme for signs of malicious code. An excellent tool if you don't want to manually search through your theme files. Be advised it won't catch everything so manual inspections are still necessary. [download link]

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. A very handy tool. Once activated navigate to Settings > WordPress File Monitor and configure the plugin. You can set up automated scanning or perform a manual scan. If automated scanning is enabled you can activate the email notification option. You can also exclude certain paths from the scan. [download link]

WordPress Firewall
Investigates web requests with simple WordPress-specific heuristics to identify and stop most obvious attacks. [download link]

WP Security Scan
Scans your WordPress installation for security vulnerabilities and suggests corrective actions. Includes:

• passwords
• file permissions
• database security
• version hiding
• WordPress admin protection/security
• removes WP Generator META tag from core code

An excellent plugin from the creator of All in One SEO Pack. [download link]

WP-Ban
Ban users by IP, IP Range, host name and referer url from visiting your WordPress's blog. [download link]

You can get yourself set up with a shared hosting package for as little as $2.48/month while their reseller hosting packages can be had for a mere $12.48/month.

The terms of the sale are slightly different for their VPS and Dedicated packages. The sale price covers only the first month of VPS and Dedicated. After that the regular recurring price comes into effect. That's still a darn good deal. You can grab a VPS for as little as $9.98 for the first month or get on a Dedicated box for the low price of $87.00 for the first month. This is perfect if you want to give either package a trial run.

You'll have to hurry though as these prices are in effect for Friday (Nov 26) only.