Securely Installing WordPress
Published August 31, 2010
Topic: WordPressAccording to WordPress’ official website over 25 million people, including myself, use this free open source platform to power their websites and internet portals. This statistic alone makes the product a good target for hackers, and with exploits already circulating the internet I’d recommend spending 10-15 minutes ensuring your copy is nice and secure.
This article isn’t a definitive list documenting all of the possible steps you can take to secure WordPress but I think it’s a pretty good start. Ideally if you’re looking to use the product in a production environment then this should be the bare minimum for your deployment. If you’re not in a position to install WordPress right now then don’t worry as this article should act as a good reference guide, however you might find it’s best to run through the installation with me. So without further ado let’s begin.
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My first few days with an iPhone 4
Published June 27, 2010
Topic: ReviewsThe 24th June was an exciting day for many Apple fanatics as it was when Apple officially launched their latest iPhone, the iPhone 4, to the world. Coincidentally it was also the first Apple launch event I’ve ever been to so for me there was more excitement beyond just ‘getting something new’.
For the past 18 months I’ve been relying on an iPhone 3G to get me through the day; checking email, browsing the web, editing documents and playing the odd game or two. Whilst I have no qualms with the device, my mobile phone contract went up for renewal just three weeks ago and since I wasn’t moving away from the iOS platform I decided to upgrade to the new iPhone 4 when it became available.
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Use shorthand to run your favourite programs
Published May 18, 2010
Topic: TechnicalI’m someone who loves keyboard shortcuts. To me there’s nothing quicker than pressing Ctrl + S to save a document or hitting Windows key + L to lock my screen. I find it much faster than navigating to the file menu with a mouse or hunting down the Lock option in my Start Menu.
Because of the passion I have for the humble keyboard I regularly use shorthand to execute favourite programs by using a combination of file shortcuts and the Run prompt. What I’m about to demonstrate isn’t exactly revolutionary, (and you could argue that the Windows 7 start menu does a similar job to this with its integrated search), but for me my method is quicker and more convenient.
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An Introduction to CSS
Published April 30, 2010
Topic: TutorialCascading Style Sheets are used to define the look and feel of documents written in mark-up languages such as XHTML and HTML. Each CSS ‘rule’ has two primary elements; the selector and the declaration. The selector is usually the particular element that you want to style such as a paragraph, a list, an image or even the entire body of a web page. The declaration contains the actual style instructions for the element you’re customising.
With each declaration you can define many properties to completely alter how the elements look. For example you can define properties for changing text colour, size and font, the thickness, style and colour of borders and where you want elements to position themselves on screen.
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My first impressions of Opera Mini on the iPhone
Published April 20, 2010
Topic: ReviewsConsider me gobsmacked. Apple has actually approved Opera Mini, (Opera Software’s mobile web browser), for distribution in their App Store. Whilst I love mobile Safari on my iPhone, (and have no real qualms with its WebKit rendering engine), I do love choice in software and seeing as the desktop version of Opera is pretty good I thought I’d give it a go.
I’m sure you’ll agree by looking at Opera Mini, that its interface is clean, modern and concise. By default its back, forward, refresh and settings buttons are visible as well as its tab switcher icon, the search box and the address field.
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