Tech Tutorials Archives

WordPress Security Tips for the Beginner

9 June, 2015 by ES Ivy

Yesterday I attended a WordPress Meetup about basic security presented by Nick Batik. WordPress Meetups are awesome free gatherings where developers volunteer to teach others all about WordPress and I’ve been to quite a few. I’m working on a whole series about making a WordPress site (my How to Install a Favicon on WordPress tutorial will also be part of that series), but this security information is too important to keep to myself until I get this site moved and the series completed.

If your site gets hacked, to add to all the other headaches you can get blacklisted by Google. (Understand Google Website Blacklists) You can see Nick’s slides from the presentation on the WPAustin blog, Revisting WordPress Security. There are links to lots of authoritative sites to learn more information. (Note: Currently, the slide program only works in Firefox for me, I can only see the first slide when I use Chrome.) When you’re searching around the web, it’s really helpful to learn where the sites are that you can really trust. That’s one of the things I love about going to these WordPress meetups. But below are are some basic WordPress security tips, practices that even a beginner can easily tackle, that were my take-away from the discussion.

…

Picking a domain name for a lifestyle blog or mommy blog

14 May, 2015 by ES Ivy

It can be tricky to pick a domain name for a lifestyle blog. I like the terms “lifestyle blog” or “mommy blog” because the topics can be so broad on them, which is what has turned out to happen here in my little corner of the internet. But in some ways, that seems to make coming up with a domain name and buying a URL more difficult.

But before I get into all that, maybe your wondering – Exactly what is a domain name? And if you look on the internet (like I did), it will become clear to you that all of the definitions were written by software engineers who knew exactly what they were talking about. But after you read their three paragraph definition you’ll have no clue what they’re talking about….

Backing up Scrivener Files – a quick guide to safely saving your files and backups

26 November, 2014 by ES Ivy

In this tutorial I’m going take you through the steps for backing up Scrivener files (or projects.) You’re going to save your Scrivener files three places.

1. Save your working copies to your computer hard drive.

2. Save the 25 most recent automatic backups to a second location, such as in the cloud.

3. Save an infinite number of manual backups to removable storage, like a memory card….

Install a Favicon on WordPress tutorial (2012 and other themes)

22 November, 2014 by ES Ivy

You may want to know how to install a favicon on your WordPress blog, so that when you apply for Rich Pins on Pinterest your blog name will have the little icon next to it. Or you might just want it so that your website has a nice little icon in a browser tab. I was waiting to install a favicon until I managed to do my complete redesign. But I wanted to go ahead and apply for Pinterest Rich Pins, so I decided to make a “quick” temporary favicon and install it on my WordPress website. (Maybe my tutorial will help it be quicker for you!) I’m currently running the Twenty-twelve theme, but since I used a plugin to generate and install the favicon, this should work for most other themes as well….

How to backup My Documents with Dropbox

20 November, 2014 by ES Ivy

I’d like to backup all of the documents on my computer hard drive to the cloud. For cloud storage I use Dropbox.

(If you want to set up your backups the same way and you don’t have Dropbox yet, if use the link above, or this link to Dropbox ,we both get 500 megabites of free bonus space! Just sign up, and they have a great tutorial to get you started.)

So, if you signed up for Dropbox, you now have a Dropbox folder on your computer. This is where you put all the files you want backed up to Dropbox.

Most programs when you save a file for the first time will automagically find your “Documents” folder on your hard drive and save things to there. So, naturally, it seems like you should just drag, copy that file into your Dropbox folder. But you can’t. …