The cell phone I currently have is not exactly what you can call a “smart phone”, but every so often I like to check and see how my websites and blogs look on my phone. According to Google Analytics, I am not the only one to try and access my blog on my cell phone. During last year there were 83 attempts to access Go Beyond MLS using number of mobile devices:

While the above numbers are not something to brag about, I still was surprised to learn that there were attempts to view this blog on mobile devices.
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As a WordPress user, I have come across many premium themes. Some were good, some were not so good. Several tims I was close to buying at least one of the premium themes (I believe it one of them was called “Revolution”) but none of the premium WordPress themes satisfy my website’s needs. So instead of going with a premium one I used to chose a free theme, and then tweak it, and tweak it, and tweak until I was satisfied with what I saw. The problem of course was that some WordPress theme developers have their own style (an some have no style at all) when it comes to coding the theme. The end result is that in many cases, one can waste considerable amount of time looking for example at CSS files and trying to figure out what controls what.

When I first heard of Thesis, I pretty much dismissed it as one of those premium themes that will not do much for my websites. However I was fortunate enough to have a closer look at this theme on a website of a friend of mine. Needless to say Thesis is on the top of my shopping list. The video (subscribers might need to visit this post to see it) bellow explains better than I ever could why I am falling in love with Thesis.

When trying Thesis on the website of a friend of mine, I immediately realized how easy and intuitive Thesis is. Most of the changes I made for example to the original theme that powers this blog, can be done via “options” in theses without need to modify themes files nor CSS. In addition it also can eliminate number of plugins you might be currently using. If you are looking for a suitable theme for your WordPress site, Thesis should be given serious consideration.

I may have inspired Andy Beal to start using TweetMeme plugin on Marketing Piligrim, but he certainly inspired me more. Every time I come across a great plugin I promise myself to give credit to the plugin’s author as well as share with my readers how a particular plugin helped. Of course day passes by, then another and after a few days my desire to write about particular plugin slowly withers out. “It just a plugin”, I tell myself -”some one has already written about it anyway.” The truth is however that many of the plugins I use on my blogs make my life so much easier.

So here are some 20+ plugins that help this blog tick….
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WordPress, being one of the most popular publishing platforms and content management system also is the most frequent target for spammers. Google reacts quickly to identify the hacked sites – as a result your traffic and sales can drastically drop. The good news is that Google will try to make reasonable attempts to notify webmasters about potential problems via Google Webmasters Tools. However if you do not act quickly, it can be truly a devastating blow to your online presence.

So how do you prepare yourself for the event such as your blog being hacked by injecting code into your theme files or even database? Here are the steps that I would recommend to anyone using WordPress as their publishing platform or CMS:

• Register with Google Webmasters Tools. Not only Google Webmasters Tools can be useful in identifying the attack. You can also use the tools to resubmit your website for reconsideration once your dealt with threat and cleaned up the mess.
• Create Google alerts to notify you of a possible threat. While it is impossible to foresee every possible spam keyword you can create alert for the most common ones such as “viagra” or “port”. How do you create such an alert? Simple. Lets presume your domain is “yourdomain.com” your Google alert the will be for the search query “viagra site:yourdomain.com”. Of course relying on Google Alerts alone is not a good idea.
• Check the code yourself. It does not really take that much- right click your mouth and view the page source. Generally when attack is carried out the code is injected somewhere in common files and will be visible on every page of your website.
• If you modify your theme yourself- keep the back up of the version that includes your most recent updates. It is always good idea to keep a back up of your theme files no matter what.
• Keep the latest back up of your database. I find that WordPress Database Backup Plugin (HT: Andy Beard) – is one of the most useful plugin to have. You can tell the plugin to mail you the SQL file to the e-mail of your choice on a regular basis. I am doing it on a daily basis if you publish many posts per day you can chose for the back up to be made every couple of hours.
• Do not broadcast to the world the version of WordPress you are using. I have seen WordPress theme developers inserting a code that displays the current version of WordPress, most of the time it that code is found in the header.php file loog for the code and remove it. There is no reason for anyone to know what version you are using.
• Keep your WordPress and plugins updated. Current version of WordPress allows one click updates from withing your dashboard- there is really no excuse for us any longer.
• Keep your files in a directory that no one besides you knows about it. You can install or move your WordPres files to a directory that only you will know about- I will try elaborate on it in future especially on how to move your WordPress to another “secret” directory.

I have cleaned several WordPress installations for my friends over the period of last year. The hacker attack can be devastating if your are not prepared to deal with it. And yes it can happen to any one- even to the best of geeks.

A while back, hen I’ve heard about development of LeadPress, I was both happy and skeptical about the final product. Happy because a dear friend of mine was the mastermind behind the project. Skeptical because I knew very little how the final product will look like. All I knew is that LeadPress will be based on WordPress, my favorite blogging and content management software. Of course the question I had about the future LeadPress was how can it benefit mortgage professionals versus just using your own WordPress installation.

Now that LeadPress is live, I am certain it will become an ultimate solution for lead generation for mortgage professionals. LeadPress is far from just another WordPress. While it uses the flexibility and power of WordPress it is specifically designed to meet the needs of mortgage professionals.

Video Tour of LeadPress

Watch the video tour of some key features of LeadPress.

With LeadPress you are in control of your website’s lead generating capabilities and no third part lead generating companies get a piece of the action.

Disclosure: I am an active affiliate with LeadPress. If you sign up with LeadPress using the links in the above portion of this post, I will receive a commission for referring you to LeadPress. If for some reason you would not want me to earn this commission, here is direct link to LeadPress: http://leadpress.com/