WordPress Design | Elaine Griffin Designs

So, You’re Going to #BlogHer13?

May 21, 2013 by Elaine Griffin Leave a Comment

The schedule is out.

Parties and keynote speakers are being announced.

You have booked your room and your flight.

You are starting to worry about what to wear. Who to see. What parties to attend.

Have you thought about your blog design?

What about business cards?

Have your branded your blog? It is, after all, your business!

Branding and design take time, and the time to start is NOW!

You want to put your best you out there at the conference, right?!

You are in luck, because I can help you, AND I will even throw in an outrageous discount!

From now until July 1, 2013, you can receive 25% off ALL SERVICES!

That means 450 bones gets you a new logo, a custom blog design, custom social media follow buttons, custom Facebook and Twitter graphics, a business card design, and more.

BOOM! That was us blowing up the internet.

Here is your contact form – I’m looking forward to making your blog even more AWESOME!

Pssst – this isn’t just for BlogHer ’13 attendees! Even if you are not attending, you can sign up!

Filed Under: Branding, Design, News, WordPress Tagged With: blog design, BlogHer '13, branding, business cards, logo design

Fix the White Screen of Death with FTP

May 3, 2013 by Elaine Griffin Leave a Comment

Have you ever been happily working on your blog – installing plugins, making it more reader and user-friendly, perhaps, and POOF, all of a sudden your blog is gone, and you are presented with a white screen? Fear not, readers! This is The White Screen of Death, and is generally easy to fix. But first, let’s back up a little bit.

What is the heck is FTP?

FTP stands for file transfer protocol, and it is the way we designers load your customized files to your server, and is an “account” if you will, where all of your website information is held. You will need to download an FTP program, but it is easy to do, and can be free! I love FileZilla. It’s free!

How do I access my FTP site?

When you signed up for your hosting account, you should have received an email with information on how to access your site via FTP. This should include a host name, which is generally some variation on your URL, or domain name, or your server IP address. You should have also been given a user name and a password. To open your website in the FileZilla FTP program, click “file” and then “site manager” on the top left of the screen. Add your login information and viola! Here are all the files on your website.

How do I fix a White Screen of Death?

In order to fix a white screen of death, you will need to disable all of your plugins. But first, you have to find your way to the plugins folder!

When you first log into your FTP site, you will see a bunch of files and folders. What you are looking for is a folder named “wp-content.” Depending on your host and how your WordPress site was created, you may not see this folder here, but you will see a folder named “public_html,” and you should click that. Now for another caveat. If you have more than one WordPress installation on your main hosting account, you will need to navigate to the appropriate site folder and double click there to find the “wp-content” folder. We call all of these folders and clicks a path. Here are some examples of your potential paths. Think of each slash as a click.

/wp-content/

/public_html/wp-content/

/public_html/your_site_name/wp-content/

(before each of these potential paths would be http://www.your_main_hosting_domaine_name.com.)

Now that you have found the wp-content folder, double click it to open, and you will see some more folders, one of them being the plugin folder.

Double click on that and you will see all of your plugins. You can disable them by right clicking on the name and re-naming it. You want to name it something like, plugin-name-old. If you go view your site, you SHOULD see your site there, although there may be some widgets or other bells and whistles missing because they were related to the plugins.

Now, go back to your plugins folder in your FTP site, and one-by-one rename them back to the original plugin name, by removing “old” from the title. Each time you rename a plugin, go back to your site and refresh your screen. Do this until you get the white screen again. Once you get the white screen, then you have your culprit. Put the “old” back in the title of that plugin. Keep in mind, though, that you may have more than one upset plugin, so you want to continue the one-by-one process until they have all been checked.

The next step is to do some research. Sometimes plugins don’t play well with each other, so go ahead and Google your plugin name and “conflicts with other plugins” or something along those lines. It is also helpful to visit the WordPress Forums to see if there is anything helpful there.

If you feel like you need to just get rid of the plugin, go to your dashboard, deactivate the plugin and delete it so you don’t put yourself at any kind of security risk. Now you know how to fix the white screen of death!

Have you ever had a white screen of death, if so, what did you do?

Filed Under: Design, WordPress Tagged With: FTP, plugins, white screen of death, WordPress

What You Need to Know About Securing Your WordPress Site

April 8, 2013 by Elaine Griffin 15 Comments

Just like any online account you have, there are security issues associated with having a WordPress blog or website. Fortunately there are ways to help safeguard your site and your information. Although nothing will completely eliminate the threat of hackers, a little forethought and continued monitoring efforts should reduce your vulnerability.

Usernames and Passwords

When installing WordPress on your hosting account, change the default username of admin to a unique username. Using a combination of letters and numbers is a good idea.
Create a strong password, which contains letters, numbers, at least one capital letter, and a symbol.
Change your password often, and NEVER let your computer store your login information.
Never give your login information to anyone. Ever. Even your designer, if you have one. Always create a new administrative login for your designer. Create contributor or editorial accounts as necessary.
I feel I should tell you to never write down usernames or passwords. I know it’s hard to remember all of our unique usernames and passwords, so you have to make a choice on this one.

WordPress Themes, Frameworks, and Plugins

Only use premium themes or themes from WordPress.org. The core framework for these themes is in place and most likely free of bugs. Use a trusted designer to customize your design using a child theme. (There are a couple of exceptions to this rule, one being Smashing Magazine, which offers some free, safe themes. Here is another great article about free WordPress themes.)
Always delete any unused themes you may have installed. You can always re-download them if you want to.
As I said before, any theme modifications should be done using a child theme. These theme mods should be done outside of the WordPress dashboard, with editing software, and uploaded via FTP.
Limit the number of plugins you use, and always delete de-activated plugins.
Always use the latest version of WordPress, any framework you might use, your theme, and your plugins. You should monitor this constantly.

Limit Permissions

Disallow user registration. In the dashboard, go to “settings” and then “general” and uncheck the box that says “anyone can register.”
Dashboard theme and plugin editing can be disallowed with a simple line of code to the functions.php file. You should do this, and you should probably seek help with this if you are not a coder.
Secure your file permissions. In your FTP directory, you can select user permissions for individual files and folders, users and groups. This is another advanced task that you should seek help with if you do not know anything about coding or FTP.

Plugins

There are a ton of WordPress security plugins out there. Two of the top plugins are Better WP Security and Bulletproof Security. Another plugin, Limit Login Attempts, combats brute force login by limiting the number of attempts at logging in one can make. Information about attempted logins, including the IP address, are logged and can be viewed in your dashboard.

Outside of WordPress

In addition to keeping up with your WordPress and plugin updates, you should make sure that your virus protection and firewalls are up to date, and your networks are secure. You should also make sure to update your browsers.
You should also ensure that your host is keeping up to date on their server security. It is also a good thing to choose a host that specializes or has extensive knowledge of WordPress.
Lastly, in order to safeguard your information in the event you do get hacked, you should be backing your site up frequently. I personally back up my information through my hosting account. They backup daily and weekly, and I periodically go in and do a manual backup. If you do not feel comfortable doing this, however, there are plugins available.

This is just the beginning of how you can protect your WordPress blog or website, but doing these things is a solid start. There are tons of articles online that discuss more advanced techniques to protecting your site. Below are the articles I recommend reading.
Manage WP Blog: 5 WordPress Security Threats You Probably Don’t Know About
Studiopress: 4 Simple Ways to Secure (and Maintain) Your WordPress Website
ProBlogger, Top Ten WordPress Security Myths
WordPress Codex

What do you do to maintain the security of your WordPress site?

Filed Under: Technology, WordPress

It’s a V-Day/B-Day 34% off Special!

February 11, 2013 by Elaine Griffin Leave a Comment

V-Day/B-Day Special from Elaine Griffin Designs

YOU can have this much fun with a new WordPress blog! Photo Credit: telmo32 via Compfight cc

I love February, and not just because it’s the shortest month of the year and my birthday is March 1st.
Okay, yeah it is. I could take or leave Valentine’s Day. But, how cool does V-Day/B-Day sound? I thought so too.
So here are the goodies. If you contact me and pay your deposit before February 28th, 2013, you will get 34% off all of your services. ‘Cause I’m turning 34. Party on!
Also, if you are interested in migrating from WordPress.com OR Blogger to WordPress.org, I will do that for FREE!
I’m a giver, what can I say!?
So, take one, or don’t, but if you know someone else who could benefit from this, don’t hesitate to pass it on!

You can learn all about my services by clicking here!

Filed Under: Marketing, News, WordPress Tagged With: February special

So, You’re Going to #BlogHer13?

Branding and design take time, and the time to start is NOW!

From now until July 1, 2013, you can receive 25% off ALL SERVICES!

Here is your contact form – I’m looking forward to making your blog even more AWESOME!

Pssst – this isn’t just for BlogHer ’13 attendees! Even if you are not attending, you can sign up!