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Hello all. I just wanted to remind you please please please to update your plugins. This is the most important thing you can do to keep your site stable and secure, as the majority of plugin updates are security fixes – ie updating the code to remove vulnerabilities that have been discovered.
Of particular note, I notice that three plugins which I am aware that were installed on many iChurch sites have had significant vulnerabilities exposed recently:
Ninja Forms (details here: https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2020/04/high-severity-vulnerability-patched-in-ninja-forms/)
Real-Time Find and Replace (details: https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2020/04/high-severity-vulnerability-patched-in-real-time-find-and-replace-plugin/), and
MapPress Maps for WordPress (find out more here: https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2020/04/critical-vulnerabilities-patched-in-mappress-maps-plugin/).All of these have been fixed via plugin updates, so all you need to do to protect your site is to update your plugins – just a couple of clicks and it’s done, it’s as simple as that. And the risks of leaving these vulnerabilities exposed are very worrying – allowing hackers access to your site. And if you aren’t clear on why that’s bad, have a read here: https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2016/04/hackers-compromised-wordpress-sites/.
Thank you for your attention – now please go and update your plugins! I would recommend doing it on a weekly basis, if you don’t already.
I hope that’s helpful. Rebecca.
Hi Andy,
First up, I’m not sure why the forum site didn’t tell me you had posted this – very sorry about that! In answer to your question, unfortunately I don’t exactly have an answer for you at the moment: I’m not sure what the set-up allows nowadays, but I can pass the question up and see if we can find out. Unless you have solved the problem in the meantime – have you? There may be ways to work round what Google is asking for (but then again, there may not be…!).
Thanks,
Rebecca.
Hi Andy.
Updating Akismet is definitely a good move – please keep all your plugins up to date at all times (I am aware that you tend to be on top of that, but I’m flagging it here in case it helps others).
If you are getting a flurry of spam comments, the first port of call is Akismet – it’s there to protect you from spam. So, in the first instance, you need to go into your dashboard to ‘Comments’, and there click the ‘Check for SPAM’ button. Akismet will then do its thing and check all of the comments that have been posted to see if they are spam – it already filters lots out so they never reach your site, but occasionally some get through. By asking it to check them, you are helping it to learn what is getting through. It should then mark more of the comments as spam and remove them from your comments list. If there are still some there, then please manually mark them as SPAM yourself – again, this will go a long way to helping Akismet learn what it needs to be blocking.
My experience has been that sometimes an individual site will come under this kind of attack – it tends to be a flurry for a few hours or days or weeks, and then it tails off again. If any of you are experiencing problems with receiving lots of spam comments for longer than a couple of weeks, or if there is an absolutely overwhelming flood of them, please contact me. Otherwise, the steps above should help you to be protected by Akismet for the majority of spam-type issues.
I hope that helps.
Rebecca.
And, finally, our very own helpsheet on the subject: http://forumurc.org.uk/making-friends-with-search-engines/
Hi Carol.
Don’t worry – you only see that as a logged in users. People who are just viewing the site are not able to edit it.
No, if you don’t have a lot of links into specific pages on the site, it’s not really an issue for something like a church website – it’s far more of a worry for those bloggers & commercial sites where their Google reputation is a huge part of their presence – you should be fine. I would suggest you make the change, then just go through all of the site, including all the links, making sure that none of your own links are returning 404s. Unless someone somewhere has linked to a specific post, then you should be fine.
Helpful infographic giving ‘at a glance’ pointers as to the important things for SEO these days: http://blog.red-website-design.co.uk/2015/02/23/does-your-seo-suck-heres-9-reasons-why-you-dont-show-up-on-google/#more-8097
Interesting article about how best to make friends with Google these days: https://econsultancy.com/blog/65712-how-does-google-judge-quality-content
Hi Ken – yes – great question! And yes please – I’m all for multimedia sites, and for sermons to be on sites.
Basically, here’s how I’d do it:
[*]Record the sermon, probably on something like an iPhone or an iPad
[*]Edit the video, if I have video editing software – I’d do it in iMovies, but there are other, non-Apple ones out there! It’s possible to upload without editing, but even a minimal amount of editing (eg making sure the video starts and stops at the right moment) will make it look more professional
[*]Then I’d upload the video to YouTube. You need to have set up your own YouTube account (or one for your church). It’s free and easy to do – just go to youtube.com and follow the steps. Depending on how you recorded and edited the film, you may need first to convert it to a suitable file format.
[*]Once it’s uploaded, your video on YouTube will display below it a little box saying ‘Share’. Here you will find the link to share the video. You can also get the embed code, but it’s easier to use the link these days. Copy the link, then…
[*]Head to your website, and create a page or post where you are going to display the video. Wherever you want it to appear, paste the link – it’s as simple as that. Where you’ve pasted the link, you should see a visual of the video appearing in your editing pane, and when you publish – hey presto!I hope that’s helpful. I’d love to hear how you get on!
Hi Ann,
When I navigate directly to the media library, it lists out the items – as per this image:
When I’m working in a page and I click ‘add media’, it displays the available items in a grid, like this:
Does that answer your question? I certainly don’t have any plugin to handle media for me. Hope that helps!
Great article here about SEO stuff: http://www.jeffbullas.com/2013/11/04/6-common-seo-mistakes-to-avoid/
Hello Peter – ah, that’s the wonder of shortcodes, which is another thing we never got to in your brief training! In your editing pane, you will see a little button that says ‘TB’ on it:
Clicking on that will open a drop-down menu, which allows you to select from a list (and then sub-lists) of elements you might like to add to your page or post. To make the button you need to select ‘HTML Element’ and then ‘Button’. This will open a lightbox where you can configure the button of your dreams, then you click ‘Insert’ to add it to the page. In the writing screen it’ll appear as some code enclosed in [ ] – that’s the sign that it’s a shortcode ie it’s telling your site to do tricky stuff but you don’t have to need to know the code to tell it yourself – you can get the shortcode to do it for you.
Have fun experimenting with the buttons – and then with all the other shortcodes. It gets quite amazing once you realise you can *almost* put anything anywhere!!
have found this ‘Media File Manager Advanced’ by Thibault El Zamek. Looks promising – will install and try it when I have time.
