Wordpress Archives - Sam Harrelson

November 12, 2018November 12, 2018

Churches, We Need to Talk About Website Accessibility (and Discrimination)

“Failure to comply with Section 508 of the Department of Justice’s ADA (American with Disabilities Act) Standards for Accessible Design could expose your company to hefty fines, the risk of expensive criminal and civil litigation as well as a reputation for being unfriendly to the disabled.” https://userway.org/ I’m going to make a rant here. Forgive me … Continue reading Churches, We Need to Talk About Website Accessibility (and Discrimination)

November 8, 2018

Keep your WordPress Site Plug-ins Updated

Now more than ever… After its removal from the WordPress plugin repository yesterday, the popular plugin WP GDPR Compliance released version 1.4.3, an update which patched multiple critical vulnerabilities. — Read on www.wordfence.com/blog/2018/11/privilege-escalation-flaw-in-wp-gdpr-compliance-plugin-exploited-in-the-wild/ Continue reading Keep your WordPress Site Plug-ins Updated

December 27, 2017January 16, 2018

WordPress Plugin Supply Chain Attacks

These are pretty popular plugins in the SEO world… I imagine lots more of these “supply chain attacks” exist due to older but still popular plugins being sold or leased: If you have any of these plugins running on your site, we recommend that you remove them immediately and that you make sure that SEO spam … Continue reading WordPress Plugin Supply Chain Attacks

December 18, 2017January 16, 2018

Building a website is cheap, but not protecting it is costly.

We use Wordfence as a default on all new WordPress client sites that we create for good reason. Here’s a scary reminder that while building a website has become quick, easy, and relatively cheap your company / nonprofit / church / community group should not take WordPress security for granted with cheap hosting and no one … Continue reading Building a website is cheap, but not protecting it is costly.

August 10, 2017

Even Hackers Take Summer Vacations

Pretty staggering July stats from Wordfence regarding attempts to log in to WordPress installs with guessed user / passwords. People still don’t use secure passwords (or more preferably a password manager)… The average number of daily brute force attacks increased 21% from last month, which was up substantially from May. Daily attack volumes were incredibly stable … Continue reading Even Hackers Take Summer Vacations

April 6, 2016

Why Your Church or Nonprofit Website Needs Regular Security Updates

One of the items Harrelson Agency itemizes on invoices when building out a new client website (particularly when using WordPress or Drupal) are maintenance and security updates for the year. It’s not a major cost, but I often receive questions about the charge and whether or not it’s really necessary. That’s particularly the case when dealing … Continue reading Why Your Church or Nonprofit Website Needs Regular Security Updates

November 24, 2015

Should You Use WordPress.com or Host Your Own WordPress Site?

I am often asked by Harrelson Agency clients and potential clients if they should use a WordPress.com site or have us build and host a WordPress site for them. Money is often a main concern, as you can pay $100 – 120 a year for a pretty solid WordPress.com site without much fuss. A hosted … Continue reading Should You Use WordPress.com or Host Your Own WordPress Site?

December 15, 2014

Don’t Use Admin As Your WordPress Username

We create, host, and manage a number of sites for churches, non-profits, community groups, and businesses. As a part of that, we also spend a good deal of time “behind the scenes” keeping these websites safe and secure. Our clients often don’t realize how much work that entails in 2014 / 2015 with the ongoing … Continue reading Don’t Use Admin As Your WordPress Username

January 5, 2014

Blogging Still Matters in a Social Media World

One of the main things I want to do more in 2014 is post on my blog. It’s a daily fight with Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc. However, this has been my web home for over ten years now an I need to start treating it better. Great post by Matt… Blogging is harder than it … Continue reading Blogging Still Matters in a Social Media World

December 14, 2012

Reminiscing About What the Web Was

From 2008: The vanishing personal site – Jeffrey Zeldman: “Our personal sites, once our primary points of online presence, are becoming sock drawers for displaced first-person content. We are witnessing the disappearance of the all-in-one, carefully designed personal site containing professional information, links, and brief bursts of frequently updated content to which others respond via … Continue reading Reminiscing About What the Web Was

December 7, 2012

New in WordPress 3.5

We’re super excited about the upcoming release of WordPress 3.5 as we use the insanely flexible and competent WordPress content management platform for our own blog as well as a a number of client sites (especially in the affiliate and performance marketing world). MediaTemple, who we use for hosting this site and can’t recommend enough … Continue reading New in WordPress 3.5

December 5, 2012

WordPress A/B Testing with Simple Page Tester

Shawn Collins points out a nifty WordPress plugin for split A/B testing on affiliate sites or any landing page that requires optimization… A/B Testing: “For the uninitiated, split or A/B testing is a process where you serve up different versions of your page to different visitors to determine which is more effective. I’ve tried various … Continue reading WordPress A/B Testing with Simple Page Tester

January 2, 2012

My Favorite SEO Plugin

I do most of my own SEO but when I have an affiliate site on WordPress (as most of mine are), I like to use the great SEO Ultimate Plugin. There are a few others out there (probably equally as good) but this plugin is my go-to when it comes to quick link masking, 404 … Continue reading My Favorite SEO Plugin

July 30, 2009

Great Review of @Posterous

Years of building and maintaining my WordPress blog have resulted in my learning a lot about WordPress and getting a lot of grease under my fingernails. Weeks of using Posterous has resulted in a media-rich blog with several posts per week. Tell me which service is more powerful. via suntimes.com I started using Posterous primarily … Continue reading Great Review of @Posterous

May 14, 2008

Magnify Publisher Simplifies Blogging

Magnify.net is releasing a very exciting new WordPress and MovableType plugin aimed at making it easier for bloggers to find and include images and videos into posts. Basically, the plugin integrates easily and nicely into either a WordPress or MoveableType install and allows for a blogger to include a keyword relevant image or video to … Continue reading Magnify Publisher Simplifies Blogging