Wow, it has been too long since I added anything here! It’s been a busy year with building and growing Photography BlogSites.

I was honored to be one of the speakers this last weekend at WordCamp LA where I presented a behind the scenes look at Photography BlogSites.

Here are the slides from the talk. There was a lot of information spoken as the slides were shown, so if you have any interest in hearing what got left out here in the slides, let me know.

Over the weekend I put the finishing touches on a new WordPress plugin I’m calling “Photographer Connections”. It is basically a framework to connect photography related sites to WordPress sites.

At launch, it has Pictage, SmugMug and Shootq built in. You can list your Pictage events, add SmugMug galleries to any page or post, and allow the Contact Form 7 plugin to send information to your ShootQ account.

For developers, this was created with an easily extendable format, allowing new sites like Flickr, Picasa or any others to be added very quickly as new modules.

Because this was developed for PhotographyBlogSites.com, it has some great MultiSite options as well. Super Admins of any WordPress MultiSite network will get an extra menu item, allowing them to enable or disable any module sitewide.

You can find full details and instructions at the official PhotographyBlogSites page or download the latest from WordPress.org.

On November 27th 2010 (a week from this Saturday), I’ve been asked to take part in a workshop called WPWorkshopLA.

The workshop is run by Austin Passy of Frosty Web Designs, and organizer of WordCampLA, the annual WordPress convention that had over 300 WordPress developers attend this year.

We are open to suggestions for topics – anything from “What is WordPress?” to “How do I create a custom plugin?” and everything in between.

For anyone interested in learning about basic to intermediate level topics involving WordPress, this could be a great opportunity. Instead of paying myself or another developer their standard hourly rate, this will be 4-5 hours of group and even some on-on-one training for the ticket price of $65. Use the discount coupon MARTY for a 10% discount  making the ticket price $58.50.

Leave a comment here or email me with any questions or suggestions for topics.

This project started a looong time ago, when I first started working with Ellen Petty of Identity Kitchen. As we worked together on custom blogs and websites for photographers, we started brainstorming ways to make something similar available to everyone. The goal was to create Affordable, Easy-to-use, WordPress Portfolio Websites for Photographers.

Our Goals

We put together a long list based on what worked best with the common features we were using in our custom sites: social media integration, customization, easy-to-use backend, unlimited galleries, integration of fantastic photography tools like ShootQ, etc, etc. Like all of our custom sites they needed to be an all-in-one website AND blog, all built in WordPress and 100% HTML – no Flash.

Flash sites are invisible to iPhones and create difficulties for search engines. Unfortunately, until now, Flash templates have been the only realistic option available at an affordable level. Regardless of what was used for a website, we were seeing a lot of people still use WordPress for their blog, often combining two or three website and blog services to manage it all, sometimes even hiring separare designers or programmers to work on them.

There is a good reason why WordPress and HTML based sites were not being done on an affordable level. WordPress is software that needs to be installed for each site. You can purchase “themes” or templates for WordPress but these also need to be installed. It requires some knowledge of databases, HTML, a programming language called PHP – all pretty overwhelming if you don’t know how to use it.

The Answer

The answer was to use a lesser known version of WordPress, which allows an entire network of sites to run off of one installation. Once the basic framework is developed, anyone can then sign up for a site by just entering some contact information. No HTML, no installation, no upgrades to worry about. You don’t need a hosting account. You don’t even need to wait for us to respond to an email or return a phone call. Just sign up and the site is ready.

You can check out all the features on the main site: http://photographyblogsites.com or to really see how it works sign up for the free 7-day trial.

Lifetime Offer

In celebration of the launch, we are offering an introductory lifetime membership for $499. That includes our search engine optimized blogsite, any new themes, 4 GB of hosting, our support, maintenance, upgrades and much, much more. For a full list of features visit our features section. No recurring costs…ever! But act fast! The offer will expire 11:59 PM on November 30, 2010.

Feedback

This is growing community and we are continuing to build and improve everything about the site – the way the main site itself works, suggestions for new features, etc. We have setup a support forum to take any and all feedback. We’d love to hear your thoughts as we will keep developing PhotographyBlogSites to be the best they can be.

Thank you to everyone who has helped with feedback and ideas throughout the process – we couldn’t have done it without you!

In the midst of keeping up with client work and a mad scramble to finish the major launch of a website, it was nice to get a break from it all and be a part of my first WordCamp.

WordCamp is a conference that focuses on everything WordPress. There are many held around the world and this year’s WordCampLA was the second one held in Los Angeles. I was lucky enough to be contacted by the organizer, Austin Passy of Frosty Web Designs and asked to be part of a panel of WordPress designers.

One of the great things about WordPress, the main reason why it is now used in 100% of the websites I build, is the community. WordPress is a free, open-source piece of software with thousands of dedicated programmers and designers around the world who build plugins, design themes and even contribute to the very code itself. There are forums and blogs and tutorials that are freely available. So many that if you have a question about WordPress, you can probably type it into google and get an answer.

None of this would be possible without the generosity and sharing of those who know more than I do. I was able to learn this software in the first by asking questions in forums and visiting blogs. So it was truly an honor to give some of that back and hopefully help answer some questions for those new to the world of WordPress.

The other members of the panel (pictured below, left to right) were Thom Merideth , Matthew Lawson, myself and Kristin Falkner. I wish I had more of a chance to talk with the other panel members and to see more of their work but the free-for-all nature of the Q&A made the time fly by. Questions ranged from favorite fonts to recommended plugins to demonstrations of different ways to display posts. From the people I spoke with afterwards, I think the biggest thing most people took away from it all was that there are many, many ways to make WordPress more than a blog and shape it into whatever kind of site you want.

Photo by Bryan Villarin

The Speakers

There were also some great opportunities to learn from the speakers. I only had to show up for a Q&A but most of the talks were put on by talented people who took time out of their lives to prepare amazing demonstrations of what can be done with WordPress. I’d like to point out a couple that I found particularly interesting.

Thoms Merrideth (same guy from the panel) explained some ways to use custom post types through the Magic Fields and Pods plugins. In case you still think WordPress is just a blog, look at the site he used for the demo, one he built for the LA Times Media Kit – all built in WordPress.

Brandon Dove of Pixel Jar shared his thoughts on building ‘Pluggable Plugins”. This is the future of WordPress. Plugins add functionality to WordPress – calendars, SEO tools, image galleries, contact forms, database backups, etc. Things not built into the core of the software can be added on. But it is also possible to make your plugin something that can be plugged into. New ways to display images, new ways to process contact forms and so on. You can find his presentation here.

The event’s organizer, Austin Passy did a presentation called ‘Posting on the Go’ where he built a site that allowed anyone to email photos which would end up live on the site moments later. The result was site filled with photos from the day just by sharing the email address and allowing attendees to email images. The magic behind it is a pretty cool plugin called Postie.

WordPress Experts Panel

Coming up in October, I will be part of a ‘WordPress Experts Panel’ for the SoCal WordPress Meetup Group. If you want to stop by check out the Meetup page.

One of the other speakers already put together a post about it here.

WordCamp Las Vegas

Also… on October 23rd is WordCamp Las Vegas. Not sure if I’ll be there yet but it might be a good excuse to go back to Vegas.

Other coverage of WordCampLA:

WordCampLa Official Site

More Photos at Flickr

More photos and a review by Bryan Vallarin

WPCandy Review

Easier is not quite right either. Some of the things I have been able to do with WordPress MU would not be possible without the plugins and support of the folks at WPMU DEV.

What is WordPress MU and What is WPMU DEV?

WordPress has become a well known name as one of the best (the best in my opinion) Content Management System available. It allows any site from a simple bog or basic five page site, up to the most complicated site you could imagine to be easily edited by anyone without any knowledge of HTML.

WordPress MU means WordPress Multi-User. It is essentially the software that runs WordPress.com and was developed to allow an entire network of sites. User can visit a WordPress MU site and get there own site by just signing up. No installation, no hosting to worry about, etc.

It has been a branch of WordPress for the last few years – not as well known, not as well documented and not as well supported. One of the only places providing real support has been WPMU DEV. They provide a number of free plugins, as well as a premium membership with some really essential tools for any MU site.

How I Have Improved MU with Premium Plugins

While not officially announced yet, if you read my post about SEO Image Galleries or follow me on Twitter, you may have heard of a major side project I have been developing for some time now – PhotographyBlogSites.com – which was built using WordPress MU as a means to make it easier for photographers to simply sign up and get a new site.

As one of the only sources of reliable MU plugins, I have made use of many of the close to 100 plugins avaialble on the WPMU DEV site. I want to point out a few of my favorites, without which PhotographyBlogSites would not be possible.

New Blog Template

This plugin makes it possible to make an exact copy of any blog and give it to new users. This way, instead of an empty default WordPress site, the new users has the chosen theme, settings, even pages, posts, categories, etc. All in place. It saves you the time of deleting the placeholder content, adding the standard pages, fixing the settings, etc.

Download New Blog Templates Here

Domain Mapping

This one is absoultely crucial. It allows users to use their own domain name. Without it, they would have something like marty.photographyblogsites.com – similar to the free sites you get at WordPress.com or Blogger. But if you are running a serious business site, you want your domain.

Download Domain Mapping Here

Anti-Splog

If you think spam comments are bad, try running a site where spammers can create entire sites and usernames through a contact form. One of the toughest aspects of running WordPress MU is dealing with the spam blogs or splogs. This plugin does a great job of preventing those fake sites. In turn, it saves database space and bandwidth for the legitimate users.

Download Anti-Splog Here

More

These are just three of the developer end plugins I have made use of. I will be doing a post on the PhotographyBlogSites blog about a few that make the user experience better.

—

As a disclaimer, this is a post I put together as an entry for a contest (http://wpmu.org/100-plugins-wpmu-dev-giveaway-time) where they are giving away a free annual membership ($419). While that would be great, I am currently a paid member and have been meaning to write a post about them anyway. If you are developing a WordPress MU site, definitely check them out.

With every custom blog, especially for photographers, I have usually been required to add some kind of image gallery plugin for WordPress. I have tried several, but found them all lacking in one way or another. Some end up in a Flash player, making them hard to customize and invisible on mobile phones. Some are not user-friendly as far as uplaoding images, editing galleries and then insterting the galleries into pages.

While developing the inner workings PhotographyBlogSites.com, I decided to start from scratch and build my own. It has been in somewhat limited release so far as it has been tested on PhotographyBlogSites and put through the ringer on a few recent custom sites that are about to launch.

My goal was to build a comprehensive image gallery plugin that would be easy to use, versatile, visible on mobile phones, and highly customizable. I also wanted to add the all important SEO information to each and every image using file names, ALT and Title attributes and even the folder structure of where the images were stored to really push the SEO quality of every gallery.

Where to Get it

You can find more technical details as well as how to use the plugin here:

This plugin is hosted at WordPress, so you can search for it and auto-install into any WordPress site, or you can download it from WordPress.

Example of how it can be used…

Directly embedded on a page, with the default white display:

More Images

No Images in this gallery yet.

More Images

This is the small size. For full width photoblogs, it can display at 920px wide.

And using the alternate skin, ‘black’:

More Images

No Images in this gallery yet.

More Images

A thumbnail that opens full screen:

With the default white display:

More Images

No Images in this gallery yet.

More Images

Close

SEO Image Galleries

SEO Image Galleries

And the skin ‘black’:

More Images

No Images in this gallery yet.

More Images

Close

SEO Image Galleries

SEO Image Galleries

A thumbnail list of every Gallery:

With the latest version, you can even add an automated album of every gallery you create, or list an album of any category of galleries.

You can see an example of the album idea in action on the demo sites for PhotographyBlogSites.com.

If you like that demo site and are a photographer, check out the main site – PhotographyBlogSites.com and sign up for our mailing list.

Custom Image Galleries

This plugin is incredibly easy to customize with basic knowledge of CSS. I have put together some detailed instructions and would love to see any examples of custom galleries using this plugin.

In the next week or two I will be launching two new custom blogs with Identity Kitchen which are the first two sites to use the custom options to the full advantage. Once they are live I will do another post about the custom possibilities.

A client’s WordPress site was recently hacked by some malware, receiving the dreaded red warning screen. You know the one where it warns that a site may harm your computer? This warning comes from your browser but is triggered by Google detecting that malware is on your site.

First, this is NOT a WordPress security issue. It is all about malware being inserted by third party ad services. For my fellow WordPress folks, this is not the same issue dealt with at that hosting company that will remain unnamed.

The Red Screen of Death

When Google crawls a site and detects malware, they issue a warning which results in that red screen. They also add a warning within their search results right under the link to your site that says ‘This site may harm your computer’. All pretty scary stuff for a visitor finding your site for the first time.

So,assuming at the time that it came from Google, it seemed strange to me that Google could stick a red screen on a site. How could they do that? Well, they can’t of course. So I looked into the code of the warning itself and saw that it was coming from mozilla.org, the company that makes Firefox, meaning it was something in the browser itself.

Checking the security settings, I saw a check box for ‘Block reported attack sites’. So I unchecked that and tried the site again. It loaded just fine. No warning. Same in Safari. They have a setting to block sites and send a warning. Problem was these were defaults, so essentially everyone is seeing these red screens.

Removing the Red Screen

The only way to get rid of the warning screen is to remove all the malware, and get Google to re-crawl your site. You can either wait for that or re-submit your site using Webmaster Tools Reconsideration. Even with both myself and the client submitting for reconsideration, the process took about 18 hours which I feel is pretty quick form stories I have heard. In fact we were getting ready to redirect the domain to a clean url if the warning hadn’t gone away within another hour or two.

All said, it was about 48 hours of the site being blocked with this red screen.

Then after it was fixed, we had to clear the cache in our own browsers to make the warning go away, meaning that anyone who saw the site in the last day or two was most likely STILL seeing the warning even though Google had removed the warning and the site had been totally clean for close to 24 hours. And who knows when everyone’s cache would reload the cleaned pages?

The Hypocrisy of Google

Here is the problem… The malware appeared after a third party ad service started using Adsense of all things. The stunning thing to me is the possible hypocrisy of Google Adsense sending malware and then using its malware warning to essentially shut down a site for close to 48 hours.

When you see that red screen do you ever click ignore? Probably not since it warns you that your computer may be harmed. After I fixed the problem, the warning was still there and I still felt cautious about clicking, feeling that maybe it was still detecting something I didn’t find.  This is when I figured out that it was the browser settings I described above.

So… The timeline went something like this:

• Site is infected with malware at some point. This could have gone undetected for a while. Hard to tell.
• Google detects it and adds the warning.
• Browsers see that warning and visitors get the warning screen.
• Regular readers of the site start sending emails and tweets to the client.
• About 24 hours AFTER all this, the client gets an email from Google telling them about the problem.
• Client contacts me and within a number of hours we clean the site and submit for reconsideration. This is only because I was out at the time. The actual process of fixing took about an hour.
• 18 hours later the site is recrawled and put back to normal.
• Visitors whose cache is not emptied are still receiving the warning.

So…

• 24-36 hours – site is down before being able to fix it.
• 1 hour – fixing time
• 18 hours – re-crawl and remove the warning.

Ignore Bad advice from the Hosting Company

The client’s host was saying that the process might be 2-3 weeks! Not only that… They recommended removing the URL from Google because of that little warning, suggesting that people shouldn’t see that because it made the site look bad.

Remove the URL form Google? That would lose all search ranking and everything, I have never heard of worse advice. The site was back up within an hour or tow of getting that advice and if the client had listened they could have lost all their search rankings.

How to fix it

As with any changes to a site – BACKUP EVERYTHING first.

• Export your WordPress content from the backend.
• Backup your database.
• Backup you wp-content folder

Finding the Malware

This can come in a few forms:

• It can be added to files you already have.
• It can be added as new files that were not there before.
• It can be injected into the database.

But is actually fairly easy to spot once you know what to look for. It is almost always something known as obfuscated javascript or something embedded in an iframe. Obfuscated javascript looks like a bunch of random letters, numbers and symbols, like this: ‘JGs9MTQzOyRtPWV4cGxvZGUoIjsiLCIyMzQ7MjUzOzI1MzsyMjQ’. It is totally meaningless until decoded. An iFrame is used to embed another page into a site. It is used by Facebook and any other number of legitmate sites, so iFrames are not by themselves bad. On the other hand any apperance of that obfuscated javascript is cause for concern, especially in an open source project like WordPress where all code must be readable.

To find the bad code:

• Search your files for the word ‘base64_decode’ where you find something like this ‘<?eval(base64_decode(“JGs9MTQzOyRtPWV4cGxvZG…’ and that string of characters will go on for a while and end with something like ‘==”));?>’
• Delete all occurances from the opening ‘<?’ to the closing ‘?>’
• Search your database for ‘base64_decode’
• Delete that same line (it will probably not have the ‘<?’ or ‘?>’, just the ‘eval(base64_decode)’
• Search all your pages for ‘iframe’
• Search the database for ‘iframe’
• Before deleting any iframes, look at the content and see if it is something you recognize. It might be fine.

Specifically in this case, there was a series of files that were somewhat easy to spot, since they were in the main directory and not part of the core WordPress files. Here are the names:

• A folder called ‘.files’ which will be hard to spot unless you are able to view hidden files because of the ‘.’ at the beginning of the folder name.
• The folder contained a huge number of files, all ending in .html, all with spammy search titles.
• A file called ‘hobard_ebeneser.php’ whose only contents were the javascript described above.
• A file called ‘spite_kerk.php’ whose only contents were the javascript described above.
• A file called ‘vhfjp.php’ whose only contents were the javascript described above.

Another post about a similar set of files they called the ‘Movie Review’ infection and how to fix it. Essentially the same as here.

After the Malware is Gone

So the malware is gone and 18 hours later Google has approved the site again. According to Webmaster Tools no malware was found.

BUT… we are still getting the warning until emptying our browser’s cache and refreshing a few times. This is a problem since most people who saw the site with the warning will still see the warning but would not bother refreshing or deleting their cache. So there needs to be a way to FORCE the visitor to load a new version of the page.

I used the php function called header() which must be called before anything is output to the screen. To make sure of this I placed it right in ‘index.php’. Not the one in the WordPress theme, the main index.php of the whole site, the one contains about 3 lines of code and opens WordPress itself. I wanted to make sure this was the very first thing a browser saw when opening the page.

Here is exactly what I used:
[sourcecode lang="php"]
header(“Cache-Control: no-cache, must-revalidate”); // HTTP/1.1
header(“Expires: Sat, 26 Jul 1997 05:00:00 GMT”); // Date in the past
[/sourcecode]

I pasted that right above the line:
[sourcecode lang="php"]
define(‘WP_USE_THEMES’, true);
[/sourcecode]

Now eventually we will remove this. Pages are cached for a reason. It speeds up page load time, etc. So we don’t want to make everyone lodd a new version indefinitely, but for a couple days we are going to make sure everyone gets the clean version.

Final Note – AVOID AD SERVICES that use javascript

There have been a HUGE number of ad services compromised by these attacks lately. Unless you are making enough to justify going through this, I would recommend not using these ad services that place javascript on your site. The same goes for affiliate links that use javascript. Most will offer an HTML version that is just an image and a link. If you see the word ‘javascript’ in the line of code they want you to copy, I would stay away.

Cross posted from IdentityKitchen…

Now, you know how proud we are of our Search Engine Optimized, WordPress powered, custom portfolio blogsites. What if there were an entry-level, template-driven, DIY, portfolio blogsite available? No more updating your blog at one address and your portfolio at another. No more calling your webmaster to make changes to your site, update your entire site as easily as creating a blog post. You can even customize the site to match your brand.

Now, what if it was affordable to everyone and included installation and set-up? Interested?

Sign up here for more information.

Here’s a blurry sneak peek…

Some added details of my own:

There are a lot of sides to this project, including some exciting resources for anyone, whether they use the new BlogSites or not…

• There will be an FAQ and tutorial site, complete with screencast videos for everything WordPress.
• There will be support forums for plugins, and technical issues.
• SEO Image Galleries. This new site is also the home of a plugin currently released in Beta called SEO Image Galleries. It is available at the WordPress Repository, or can be installed directly through the plugin browser on any self-hosted WordPress site.

Plus lots more…

Sign up for our Beta list here: Photographyblogsites.com

You can also follow us for updates on Facebook and Twitter.

Over the last year or so, I have worked on some great projects with designer Ellen Petty, founder and head designer of Identity Kitchen. I was proud to most recently work on the actual Identity Kitchen site itself, which got a major overhaul for the new year. Identity Kitchen provides branding and identity design as well as custom blog and website design and I get to help turn some of those designs into  working WordPress sites. I recently posted some examples of our collaborations.

The new Identity Kitchen site was not just a face-lift or simple redesign but a complete rethinking of everything. By combining the formerly separate portfolio site and blog all into one WordPress installation, the content and structure of the site was improved, the search engine optimization was improved, and the backend became one place to add and edit all the content.

We were also able to use some new image gallery techniques to ensure everything on the site is HTML and CSS based. This means no Flash, even for the image galleries, providing a seamless user experience for those without the ability to view Flash, most importantly iPhone (and now iPad) users. Not using Flash also improves the SEO, by using keywords in the image’s ‘ALT’ attribute.

Home Page

The most complex page on the site, the home page pulls the latest post from the blog, has links to social marketing sites, a newsletter signup, a section highlighting some products from the store (Identity Cafe) and features a fading slideshow of images.

click for full size view

Case Studies

The first style of image gallery is shown on the Case Studies pages. The images are attached using custom fields in the backend, thanks to the WordPress plugin Flutter. Usually each page has a simple text area, where images can be inserted. But by adding some custom areas we were able to upload extra images and then display them in any way we want. In this case, by displaying them in a gallery, with thumbnail previews along the bottom. A second custom area was used to add a series of ‘services’ as the pink text at the bottom of the right-hand column.

click for full size view

Work Pages

Similar to the Case Studies pages were the Work pages, which were more specific looks at a single website, a single brand, and one page with 30+ examples of logos. The backend for these pages worked almost identically to the Case Studies pages, but we displayed the info in different ways. The descriptions, list of services and link to the live websites needed to display under the images so that we could have a menu on the right hand-column. To make room for that we needed a second image gallery design, using smaller thumbnails and new navigation buttons. The gallery is actually the same exact HTML markup. But thanks to a few changes in the CSS, they display differently.

click for full size view

Questionnaire and Contact Forms

Some aspects of a site can only be appreciated by the owner of that site. One of those things on this site would be the Questionnaire page. I used the ‘Contact Form 7‘ plugin for all the contact forms on this site. This is my favorite contact form plugin because it is easy to use, even for a non-programmer and it allows complete control over all the fields and customization of the look. By adding a Questionnaire page, it will now be easy to send new clients a simple link where they can fill out all the needed info online and hit send. Pro-active clients could even find it on the site and take the initiative to fill it out themselves. Everything is sent in an email seconds later. Compare this to a written form that is left with a client or snail-mailed, or even the process of needing to send a .pdf file to someone, possibly forgetting and hoping they will print it out and send it back.

click for full size view

Blog

Last but not least is the blog section, otherwise known on this site as ‘Fresh’. While it matches the main site’s design, it has its own thing going on, practically a reverse of the look, with a mainly white page and dark text, compared to the dark background and white text of the main pages. As far as programming, this was the most straight-forward of the whole site, just a matter of scaling back to the built-in blog platform that WordPress is made for.

click for full size view

]]> http://martythornley.com/2010/02/new-blog-site-for-identity-kitchen/feed/ 0