Protect Your PC Before April 1

As some of you may already know, the Conficker worm is due to begin contacting its “home base” for instructions on April 1, 2009. It is estimated that this worm has infected millions of PCs worldwide.

Windows Secrets has published an in-depth article on how to secure your PC from the Conficker worm and what to do if you already have it. I strongly suggest reading this article and taking the recommended steps to avoid having your PC contribute to the problem:

http://windowssecrets.com/2009/03/30/01-Run-a-Conficker-removal-tool-before-April-1

John The Geek

Viral Inviters: Still a Bad Idea

I was happy to see the top story in this week’s edition of the Windows Secrets newsletter pointing out the dangers of viral inviters. I have to wonder what took so long, but better late than never.

Some of you may recall that almost exactly a year ago I wrote a post in this blog on that very subject. I thought viral inviters were a bad idea at that time and I still do.

I know people aren’t going to stop using viral inviters. I’m just hoping that they’ll at least give it a moment’s thought before giving up the user IDs and passwords to their email and other accounts. It’s already way too easy for the bad guys. We just need to exercise a bit of common sense before doing something with such a potentially large downside.

I’d like to know your thoughts on this subject. Please leave a comment.

John The Geek

WordPress Plugins Site For Users and Developers

I’ve been a fan of Mass Automation’s WordPress plugins and tools for some time. These are high quality blog administration tools, for the most part, that save me a tremendous amount of time keeping my many blogs updated. If you’re just running one or two blogs, these are not for you, but if you’re like me and have a number of blogs, I highly recommend them.

The Mass Automation folks have recently opened a new site featuring free open source plugins for WordPress called PluginEdge. PluginEdge is a repository for WordPress users to get some very handy utility plugins. It is also a place for WordPress plugin developers to upload plugins for distribution and additional exposure.

I’ve installed several of the free plugins from PluginEdge and found them to be very useful. There are still others I’ve got on my list to check out when I have a chance to do so.

The PluginEdge home page lists the 10 most popular plugins in terms of downloads. Because the site is only a couple weeks old as of this writing, the list changes pretty frequently. As of today, the top 10 plugins are:

1. GAFMonitor – monitors the Get A Freelancer site for project requests
2. ScuttlePlus – create your own social bookmarking site
3. WP Bazaar – turn your blog into an online store
4. Plugin Remover – removes unwanted WP plugins without FTP
5. Robots.txt – creates a robots.txt file for your WP installation
6. WP Database Reverter – restores a WP database to its previous state
7. Trackback Search – search for and find trackback URLs to add to your posts
8. Comments Pinger – pings comments instead of posts
9. Set Permalinks – makes .htaccess file writable via FTP
10. WP Checkup – pings a list of your blogs and warns if any are unavailable

Since this site is so new, you’ll want to check it on a regular basis to see what new goodies are uploaded. Enjoy!

John The Geek

Using WordPress? Update Now!

If you’re a blogger using WordPress, be sure you’re at the latest version 2.7.1. Earlier versions of WordPress are vulnerable to a security loophole that allows the bad guys access to your server via a “back door”. Needless to say, you don’t want this to happen!

I was recently hacked through an old version of Joomla I’d left laying around on my web host. Fortunately, no real damage was done, but it brought home the folly of running old versions of popular software. The fact is: the more popular the software, the larger target it is for those who get their jollies finding ways to exploit it.

WordPress is the most popular blogging software on the Web, so it stands to reason that vulnerabilities will be found and exploited. For that reason alone it is important to keep it updated to the latest version.

If you need help updating your WordPress installation, get my free guide to upgrading WordPress quickly, easily and safely:

http://JohnTheGeek.com/wpupgrade

John The Geek

Royalties: The Key To Ongoing Income

We’ve all heard about royalties, usually in the context of musicians, songwriters, and authors. The basic concept of royalties is that you create something, then every time a copy of it gets sold, you get part of the price that was paid for it.

As an example, let’s say you write a book. You get it published and it goes to book stores all over the country. The book sells for $15. To keep things simple, your royalty is $1 per book. So, every time somebody sells one of your books you get a dollar. Sound good so far?

“But, wait!” I hear you say “That means I’d have to write a book in order to get royalties! I can’t write a book. I don’t have the time or talent for that!”

Maybe you do and maybe you don’t, but that’s not the issue here. The problem is that your definition of “royalties” is too narrow. Royalties don’t have to be for a book or a song. They can be for pretty much anything that gets bought and sold. You just have to figure out how to get a piece of the action, so to speak.

More importantly, you need to know how to make that happen on a recurring basis so that you’re not limited by the amount of time you have or the number of promotions you can send in a day. That’s the beauty of royalties!

Royalties mean passive income. That’s income that you’re not trading your time for. Ideally, it’s recurring income that you receive while you’re working on something else. You don’t think Stephen King’s royalties from his last book stop when he starts writing a new one, do you? Of course not!

Christopher Westra has been making his living from royalties for years now. He has created a course called “Royalties University” that will teach you step-by-step how to create royalties in your life. You’ll receive one lesson each week plus bonuses as time goes on.

I’ve known Christopher for a couple of years now and I’ve purchased many of his products. They’ve always been top-notch and “Royalties University” is no exception. I highly recommend it, especially if you’re looking to create streams of income that don’t require your attention 24/7.

John The Geek