As one of the mini-challenges for the Spring 2018 Bloggiesta, Berls suggested organizing Tags, Categories and Labels on your blog. It’s a Mystery is my newest blog, so I thought it was somewhat tidy. After taking a look, however, it was obvious the categories need some work.
Before organization:
Blog security is something you probably wish you didn’t need to think about, but these days it is necessary because you may be vulnerable regardless of the size or activity level of your site.
For this Bloggiesta mini-challenge, develop a security plan for your blog and then share link to your post — or at least a few details — in the comments, if you like.
Because each blogging platform is different, your blog security plan will be unique. To get you started, however, let’s go over some basics.
No matter what platform you use, always be sure to install any software updates immediately. Many times the updates are issued to fix security vulnerabilities.
You may have noticed that a lot of commercial websites and blogs have changed the beginning part of the URL to “https.” What does that mean and should you do the same?
Http stands for “hypertext transfer protocol” and it is how linked text/data is transferred around the Internet. Nowadays hackers can intercept that information as it is moving from place to place and use it for their own purposes. For example, they might intercept a password and use it to gain access to your blog. To prevent unintended access, the information is encrypted or converted into a code. When the transfers are encrypted, it is called “https” or “http secure.”
If your blog is on a hosting service like WordPress.com or Blogger, it may already have been upgraded to https without your knowledge. Check the URL of your blog in your browser. The symbol of the lock (green) also means it is secure.
If you have a blogspot domain and it isn’t https yet, https for blogspot domains explains how to make the upgrade.
For WordPress self-hosted blogs, how to make your site https or secure will be more complicated and will depend on your hosting server. Typically you will need to obtain a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate. Your host may let you use theirs or you may have to register you own with a service like Let’s Encrypt (or see this review of 5 services).
Whatever you do, always back up your blog prior to making these changes. After you make the conversion, all the URLs in your blog/website will change to https. Your browser will give you an error, however, when you load any internal http links that didn’t change automatically. All the internal links will have to be changed from http to https, including those for images.
To fix this problem, you need to do two things:
For WordPress sites, you can use search and replace plugin to change it all at once. Examples of these type of plugins are Search & Replace and Better Search Replace.
Sound complicated and a lot of work? You may wonder if you really need to do it. That is a good question, but a tough one to answer. It is likely https will be required at some point in the future (Remember when Google required all blogs and websites to be mobile-friendly?) At this point you should at least read up on it and have a plan in place in case it becomes required.
One important security precaution is to not use “admin” as your login/username. If you have been using admin, WordPress makes changing usernames difficult, but not impossible.
This video shows how to do it:
See more at this related blog post from wpbeginner.
Hopefully that gives you some ideas for developing your security plan. Please leave a comment if you have any questions or have any additional suggestions.
Let’s all have a safe blogging experience!
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Example of a Security Plan
Is your blog is disarray? Schedule lagging, to-dos building up, or feeling unorganized? Then join the Spring 2018 Bloggiesta from March 19-25 and tidy up your blog!
What is Bloggiesta?
Bloggiesta is an online party where you can find blog organization tips, take challenges to learn new things, and — best of all — meet some awesome bloggers!
If you are interested, post a to-do list like the one below and then link to the Spring Sign Up page. There is also more information to explore at the Bloggiesta blog.
Adding to my next Bloggiesta to-do list: (I’m posting these here to find when I create my next list)
If you’re interested, I will be pinning to my Bloggiesta Wisdom Pinterest Board throughout the week.
Time to get busy.
Hope you all have a fun and productive Bloggiesta.
Do you have a blog, particularly a book blog?
Time to spruce it up, catch up on those posts you’ve been meaning to write, and get re-energized about blogging by participating in the winter 2018 mini-Bloggiesta from February 3-4, 2018. Sign-ups are here.
What is Bloggiesta?
Bloggiesta is an online party where you find tips to get your blog organized, take challenges to learn new things, and — best of all — meet some awesome book bloggers!
Time to get busy.
Summary: I accomplished more than I thought I would, even though life got in my way yesterday. Three projects that seemed to be nearly completed took sideways turns on me and will now require significantly more work. Guess it was better to find the issues before they are submitted rather than afterwards, but it was still a bit disheartening.
Hope you all have had a fun and productive Bloggiesta.
Do you have a blog, particularly a book blog? Time to tune it up and get energized by participating in the Spring 2017 Bloggiesta running from March 20-26. Sign-ups are here.
What is Bloggiesta?
Bloggiesta is an online party where you can get your blog organized, take challenges to learn new things, and — best of all — meet some awesome book bloggers!
Time to get busy. Hope you all have a fun and productive Bloggiesta.
Do you have a blog, particularly a book blog? Time to tune it up and get energized by participating in the Winter 2017 Mini Bloggiesta running from January 13-15.
What is Bloggiesta?
Bloggiesta is a wonderful blog party where you can get your blog organized, take challenges to learn new things and, best of all, meet awesome new bloggers.
If you’d like to sign up to participate in this Bloggiesta event, make a to-do list/landing page like this one and then add the link to your post to the Bloggiesta sign-up page.
Be sure to look for the Twitter Chat tomorrow (Saturday Jan 14). I’m bummed because I’m going to be in a writing workshop and won’t be able to attend live.
Time to get busy. Hope you all have a fun and productive weekend.
Today I decided my blog looked too messy and decided to change the theme. I thought the notebook look was fun at first, but got tired of it.
I think the new header image is more “mysterious.” Does the accent color of the text in the sidebar match the header in your browser?
So, what do you think?
Andrea at The Overstuffed Bookcase has a wonderful mini-challenge for using a bullet journal to keep your blog organized.
I’m afraid I had to rush through this one a bit, because I’m due at a birthday party shortly. I highly recommend heading over to Andrea’s blog and reading more about the potential of bullet journals.
Okay, I admit I’m totally weird, but I have a lot of blogs so I keep track of upcoming posts in vertical columns. How it works is each column is a blog, and each row is a day of the week. This way I can see all the posts scheduled for a given day and how they flow within a given blog. Sometimes posts on two blogs tie together.
Again, I was in a hurry, so it isn’t very neat and pretty. Hopefully you get the idea.
Jeanene at Got My Book blog has a Bloggiesta Mini-challenge to “Increase Readership & Engagement with a Wrap-up Post.” I’ve never done one before, so I decided to give it a try.
This week has been a busy one, although I didn’t review any books. Instead, I
I am currently reading some nonfiction books as research for my upcoming NaNo writing project. I’m also hosting the Writer’s Studio this week, so I have out some of my favorite books about the craft of writing, such as Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones, and Stephen King’s On Writing. For fun, I have Sue Grafton’s T is for Trespass (Yes, I’m behind).
Mocha Girls Read has a great list of thrillers/suspense/mysteries to check out.
Oh, just found a list of new books coming out in all the different subgenres of suspense at View for My Books Blog.
Summary:
Wow, writing a wrap-up was actually fun. Jeanene suggests copying a template and starting the post at the beginning of the week, filling in links as you go. That sounds like a great idea!
She also suggests sharing your wrap-up post with a meme. Today I chose:
Having trouble adding a Pinterest board to blog posts? Here are some tips for including a Pinterest board widget for blogs on different platforms. See below for an example of what a widget looks like. (Note: This is how it can be done in September 2016. As you well know, how to do these things can change rapidly.)
Recently, javascript has been susceptible to security concerns. Some blog platforms no longer accept it readily.
If you have a free WordPress.com blog, as of today you can simply add the URL of your board to the content of your post (without linking it!) and it should convert to a widget when you publish.
Example:
To bypass the need for javascript, download a WordPress.org plugin like Pinterest Widgets.
You can download a plugin two ways. Either go to the Pinterest Widget page, download the plugin and then upload it manually to your server,
or
As of right now, you copy the code on the Pinterest Widget settings page, replace the example url with the url of your Pinterest board and paste it into the text version of your blog post. You should be able to see the board in Preview and once you publish.
And there you have it:
[pin_board url=”https://www.pinterest.com/sandverbena/its-a-mystery-blog/”]
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Please let me know if you have any questions.
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