“WTF?!  So anyone can see this?!”

I believe these were my exact words when I first realized that every file that I had ever uploaded to my WordPress website was just sitting there all nicely organized and completely unprotected.

Back then I had just recently switched to using WordPress and was floored to discover this glaring security hole in the software.  Every image, every audio file, every PDF file, was just sitting there exposed, waiting for any goober with a web browser and an internet connection to download whatever he wanted.

This can’t be right.

It’s a little ironic that we spend all of this time worrying about some idiot stealing one of our images off our webpage when, in reality, they can get all of them right here from our “Uploads” folder.  Not only that, but they are all nicely organized for them as well. The thing is, the hackers and the content stealers already know about this file security loophole — so why hasn’t anyone bothered to tell the rest of us who foolishly believe that our images and files are at least somewhat protected?

Curious to see if your WordPress upload directory is exposed to the world?

Go to: http://yourwebsitedomain/wp-content/uploads/ and see what you discover.

Chances are, what you’re going to find is something like the image above where every file that you’ve ever uploaded to your WordPress website is sitting there in nicely organized folders, just waiting for someone to download them.

So what can you do about it?

Well luckily for us, there’s a fairly simple solution to this problem. Watch the video below and learn how you can put a stop to this type of directory scamming for good!

Download the PHP Code discussed in the video:

Click Here to Download the .txt File 

If you found this article to be helpful, please feel free to share it!

Are you following me?!

It will probably come as no surprise that more and more companies are keeping track of exactly where you go and what you do online.

You  may have had the strange experience of clicking on a particular shirt or pair of shoes online only to later have ads for that same item magically appear on other websites across the web.  This is an advertising practice called “retargeting” and it is just one of the reasons that businesses are increasingly interested in tracking your every move online.

Unfortunately, it is up to you to protect your privacy online and to prevent these companies from filling their databases with your information and online activity without asking your permission.  Here’s a short video that will show you not only how you can find out exactly who is tracking your activities online, but also how you can block their access to your information by using some free online tools. . .

It’s been estimated that 1 out of 2 Americans will own a smartphone by the end of 2011.  What this means, is that using QR codes could be a great way to reach this massive new audience and get them to visit your website, your online shop, or just become a fan of your awesome Facebook page.

Check out this video and discover how you can create your own custom QR codes quickly and easily with some awesome free online tools…

Everyone wants a cooler font for their WordPress website, but most of us don’t really understand how it all works so we end up sticking with our boring san-serif wannabe font and then live out the rest of our days in font envy — but suffer no more!

Watch the video below to learn all about the exciting world of “font stacks” and how the great Google has (once again) come to the rescue to save us from a world of crappy web-safe fonts.

Enjoy!

 Get all of your fancy pants Google fonts here:

http://www.google.com/webfonts

What are the most commonly installed fonts on other people’s computers?
http://www.codestyle.org/css/font-family/sampler-CombinedResultsFull.shtml

Want to know more about how to use “font stacks”?
http://georgebutler.com/blog/typography/10-definitive-web-font-stacks-for-designers
http://unitinteractive.com/blog/2008/06/26/better-css-font-stacks
http://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/font-stacks

Luckily adding a simple text copyright notice to the footer of your website is fairly easy as long as you follow a few simple steps and are very careful along the way….

Enjoy!

Note: Don’t forget to make a copy of the “footer.php” file before you change anything!

One of the best ways to do this is by providing them with links to other relevant content on your site that they might be interested in.  You can either do this by spending hours going through your content and setting up the links yourself, or you can do it the easy way and have this nifty little WordPress plugin do all the work for you.

Watch the video and get your related posts linked up in less than two minutes!

Watermarking your images is one of the easiest and most effective ways of protecting your images. Unfortunately, a lot of the watermarking methods out there rely on expensive and not-so-easy-to-learn software tools like Adobe Photoshop.

In this video, I talk about one of my favorite ways to watermark images for free online that’s incredibly easy and doesn’t require you to use an image program like Photoshop. In fact, there’s no software to install at all which is why it will work with both Windows and Mac.  Once you see how it works, you’ll be able to watermark your images in less than a minute and have them ready to be posted on your WordPress website.

Watch the video below!

It used to be that creating a poll on your website required you to sign up and create an account with a company that would host your poll and keep track of the results.  Now thanks to an awesome WordPress plugin, you can have your poll set up and running in less than five minutes.  In fact, the hardest part is going to be coming up with a good poll question to ask your readers. . .

Watch the video and setup a poll on your website today!

Here’s the link to the plugin we talked about in the video:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-polls

Hotlinking is one of those words that you might have heard about but you’re not really sure what it means but everyone else seems to know so you never end up asking anyone because you feel like you should already know. . . I know right?

Seriously though, hotlinking may not be what you think it is. For example, it really isn’t about stealing someone else’s images online without their permission.  It’s actually more about stealing someone else’s server bandwidth that they may have to end up paying for.  It’s kind of like if someone borrowed your cell phone and used up all of your minutes without you finding out about it until you got the bill in the mail. That’s just not cool!

Confused yet? Watch the video below and all will be revealed. . .

We all know that links to other websites change all the time, but unless you want to go back through each and every post that you’ve ever written, there has never been an easy way to find out which links are broken.  Here is a great WordPress plugin called “Broken Link Checker” that will automatically scan your entire website and let you know immediately which links on your site are broken.

Watch the video below and see how easy it is to find broken links. . .

Here’s the link to the WordPress plugin we talked about:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/broken-link-checker