Tag: Wordpress

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Plugin To Protect WordPress Against Password Reset Vulnerability

Since morning I have been reading about latest password reset vulnerability found in wordpress  version <= 2.8.3. (Details)

Those who can upgrade their wordpress installation, should upgrade to version 2.8.4 which fixes this vulnerability.

But there are people like us who are running highly customized wordpress setups which cannot be simply upgraded by single-click!

Although I personally do not find this recent vulnerability is anything serious, people who trying to hack into Devils Workshop flooded my inbox with Password Reset emails. So to save myself form annoyance, here is code I put into our WPMU’s mu-plugins directory.

<?php
/*
Plugin Name: Password Lock
Version: 0.1
Plugin URI: http://rtcamp.com
Description: Lock Password for specific users
Author: Rahul Bansal
Author URI: http://rtcamp.com
*/

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add_action('password_reset', 'rt_pass_reset_disallow',1);

function rt_pass_reset_disallow($user){
if(in_array($user->user_login, array('admin'))){
wp_redirect('wp-login.php?action=lostpassword&error=invalidkey');
exit;
}
}
?>

For Standard WordPress

  1. Copy-paste above code in a text file and name it “password-lock.php” (you can name it anything)
  2. Upload to “wp-content/plugins” folder.
  3. Log into WordPress Dashboard, Go to Plugins menu and activate plugin with name – “Password Lock”
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For WordPress MU users

  1. Copy-paste above code in a text file and name it “password-lock.php” (you can name it anything)
  2. Upload to “wp-content/mu-plugins” folder.
  3. It will get activated automatically.

For more than one admin account…

In case you want to block password reset for more than one admin account, you can add all other admin-level usernames on line

if(in_array($user->user_login, array('admin'))){

next to ‘admin’, separated by comma.

Check example…  I added ‘rahul’ and ‘deepak’ below…

if(in_array($user->user_login, array('admin','rahul','deepak'))){

Nothing to worry…

Actually, this bug only affects first user in wordpress database i.e. default user with username  ‘admin’. Also wordpress reset password function generate strong password which are hard to guess.

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Reviews

How to Copy Music and Videos from your iPhone to your Computer

Most of us might be using an iPod or even an iPhone to carry our favorite music collection everywhere. Usually I load my iPod with all the latest music releases which I’m able to collect from my friends and relatives computer. But the problem comes when we want to copy those songs from the Apple device [ipod/iphone] onto our computer. iTunes simply doesn’t allow you to do this. So how do you copy your favorite music from your iphone to computer.

iPodrobot is a program which allows you to transfer batches of songs,videos and playlists from your ipod and copy them to your computer hard disk or import them to your itunes library.To do this,just follow these steps on how to transfer music from iPhone to computer.

1) Run iPodrobot ipod to computer transfer software.

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2) Connect the iphone or ipod to your system.

3) Mark the music or videos you would like to copy to your system and click “Copy To iTunes” or “Copy To Folder” button.

Transferring photos to computer

Transferring Music from iPod to your computer.

Features of iPodrobot software

  • Easily get all the music, videos, and photos off your iPod and transfer them to your computer folder or iTunes.
  • Supports all iPod and iPhone models.
  • All song ratings, comments, play counts, the songs’ order, and even volume adjustments will be preserved.
  • Protect your iPod against unwanted iTunes synchronizations.

Converting Videos to iPod/iPhone Compatible formats

Although iPods and iPhones have the ability to play videos,these devices supports a certain types to formats only.So you will have to convert those incompatible videos before loading it into your iPod.Download this free iphone video converter software to convert videos into ipod compatible format.

To do this,first select your ipod model and convert profile.Add the video source file and click start to begin the conversion. After finishing the conversion,copy them to your iphone and enjoy.

[Editor’s Note: This post is submitted by our guest blogger Ripe akka Renjith, who is a web-a-holic and his keen interests include blogging, traveling and photography.

If you, too would like to write for Devils Workshop, please check this. Details about our revenue sharing programs are here.]

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Tips

Protect your WordPress Blog from going blank

If you’re confused about the title, then let me tell you that many sites on WordPress self-hosted platform have affected sites and they go blank.

Click Here to See The Infected Site

This site was used to look like this in the past:

This site is owned by one of my friends, who has suffered loss of visitors and ranking on Google search index due to this problem. Even every site of mine has gone through this problem, as they were on the same host. But I managed to recover it.

I am not sure if it is a virus or not, but its symptoms and working indicates that it is like some injection attack. Please note that I am not declaring it as virus, as I haven’t found any literature on this problem yet. (Also this has infected only very few sites on the Internet which is negligible as compared to millions of websites out there, so chances are that this problem is still unnoticed).

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Well, what exactly is this?

This actually penetrates in your WordPress files (PHP files) and inserts a piece of code in it. It causes your ‘index.php’ to crash, and your homepage as well as post pages go blank (as you can see in above example).

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What can I do if my site is already infected?

If you’ve encountered similar problems, then simply delete your all WordPress file on host and upload freshly downloaded WordPress and plug ins from WordPress site.  You can keep the list of which plug ins and themes you are using so that you can upload them again.

REMEMBER:

DO NOT DELETE YOUR MYSQL DATABASE. (It contains all your posts, settings  and comments, and it is not infected at all. So please don’t make this stupid mistake)

What are the preventive measures I can take?

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  • You can keep your WordPress upgraded with the very latest version.
  • Keep your MySQL databases locked with a very strong password (More that 8 digits in length, containing alphanumeric characters with symbol)
  • Take backups of MySQL databases daily. (You can use software for that)
  • If you’re a professional webmaster then you can check your event logs to detect any activities.
  • You should also keep backups of all plug ins and themes downloaded by you.

That’s it from my side folks! I’ll keep you informed with such tips for your wordpress  blog and also give updated news about this problem.

Please let me know if you have similar problems, so that I can suggest you the possible remedies for it.

(Source: The  article has been written based on my own experience of the problem)

[Editor’s Note: This post is submitted by our guest blogger Amol Wagh. Amol likes to give out tips to aspiring ethical hackers around the world. He is interested in SEO, animation and blogging and writes columns on ethical hacking and blogging for Times of India (Nashik Times). He authors the following blogs – seobloggingtips, hackersenigma and digitalconqurer.

If you, too would like to write for Devils Workshop, please check this. Details about our revenue sharing programs are here.]

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Sugar on Stick breathes new life into old PCs

Sugar on Stick software was originally meant for the OLPC – One Laptop per Child project, but now can be used on any old PC to give aging computers a new interface and access to collaborative educational software. It can simply be run from a USB drive.

Developed by Sugar Labs, Sugar on Stick has been designed for use by children and was launched at the LinuxTag conference in Berlin. Sugar Labs, nonprofit provider of the Sugar Learning Platform to over one-million children worldwide, announces the immediate availability of Sugar on a Stick v1 Strawberry.

Sugar on a Stick is designed to work with a School Server that can provide:

  1. Content distribution
  2. Homework collection
  3. Backup services
  4. Moodle integration
  5. Filtered access to the Internet
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Features

Sugar on a Stick provides a coherent and consistent computing experience.

  • It reduces costs by providing flexibility in hardware choices, allowing schools to keep their existing investment in hardware.
  • Learners can benefit from the increased household ownership of computers.
  • Every student has a consistent, comparable computing environment that parents can share in as well.
  • It also provides off-line access to applications and content as not every learner has Internet access at home.
  • It is possible to store everything you need to run on a single USB memory stick (minimum size 1GB).
  • This small USB device can boot into the Sugar learning platform on different computers at home, at school, or at an after-school program, bypassing the software on the those computers.
  • Sugar on a Stick will work even if the computer does not have a hard-drive.
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Free download

  • It is available free for download at www.sugarlabs.org.
  • It can be loaded onto an ordinary 1GB USB flash drive
  • It can be used to reboot any PC or netbook directly into the Sugar environment.
  • It runs on recent Macs with a helper CD and in Windows using virtualization.

Sugar on a stick is a great new opportunity to breathe new life into these old machines,” says Walter Bender, founder of Sugar Labs.

The child-friendly computers currently cost $199 (£120) each. Sugar on a stick, however, can be used on any machine – on Asus, Dell, HP, even runs on phones.This release could help increase the use of the free software, which has until now been predominantly distributed with the XO laptop, the machine sold be OLPC.

(Source: sugar labs)

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Tips

Easy tricks to make your Blog/Website look professional

These are the best | few | easy tricks to make your wordpress blog/website ‘tough’!

Note: Many of the tricks below can be used on any website(marked by * | Non-wordpress as well as WordPress hosted websites)

  1. Redirection with *

    CO.CC as you might already know, is a free domain(actually sub-domain) registration service. Some of the best features of  include..

    • Google Apps Supported
    • DNS Service: Delegate CO.CC domain like a .com
    • Changeable Zone Records: Co.cc supports for CNAME, A, MX, NS records!
    • Google Adsense supported

    There are many other free Redirection service like co.nr, .tk, co.tv but co.cc is recommended. You’ll understand the reason in the next trick.

  2. Subscribe to *

    Google Apps lets you have name@yourdomain.co.cc email ID. Get a Standard Edition for FREE. Standard Edition provides 50 IDs. If you earn enough bucks by advertising, you can also buy the Premier Edition of Google Apps. Some of the best features of Google Apps Standard Edition include:

    * Your domain Gmail
    *Your Domain Gtalk
    * Google Calendar
    * Google Docs
    * Google Sites

  3. Free RSS/SMS Alerts of new posts on your blog*

    RSS Alerts

    Its simple! All the wordpress blogs already have a RSS feed. For your blog, it will be <http://yourblog.wordpress.com/feed>. Just replace the ‘yourblog‘ with your blog’s domain. You just need to tell your visitors or give them link in one of your posts(It is often preferred to make the post sticky). For more info & example, please see bottom of this post.

    SMS Alerts(by Google SMS Channels)

    These are the steps to create an sms channel and alert your subscribers via SMS, for free, of course…

    1. Go to GoogleSMSchannels.

  4. 2. Set a nickname and register your Phone(If not already) and click the ‘Try Now’ button. Bottom Right, Highlighted in the above post.3. Type in the name that suits your blog. Choose Category as per your blog and Location as ‘none’. In source, choose RSS and type/paste the URL of your feed(not your blog)<http://yourblog.wordpress.com/feed>4. Click create channel.5. After the channel is created, go to ‘Manage Channel’ and then the ‘Subscription link to the Channel’ button. You will get a subscription link something like <http://labs.google.co.in/smschannels/subscribe/YourChannelName>

    6. Now, Spread this subscription link!

    Drawbacks of GoogleSMSChannels–

    * Not available for Non-Indian users.

    * Subscriber requires a Google ID.

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4.  Add Widgets

Out of the various widgets available, I recommend you using these–

  • ChatRoll.com Chat Room. There are various Chatrooms available to be embedded, but ChatRoll is much better because No, plugin is required, supports sounds, highly customizable, easily embeddable Discussions etc. are supported. To add it as a widget, check out this post. To dedicate just one page to your chatroom(if you get great deal of hits), see this post.
  • Dhingana Music Widget (Recommended only if your target audiences are Indian and your blog/website is somewhat related to Music/Youth) Listen to songs online. Afetr you add the widget, your visitors will ba able to listen to the songs LIVE on just your blog. Loved Dhingana? Add it to Orkut!
  • Add Fun polls to your blog. Lets get back to the official wordpress. Polls. Just as you open your Dashboard, on the right, there’s Quickpress, Click the ‘Create a poll button[] , then ‘New Poll’, create the poll and  save it. When done, open the list of polls, choose your poll and click ‘HTML code’. Copy the short address and not the long one(Choose the one [Polldaddy xxxxxx]). Go to Widgets page, drag the ‘Text’ Widget to the sidebar and paste the code in it. Keep asking the visitors about the website, ask fun polls.

5.  Contact Forms

I recommend Wufoo form creator, for the following reasons…

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  • 3 forms avalable for free.
  • Easily Embeddable
  • No Ads, even in free forms
  • Highly Customizable(Create your own themes etc)
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Go for it, create forms and link them directly from your blog. Such forms help to keep your own Email ID safe and also add to the looks of the website.

6.  **Logo

Create a logo for your website, Just to spread the word. Like, for DevilsWorkshop, I would suggest something like this to be posted in forums etc. with link to DW…

To make 3D header online for free(like this one), check out this website.

If I get anything new, I’ll surely post it on DW!

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Note: An Example of almost all the above services is this website.

(Needless to say, the website is mine.)

(Source(s): co.cc, Google Apps, Google SMS Channels)

Links: co.cc, A post by Rahul Bansal on DW, Google Apps, Google SMS Channels

[Editor’s Note: This post is submitted by our guest blogger Himanshu Kalra, alias TooYoungGeek. Himanshu is a young geek who believes in finding and sharing with others the best of the internet!

If you too, would like to write for Devils Workshop, please check this. Details about our revenue sharing programs are here.]

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Tips

How to add a Chat Room to your WordPress hosted Blog/Website as a Widget?

If you want to dedicate just one page to the Chat room, and don’t want it to be available on all the pages of the website, see Add a Chat Room to Your Blog in 3 Easy Steps.

This is a quick tutorial to tell you how you can add a chat room in the sidebar(which will be available on all the pages of your website/blog and hence will connect all of them together).

1. Go to the Create a Chatroll page.

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  1. Give a suitable name to your ChatRoom and a URL that is available and suits you. Click Next.

3.  On the next page you get a link to create your chatroll account. It is recommended to create a new account, to secure the data and to give you administrative rights over the chatroom. You can follow the steps on the right side of the page(see screenshot below) to popularize it. Yet, you can also skip the step.

  1. Down next, you’ll see a button labeled ’embed’

  1. On the embed page, choose narrow sidebar, set your other preferences(text colour, chatroom colour etc.) and copy the Embed code.

  1. Now, Go to your wordpress account’s dashboard and click ‘Widgets’ near the botton left of the page under ‘Appearance’.
  2. On the ‘widgets’ page, Under the tab ‘Available Widgets’, Choose ‘Text’ and drag it to the ‘Sidebar’ tab on the right.

  1. When dragged to the sidebar, it’ll open up. Now, In the first small box, type ‘Chat Room’ and the second big box, paste the code and click save.

That’s it!

Leave comments if you liked it!

😀

Link: ChatRoll.com

(Image Credits: SOLELY MINE!)

[Editor’s Note: This post is submitted by our guest blogger Himanshu Kalra, alias TooYoungGeek. Himanshu is a young geek who believes in finding and sharing with others the best of the internet!

If you, too would  like to write for Devils Workshop , please check this. Details about our revenue sharing programs are here.]

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Tips

3 Easy Steps to add a Chat Room to your Blog

If you want to make your Chatroom available on all the pages/posts of the blog/website (hosted by WordPress) as a widget, instead of dedicating just one page for Chatroom, please see Adding a Chatroom to wordpress as a widget. (If the link is not working, please tell me)

So you’ve decided to add chat functionality to your blog or website.

Chat rooms are a great way to let your visitors meet each other and discuss your content. Chat creates a community feel and adds interactivity that can set your blog apart from the rest and keep your visitors coming back!

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We’ve put together 3 easy-to-follow steps to embed a chat room in your blog or website using Chatroll live communities.

All Chatroll live communities can be easily used as embedded chat rooms. Here’s how:

  1. Create a Chatroll live community to use for your chat room.
    Go to Chatroll, enter your community’s name in the “Name Your Live Community…” box and click “Create”. Choose a name that fits with your blog, as this name will appear in the chat box title. Write an attractive and detailed description so that people can easily find your new Chatroll community (this will also help drive traffic to your blog).
  2. Copy the embed code from the community’s home page. On your live community’s home page (the page that appears after your community has been created) you’ll find a text box labeled ‘embed’ under the chat window. Click the embed code and copy it.
  3. Paste the embed code in your blog or web site. Paste the code where you would like the chat room to appear in your site. If you have a blog, you can either place the chat room in individual posts, or you can create a dedicated page on your blog to host the chat.

(IMPORTANT: If you are using the WordPress Visual Editor, or other visual editors, make sure to switch to HTML editor mode, otherwise WordPress will remove the embed code! This is a known issue with WordPress.)

You’ll see something like this–

(Source & Image credits: Chatroll blog)

[Editor’s Note: This post is submitted by our guest blogger Himanshu Kalra, alias TooYoungGeek. Like his alias suggests, Himanshu is a young, 14-year old Geek!

If you, too would like to write for Devils Workshop, please check this. Details about our revenue sharing programs are here.]

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Software to change your gender instantly!

Now, you could change your gender on the computer instantly! Scientists have developed a video software that would take a live video feed of the person talking and make them look and sound like somebody else by changing the sex. To complete the effect, a person’s voice can be manipulated to match their new face.

Scientists behind the creation?

  • Barry John Theobald – Computer scientist at the University of East Anglia in the UK
  • Iain Matthews – formerly at Carnegie Mellon University and now at Weta Digital in Wellington, New Zealand

Experiments and tests show how a person’s gender affects the body language of others. The scientists were approached by psychologists who were searching for a way to switch the visual gender of people.

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The process?

In order to create this software:

  • Footage of different facial expressions (frown, smile, surprise) were manually labeled with positions of key facial features, such as the eyes, nose and corners of the lips.
  • The footage was then used to train and polish the software so that it could recognize individuals and expressions featured in the set.
  • Once the software gets trained on a person, it would closely track every move of their face in video footage.
  • The movements can then be transferred onto the face of another “known” person by calculating how the recipient’s features need to change to take on each new expression.

How fast is it?

It takes just 150 milliseconds… which is fast enough to allow a conversation over video link to continue in real time!

Traditionally, changing one’s gender would take on hours of makeup and art. This is something that even Hollywood would be interested in.

Watch the video

(Source: NewScientist)

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Aviary: A Free Collection of Online Image Editing Tools

Edit images, create mind-blowing effects, design logos, find colors, collaborate, and more. All you need is a web browser! Its Free!

Aviary is a company developed by a large number of people and by the developers of worth1000.com.

This site is having a number of tools (all free) (still in beta) to create and even edit your images online. It includes “Peacock” effects editor, “Raven” Vector Editor, “Toucan” colour swatches and more.. (there are more to develop soon)

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Peacock can be used as a Photoshop alternative and Raven as illustrator alternative. They both support all of the features including custom fonts, filters, pen tool and much more.

Having a large tutorial database and a good community, this site attracts many users and that’s why they are developing more free tools. Probably, there next tool can be a 3D image editor (still in development).

The above image is also developed by their own online software peackock.

There is no limit on how you make and how much time you take so be creative and start creating some beautiful art.

Link:Aviary

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Reviews

Picture Collage Maker: The fast & easy way of creating a collage!

Now you would never have any hassles in making collages for your daily use! Picture Collage Maker will handle it for you! It is a very simple to use program which can turn your ordinary photos into stunning keepsakes. You can also share them with your family and friends! With some few clicks, you can create digital collages, scrapbooks, posters, invitations, calendars, and greeting cards. Amazing, isn’t it?

Continue reading “Picture Collage Maker: The fast & easy way of creating a collage!”