Nebraska Libraries on the Web

Today I can announce that Broadwater Public Library has gone live with Nebraska Libraries on the Web. Please welcome them to the project.

Some of you may have read recently that there is currently an ongoing attack against WordPress sites. If you’re interested in a good explanation of what’s going on please check out this article from ithemes.com: Ongoing WordPress Security Attacks, The Details and Solutions.

In general there is nothing you need to be worried about. We’re taking care of it on our end and you should not see any significant changes to your sites as a result. We do however have two suggestions/reminders and one heads-up that may affect you.

First: Please NEVER use “admin” or “administrator” as a username. Not on WordPress or on anything else if you can help it. (There are some systems that require this so in those cases it’s unavoidable.) The core of the current WordPress attack is based on assuming there is an account named “admin” or “administrator” and then trying to brute-force guess the password. We have already made sure that no one is doing this on their sites but now would be a good time to check all of your other accounts both personal and library.

Second: Pick a good password. Here’s a site that will help. Yes, it’s annoying but it is your single best line of defense. We have no way to check on the strength of your passwords or even know what they are so please take this advice seriously.

Third: We may be installing a plugin on everyone’s site that will limit login attempts. For example, if we turn this on you will be limited to three login attempts. If all three fail, you will be locked out of your site for a short period of time. If after that time, there are another three failed attempts, you will be locked out for a much longer period of time. We are looking to avoid this but if the attacks increase this is a line of defense we’ll be forced to take on this end. So, when you log into your site, please be sure to enter your login credentials correctly.

As always, if you have any questions please do not hesitate to leave a comment and we’ll be happy to help in any way we can.

I’ve been using and recommending Compfight for year as a great way to search Flickr for CC-licensed content. Last night while searching for an image for a blog post I noticed that they were highlighting the fact that they now have a WordPress plugin. So, this morning I installed it and gave it a try on my own site. Result: I love it! No, it’s not perfect (you’ll need to tweak your layout after insertion as needed,) but it does allow you to keyword search flickr, see CC-licensed results, and insert various sizes (Small, Medium, Large, Full) all without leaving WordPress.

If you’d like it installed on your site just leave a comment here with your library name and I’ll get it installed as soon as I can.

Fellow WordPress users come forth and pay attention for I have just been pointed to the single most useful WP-related Web site I have ever laid eyes upon. (Yeah, I think it’s that cool!) Head on over to http://whatwpthemeisthat.com/ and enter the URL for the WordPress site of your choosing. What you’ll get back is not just the name of the theme that site is using, but the version number, official description, sample screenshot, a link to the author’s home page, and the license. Oh, and did I mention it will also report what plugins the site is currently using? Seriously, this is amazing. No more hunting through the code to try to find it all on your own.

Thanks to pollyalida for the pointer! Oh, and that link just there, that take you to her WordPress Tips and Tricks Scoop.it page which you should subscribe to immediately.

Say hello to our 51st library: Loup City Public Library! Stop on by and say hello.

I’ve been on the phone recently with several people from other libraries and library systems that are interested in the hows and whys of Nebraska Libraries on the Web. Mainly they’ve all been considering setting up a system like we’ve got here in Nebraska and wanted to get the skinny on why we chose WordPress over other content management systems. Then this morning this article came across my feed reader: Five Reasons We Still Use WordPress in 2013. They’re five reasons are:

• Ease of Use
• Backed by a Dynamic and Diverse Community
• WordPress Plugins
• Bulletproof
• About half of the top 10,000 sites use WordPress

The article goes into much more detail and I highly recommend you take a moment and read it. In the end, I’d say that these are five core reasons that we chose WordPress over other systems. All leading to the fact that we felt it was the best choice for our libraries and three years later I know we made the right choice.

We’ve just updated WordPress from version 3.5 to 3.5.1. Mostly the changes are under the hood and you shouldn’t notice any differences.

We’ve just finished the previously mentioned clean-up of our WordPress installation. We’ve removed all unused themes, and ran updates on all the remaining themes and all plugins. If you notice any problems or differences with your site please contact me ASAP (michael.sauers@nebraska.gov) and we’ll get on solving the problem.

With over 50 Web sites now live on the system, we’re looking to do a little house cleaning. The major portion of this cleaning will be removing themes and plugins that are not currently being used by any site on the system. We will be doing everything in our power to not delete anything that will negatively affect your site, but we realize that there is a very small chance we might delete something we shouldn’t.

We plan to do this work on Wednesday, January 16^th and Thursday, January 17^th. What we need you to do is to keep a close eye on your site those two days and make sure everything is working as it has been. If something changes, please let me know ASAP and we’ll do what we can to put things back the way they were. As I said, we don’t expect anything to go wrong, but better safe than sorry.

There may be some other items we’ll be dealing with that effect specific sites and I’ll contact those sites individually. If you’re wondering about the status of something I’ve said that I’m working on for you in particular, this is all part of that and you haven’t been forgotten. I’ll also contact those libraries directly as the project progresses.

As always, if you have any questions just let me know and please don’t forget to keep an eye on this blog for news, tips, and updates.

Thanks for your continued participation in this project.

Michael

Maria Cadwallader, Director of the Valparaiso Public Library asked me the other day how to create a blog post which appears as an excerpt (i.e. shortened version) on the home page and then offered the reader a “more” link to be able to go to a Web page containing the complete post. This way, your site’s home page isn’t taken up by one or more post of longer than usual length.

At first she, and I, thought that this was theme based; some had this feature, some didn’t. While that seemed to be true at first glance I though that adding a plugin for those that wanted this feature might be a better option. It turns out, that this feature is currently available to everyone, I just didn’t realize it.

Instead of repeating all of the instructions here I’ll instead point you to the WordPress Support Page for The More Tag. There you will find instructions for just how to pull this off through a button on the Add New Post page.

One word of advice: please use this sparingly and only on longer posts. Studies have shown that when you make the use click a link to read the rest of a post, the number who do is much lower than you would expect. So, when you do use this feature, don’t bury the lead. Make sure the important bit is in the excerpt that appears on your home page.