Previously, it was reported that the German government warned against using Internet Explorer due to security vulnerabilities. They urged users to drop IE for a better browser, like Firefox.

To be fair, the German government has now announced that Firefox 3.6 has a security vulnerability. Time for another update!

Updates to browsing software are pretty easy…for Firefox all you do is click on the menu item Help then on Check for Updates. You may not see the link to check for updates and instead the link Apply Downloaded Update Now… may be visible. This means that an update has already been downloaded, probably from having automated checks for updates.

Here’s how to make sure you have your Firefox set to automated updates — click on the menu item Tools then on Options and you’ll see a new window. Click on the Advanced tab and the Update tab and you’ll get the following:

Firefox Tools Options Advanced Updates

Make sure you select to have Firefox automatically updated. This will run in the background and when an update is found you will be notified via a new window.

When you do search for an update manually, by clicking Help/Check for Updates, a small Software Update window pops up while an update is sought. When one is found the appropriate message is displayed along with a link to the Mozilla website where you can learn more about the latest version of Firefox. Click on Update Firefox to download the latest and most secure version.

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• Firefox 3.6.2 Candidate Fixes Critical Security Vulnerability (techie-buzz.com)
• Mozilla Patches Critical Security Vulnerability In Firefox 3.6 (ghacks.net)

Check out this article from the BBC about the SNAFU that IE6 caused Google. International intrigue, espionage, threats, big business — sounds like the making of a great movie!

It turns out that some key functionality of Google Docs and other bits of its software won’t work properly for users using IE6. If you haven’t upgraded to a later version of Internet Explorer yet, it’s time!

If you’re a developer or web site designer, check out ie6nomore.com for conditional statement that you can use to alert your IE6 site users that there are better browser alternatives.

Grab the SEOBook.com Toolbar which has a lot of other goodies to explore. Once installed, bring up the Search Engine Ranking Checker by clicking on the fireball.

Enter the domain and keyword combination that you’re interested in tracking and then hit ‘Start.’ If your site is in the top 200 listings for the given keyword phrase, its position or ranking will be listed. If not, just a dash will show.

Export the file for future use. Here, you should take a second to make a new folder and call it ‘rankings’ or whatever. Export the results that you want to keep as a csv file into the new folder.

Collect these rankings reports over a period of time, say weeks. Then you can check out the Site Rank Reporter Add-On for Firefox. Just point it to the folder containing the ranking report csv files.

TIP: Make sure the files are saved with filenames that fit the format MM-DD-YY.csv, where MM, DD and YY are the numbers representing the actual date of the rankings.

A file with the name 21-jan-10.csv wont’ work!

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• 6 SEO Extensions for Firefox (maketecheasier.com)

Complete security is a fairy land on the Internet. We all know there will always be people willing to get something for nothing, skirt the law, and outright steal from you. Protect yourself and your information.

Microsoft has begged users for years to use their flagship browser Internet Explorer with the highest security settings possible. Using IE with security set to ‘high’ will not allow scripts to run. Any sites that you use that personalize your visits in some way may not function correctly, but those can be added to a list of trusted sites.

Microsoft is kind enough to provide us with instructions for how to add a website to a security zone, but look how complicated it is:

1. Open Internet Explorer by clicking the Start button Picture of the Start button, and then clicking Internet Explorer.
2. Navigate to the website that you want to add to a specific security zone.
3. Click the Tools button, and then click Internet Options.
4. Click the Security tab, and then click a security zone (Local intranet, Trusted sites, or Restricted sites).
5. Click Sites.
6. If you clicked Local intranet in the previous step, click Advanced.
7. The website should be shown in the Add this website to the zone field. Click Add. If the site is not a secure site (HTTPS), clear the Require server verification (https:) for all sites in this zone check box.
8. Click Close, and then click OK (or click OK twice if you clicked Local intranet in step 4).

Gotta love that first step! It seems like Microsoft is stuck in the 1990s. Why not have a simple button on the browser toolbar to click off the sites that you really do want to visit and otherwise trust?

The best thing that you can do is download and run Firefox.

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• Microsoft Confirms Internet Explorer Vulnerability [Security] (ghacks.net)
• German govt’s Microsoft Internet Explorer warning (taragana.com)

The features that would be important to me are the amount of storage space you get, whether there is a limit on the size of the account, if backups will interfere with the computer speed, whether the stored files could be shared with others or myself sitting at another computer, and of course the monthly cost.

Here’s my latest breakdown of the most popular online storage providers.

• Mozy offers 2GB totally free. You pay only $4.95 per month for unlimited storage. Strictly a backup and restore service, not for file sharing. You can sign up two computers for free, but the 2GB would be shared. If you want unlimited storage and backup, then each computer would need its own account.
• Box gives you 1GB storage and allows file sharing. There is a limit of 25MB for the size of any file, but this would be a great service for small projects involving 5 people or fewer. You can invite collaborators to read and or modify the files. Unfortunately, you have to give your credit card number to sign up and it will be billed after a 14-day trial period. If you do sign up, the cost would be $9.95 per month for 5 GB of storage. This is more of a file-sharing service. Not a complete backup and restore service.
• DriveHQ provides more services than backup and restore. You can share your files with a slick drag and drop interface. This site can be used for sharing videos and photos and other large files. Backup plans start at $2.99 per month for 2GB and scale up from there depending on how much space you need. For 6GB the cost goes up to $7.99 per month, but you can backup multiple PCs.

The code tag only changes the font so that your code appears different from the rest of your text. It does not fix it so that WordPress won’t recognize your code. To handle this in a very efficient way, use the service at htmlizer.

Just copy and paste your code fragments into the provided box and hit the “htmlize!” button. The code characters like <, >, " will be replaced with their HTML special characters so that the code is not perceived by the WordPress engine as actual code.

First, you have to tell WordPress that there are two sidebars for your theme. This step is called registering the sidebar. The important point here is to make sure that each sidebar is given a different name. Here, two sidebars are designated. They will have the names sidebar 1 and sidebar 2. Put this code in functions.php.

<?php
if (function_exists("register_sidebars")) {
register_sidebars(2, array("name" => "sidebar %d"));
}
?>

Alternatively, the functions.php code could use separate lines, one for each sidebar, like so:

<?php
if ( function_exists(‘register_sidebar’) )
register_sidebar(sidebar-one);
register_sidebar(sidebar-two);
?>

You could have more than one sidebar. Just make sure each one is registered with a new name.

The content for each sidebar will be in separate files, such as sidebar1.php and sidebar2.php.

Second, each sidebar must be included in the index, page, or single pages where each sidebar is to appear. Use a template path in an include statement with the name of each sidebar file, like so:

<?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . ‘/sidebar1.php’); ?>
<?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . ‘/sidebar2.php’); ?>

Third, the sidebar.php files must pass the name of the sidebar when calling the dynamic_sidebar function. At the top of each sidebar.php file, insert this code:

<?php if ( !function_exists(‘dynamic_sidebar’) || !dynamic_sidebar(‘sidebar 1′) ) : ?>

Here, we pass the name of the sidebar (sidebar 1), not the filename (sidebar1.php).

The top of the sidebar1.php file is:

<div class="sidebar">
<ul>
<?php if ( !function_exists(‘dynamic_sidebar’) || !dynamic_sidebar(‘sidebar 1′) ) : ?>

followed by a few list-items, closing unordered list and closing div tags. Sidebar2.php is as follows in its entirety:

<div class="sidebar2">
<ul>
<?php if ( !function_exists(‘dynamic_sidebar’) || !dynamic_sidebar(‘sidebar 2′) ) : ?>
<?php endif; ?>
</ul>
</div>

There you have it! Now all there is to do is to go back to the WP admin panel > appearance > widgets and select the widgets that you need for each sidebar. Now, your WordPress theme has two sidebars!

The newer version of this forum software has better capabilities for dealing with, deleting or banning, users based on their email address or IP. Deleting users and their posts started to take more time than I wanted, but I continued that for a couple weeks.

After signing-in to the admin panel, go back to the forum post that you want to delete and click on the poster’s username to bring up their profile. Click on the “Administrate User” link near the top, then scroll down on the next page to the Basic Tools section. Check the box to delete the user and use the spin box to select ‘delete posts’. Hit the submit button and verify your choice on the next page. Poof! That user is gone.

The trouble with that tactic is that every day someone will have to keep on deleting. Not the way I want to spend my time.

I also tried banning users based on IPs by going to the ‘Users and Groups’ tab from the Admin panel. Under user security, I entered many emails in the ban by email, and many IPs in the Ban by IP pages. The Stop Forum Spam site provides current lists of spammer emails and IPs. I simply copied these long lists into the appropriate places in the ban by email or ban by IP pages. Bulk banning worked a little better. Now I was seeing fewer registrations and fewer unwanted posts on the forum.

Still SPAM! Still not good enough. So, the big guns (finally?) settled the score.

Changing from self-registration to admin-approved user registration is the last resort. This means that anyone wanting to register to make a post on the forum would have to wait for the admin to manually approve their registration. I figured that I’d like to deal with something positive regarding the forum boards, like approving a real person’s registration, instead of spending time with the negative actions of banning and deleting the obnoxious users, but since I didn’t want that much hands on I tried to vary the registration settings first. Here’s what to do….

Go to the General tab of the admin panel. Click on ‘user registration settings’ and “enable visual confirmation for registrations”, which means that new users would have to enter a random code that matches an image before they could register. This helps to prevent mass registrations by spammers.

Then go to ‘visual confirmation settings’ and select GD CAPTCHA, no foreground noise, background noise-x and -y set at 15, and add 3D noise objects. These settings have prevented new registrations to the forum for about a week on now. Wish us luck!

Let us know how your forum is dealing with the spammers!

phpBB3 does do a much better job (so far) than its predecessor. Hooray! Let’s hope it’s not short-lived success.

Directions for converting the forum software are thorough enough – I’m glad I wasn’t left with more questions than when I started.

Note that the first step is to install a brand new phpBB3 forum in a different location than the existing forum – so go up to the top of the page and start from there. During installation you’ll feel like someone is holding your hand – the directions were step-by-step and quite easy to follow.

Renaming the directories, in order to have the new forum replace the old, worked like a charm.

Oh yeah, don’t forget to delete the install folder when you’re sure everything went smoothly.

Immediately, about 40% of the users were dropped when comparing those in phpBB2 to those still present in phpBB3. I hope that spam suppression works better in phpBB3 – so far so good!

Anybody use Akismet with phpBB3? Do we need it -yet?

Whitelisting email addresses is the practice of flagging wanted email senders so that your mail program won’t mislabel the things you want to read as spam, essentially hiding it from you.

Since many of us use different email programs for reading our email, here’s the steps you’ll need for the most popular mail programs to whitelist your desired contacts.

For Yahoo! users -

1. Open your Yahoo mailbox and click on “Mail Options”.
2. Click “Filters”
3. Next, click “Add Filter”
4. In the top row, labeled “From Header:” make sure “contains” is selected.
5. Click in the text box next to that drop-down menu, and enter the address that you want to whitelist
6. Select “Inbox” from the menu near the bottom where it says “Move the message to:”
7. Click the “Add Filter” button again.

For AOL users -

1. Go to “Mail Controls” and select your screen name
2. Click “Customize Mail Controls For This Screen Name.”
3. Select “Allow e-mail from all AOL members, e-mail addresses and domains”.
4. Click “Next” until the Save button shows up at the bottom
5. Click “Save.”

For Hotmail.com users -

1. Click the “Options” tab
2. Under “Mail Handling” select “Safe List”
3. In the space provided enter the address that you want to whitelist
4. Click “Add”
5. When you see the address you entered in the Safe List box, click “OK.

For those of you using POP3 mail clients, like Thunderbird or Outlook, investigate the filtering options to whitelist email addresses.