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49% of the world’s top 100 blogs are using WordPress

April 12, 2012 By Dan Thornton

An interesting study released yesterday by Pingdom reveals that 49% of the top 100 blogs as ranked by Technorati are using WordPress as their CMS platform.

You can debate whether Technorati is still a decent ranking system, and it doesn’t include 8 sites for which information wasn’t available, but 40% of the sites with available information are on self-hosted WordPress (with 9% on WordPress.com’s hosted alternative). The article also has an informative list of what each of the top sites is actually running on – sadly TheWayoftheWeb just missed out on making the list, but for the record, I’ve been using self-hosted WordPress for a number of years now for pretty much all my sites (I do have one or two on both Blogger and Tumblr).

There are a number of reasons why I recommend self-hosted WordPress, including the fact that you have ultimate control over design, data etc, and as long as you’re backing up regularly, you’re better offer in the event of hosting/domain name failures.

It also gets increasingly easy to use – in addition to usability improvements to the core product, all the big third party theme providers and frameworks have made big steps in making everything quicker and easier to setup. Most of my sites currently run on the Genesis framework from StudioPress, but there are also great products I’ve been checking out from the likes of Headway and Pagelines, who are both offering drag and drop customisation.

More and more themes are now coming with responsive design as standard (meaning your site automatically works on mobile/tablets), and it’s really easy to find extremely talented designers and developers who are not only familiar with WordPress, but the relative ubiquity of it keeps prices fairly realistic. If you’re stuck for designers/developers I’m always happy to recommend several that I’ve enjoyed working with both on my own sites and client projects.

And that’s before you get into the various projects built on top of WordPress – for example, Jigoshop, a client of mine who produce a frankly amazing WordPress eCommerce solution. Not only can you install and set-up a fully functioning online store for free, but there’s an amazing range of extensions for it already which means your shop has all the services at a level you’d expect for a big online retailer.

And if you need some help, I can provide domain names and hosting, plus initial set-up for a low fee, having currently set up a number of sites for my own projects and for a range of friends and businesses, which regularly get many thousands of visitors each month, so feel free to contact me. I’ve also had experience of transferring sites from other platforms, and if you just want some quick tips, advice or reassurance, feel free to give me a shout!

What the internet should be for…

April 10, 2012 By Dan Thornton

Find something cool (in this case, a 9-year-old’s DIY cardboard arcade), share it, and bring people together to enjoy it and make a child very happy.

Story via BoingBoing.

The best way to enrich the web is to go out and discover, find and create interesting things and then help people come together around them.

Backup. Restore. Protect

April 4, 2012 By Dan Thornton

It may have been April Fools Day on Sunday, but it was actually Saturday March 31 that held all the ironic humour for me this year. That’s because it was ‘World BackUp Day’ (unfortunately the site appears to be down right now!), designed to promote safe and secure second copies of all of your data, and I was spending it reinstalling my operating system due to a malware infection.

Malware can get you, even when you’re careful:

I tend to be reasonably careful, particularly on the laptop I primarily use for my business. I have antivirus software installed (McAfee for the record), I run some browser add-ons for extra safety and I try not to visit any websites which I know or suspect could be dangerous.

I also don’t click on links in emails offering Nigerian lottery winnings or direct messages on Twitter which suggest there’s a ‘really bad picture of me’ with a link obscured with a shortened link.

And yet on Friday afternoon I was hit by a spoof version of a legitimate program which not only then covered my desktop in pop-up windows, but also proved a complete pain to remove as it edited the computer’s registry and made sure it reappeared every time I thought I’d successfully eradicated it.

The one good thing is that there are now plenty of websites giving detailed instructions on curing more problems as soon as they appear – unfortunately it took a couple of attempts to find one to deal with the current version of the malware, but it’s worth having a look around to find trusted and reliable sites before you need to Google them in a hurry.

And incidentally, a new piece of research just published shows how easy it is to fall foul of a widespread problem – on average 2 of the top 25,000 websites in the world (ranked via Alexa) serve malware to visitors each day on average. Or problems can occur installing apps – even from ‘official’ sources such as the Chrome Web Store. This doesn’t mean you need to be paranoid, but does mean doing some research and thinking before clicking on links, installing apps, and putting some effort into protecting yourself and your data, including if the worst happens.

The importance of backups:

The good news is that I finally managed to remove it successfully, using a couple of anti-spyware programs I hadn’t tried before. Having finally killed the process and restarted my machine to ensure it wouldn’t reappear, I was left with one further problem – the malware had also been created to remove all desktop icons, links and to stop anyone searching from programs which would interfere with it.

So a Restore/Re-Install was needed. But trying the automatic Windows Restore didn’t work – it was only the proprietary manufacturer backup which worked, sending my laptop back in time to the first day of 2011.

I always ensure I have two copies of all data relating to work – one copy is stored on a removable hard drive which is kept in a different part of the house to the laptop when not in use, and the other is stored ‘in the cloud’ on an online storage system which automatically saves any changes made to any files.

Pictures are always backed up on the hard drive, and also uploaded to Flickr on a weekly basis, as are most videos. But I did lose all my (legally) downloaded music as unfortunately I’d cleared all the albums from my hard drive backup whilst I sorted through them and put them into some sort of order.

Aaaaaaaaaargh.

And even worse, I have a nagging feeling that some images and videos of my son appear to be missing, and it was pre-upload/backup, which means they’re gone forever.

Going back so far also means I’ve spent about a week receiving updates every time I fire up my laptop, which then install on Shutdown and leave me stood around for ages when everyone else is going home.

Re-install, Rebuild, Update,Protect:

So what have I done since? Well, seeing as I’m fully paid up for McAfee for a while longer I’ve made sure it’s completely up-to-date and double-checked the set-up. I’ve also started testing one of the new programs which seems to have killed the malware on this occasion, and one other anti-virus solution which is available for free download. No single program is lightly to always cover everything 100%, but having 2 or 3 available means I should be able to cover most options.

I primarily use Firefox as a browser, so I’ve added ‘AdBlocker’ and ‘No Script’ to cut down on the risks. There’s a moral issue with using AdBlocker, in that it deprives ad-funded sites of revenue by stopping any advertising from appearing, but you can quickly and easily whitelist sites you trust, as you can with No Script, which stops a lot of sites working initially as it blocks all Javascript. That’s great for preventing malicious attacks, but it’s not a solution that will be 100% effective – for many sites to work, you have to start allowing various processes to run, and as mentioned earlier, even trusted sites can sometimes end up unknowingly spreading malicious software.

But on balance I think I’ve done a reasonable amount, as well as double and triple-checking all backups are running correctly both for the laptop OS and Software, and for the Files and Data. I’ve reinstalled the programs I use on a regular basis, and set them all back up to work properly, and I’m working at full speed again. You can never be 100% safe, but with the right processes in place the occasional problem isn’t as much of a hassle, and a clean install can be quite a refreshing spring clean of all the old junk you’ve got on your PC which isn’t actually used.

It’s also reminded me to audit my accounts and passwords on my sites, remove unused WordPress plugins, and update everything on social networks etc.

ORGCon 2012: My experience and thoughts

March 25, 2012 By Dan Thornton

There’s never been a more important time to be aware of the issues around Digital Rights, whether your main concern is copyright, privacy, or internet access. You can debate whether being able to get online is a human right, or is the tool that now enables many of your human rights, but either way, it’s an essential utility for many, many people, and if you don’t get involved, you leave it to big business and your government to make the decisions that will affect you.

So a good time to attend my first ORGCon, organised by the Open Rights Group.

ORGCon 2012 – was it a good event?

It’s tricky to seperate out the event itself from the essential topics it covered, but in essence, it was a really well put together event. As a non-member it cost £26, but the line-up of speakers included Lawrence Lessig and Wendy Seltzer visiting from the U.S along with Cory Doctorow as the three ‘headliners’ ORG themselves picked out to promote the event.

The venue was the University of Westminster, and it worked pretty well, aside from some slight congestion in narrow passageways. The main room was big enough to seat everyone, and by running four streams of talks and activities it meant that everyone was able to cram into pretty much every event, although the ‘Defeating ACTA’ talk did prove so popular it spilled out into the corridor. It was also a very central location, just yards from Oxford Circus, which was particularly handy when public transport tried to make me miss Cory Doctorow’s opening talk – I made it in time to catch about half of it.

The day included open space/unconference sessions which sadly I didn’t check out due to some of the other talks I felt were essential, but they apparently went well, and everyone was invited to the pub etc to carry on chatting (I ended up heading home after, mainly due to post-cold/flu exhaustion!).

The talks:

The good news if you didn’t attend is that all talks were filmed and will be available online at some point – but I definitely think it was worth seeing Doctorow, Lessig et al talk in person and experience the passion, enthusiasm and intellect that each has.

So first up was Doctorow’s ‘The Coming War on General Purpose Computing’, an updated version of a talk he’s previously given on how copyright is just a minor skirmish as increasingly general purpose computing devices are restricted by spyware and rootkit methods which are similar to those used in repressive regimes. I stayed in my seat to catch Wendy Seltzer on Organizing for the Open Net, and both were extremely interesting and useful talks, followed by a panel debate on the Communications Bill and Copyright Enforcement.

A nice day and indecision over lunch meant I skipped the lunchtime ORG volunteer sessions, but I did catch a bit on How Secure is the Anonymisation of Open Data with Ross Anderson of Cambridge University, before failing to get into Defeating ACTA and lurking in the corrider for Jeremie Zimmerman and Erik Josefsson, before finally snaffling a seat for People not Profiles: Do Not Track & Data Protection followed by the Lessig closing keynote on IP activism.

Rather than dissecting each talk one by one, the overall themes of the day were a lot of useful information, some inspiration, and some very useful approaches to reframing and refocusing how you might put your effort into campaigning or activism in favour of individual digital rights. Lessig, in particular, opened up the ways in which future efforts could be far more successful in the wake of action over SOPA and PIPA.

The only minor criticism was that sometimes the information on practical steps was missing from the talks I happened to be in – there were other sessions which covered things such as activist tools, but some of it did feel a bit like a recap of information that you might have already put together if you followed rights activity over the last couple of years. I suspect that was why ‘Defeating ACTA’ and the manner in which is was delivered proved to be so popular – if you haven’t checked out La Quadrature du Net, it’s worth taking a look, particularly as they have a full English version of the site!

It might have also been helpful to have had some way to better integrate the non-ORG faithful, as I wasn’t the only person who was new to the event and would have felt a bit isolated if I hadn’t bumped into a couple of people I knew (I went old school after gadget failure). But the mix of attendees and speakers was really interesting as much in the crowd as onstage. It was great to hear some of the insight from Google’s UK Policy Manager, Theo Bertram, and from Tom Lowenthal of Mozilla on Do Not Track in a session shared with Lillian Edwards on data protection regulations.

Will I attend again?

Definitely – although it was quite interesting at times being someone who believes in digital rights, and the rights to individual privacy on one hand, and on the other works on projects and with clients where user data and advertising are essential to offering a better service. I didn’t get a chance to raise a couple of the questions I had regarding both Google and Mozilla unfortunately, but I know who to ask now, so will go into more detail in due course, but I did come away with a slightly strange feeling that on one side we have the forces of big business and government, and on the other we have privacy and rights groups and campaigners – the one voice missing seemed to be that of the small businesses that are getting caught in the middle.

Although it was a bit of a long day – getting up not long after 6am, and getting back at almost 9pm after delays due to inebriated rail passengers, it’s definitely given me a lot of things to think about, work on and blog about. And where else can you discuss politics with the pirate party on the way back from lunch?

If you don’t have time to create great presentations…

March 20, 2012 By Dan Thornton

My tip is to keep an eye out for when Neil Perkin puts out a call to crowdsource one every few years…

What Is The Difference Between A Fad And A Trend

View more PowerPoint from Neil Perkin

Bonus points if you can get credited for paraphrasing someone like Clay Shirky. I’d also recommend his weekly Fish Food email. It’s a great collection of interesting stories, and there always seems to be at least a couple that haven’t cropped into my view from other places. I can honestly say it’s one of about 3 email subscriptions that actually get read pretty much immediately, rather than skimmed through or archived for a time when hell freezes over and I can actually clear my archive a bit!