When securing your site you want to look at a few different things including:

• Content Management System (CMS)
• Database
• Passwords
• Server

Security Plugins

Here are the security plugins that I use to secure my sites:

• Limit Login Attempts – Limits the number of login attempts to the administration area of the web-site and blocks by IP or cookies after a certain number of failed attempts.
• Secure WordPress – Performs basic security checks on your WordPress installation and makes suggestions for better securing your site.
• WordPress Firewall 2 – Monitors web requests and blocks obvious attacks.
• WP Security Scan – Performs security scan of your WordPress installation.

In addition to security of your site you also need to make sure that you have up to date backups.

WordPress Backups

In addition to the security plugins I also make sure that I have automated backups set-up of my site. When backing up you need to make sure that you back up all important files including:

• Database
• Uploaded Content
• Themes
• Plugins

I explain how to set this up in another article that I wrote, WordPress Backup in Only 8-Minutes.

WordPress Updates

Keeping your WordPress installation up to date is also very important. Although WordPress hasn’t had any major security holes since versions 2.7 you should still update it regularly.

One of the things that I really like about WordPress is how easy it is to apply the updates. It’s one of the reasons why it is my CMS of choice.

Deciding when to update WordPress can be challenging. I find that as you use more plugins or heavily customise your theme you increase the chances of something breaking when you do an update.

Usually the “smaller” updates (0.0.x) can be installed without problems. The larger updates though (0.x.0) have a higher chance of breaking things, so I usually wait a few weeks and take the time to check for plugin updates before moving ahead with those upgrades. Having a beta or test site is very beneficial and I do that with the main ministry sites that I am responsible for.

Secure Servers

A lot of your security also depends on your web host server. There are many quality web hosts out there but my personal choice is HostGator. All of my dealings with them have been good and I have not had any server related security problems since I started hosting with them.

One challenge with the shared hosting that I use through HostGator is that there are other people using the shared server. To really boost security you can go with a Virtual Private Server (VPS) or a Dedicated Server. Both of those involve higher cost than a standard shared hosting account but come with a more secure set-up. You can get both of these services also through HostGator.

Lock image by kchbrown

WordPress has a pretty good page about accessibility that you can check out here. Usually when we think of accessibility we think about accessibility for blind users but WordPress not only addresses accessibility for the blind, but address it as an overall accessibility issue.

WordPress defines accessibility as:

Accessibility in web page design means creating a web page design that anyone can use. And that means anyone. Not just the visually impaired, handicapped, or otherwise challenged. This includes people in Russia and South Africa who are using outdated computers hooked up to generators that only run two hours a day, trying to connect to the Internet with old browsers and dial up connections. It’s about people from different countries who speak different languages and yet are trying to learn your language by reading your blog or site.

This also includes using cell phones and handheld computers to access your blog. Those people, including the approximately 25% of all Internet users who are physically impaired in some way, need access to web pages, and as a web page designer (or tweaker), you need to know about accessibility.

Here are a few key points from the WC3 – Web Accessibility Initiative that you should also keep in mind:

1. Images & animations: Use the alt attribute to describe the function of each visual.
2. Image maps. Use the client-side map and text for hotspots.
3. Multimedia. Provide captioning and transcripts of audio, and descriptions of video.
4. Hypertext links. Use text that makes sense when read out of context. For example, avoid “click here.”
5. Page organization. Use headings, lists, and consistent structure. UseCSS for layout and style where possible.
6. Graphs & charts. Summarize or use the longdesc attribute.
7. Scripts, applets, & plug-ins. Provide alternative content in case active features are inaccessible or unsupported.
8. Frames. Use the noframes element and meaningful titles.
9. Tables. Make line-by-line reading sensible. Summarize.
10. Check your work. Validate. Use tools, checklist, and guidelines at http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG

Other sources for information about Web Accessibility:

• Godbit Project: Do We Really Care?
• WC3 – Quick Tips to make Accessible Web Sites
• National Federation of the Blind – Web Accessibility

Recently I’ve come across a number of YWAM Ministry videos that have had the sound removed. The reason why the audio has been removed is because the creators of the video used copyright music. One of the options available to the holders of the music copyright is to remove the audio from your video. They don’t just remove the copyright music, but all the audio, creating a silent movie for you.

The YWAM East Timor outreach video at the bottom of this post as an example of this happening…

It’s not hard to find free music if you know what constitutes “free”, and where to look…

What Can I Use as Free Music for Video

Pretty much anything that you hear on the radio would probably not be free and anything recorded or written in the last 70-years would also not be free if it was copyright when produced. That sounds pretty limiting, but if you are willing to look beyond the commercial music scene there is plenty of music available out there that you can use.

Some examples of music you could use for your Ministy video would be:

• Music licensed under a Creative Commons license
• Stock audio options (paid for licenses)
• Post a request for music on the YWAM Music Network
• Original music by local musicians

For all of these options you will need to be clear of what the license is and the specifics of what you can use the music for.

Two things that can catch you out is that even if you use a local recording of a song you need to make sure that the song isn’t copyrighted (ex. you can’t use a locally recorded version of a Hillsong song). By the same token you can’t grab a song that is older than 70-years old and out of copyright (ex. Amazing Grace) and use a modern recording of it.

Where Can I Get Music for my Ministry Video

If you want free download for your ministry video and don’t want to go through the process of arranging a local recording or working with someone from the YWAM Music Network, head over to Creative Commons and follow the links there to some of the featured web-sites.

Otherwise have a chat to some of your local musicians, or drop a message over at the YWAM Music Network and see what kind of original music you can put together.

The follow up question I think needed more than 140 characters to reply to:

What difference do you think a nice web page makes?

A web-site is quite often the first point of contact that someone has with your ministry. Even if the person is a word of mouth referral the web-site is likely to be the first place that person has contact with your ministry. As such having an quality web-site is very important in communicating about your ministry.

What Do You Want to Do With  Your Web-Site?

When you start to look at what you want to include on your web-site you need to think about what the purpose of the site is. Do you want to get people to connect to you personally (phone call / social networks)? Do you want to simply provide information about your ministry?

If you are looking at a ministry training program the best thing to do is to try to connect with the person personally.

At the last ministry centre I worked at we my main goal with the web-sites I built and maintained was to get the potential staff and students in personal contact with one of our training staff. The personal contact is vital when we are looking at how we can serve the potential student and if our training program was right for them.

We spent countless hours building content and developing advertising campaigns for our web-site. The bottom line though is that you want people to want to contact you. You can help make people want to contact you in many ways, including…

• Testimonies of other people’s experiences
• News from currently running programs in your ministry
• Compelling images and videos

In addition to making people want to contact you, you should also make it easy to contact you. You want to have as many points of contact as possible, and make those ways of contacting you easy to find. Some of the ways that you can include in ways to contact you are:

• E-Mail
• Phone Number
• Physical Address
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Google+
• Skype

You want to provide people with as many ways to contact you as possible to provide the least amount of “friction” as you can.

Your primary “call to action” on your web-site should be to get people to connect with you. As you design your web-site you need to keep that foremost in your plans.

How Can I Build a Quality Web-Site?

The good news is that having a quality web-site is very achievable and affordable.

For virtually everyone wanting a web-site I recommend a self-hosted WordPress site. Although WordPress started as primarily a blogging platform it has developed into a full fledged content management system with hundreds of different plugins, and thousands of different themes. This makes it extremely versatile and easy to customise.

Although most of the sites I have built with WordPress are blogs there are a few that fit the more traditional definition of a site. Here are links to a few of them:

• International YWAMer (bi-monthly online magazine publication)
• Personal YWAM Ministry Web-Site

There are also many other ministry web-sites built on WordPress:

• YWAM Haiti
• YWAM Harpenden
• YWAM Derby

The versatility if WordPress is why I recommend it and use it for most of the web-sites that I develop.

Using WordPress you can have a web-site set-up within an hour.

The starter site could consists of a front page, about page, contact page and various pages for your ministries and training programs. Setting up the starter web-site is actually the easy part, the most time consuming part would be writing the content and finding the right photos to personalise it.

If you are interested in setting up a web-site, but are still unsure how, please contact me and I’ll see how I can help.

I set-up some Blog badges for YWAM Bloggers and someone asked me over Twitter how to add the badge to their Blogger blog.

I have a few old Blogger blogs floating around, so I logged on to see how to put the YWAM Blogger Badge in the sidebar of one of those old blogs.

1. After logging into Blogger I clicked on the “Design” link for the blog that I want to add the badge to.
2. In the sidebar I click on “Add a Gadget”.
3. Go down the “Add Gadget Basics” List in the pop-up until you come to “HTML/JavaScript” and click on the + sign to add it.
4. You can now give it a title if you want, or just paste the code from the badge in the content section of the next page and click on “add”.
5. You should now be back on the design page and you can drag the new Gadget to where you want it to appear on your sidebar.
6. Once you have the badge where you want it just click on the “save” button in the top right of the screen and you are done…

In rural Papua New Guinea one in seven women die in childbirth! Yep, that’s right, 1 in 7 women die in childbirth! That’s a shocking statistic to say the least. To give birth to a child a mother has a 15% chance of dying, can you imagine?

A friend of mine, Adriel Booker, in Australia works with YWAM Ships, a ministry that is currently working on delivering medical help into Papua New Guinea. She is a Mom, blogger and fellow YWAMer who has a strong passion for helping other mothers in need. To help expectant mothers in Papua New Guinea she has started a program called Bloggers for Birth Kits to help reduce maternal mortality in rural Papua New Guinea.

The way to help is so simple that anyone can do it…

For as little as a $2.00 donation you can purchase a Birth Kit. The Birth Kit is very simple, but according to the Birthing Kit Foundation can greatly help to reduce the incidence of infant and maternal mortality and morbidity. The kit includes:

• 1 plastic sheet to provide a clean birthing surface
• 1 bar of soap for clean hands during the birthing process and to clean the umbilical stump
• 1 pair of plastic gloves for clean hands
• 1 sterile scalpel blade to cut the umbilical cord
• 3 cords / pieces of strong string to tie the umbilical chord
• 5 gauze squares to clean the baby and mother

The kit is simple, yet effective. Adriel made up her own (which you can watch on the video at the bottom of this post), but I think the most effective way for us to help is to donate.

If you do want to help with this great project, and for only $2.00 who wouldn’t want to help, you can read more about it at Bloggers for Birth Kits.

This post was originally posted on my personal blog at Help Prospective Mothers in Papua New Guinea – Bill Hutchison

How easy to do you make it for people to read your writing?

Like it or not, most people out there don’t know what RSS is or how to subscribe to it. The term “Real Simple Syndication” is a bit of a misnomer for anyone other than web-savvy folks. I know that my family certainly wouldn’t find that there is anything simple about it, and would probably not be able to figure out how to subscribe to it in it’s raw form either.

As content creators though RSS allows us to make it easy for people to get our contact how they want it, when they want it and where they want it.

Here are some ways that RSS allows us to deliver our blog content:

• E-Mail
• Twitter
• Facebook
• RSS Readers (like Google Reader)

RSS Readers

In it’s raw form your RSS feed can be delivered to RSS Readers like Google Reader. For geeks people who are web-savvy this can be a great way to follow many different blogs in a very well organised way. Put simply though, most people have no idea what RSS is, so the best thing for us to do is to use RSS to deliver our stories to as many different mediums as possible.

E-Mail

We can send our stories automatically straight to e-mail using many different programs. I’ve tried a half dozen or so and my favourite two are MailChimp and FeedBurner. Both have free options and have different features.

Feedburner covers most of what you might want to do with your RSS feed. From there you can set it up so that people can sign up to receive you updates by e-mail. You can put a subscription form on your web-site, like what you can see on the right hand side of The DIY Blog, or you can also link to a sign up form hosted at Feedburner.

Feedburner will also allow you to brand the outgoing emails with your own logo and make some simple changes to the formatting of the email. It will also allow you to choose your preferred delivery time based on your time zone.

Mailchimp is an all round email service that offers RSS to e-mail as one of many email campaign options. Mailchimp’s email offering is a lot more substantial than Feedburner’s, but where as Feedburner is free for unlimited subscribers and unlimited e-mails, Mailchimp is only free for up to 2000 subscribers and / or 12,000 e-mail sends.

After you add your RSS feed to Mailchimp you can select how often you want your emails delivered, with options for daily, weekly or monthly. This is a very useful feature as it allows you to set up weekly emails to be sent on a specific day and time. Mailchimp also let you segment your e-mail list based on location, age, gender, social network and more.

While Feedburner allows you to customise your e-mail by adding a logo, Mailchimp has many more options for customising your email. The WYSIWYG editor has been reviewed as being pretty good at allowing full customisation of the look and feel of your email.

Like with Feedburner you have multiple options for people to use to sign up for your e-mail updates including forms that can be added to your blog or web-site.

Another extremely useful feature is the ability to add multiple RSS feeds to a single email campaign, something that I know I could make good use of for my work with Youth With A Mission.

In choosing between these two services I would lean towards using MailChimp for automatic e-mails because of the customisation option, tracking and statistics, and their ability to import and export your contacts from the service when and if you need to.

Twitter

Both MailChimp and Feedburner allow you to link your articles automatically from Twitter, but they both do it very different ways.

Feedburner allows you to post your content title, link directly to your article, add automatic hash tags from categories, add additional text before or after your Tweet and filter posts by keywords or categories.

Mailchimp will automatically send a tweet with your subject line and link to the online version of the email that Mailchimp sent our from your blog.

For Twitter my hands down winner is Feedburner because it allows more customisation of your Tweet, and links directly to your actual posted article, where as MailChimp links instead to the email they created from your story,

Facebook

RSS Graffiti is actually the application that I recommend and use for all of my automatic posting of articles to Facebook. RSS Graffiti will pull in the title, the first photo from your article along with the starting text in the body of your article and post it as a link on your personal profile or on any Facebook page that you are an administrator for.

You can set up the update frequency for RSS Graffiti and select how many posts it updates per update, and what to do with extra articles if you are a prolific writer. You also have a few different options for creating the status for the linked article, which can be useful.

Feeburner offers no may to automatically post your article to Facebook.

Mailchimp allows you to automatically share a link to the online version of their e-mail to your Facebook profile, or to your company / organisations page. It also allows the integration of a Facebook “Like” button in the email, which is a nice feature, although it likes the online version of your e-mail, not the original article.

For Facebook I would highly recommend using RSS Graffiti out of the many options that I have tried over the years.

Conclusion

After looking at all the options available I found that there isn’t one single option that I like, but rather by using these three tools together; MailChimp, FeedBurner and RSS Graffiti, you can do a pretty good job at increasing the reach of your news stories.

Screenshot of the donation screen

One problem that I had with the previous version of the plugin was that if a currency was not selected PayPal would report an error. The latest update to the plugin allows for you to choose a default currency, which has completely fixed this error.

If you are looking for a PayPal donation plugin this is definitely the one that I would recommend. I use it on all my web-sites that I put a donation page on and have pointed quite a few friends in this direction.

Check out the plugin on my friends web-site, Make Some Code – Multi Currency PayPal Donations WP Plugin.

Setting up automatic WordPress Backups for your WordPress installation does not have to be hard. Following the steps in the tutorial above should have you up and running with automatic weekly backups in under 10-minutes.

The two plugins that we use for backups are:

• WP-DBManager for database management and backup
• WordPress Backup (by BTE) for theme, plugin and upload backup

I’ve decided that the best use for this web-site is to help other people set-up and run their own blog using WordPress. I’ll be including tutorials, articles and an ebook for free distribution on this site.

Stay tuned to this site for updates as I work on the free ebook and develop new tutorials and articles.