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WP tips and tricks for security

Our sites are all pretty old, so they are DDOS attack magnets. Bots LOVE our sites! This is why we have outages on the server quite frequently. The people at Siteground, while very responsive, really don’t do any WordPress support – despite their advertising. All they ever offered was fiddling with the robots.txt file. This can work, but it’s REALLY hard to figure out which bots to block without a list.

So we went forth into WP plugins and we’ve found a couple that work really well: Blackhole for Bad Bots and StopBadBots. The first one, Blackhole, requires that you set up a robots.txt file (if you don’t have one) and then add some code to it. I guess it works, there’s no real feedback. It’s always good to have a robots.txt file, so no harm setting this up.

The second one, however, StopBadBots, is wonderful. It REALLY works and it gives feedback so you can see which bots are the ones hammering your site. No fiddling with robots.txt files or any of that. I highly recommend using this plugin to defend your site against bots.

Also: use Wordfence. It offers tons of security as far as hacking, like blocking IPs that repeatedly try to log in and offering multi level login security.

Hosts are pretty useless when it comes to supporting WordPress. I’ve never gotten any decent support from a host. The important part about WP is security. You’ve GOT to lock it down from login attempts and bots that hit your site and drive up traffic, which can slow and even bring down your server.

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Virgin Mobile USA Tips

In light of the truly sucktastic service we’ve gotten from Virgin Mobile USA this week, I felt I should write a post in the hopes that it might help others who use VMU but can’t get things to work. Most of this post has to do with iPhones in particular, since that is what we have experience with, but I’m sure a lot of it will help with any device you have using the Virgin (which is under Sprint) service. This post is about USA service only. BTW, Sprint is dying and it will take VM with it. I wouldn’t advise spending a lot of dough on a phone with either of them. It’s a shame, we’ve used VMU for over a decade. I’ll miss them, shitty customer service and all. :(

Basic Virgin Mobile FAQ:

– Virgin Mobile shares bandwidth on the Sprint network in the US. This used to be a good thing, now, not so much. Sprint is dying. America is the land of the oligopoly and eventually there’ll be just AT&T for phone and satellite TV, but for now there is Verizon (CDMA network) and AT&T (GSM network). VM uses the CDMA network. That means the phone must be CDMA. You cannot use a CDMA phone on a GSM network or vice versa. Here is an article about bringing a phone to Verizon, FYI.

– NO, VMU will NOT be getting the iPhone 5 series back in stock. Every VSU employee will tell you “Yes! It’ll be any day now!”, which is a lie. The front page of their site is a lie. I asked them over a year ago when they’d be getting the iPhone 5 in stock and they said “Soon!!” The fact is that VMU bought their iPhone stock and then it sold out. IPhone 5 series is not being manufactured any more, so their inventory is finite. You must buy a 5 series (or 4 series) off of eBay. Which is generally not a problem, just make sure it’s a VMU phone with a clean ESN. If it’s a 5 series, you’ll need to also buy a new card for it (it is a UICC card, which is just a newer generation SIM card).

– YES, a used iPhone 5 and up WILL require a new UICC card. Do not listen to the VMU employees that tell you otherwise. NO you do NOT need a card for a 4 series phone. Actually these require NO CARD in the slot.

– VMU has really horrible support. Which is probably why you’re here. It will not get better, so it’s something you must make peace with. Hopefully something in here will help you.

– Don’t even bother with trying to use the website to swap phones. Just suck it up and call.

– The Twitter people (@VMUcare) suck just as much as the phone people. Don’t bother.

– If you have a “support” person who clearly does not understand what you are calling about, just say goodbye and call back. You may have to do this many times. Be prepared to spend a LOT of time on the phone. You simply have to persevere and keep cycling through support people until you find one that has a clue. No way around it.

– There is a glitch in the VMU system that will render your iPhone 4 series unable to send/receive calls when you update the OS. Virgin support is apparently unaware of this and cannot help you. But I can. Simply call ##873283# and your phone service will be restored. I am not sure if this applies to 5 series (or 6 series) iPhones. I’ll update this when Nick updates his 5c.

How to buy a new iPhone and get it activated with VMU:

– Go go eBay and look for phones specifically labeled Virgin Mobile. Make sure they have a clean ESN – which means they are not stolen and/or bricked.

– If you are buying a 4 series iPhone, you’ll need to REMOVE the SIM/UICC card that might still be in it. My phone had been used with TMobile, apparently, since there was a card in the slot. I know this because when I called to activate the phone, it kept giving me an “incompatible SIM card” error. Of course the “support” person in Philippines did not know what this meant. I am a nerd, so I knew to pop out the card, but the “support” dude kept telling me I had to take the phone to Apple. Yeah, NO. 4 series iPhones do NOT need any card in the slot to work with VMU. Ignore whatever else you’re told, just pop out the old card and then call VMU to activate. You can google how to remove a SIM card, it’s a snap.

– If you are buying a 5 series phone, you’ll need to buy a NEW SIM/UICC card for it. They sell those on eBay, too. Once you get your new phone and the card, this is where the fun begins. And by fun, I mean soul sucking hell. :( You’ll have to call VMU to get the phone and its card activated. The problem is that most of the “support” people don’t know how to do this. They will attempt to activate the phone w/out activating the card, which, of course will not work. It took my husband FOUR DAYS to find a support person who could understand this issue and activate the UICC. Once the card was paired with the phone’s id#, all was well. Getting there was a chore, for sure.

Those are the biggest issues with iPhones and VMU. They won’t get any better. My advice is to go with another provider if you’re just setting up cell phone service. As I said at the top, Sprint is dying and with it, Virgin Mobile USA. We assume another provider will buy up the bandwidth and service (Verizon most likely) but the heyday of good VMU service is gone.

Do not get into a contract with any provider. Just buy the phone that will work with one of the two networks and then shop providers. Like I mentioned, there are only two networks in the US and AT&T (GSM) is dominant. Their non-contract division is called Cricket. Even tho I detest AT&T, I think Cricket is the best choice for non-contract. If you have a Virgin/Sprint phone and want to switch, your only choice is Verizon – which may or may not take your phone.

Cell phone service is as screwed up as broadband and TV in the US. It won’t get any better. Just try to find the best deal you can and don’t be afraid to change if you’re not happy. I think too many people in the US are afraid to change their providers. In addition, make sure to support efforts to break up and/or regulate our broadband, TV and cell services. The reason American services are so bad is due to the government being paid off by monopolies and oligopolies that collude to keep prices high and service low. You must speak out about this to your US House Reps and Senators. American cell service sucks because we let it suck. Remember: we are a third world country when it comes to broadband/TV/Phone services.

Good luck with your cell phone service! I hope something here may have helped.

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Tips and Tricks for your MacBookPro

I wrote this massive support email to a friend and thought I should share it with the class! Stuff everyone should know! It’s written for Macs, but the laptop tips are for everyone.

Backup Drive:
This one will work great: https://goo.gl/4ST5CB (Best Buy, $70). You just plug it in, format it for Mac and point Time Machine to it. Voilà! Try to get in the habit of running Time Machine at least daily.

DropBox:
DropBox is a FREE service that offers you a way to automagically back up documents or whatever files you want to in the cloud. You get 2Gb storage for free. This is really great for using with accounting files because you always have a current backup, independent of your full Mac backup, so if you forget to plug in your backup drive and something happens, you’ve got a backup in Dropbox at all times. I highly recommend setting this up.

Using your MacBook Pro (MBP) or ANY laptop:

ALWAYS let it go to sleep completely before moving it. Look for the pulsing light. This goes for moving it around while you are using it. BE CAREFUL. Hard drives spin at 5400rpm!! One good bump could crash the arm onto the plate. Think record player – hard drives are similar: an arm goes back and forth across a spinning platter. This does NOT apply to MacBook Airs since they have a solid state drive (SSD) which has no moving parts. Same if you’ve installed an SSD to your MBP.

NEVER handle your MBP by the display. Not only does it put stress on the hinges, but it could damage the very thin ribbon that runs from the mother board to the display. Don’t crank it open all the way back, either.

MAKE SURE your MBP’s vents along the back under the hinges are not blocked. Lack of air flow will fry your motherboard.

TRY to restart your MBP once a week. Go to Apple menu -> Restart. DO NOT press the power button. ALSO, shut down your running programs before you restart. You can tell what’s running by looking at your Dock at the bottom of your display. Anything running will have a dot under it. If you right click the icon, you’ll see the option to shut it down. Or you can click the icon, bring the application forward and Quit via the menu.

TRY to run down the battery at least once a month. The “optimum” for these batteries is between 40% and 80%, but that’s really hard to do, so just run it w/out the power supply often and run it down. That should keep your battery happy. ALSO, the new (late 2012 and up) MBPs have a different type of battery than the older ones. I am not sure if they have the “battery bulge” problem, but just be aware of any change in the bottom of your MBP. If you see any sort of warping or bulge, take it to the Apple Store or Onyx immediately. Onyx is a really good Apple Certified support provider in Atlanta if you need a repair: https://onyxconsulting.com/ There’s an office in Downtown Decatur behind McDonalds.

Speaking of Apple, did you buy AppleCare? It is the extended warranty offered from Apple. If not, DO IT. It costs $150 and extends your warranty by two years, which means you’ve got three total years of warranty. I am not a proponent of warranties generally, but I can tell you that spending the $150 for the extra two years is TOTALLY worth it. A bench charge (diagnostic) ALONE is $50 and that’s not doing any work on a laptop. Laptop parts and labour are PRICEY.

Buy AppleCare no later than the 10-11 month point of owning your MBP. Do NOT let the year lapse, tho, or you will not be able to get the extended care. And if you didn’t register your MBP, go register w/Apple RIGHT NOW. You need to be in the system to get service. Set up an iCal alarm to alert you to get your AppleCare before your year elapses.

Software:

Since Apple support is apparently unaware that Office is still made for Mac, here is the scoop: Microsoft Office for Mac is available for download from here: https://goo.gl/eK3RQt Student version is $140. Office documents are 100% compatible between mac/pc as long as the VERSIONS of office are close. The only time you’ll run into problems is if one version of Office is a lot newer than the other. This is a Microsoft issue, NOT a mac or pc issue. I’m not sure why Apple Support tells users that there is no Office for Mac. ?? (They told this to a client of mine recently.)

I highly recommend getting Cocktail and running it once a month on your Mac. https://www.maintain.se/cocktail
The free version gives you a few uses then you have to buy. I’d just flat out buy it. It is the best software out there to keep your Mac’s Unix underpinnings optimised and running happy. Get the $19 single user version, it’s worth it.

If you need FTP, I recommend Transmit. It’s been around forever and it’s rock solid. It’s not cheap at $34, but it is really excellent.

Use Chrome. It is an excellent browser and you can tweak it to be very secure. Second choice is Safari. Third choice is Firefox (mozilla). You’ll probably need more than one browser handy no matter what you have because lazy corporate web coders who use ASP will not code their sites to work properly with anything Mac. It’s not that it’s a big deal to be 100% compatible, it’s that ASP coders tend to rock it like it’s 1999. Sad but true. If you run across a site that won’t function properly in your browser, it’s good to have a backup to try. Oddly, I find that ASP sites that won’t work in Chrome (Mac) will typically work in Safari. If the site won’t work at all, then send them hate email and find another site that employs decent coders. ;)

And don’t forget to check out the Apple App store as well (there is a shortcut in your dock!). Lots of apps that are in iOS have been ported to Mac and there are TONS of handy little free apps for all sorts of things, like finding special characters on your keyboard or getting the hex number for a colour. Cool stuff!

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Twitter Primer

Twitter is sort of like text messaging, but shorter: only 140 characters. Twitter users are identified by their @ handles: @misangela, @taqueriavecino, @carolynscupcake. If you don’t put the @, then that person will not know that you are tweeting to or about them.

Hashtags (#) are officially used to make a topic trend, but we Twitter folk tend to use them for all sorts of silliness. You’ll see stuff like #AIDSday, #oscarredcarpet or #fb, which is the hashtag that you can use to crosspost a tweet to FB. The thing that makes this #fb tag work is an app called Selective Tweets that you can install on FB.

Another part of twitter is retweeting. You’ll see RT in front of a post that has been retweeted (reposted) from someone you follow. This is how twitter users pass along info and get trends started. By using retweets and hashtags, you’ll see topics trend like mad. If you’ll look over your @ mentions, you’ll see that there are twitter users who follow you and retweet your posts occasionally. RTs are seen by all the followers of the person RTing, so you see how things can become exponential.

The basic rule for twitter advertising is this: repeat your deal 3x a day: morning, noon and night. This is to cover as many followers as possible. Twitter is a stream. TONS of tweets are missed due to the immediacy of it. That’s why tweeting 3x is useful. BUT I wouldn’t do that every day. There is such a thing as twitter spam and repeating yourself a lot every day will run off your followers.

Speaking of immediacy, it’s bad form to reply to an old tweet. Because of the flow of Twitter, it’s difficult to reply to someone commenting on a tweet from 3 days ago without context. If you do comment on something old (over a few hours), it’s best to preface your tweet with RE:[content of tweet you’re referencing]. That way the person your are tweeting to has an idea of what you’re talking about!

If only 10 of your followers RT your tweet, you can assume that you’ll reach 1000 people. Pretty cool, eh?

Twitter is a dynamic social conversation. You can interact with celebrities just as easily as friends. It truly is democratic in that way. I tweet a LOT on my personal feed. In fact, 95% of anything you see on my FB page is crossposted from Twitter.

I think Twitter is the best social media available. Get out there and TWEET SOMETHING! Here are the feeds we run:
@indigodragonIDS because a squatter got indigodragon. >:(
@misangela my personal feed
@thinkweasel Nick’s personal and comics feed