Archive for the ‘Tips and tutorials’ Category
Getting started with Wordpress
Feb 10 04
Wordpress is one of the most popular Content Management Systems available, as of September 2009 
it is used by over 200 million websites worldwide. It is primarily a blogging software but it can also be used as a general content management for standard websites.
We will shortly be launching a new ‘Wordpress Hosting’ package, which will make it easy for you to set up and start writing your blog/website with a minimum of technical know-how. We’ll take care of the installation, set up the back end database and provide you with your user details. All you need to do is start typing!
Below is a guide which will enable you to have a fully working website or blog in minutes.
Once you login with the details we provide you, you will be presented with your Wordpress Dashboard, which is the control panel that will take care of pretty much everything on your blog, form the writing of posts to the style and layout of your site.
The first thing to do is choose the kind of layout you would like and this is done in the Appearance section under ‘Themes’ There are thousands of free themes available, just click on ‘add new theme’ and you can search through Wordpress’s extensive list of available themes. Once you have chosen a theme click ‘install’ and Wordpress will then upload that theme to your account. Then click on the ‘themes’ section and activate the theme you have just installed. Then visit your website and you will see your content presented in the layout and style of the theme you have chosen.
Once you have set up your theme you can then start to customize the website. When you first visit your site you will see the Wordpress default tag line ‘Just another Wordpress Blog’ To remove this click on ‘general’ in the Settings section and remove or replace the text in the Tagline field.
Next, you can go to your Permalinks section and modify the way your posts links are displayed. The default permalink structure uses question marks and a lot of numbers. e.g http://www.your-name-here.co.uk/blog/?p=123.
If you change this to the ‘day and name’ option your web url’s will look cleaner and this is a more search engine friendly method. See below:
You are now pretty much ready to start writing. Wordpress does put a test post and test comment on your account. If you would like to remove them fist before you start, just go to the top left corner of your Wordpress Dashboard and click on ‘Posts’ then ‘Edit’ and remove the default text, then do the same in the ‘Comments ‘ section.
Now you have your website style and you’re ready to go, you may will want to add some Plugins, which add extra functionality to your site. Anything you can think of to add to your blog or website, there is probably a Wordpress plugin for it. Social networking Plugins are particularly popular.
You search for a Plugin the same way you would search for a Theme. Once you have installed your Plugin, go to the Plugins section of your Dashboard and click on ‘installed’ and then click on ‘activate’ In there are any further settings to configure the Plugin will appear in your dashboard sidebar, so you just click on the Plugin name and follow the instructions. Plugins are very useful and they can add so much to your site so it’s worth checking them out. You can find an excellent list of top Wordpress Plugins here.
That’s it! You’re ready to go, so start creating your content.
One other thing we recommend you do, is sign up to Google Analytics as it is a great resource for checking your website/blog’s stats and it can really help you optimise your site for the search engines.
Use the Google Analytics plugin in the link above, then you just sign up for a Google account and copy the code Google give you, into the plugin you have installed.
A full guide to Google Analytics can be found here.
Make the most of your Spam Filter
Oct 09 07
The fight against Spam is a significant challenge that you face daily, and it continues to be one of the biggest problems on the Internet. Spammers are clever and they will continually conjure up new ways to bypass spam filters, so unwanted email will always be there, but you can dramatically reduce the amount of spam you receive if you use your Spam filter correctly.
Spam Assassin 
At Your-Name Here our choice of default Spam Filter is Spam Assassin.
SpamAssassin uses a variety of spam-detection techniques, that includes sophisticated scoring filters, Bayesian statistics, external programs, blacklists and online databases.
Used correctly, it can be a very effective deterrent against unwanted email.
How to configure Spam Assassin.
- Firstly login to your Plesk control panel.
- Click on the Mail icon under Services.
- Click on the email address you would like to configure settings for.
- Then click on the Spam Filter icon in the Tools section.
- In the Preferences section, you firstly set the score/tolerance level that email must hit before it is recognised as Spam. Each email is scored between 1 and 10 . As an example, if you were to receive an email with the subject ‘Buy Viagra Now’ that would score 8 or 9 as it is obviously Spam. The default setting is 7, which is usually a good place to start, but if you feel Spam is not being recognised enough, you just lower it to 6 or 5 and see how it goes.
- The What to do with Spam section gives you the choice to remove Spam automatically when it comes to the mailbox, or still deliver the email and mark it as xxxSpamxxx. If you want to include into the subject line the number of points that messages score, type _SCORE_ in this box. This will help you determine the best score setting to have.
- Next is the Blacklist section which allows you block specific addresses or domains that you do not want to receive mail from. You can add muliple entries, seperated by a tab, a colon or a comma. If you do not want to receive anything from any address at a particular domain you can use * as a wildcard. Just type *@domain.com and any user at that domain will be blacklisted.
- Similarly there is also a Whitelist section. If you want to be sure you do not miss any emails from specific senders, you can add multiple entries to your Whitelist in the same way.
- Click on the Training tab to improve accuracy of spam detection by training the spam filter on the e-mail messages that you have in your mailbox. Simply highlight an email and click on ‘It’s Spam’ or ‘Not Spam’ Once finished with training, you can remove spam e-mails from your mailbox using your e-mail program or Horde IMP Webmail interface.
- Once finished with your spam filter settings, remember to click the ‘Switch On’ icon, and then click OK.
That’s it! Your Spam filtering is now enabled and set to your specific requirements. The settings can be modified at any time in the same area of your Plesk control panel.
How do I upload my webfiles?
Sep 09 29
There are two main ways to upload your website files to your web hosting server:
FTP (File Transfer Protocol)
The most common way to upload your files is through FTP. This requires an FTP program. There are many FTP programs out there but we would recommend Filezilla as it is very user friendly. You can download Filezilla free from the following address:
http://filezilla-project.org/ 
and click on ‘Download Filezilla client’
Once you have downloaded this, open up Filezilla and click on the top left icon (computer screen) and click ‘New Site’ and enter ****domain*** or any description as this is just the label for the site, then enter the following details into the boxes:
Host = Given in your web hosting welcome email
Port = 21
Servertype = FTP
LogonType = Change the drop down list to Normal
Username = Given in your web hosting welcome email
Password = Given in your web hosting welcome email
Then click Connect, and double click on the ‘httpdocs’ folder to enter
your hosting webspace.
Once you are connected you will have 2 split windows, the left hand side is the files on your computer, the right hand side is your web space, in order to upload your files you need to either drag and drop from left to right, or double click on your left hand files to upload to the right. You will notice the transfer progress on the bottom of the screen. If all is well Filezilla should display the files you have uploaded on the right hand screen and your website should now be visible in your internet browser window.
Using the Plesk File Manager to upload your files.
This method comes on any package hosted on a Plesk server 
You will be given your control panel user details in your welcome email. Once logged into the control panel you will see this icon. Click on this and you will again be connected to your server’s web directories and again click on ‘httpdocs’ to manage your webfiles.
How to use the File Manager
Once you click into your httpdocs directory your webfiles will appear as in the image below:
Other commands you can do from here would be to create or delete folders and files, change file and folder permissions, edit existing files and rename files and folder. Here are a few more helpful tips to use with Plesk’s File Manager:
- To upload a file to the current directory, click add new file, then either browse your computer or ‘create new’ file and specify its location. Click OK.
- To create a folder that will be located in the current directory, click ‘Add New Directory’, then type in the directory name in the Directory name field and click OK.
- To edit an existing file source, click the Edit File icon (pencil). The File Manager’s editor window will open, allowing you to edit the file source. When you have finished with your changes, click ‘Save’ to save the file then OK to save the file and return to the File Manager panel.
- To remove a file or directory, select the corresponding checkbox, and click Remove Selected.
- To rename a directory or file, click on the Rename icon (small rectangle). A new page will open allowing you to rename the selected file or directory. Type in a new name and click OK.
- To change permissions for a file or directory, click on the permissions icon (which will look something like rw- r– r–) the permissions settings page will open, allowing you to set the required permissions. Select the correct settings for the file then click OK to submit.