It never ceases to amaze me that when I want to find some sort of additional WordPress functionality, I normally can find a plugin that does it! Today is another one of those examples. On this site right here, I wasn’t interested in having my contact page “followed” — so I was looking for an easy way to nofollow it from my navigation bar. A quick search on google and I had my answer.

Along comes Page List Plus to the rescue. This a very handy plugin that not only lets you specify if the page is followed or not, but it also allows you to change the anchor text and attributes in the navigation. Have a page named “Search Louisville Kentucky Homes” as its name, but have it say “Search Homes” in your menu navigation. Just another tool for the toolbox! You can find the plugin at the WordPress Plugin Database, located at http://www.wordpress.org/extend/plugins/page-list-plus/

If you are running a WordPress blog or website, take notice — I have a few friends who have told me about having their websites hacked.   Keeping your WordPress version updated, as well as paying attention to what plugins you install can go a long way.  However, this little gem of advice will help keep your blog invisible to some spam searching bots.  Simply add this code to your .htaccess file.  This bit of code will return a 404 for a request to wp-config.php which, hopefully, will confuse spam bots into bypassing your WordPress site.

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^(.*)wp-config(.*)\.php$ $1wp-config$2\.php [R=404,L]
</IfModule>

Give it a shot!

Earlier today I was doing some updating on my real estate site and my host was hit with a DDos attack.  Thankfully, they got that all squared away and fixed.  However, something happend along that same time period.  I don’t know if the two are related (although, I think they are) I was updating a post, and when I saved the post — it locked  up.  An hour later after my host had restored service… my post was GONE!  I started to feel flush and nervous.  I was cursing under my breath, trying to remember the last time I had done a full site backup.  Oh, and in case you were wondering the answer to THAT question — it has been too long.  It has always been too long.

WordPress Post Revisions to the rescue!  I was able to go in and restore one of my previous post revisions from last week.  It really saved the day!  For every time I’ve seen my post revision number stack up to 20 or more and wonder why in the world I haven’t researched turning this feature off, now I know why.