Blog Flak

I’ve put up two new guides for Blogger XML skins. One is for making an easy backup copy of your source code for restoring your widgets after installing a new template. The other one is for the actual installation of an XML template from a file on your computer. You can check them out from the links below:

Back Up Your Template Source Code

Installing A New Blogger XML Template

Don’t forget the rest of the great tutorials here on Blog Flak: Complete List

tags: skins, Blogger, templates, guides, XML, tutorial, widgets

I’ve put up a brand new Blogger XML skin today. It’s called Desert Sunrise and it’s a fluid width, meaning it expands in width according to the viewers screen width. It’s intended for screens at least 1024 pixels wide and wider. You can download it here: Desert Sunrise Theme over at Free Blogger Skins.

It’s has 3 columns and it supports drag and drop widgets for both left and right sidebars. There are a lot more free skins over there for both classic and xml Blogger, be sure to check them all out!

tags: skins, 3 column, templates, blogger, downloads

First off, I would like to express my deepest sympathies to the families and everyone else that were caught up in the shooting deaths and wounding of so many people at Virginia Tech. The nation is in mourning over this tragedy and words just cannot express the feelings that I’m sure are felt by the vast majority of the people in this fine nation.

I would like to point out though that there always seems to be some lower lifeforms that will try to capitalize on these types of events. I’m talking about scam artists, spammers and hackers that will use this tragedy to damage, destroy, steal or cheat you out of anything they can, by however means they can. There’s already been attempts to infect peoples PC’s with Trojan horse programs and viruses by encouraging people to click on links or view videos that include malware designed to steal banking information.

IT security and control firm Sophos has warned individuals of a social engineering phishing campaign that attempts to capitalize on the tragedy at Virginia Tech. Spam messages teasing camera phone footage of the Virginia Tech shootings have begun flooding inboxes worldwide. These messages, however, are infected with malware and could pose major problems if clicked through.

To avoid falling victim to one of the schemes, Sophos encourages individuals to take extreme caution when downloading links from an unidentified source and to make informed decisions about where they gather information

Also, already more than 450 new domain names have been purchased on the ‘net with names related to Virginia Tech, presumably, most will be used for scams, charity theft and phishing attempts. The registrations have already appeared faster than the number that occurred after the Hurricane Katrina disaster in August 2005.

Beware out there folks, don’t let these scumballs take you for a ride or steal your information. Make sure you know what you’re clicking on and always check out any charitable organization to ensure they are legit before you donate money. No matter how authentic the website looks!!

tags: scams, spammers, Virginia Tech, trojan horse, thieves

Blogger Buzz announces 8 brand new language choices. This brings the total up to 19 language choices for your favorite blogging platform. This is a great idea that will help bring mass communications and social networking to a worldwide audience like never before.

Here’s an excerpt:

Today we’ve unveiled Blogger translated into: Nederlands, Türkçe, Dansk, Norsk, Svenska, suomi, Русский, and ภาษาไทย. This is in addition to the eleven language choices we already offer, bringing the total to 19!

To change the language in which you use Blogger, go to our Choose a Language page. To change your blog’s language, go to Settings > Formatting.

Have fun creating all those new blogs!

tags: Blogger, blogspot, language

Blogger Buzz has announced the release of two new built in widgets for users of the “new” or “beta” publishing using the Ajax API. One is for easily adding video from places like You Tube and Google Video and the other is for easy to add headlines from Google News.

The Newsreel searches Google News for your chosen keywords and displays an ever-updating list of their search results. The Video Bar does the same for Google Video and YouTube searches, and even lets you play the videos without leaving your blog!

To use the new widgets, click your blog’s Layout link on your Dashboard, then click “Add a Page Element.” You’ll find the new widgets right at the top. As a bonus, the Newsreel will change from a list of summaries to a scrolling ticker depending on whether it’s in the sidebar or the main column, so drag ‘em around and see what you like.

Get ‘em while they’re hot!

tags: Blogger, beta, video, Blogspot, You Tube, Ajax, News

I’ve put up a new tutorial that explains how to change the publishing mode on Blogger from either “classic” or “beta”. Apparently a lot of people are still having trouble installing free or customized web templates in Blogger because they don’t understand the differences between the two modes or how to switch back and forth. It seems like at least once a week I get a complaint that one of our Free Blogger Skins templates won’t work, when they’re actually trying to use it in the wrong mode and there’s nothing wrong with the template.

It’s too bad that Blogger didn’t see fit to clearly mark the template editor pages with a designation to tell you what mode you are in. Then to top it off they’ve “hidden” the link to switch the mode UNDERNEATH the editor at the very bottom of the page. If you try to install a new template that you’ve downloaded and you get errors that won’t allow the template to work, this is a must read! You can find the new tutorial here:

How to Switch Blogger Modes

Hopefully this will help clear up some of the confusion.

tags: Blogger, beta mode, classic mode, Blogspot, themes, skins, templates

Never, ever delete your old blog even if you have no use for it again, that is, unless you don’t mind having it taken over by blog spammers. There’s an ever increasing use of automated software that can detect when someone stops using a blog address and it WILL be taken over by assh%les that will try to capitalize on whatever traffic and incoming links you may have been receiving before you deleted it. The type of sites they will set up can vary anywhere from pornography, to illegal drug sales and casinos and just about anything else you can imagine. No one wants to see the their old blog address associated with these types of web sites, it can be rather embarrassing!

Just imagine your mom or friends or neighbors clicking on your old blog address expecting to find you and pictures of your kittens or newborn baby and spotting X-rated pornography instead! It’s best to just leave your old blog there with a forwarding link to your new location or if you want to become anonymous, don’t put anything. Just don’t delete it!

If this has already happened to you, I encourage you to Contact Blogger and report it as a Terms of Service violation, because link farms, porn sites and spam blogs are in clear violation of Blogger’s rules. If you are blog surfing and happen upon one of these sites that is clearly NOT a blog but is on a Blogger/Blogspot address, please report it. Blogger will investigate and pull the plug on it.

Sometimes, you will click a link or hit “Next Blog” and you’ll notice the page quickly change to a new location to a link farm or spam site, this is a redirect that the spammer has set up on their site to take you away from Blogger. Don’t let these people take over! If you see that kind of violation, report them vigorously!

tags: Blogger, scumbag spammers, Blogspot, exploits

If you’ve downloaded and installed Wordpress 2.1.1 in the past few days you may have a nasty explotable bug in the files that was installed by someone that cracked in to the Wordpress server files. You need to download and re-upgrade to 2.1.2 immediately to insure the safety of your website or blog.

Longer explanation: This morning we received a note to our security mailing address about unusual and highly exploitable code in WordPress. The issue was investigated, and it appeared that the 2.1.1 download had been modified from its original code. We took the website down immediately to investigate what happened.

It was determined that a cracker had gained user-level access to one of the servers that powers wordpress.org, and had used that access to modify the download file. We have locked down that server for further forensics, but at this time it appears that the 2.1.1 download was the only thing touched by the attack. They modified two files in WP to include code that would allow for remote PHP execution. More on this story from Wordpress.org

The good people over at Wordpress.org have had to take stronger security measures to make certain that this never happens again. There’s always someone willing to try to steal, damage, deface or screw things up for everyone else isn’t there? I hope they figure out who it was and hopefully have the scum ball prosecuted.

tags: Wordpress, security, hacker, exploits

There’s a new article up at Yahoo News describing quite a number of annoyances built into Microsofts flagship new OS. Sounds like a dog to me, I personally have no plans on “upgrading” any time in the near future and you may want to read this article before you drop a bundle on the latest.

There’s lots to like in the newest version of Windows. Vista’s look is stunning, the OS should be more secure, and finding things is often easier. But Windows wouldn’t be Windows without those aspects, big and small, that just drive you nuts with frustration. Here’s our list of Vista features that just make us wonder, “What were they thinking?” Yahoo Article

I’m still fuming about the changes they made to Internet Explorer, IE 7 gives me fits every single day. And don’t bother telling me to “Get Firefox” because as a web developer I have to use all browsers interchangeably. I don’t like Internet Explorer but unfortunately I don’t have much of a choice. And to top it off I have to use a second PC to run IE 6 to check pages as well. I have to agree, “what were they thinking”?

tags: windows vista, Microsoft, operating system, software

The official Google Blog has announced that it’s no longer necessary to get an invitation to open a Gmail account. This is welcome news, Gmail is one of the best email programs out there. I’m constantly in awe of how well it’s spam filters trap all the nasty stuff and I’ve used a lot of different email programs. It’s now available in 40 different languages to boot! How cool is that? To sign up for your free Gmail account just head over to www.gmail.com and get yours!