Ever wished there was a quick way to access all your Genesis related items right from your dashboard? Well there is!

The Genesis Toolbar Extras plugin is accessible from your WordPress admin bar.

Easy access to the support forum, tutorials, community tutorials and showcase to name a few.

Check it out here

Genesis Toolbar Extras – A Plugin from David Decker @ DECKERWEB

A post on the Genesis forums today was asking about theme security. As I said on the forum the best way to secure your theme is to secure your site.

The WordPress codex is a great place to start gathering information. See the Hardening WordPress article.

To help beef up security via your .htaccess file place this in the file directly after

# END WordPress

# to protect the .htaccess file itself:
<Files .htaccess>
order deny,allow
deny from all
</Files>

# to protect wp-config.php
<Files wp-config.php>
order allow,deny
deny from all
</Files>

Options -Indexes

You can access your .htaccess file via FTP or cpanel by migrating to the root of your site [where your wp-content,wp-admin, wp-includes folders are]. Make sure that you have chosen to show hidden files.

There are a number of plugins which are also helpful with security just a few include;

WordPress Firewall
Antivirus
WordPress File Monitor

And finally do not underestimate the importance of keeping your themes and WordPress install up-to-date. Sometimes updating will ‘break’ something or require you to deactivate a plugin that has not been kept up-to-date, but these are small annoyances compared with the hassle, heartbreak and expense of a hacked site.

Keeping Your WordPress Site Secure

How do I add space around my images or text?

Space is added via margins or padding.

Lets start with a square box,

You would want to adjust the padding – so padding refers to what is inside.

Let’s see the same box and text with 10px of padding added to the top and bottom, and 15px added to the sides.

so in your style.css you would have something like

#boxtest {
padding:10px 15px 10px 15px;<---this adds the space around the text
}

Margins

Perhaps the box is next to another box and you want to have a little space between them. In that case you would add a margin - margins set the space of elements from the outside edges.

Let’s add a top margin to the bottom box to give it some room, here are the same boxes after adding this to the bottom box style.

In your style.css you would have something like

#boxtest {
padding:10px 15px 10px 15px;<---Adds space around the inside text
margin:10px 0 0 0; <---Adds space to the top of the box itself
}

margins and padding work on a “clock” system

the first number is 12 or the top

the second number is 3 or the right

the third number is 6 or the bottom

the fourth number is 9 or the left

I hope this helps you to have a better understanding of padding and margins.

Beginners Guide to Padding and Margins

I have to confess I have never seen the draw to Starbucks. I had a coffee there once and while significantly more expensive was not in any way memorable. However many people are drawn to the brand and the logo is famous.

Starbucks wants to expand it’s range of products some of which will be coffee free so now that logo no longer includes the word Starbucks or the word coffee. Is this too brazen? After all what does a mermaid/siren on her own have to do with coffee let alone any other product – except perhaps fish? Is Starbucks a little too full of themselves in believing that their stylized maiden of the sea sans brand name will be enough to enslave even more devotees? I guess time will tell.

Starbucks Logo Change

I do not own the most expensive system ever but for just over a grand I would nevertheless not expect to have to reboot every time I engage my graphics card in any meaningful way.

It started with an inability to watch anything on YouTube. That problem was solved by switching off the graphics accelerator on Adobe Flash. Then it wouldn’t play an older direct x based game, fine uninstalled game. Now it just crashes on a whim.

My Nvidia Geforce GT 220 is a drunk driver on my internet highway, ready to crash at a moments notice and with no regard for others. Things are so bad I have almost considered going Mac. Though budget, an intense dislike of Jobs and distaste for fanboy kool-ade have prevented me going that far..though things could change!

Graphics Card Blues

Put an end to naked new tabs with this very useful new addon for Firefox called New Tab King. In the words of the developer

New Tab King is a browser add-on that’s available for you when launching a new browser tab. Instead of getting a blank page (or the Homepage in some cases), New Tab King provides you with your most visited sites as well as the sites you bookmarked on your own. Both these lists are ordered from most to least vested in the past 30 days. Each site is displayed with its description text and the website’s icon.

Screenshot

Download and further info here

New FireFox Addon: New Tab King

Users of Gmail will have noticed a new addition, Buzz. Reactions range from Oh Cool! to OMG!!!!! If you are wondering what all the fuss is about or how to turn it off – read this piece over at Fast Company

Like It or Lump it The Skinny on Buzz

Images can drastically alter the atmosphere and impact of your site. The hard part is finding images that don’t violate copyright. Fortunately there are some reasonably priced image resources for those of us working on limited budgets.

Stock.xchng offers photos and illustrations for free. Most can be used on personal or commercial sites. Most images are large enough to also be used on print media.

Stockxpert offers quality photos and illustrations starting from only $1US. Images are also available through subscription.

morgueFile offers photos and artwork free for commercial and personal use. It doesn’t have a mouseover feature to view images in a larger size, however it does contain a large number of quality images.

iStockphoto does offer images from $1US and have a dollar bin strictly for lower cost images.

Vectorstock offers vector images from $1US and also has a free section.

If you need current photos of news or entertainment events Picapp offers free photos and has a WordPress plugin which allows you to search their photos from your post admin page.

Of course remember to read all copyright and license agreements.

Image Resources