Some websites are blacked out today to raise awareness about SOPA. I think this is great because I share WordPress.org and many other organizations’ opposition to SOPA. But I also share Mashable’s sentiment about it being a slight bummer if you wanted to be productive and use online tools today like Wikipedia. Stan at Mashable just posted a great bit about how to access Wikipedia during the blackout. He suggests disabling JavaScript. It’s easy to do, and here’s how to disable it in Safari.

Click the image below to view the screenshot of the Safari Preferences panel. You’ll find the JavaScript settings under the menu Safari > Preferences, then click “Security” pane, then toggle the settings off to disable, then surf.

Just don’t forget to re-activate your JavaScript settings after you’re done surfing the blacked out sites. You’ll especially want JavaScript active if you have a blog to maintain! All the buttons and formatting images are powered by javascript, and you’ll wonder, “Who broke my WordPress?”

This video tutorial is for you WordPress users out there who might encounter, or who blood well have encountered issues after updating to the latest version of WordPress  3.3 —specifically issues with uploading media into posts and pages. “Sonny”, as it is called, is quite slick, but there are issues if you don’t empty your cache after updating WordPress. I updated to the latest WordPress version and was frustrated when I couldn’t get the upload media window to work. I wanted to insert an image, and just got a black screen. I wish I had read this super helpful troubleshooting list before updating:

http://wordpress.org/support/topic/troubleshooting-wordpress-33-master-list?replies=5

The solution to the WordPress 3.3 upload / insert media bug in Safari (perhaps in other browsers too) is to simply empty your cache. All of us web designers / webmasters  using WordPress should be doing this regularly—regardless of which browser we use—but it’s especially important if you’re using Safari on the Mac, as I recently discovered. I created this tutorial is for you mac folk out there.

Feel free to watch the whole video, which demonstrates adding an image into a page before and after the WordPress update. I showcase what happens to the add media window after updating to 3.3, but you can jump ahead if you wish to 4:30 min:sec to see the empty cache solution. Hopefully you watch this before updating to 3.3 to prevent any frustration in the first place.

Happy blogging.

Be on the look out for a sophisticated phishing scam that seems to be attacking PayPal transaction users and/or account holders. Here’s what happened to me recently…

I paid for a fundraiser this week through the charity’s online payment process using PayPal. I also have a PayPal account for business so used the default e-check payment rather than a credit card. I’m not sure if that last detail is what matters, but what happened is concerning…

Within two hours of my payment I received a fake email claiming to be (and it looked very real) a payment moderator with NACHA, a legitimate e-payment association (and who are they right? They never email people) The fraudulent email had a zipped attachment (likely viral) that was claimed to be a form for me to fill out and return to NACHA. If you ever get an email from NACHA, delete it totally. I took a screenshot then deleted the email and everything about it from my computer and reported the abuse to the good folks at NACHA who know about this phishing scam, and said the following in their reply, which I thought I would share.

From: Abuse <abuse@NACHA.ORG>
Date: September 7, 2011 12:08:24 PM EDT
To: Chris Gooderham
Subject: Automatic reply: Two hours After a PayPal transaction, I received this email

Thank you for forwarding your suspected fraudulent email to NACHA for analysis.

NACHA has been the victim of sustained and evolving phishing attacks in which consumers and businesses are receiving emails that appear to come from NACHA. The attacks are occurring with greater frequency and increased sophistication.

NACHA itself does not process nor touch the ACH transactions that flow to and from organizations and financial institutions. NACHA does not send communications to persons or organizations about individual ACH transactions that they originate or receive.

Your cooperation will assist in our efforts with security experts and law enforcement officials to pursue the perpetrators.

Sincerely,

NACHA — The Electronic Payments Association

As you’ll learn on my about me page, I have been building websites for over a decade now. But for too long I fit into the classic stereotype; the web designer’s website always comes last. It’s like the saying my mom reminded me of, “The shoe cobbler’s kids go shoeless”. Well, here I am with a fresh new website. And it’s a slick WordPress theme I customized just pour moi, with easy-to-update features that should keep me going for a while. I’ve recently adopted WordPress into my toolkit and must say, way to go Matt. Let me know if you ever need help!