WordPress and Cloud Storage Apps – How Safe is Your Data?

Up, Up, and Away!

We somehow have this picture in our minds that all the stuff we upload online is somehow floating over our heads, whisked way, way up into cyberspace. But what do we know about Cloud Storage and what really happens to all the files we upload? Maybe some people can probably relate to this old song about clouds by Joni Mitchell.

I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down and still somehow
It’s cloud’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know clouds at all

Is Cloud Storage all that it promises to be? Convenience, accessibility, tons of file space. Is it possible that this nice, fluffy, feel good Cloud could go wrong and cause seemingly irreparable damage to its users? Case in point, the recent celebrity photo hacks, Dropbox, iCloud, Snapchat, etc. Is Cloud Storage really safe to use?

Of Dropbox, Copy, Box, and other Cloud Storage Apps

Cloud storage service is an amazing innovation, which allows you to upload, store and share images, videos, and other type of content online. How does it work?

Cloud storage is a model of data storage where the digital data is stored in logical pools, the physical storage spans multiple servers (and often locations), and the physical environment is typically owned and managed by a hosting company. These cloud storage providers are responsible for keeping the data available and accessible, and the physical environment protected and running. People and organizations buy or lease storage capacity from the providers to store end user, organization, or application data.

Cloud storage services may be accessed through a co-located cloud compute service, a web service application programming interface (API) or by applications that utilize the API, such as cloud desktop storage, a cloud storage gateway or Web-based content management systems. (source: Wikipedia)

Ok. That’s a mouthful. In other words, Cloud Storage “refers to saving data to an off-site storage system maintained by a third party. Instead of storing information to your computer’s hard drive or other local storage device, you save it to a remote database. The Internet provides the connection between your computer and the database.”

Hacker Proof Cloud Storage

Does it exist? Probably not. Just like secrets, keeping digital information from getting into mischievous hands is like pinky swearing. There is no fool-proof way. Ever tried to format, erase or delete photos from your memory card or your hard drive? Guess what. They still live there, way below the recesses of your storage device and can still be extracted using recovery software. Yup, even after you’ve formatted or reformatted (quick reformat and not full format) And that’s just local storage. Still very much within the scope of your control. But what about cyber storage? Does this mean that you shouldn’t use Cloud Storage at all?

Secure Your Online Data

People are paranoid about large-scale theft of personal information. Unknowingly, they post more than just the usual profile information required when joining a social or public website. (Check out this amazing mind reader.) Their entire lives are posted blow by blow on social media – voluntarily. But the operative word here is – voluntarily. Quite the opposite of theft, where someone takes away from someone against his or her will or permission.

There will always be risks. Whether online or offline. Once anything is uploaded and publicly shared, the risks should have been supposedly counted already. It can be stolen, shared without permission, downloaded, altered, wrongfully claimed, disputed, etc. It’s a reality. Of course, the expectations change when information is shared with restrictions.

People need to be fully aware of what they are sharing, to whom they are sharing it with, and where (websites, online storage, etc.) they share, post, or upload. Make sure to read and understand (someone said this is the biggest lie online) the terms of use of websites and note if there are any third party clauses that allow these websites to share, sell, or pool personal information to their suppliers or sponsors.

Use a strong password and don’t repeat the same password in different places. Consider a password manager. Use the two-step verification or two factor verification option if a website provides one. Do manual backup instead of automated backups. It doesn’t hurt to create your own self-policing practices to ensure that your rights to privacy or ownership rights are not violated.

Best WordPress Themes 2021

UPDATED April 12, 2021: 2021 is sure to be another great year for WordPress Theme development. Like the millions and millions of people using WordPress, we eagerly await the Themes and Plugins to be released this year, and you can …

Creative WordPress Themes January 2014

Update your creative portfolio with a new look and a new WordPress theme. Check out these great looking portfolio styled WordPress themes to start the year fresh:

Horizontall

Horizontall Premium WordPress Theme is a unique, clean, and modern premium theme with excellent typographic aesthetics that allows for both horizontal navigation and vertical navigation all in one theme. Primarily suited for a creative portfolio with rich content, this theme is extremely customizable and flexible enough to fit all other types of websites. Portfolio images or plain text content can fit in any of the 9 schemes that come with the theme. You can customize sizes, colors, elements to display, and you can display 3 different sections of your site with different custom styles.

Scripts and styles are compressed and images are loaded with Lazyload for fast loading content. Content of individual articles are loaded dynamically into the home page or category page, while the address bar changes accordingly to what you are viewing. This way users can access the content without reloading the page, and share it or bookmark it to come back later.

Warhol

Warhol Premium WordPress Theme is a responsive portfolio theme built with clean design, smooth scroll and functionality to best present your creative work. It has different post types like: blog, service, gallery and testimonial posts. This premium theme is simple to use and its branding features give you numerous options to customize colors and fonts to create your own style. The multi layout option with 13 template pages gives you several choices to create your own unique look. You also have audio playing capabilities for photography sites that want to have audio playing in the background.

PortfolioRx

PortfolioRx Premium WordPress Theme is a clean and well-structured minimalistic Swiss-styled portfolio theme designed for creatives. The overall look and aesthetics coupled with typographic and media choices have a retro flair that will appeal to design agencies. PortfolioRx is perfect for artists from any discipline: web, graphic, motion, sound, print, art whether for an online portfolio or for personal use. It comes with a powerful admin panel, 4 different custom widgets, short codes generator, contact form 7 support, a smart scrollbar (can be enabled in the theme settings), and so much more.

Portal

Portal Premium WordPress Theme is a full screen portfolio template with tons of options for displaying your work. It comes with: 35 layouts for displaying content, a logo portfolio, architecture portfolio, web design portfolio, product portfolio, illustrations portfolio and software portfolio ready for you to insert your content. It also includes a unique horizontal scroll gallery and portfolio sections perfect for presenting your work in a full screen environment. You also have 5 different blog post versions, drag and drop page editing, Revolution Slider, tons of icons, and so many other features design agencies can use to set up their sites.

Dignity

Dignity Premium WordPress Theme is a dynamic multi layout portfolio theme that gives you a ton of layout possibilities for you or your client’s website. This simple & easily reusable One Page styled web template with an expanding portfolio feature is an effective way to present all your creative work all in one page. Featuring 12 home page variants, animated elements, parallax layers, retina ready & responsive layout, full screen BG images / BG video YouTube & Vimeo / Full screen Flickr Images BG, AJAX media portfolio, touch carousels and many more features.

Ebor

Ebor Premium WordPress Theme is an elegant and professional looking portfolio theme perfect for agencies, individuals, freelancers or bloggers looking to present an online portfolio without overdoing it. This simple and straight forward theme packs a lot of hidden power with lots of awesome features. Ebor uses a new custom field in the WordPress Customiser – a Google font selector – curating for you 10 perfectly crafted, hand picked fonts that are just right to create that professional aesthetic. Ebor comes with a built in Coming Soon Page, a built in Maintenance Page,full support for Contact Form 7, included plugins, Revolution Slider, a short code plugin, and many other well-thought out features without the bloat. This premium theme is designed to keep things simple for you without sacrificing design and function.

Angle

Angle Premium WordPress Theme is a multi-purpose, ultra-flexible, fully responsive WordPress theme sporting a flat design from another angle. The unique graphic and geometric aesthetics powered by Bootstrap functionality makes this theme extremely flexible. Key features include: Visual Composer, Revolution Slider, Isotope, SVG PAge Section Decorations, WPML Ready, Font Awesome Icons, and a whole lot more. It also comes with several page templates like Product Launch Page, Shop Page, Blog Page, Pricing Page, 404 Page, Maintenance Mode Page, and several other pages useful to any online service or business.

Miscellaneous WordPress Themes January 2014

Start off the year in style with these miscellaneous WordPress themes to match your online business:

Cafeteria Responsive WordPress Theme

Cafeteria Responsive WordPress Theme is a premium theme designed for a cafeteria web site, a restaurant web site, or any other types of food service website such as bistros, bars, fast foods, bakeshops, etc. The sweet and deliciously saccharine design appeal of this theme will surely put a smile on your clients’ faces. The template is adaptive and very easy to customize sporting a semi retro style complete with parallax effects to help make your site simply irresistible.

Mercy NGO Charity & Environmental/Political Theme

Mercy Premium WordPress Theme is a clean and elegant theme, developed mainly to setup NGOs, non-profit organizations and corporate websites. It is easy to fully customize the layout, colors and style within minutes due to the superb flexibility of its framework. You can also create unique websites for other purposes like magazine, blog, creative or business. Use the color picker to create your own color scheme and make it as elegant or as high impact as you want. This theme is most suitable for small to large NGO organizations’ website. This clean and minimalist PayPal integrated theme allows you to add as many causes as you need, is translation ready with built in RTL support, and is also WooCommerce ready.

Humbleshop Minimal Easy Digital Downloads Theme

Humbleshop Premium WordPress Theme is a Bootstrap based framework theme designed for the Easy Digital Downloads Plugin. This simple and straightforward responsive theme comes with a real-time theme customizer, related product function, and is additional product image ready. It also includes scripts and plugins: Flexslider, Magnific Popup, Fitvids, Equalize, and Selectnav, to give you more customization options.

Party Night Night Club WordPress Theme

Partynight Premium WordPress Theme is a sleek and modern club and party WordPress Theme for night clubs, parties, night events etc. Its flat, clean, and tidy graphics create a classy vibe sans the usual garish and screaming designs typical of night club or events themes. Enhanced functionality allows users to easily customize the look of the theme. Main Features include: Revolution Slider, Events booking support, Table reservation support, Advanced Events organizer (tickets, event builder), WPML support, News Management, and Blog Management.

Actority WordPress Template for Casting Agencies

Actority Premium WordPress Theme is a professional responsive casting agencies’ WordPress template especially designed for those in the entertainment or theater industry. If you’re a producer looking for background talent, or a background actor looking for work, create your own online portal with Actority. This premium theme can also be for other kinds of agencies like real estate or a travel/tourist agency. This fully responsive theme includes several pages like: For Actors page, Application List page, Contact page, Portfolio page (filterable), and other additional page templates. Actority fits any screen, from the largest desktop screens, to any tablet size, down to the smallest smartphones and is very intuitive on any device.

Play With The Code Using These WordPress Code Editors

Majority of WordPress users hate messing with code. But, there are those, (developers, but certainly not limited to) who can’t get enough of it and consider spending countless hours of coding simply child’s play. Here are some of these code editing “toys” you can try to get your fill of code poetry heaven.

Shift Edit

This online editor allows you to: access files from various sources (FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, Dropbox, Google Drive, or Amazon S3), autocomplete code for HTML tags, CSS and PHP code assist, highlight syntax errors and automatically fix them, do live editing and see realtime updates as you tweak your code, step back to a previous version of the file, open and save files when using the chrome app.

“The online IDE is one of the final frontiers of apps ported to the web. I would like to be able to develop from any computer or operating system and have the same experience without having to install software or configure anything.” – Adam Jimenez (founder)

Codeanywhere

Codeanywhere is a code editor in a browser with an integrated ftp client, and all popular web formats are supported (HTML, PHP, JavaScript, CSS, and XML). It lets you code from anywhere, without the need to bring anything along with you. Just log on to Codeanywhere with any computer or smartphone, and all your servers (FTP, SFTP and Dropbox), files, everything is waiting for you, even the files you left open will be open when you login again. Key features include: syntax highlighting, code folding, smart indentation, full internationalization, displays line number, word wrap, code indention (Tab key), unlimited undo/redo, etc.

BluePen Editor

BluePen Editor is a PHP-powered CSS editor that can be installed to any static or dynamic website and makes live CSS editing possible. It’s an online visual CSS editor and a “must have” web developer tool which makes a difference in styling online content: it runs in a browser (it’s an online application), it makes you see the changes immediately (Real-time editing), it’s a stylesheet editing software (CSS styling).

Advanced Code Editor

Advanced Code Editor enables syntax highlighting in the integrated themes and plugins source code editors. This plugin supports PHP, HTML, CSS and JS. Effectively edit your themes or plugins when you only have access to a browser, by enabling syntax highlighting in WordPress integrated source code editors. Other features include: mixed language syntax highlighting, smart search, full screen editor, multiple undo and redo, ajax create/delete file, ajax create new directory, auto format and indenting code, and so much more.

WP Editor

WP Editor is a plugin for WordPress that replaces the default plugin and theme editors as well as the page/post editor. Using integrations with CodeMirror and FancyBox to create a feature rich environment, WP Editor completely reworks the default WordPress file editing capabilities. Using Asynchronous Javascript and XML (AJAX) to retrieve files and folders, WP Editor sets a new standard for speed and reliability in a web-based editing atmosphere.

Better File Editor

This plugin replaces the boring, clunky, and difficult to use theme and plugin editor with a full-featured code editor using the Ajax.org Cloud9 Editor. Adds line numbers, syntax highlighting, code folding, and lots more to the theme and plugin editors in the admin panel.

MultiMedia WordPress Themes August 2013

Today’s multimedia audience has been bombarded with multi sensory stimuli that engage and entertain like never before. Competing in such an environment is pretty challenging and demands a lot of creativity especially when it comes to web design. Here are some innovative WordPress themes that offer you more than your usual WordPress fare:

Fuji Full Screen WordPress Theme

Fuji Premium WordPress Theme is an innovative theme with design aesthetics that are far from your typical WordPress theme design. Its modern and clean design is visually refreshing in every aspect. All the best trends in web development have been implemented in this theme: No pages reload (Html5 pushstate), Retina ready, Responsive Layout, Audio Player and Css3 animations are just some of the features of this theme. It also includes features such as: 9 different page types (Home, Standard Page, Column Page, Full Page, Half Page, Collection, Gallery, Video and Blog), Unlimited Galleries, Unlimited Collections (Portfolio) and Unlimited Audio Tracks, and so much more to fit any type of web application you need.

Acid Unique Horizontal Blog and Portfolio Theme

Why scroll downwards when you can scroll or swipe sideways? Acid Premium WordPress Theme combines the best design features you adore in Metro and One-Page and brings it all together into this one theme. Choose from Colorful Hipster, Serious Black, and Retro Grandma to create the website you need in the style that you want. This theme includes the following key features: unique portfolio layout, unlimited color options, mini parallax, unlimited scroll, One-Page horizontal layout with the option to choose and use the Metro Style blog and portfolio or a combination of both.

Anthe WordPress Theme

If creativity is your passion then up the ante and create a website that reflects just that with Anthe Premium WordPress Theme – a reliable, fast and responsive WordPress theme designed to promote small design agencies or big creative minds. This fresh and creative premium theme gives you four page styles and two page layout options. It’s a 2 in 1 theme – multi-page & single-page solution – all in one package. You can combine your WP pages to create incredible single pages with only a few clicks.

WildHorn Full Screen WordPress Theme

Wildhorn Premium WordPress theme is a full screen theme designed to put your multimedia content (images, videos, and audio) in the spotlight. Equipped with the bests trends in web development such as: No pages reload (Html5 pushstate), Retina ready, Responsive Layout, Audio Player and Css3 animations. This theme also comes with an embedded music player (can be turned on or off) to add that something extra to the whole web experience.

Wave WordPress Theme for Artists

If you are an artist looking for a theme to house your art on the web check out Wave Premium WordPress theme – a responsive WordPress theme made for artists that can also be used as a portfolio cum blog by anyone needs a theme to showcase images and galleries and a blog as well. It is designed on a 1180px grid with 16 columns which can be quite flexible for showcasing art in different sizes or dimensions. This premium theme is also WooCommerce ready which opens up opportunities for artists to sell their artwork online right on the spot.

Basic and Specific Quality Guidelines to Help Your Site Get Indexed

Creating a quality website that will stand up to any standard should be any website owner’s goal. The Internet is reaching a point where it will be more and more challenging to “hide” techniques (good or bad) from users particularly digital natives who are growing up in this Internet environment like fish to water. Here are some of Google’s guidelines to consider as you build your quality website.

Basic Principles to guide you as you build your website:

  • Be user friendly – create pages primarily for users, not for search engines.
  • Be credible and don’t deceive your users.
  • Be user helpful – Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A useful test is to ask, “Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?”
  • Be unique, valuable, or engaging. Make your website stand out from others in your field but offering more than what’s already out there.

Specific Guidelines and Techniques to Avoid:

  • Auto generated content containing keywords but makes no sense
  • Participating in link schemes like buying and selling links to increase Page Rank, Excessive link exchange, and other unnecessary links
  • Cloaking is a violation of Google Webmaster Guidelines because it provides users with results other than they expected
  • Sneaky redirects or sending users to a different url is deceptive
  • Hidden text or links (font colors, behind image, etc.) that send users to other urls is also deceptive
  • Doorway pages that funnel users to sites or pages you want to send traffic to.
  • Scraped content copied from other sites without adding any original content or value
  • Websites stuffed with affiliate programs alone without adding sufficient value
  • Loading pages with irrelevant keywords to manipulate pagerank
  • Creating pages with malicious behavior, such as phishing or installing viruses, trojans, or other badware without the user’s consent
  • Abusing rich snippets markup or manipulating code to mislead users
  • Sending automated queries to Google is not allowed
  • Engage in good practices like the following:
  • Monitoring your site for hacking and removing hacked content as soon as it appears
  • Preventing and removing user-generated spam on your site

Adhering to these basic and specific guidelines will help you build a website that will not only be beneficial to the website owner but to the whole Internet community as well.

Top 5 Themes for Non-Profit Organizations

It’s now that time of the year when most of the world celebrates Christmas. It is the season when the Christian world reflects on the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ which ultimately leads to his sacrifice on the cross so people may live a much better life in Him. It is also during this time when people are reminded to think beyond themselves and work towards causes to make the world a better place to live in. In the spirit of Christmas, we are featuring top 5 best selling and well rated themes for non-profit organizations:

1. Churchope

Churchope is a WordPress theme designed for churches. The homepage features a great slider perfect for giving visitors a brief presentation on what the church mission and beliefs are. The theme has capabilities for embedding videos as well as playing audio tracks. It also has a great calendar system to keep church members updated on the next church event. Overall, whether it’s viewing or listening to the latest sermon online or catching up with the next church activities, Churchope meets those needs and so much more.

2. WP Church

This is another theme that’s perfect for churches. It has an amazing slider set on a wood finish background. WP Church also gives visitors the chance to watch videos and audio tracks, listen to preaching or testimonies, and keep track of event countdowns on a dedicated event page. It also has a special scripture tool that automatically adds scripture text when the scripture reference (e.g. Ps. 121:1) is typed.

3. Campaign

This is a special theme for individuals running for public office. Candidate updates and news may be posted as well as a schedule for campaign events & sorties. There’s also a special tool for capturing names & email addresses of constituents and supporters and even a special, easy to set-up donation button. This theme can also be used for fund raising, charity events and the like.

4. Earth

This premium WordPress theme is designed for today’s eco-warriors. The environmental movement relies heavily on images to tell the stories of how the planet’s resources are being depleted because of human and industrial factors. Earth has great multimedia presentation capabilities that can help tell that story. This theme has an amazing slider that capable of embedding powerful video presentations to stir up conservation. It also has great sortable portfolio pages perfect for documenting various conservation projects of any environmental organization.

5. Animal Care

Animal care is a theme designed for cause oriented groups or movements who want to establish an online presence. This theme’s home page has a beautiful slider that can be used to effectively communicate the organization’s mission. The theme has allotted ample space for images, blog pages, and there is also a special box for special news posts regarding the organizations activities. Interested parties are given an opportunity to donate via a special donation button on the homepage.

There are more themes out there designed for non-profits. Hat tip to all the designers and developers who have created these themes to help the advancement of great causes.

BuddyPress WordPress Themes 2013: Trends

BuddyPress has come a long way since its conceptualization in 2008. What is BuddyPress anyway?

According to WPMU.org:

“BuddyPress is a suite of plugins for WordPress that transforms into a fully functional social network platform.
When installed on WordPress Multisite it provides features that lets your members socially interact with each other within a multi-blogging platform environment. It provides all the features that allow you to build a community on your network. BuddyPress enables you to build passionate users around a specific niche.”

Buddypress.org puts it quite succinctly:

“BuddyPress is Social Networking, the WordPress way.”

The concept of turning a WordPress site into a social network is indeed radical and has not been lacking in challenges. What is amazing is that BuddyPress users of today find a plugin that fully integrates into ordinary WordPress as opposed to the few who were tinkering with WPMU a couple of years back. With its latest version, 1.6, BuddyPress is an easy to use plugin with good content management capability. You can enjoy the benefit of user generated content with the ability to moderate and control spam posts using existing infrastructure on WordPress. BuddyPress also gives you the functionality you expect from any social networking site. You can add and remove friends, create groups and much more.

With all that BuddyPress is offering now what more is store for this great plugin? The battle cry of the developers is theme integration. More and more people would like to turn their existing sites into social networking sites without discarding their existing theme capabilities. Come to think of it, if you have a great ecommerce theme, why would you want discard your eCommerce capabilities for social networking. The challenge for theme developers is to create or redesign themes that integrate the capabilities of buddypress. Social networking, in tandem with mobile devices, has made our world smaller, closer, and within reach. It is undeniable.On the other hand, BuddyPress developers also have to do their share to make the plugin more seamless. While the task doesn’t seem easy there is indeed a host of talented, highly motivated people working to reach the summit from both sides. We are looking forward with much eagerness to their success!