Per Chris, the exploit was in the DB, so just finding and replacing the file in the WP folder was not good enough, the DB needed to be cleaned as well. So here’s a how to:

For folks who regularly back up their sites, it would be much easier to do the fix as opposed to those who do no back up their site (another reason to use wp-db-backup plugin). Nevertheless there are ways to get the DB cleaned out. We will discuss both, but before we do that, here’s a step-by-step to find and remove the PHP file that is causing the havoc.

A site with poor navigation is just as bad as or worse than a site with poor content. Magazine style themes have overcome this barrier using JavaScript dropdown menus. But there is a simpler yet seldom used method that can be used and involves only the use of conditional WordPress tags.

Conditional Navigation

We will use the same demo theme we created during the previous tutorial. As you can see it has conditional page tags built in, just like many of our other new themes.

In our ongoing exercise to learn the nuts and bolts of a magazine style WordPress theme, we examine what has become by far the most ignored part of a theme design, the navigation menu.

As important as they are, they are often found floating in the header or worse the sidebar and almost never used to its fullest. Today we will attempt to change that. We are dedicating the next few sections just to discuss navigation menus, its varied uses, and the various methods of using it. So why wait, let’s get started.

Why are Navigation Menus Important?

There are three important roles of navigation menus, they are listed below in no particular order:

• It acts as the gateway to sections of the site you want your visitors/users to explore
• When designed correctly, it aids as a visual sitemap
• When used correctly, it enhances usability of your site and helps in SEO

How are Navigation Menus in Magazine Style Themes Different from Regular Themes?

If you notice closely, most regular themes have pages listed in blocks in the header or the sidebar and call it navigation. For all practical purpose, it works, and we are all complacent with it. In WordPress, there are numerous pages that are dynamically created like the archives, category pages, paginated pages, search pages and so on that are traditionally are not considered pages when you create a list using the template tag such as the one below:

	<?php wp_list_pages('sort_column=menu_order&depth=1&title_li='); ?>

In fact, the above tag does not display any child pages! So how do overcome this limitation?

Granted that it will not necessarily minimize bandwidth usage by loading the page any faster, but nonetheless provides an alternative to having the entire content load on each and every page (even where not needed).

From our last experiment, we have a layout constructed with featured post option and some borrowed styling. Now we will add the cool tabbed interface to the sidebar.

There are many Java options out there that can generate these tabbed interfaces, the more popular ones are DOMtab and Tabber. We will introduce one other simple tab JavaScript at the very end that has recently found its way into WP themes, but for most part, we will focus on DOMtab and Tabber.

Creating such category specific presentation on demand requires both PHP script manipulation within the WordPress Loop and some changes to the CSS stylesheet. In continuing with the series on dissecting magazine style themes, we will attempt three hacks that will allow you to do the following:

1. Create a featured post that is displayed at the very top of the page, followed by regular posts; all of which happens taking into consideration the pagination aspects of the site so as to not repeat the featured post on every paginated page.
2. Create a simple featured and non-featured posts distinction using minimal PHP hack, keeping it simple enough so as to not worry about pagination.
3. Create asides to highlight useful bits of information without hogging potentially critical presentation real-estate, or in other words, creating non-intrusive side posts without using a plugin.

Let’s face it, WordPress is not just a Blogging ware like some might want you to believe, when used correctly, the full potential of the worlds best CMS can power sites big and small alike. The recent trend among high content-high traffic sites are the switch to magazine styled (mostly paid premium) themes to aid in maximizing content exposure. Most all new magazine styled themes worth your time is premium or paid, yet it requires customization and effort from the user to ensure the layout and content stays homogeneous. Is you already run a well established site with custom theme design and need to add functionalities similar to magazine styled premium themes without switching or paying for a new theme, you are at the right place.

How are magazine themes different from regular themes?

Although structurally most themes have either 2 or 3 columns, the similarity ends there. Magazine styled themes are content centric and less bloggy, they offer a platform to easily manipulate data, simplify data access and presentation, and make navigation easy.

What are we attempting to do?

We will not attempt to (re)create a magazine styled theme out of your existing theme, however, we will dissect some magazine themes and learn all the aspects that you can easily add to improve your site’s features and enhance user experience. We will focus on the following three components of the theme.

• Content Presentation – Featured, non-featured, category and asides posts
• Sidebar – DOMtab and tabber JavaScript module
• Navigation – CSS and JavaScript menu

Some of this work will involve JavaScript usage/applications, not to fear, they are all relatively simple, free to download and use and easy to adopt into any theme.

When will the guide be available?

Over the next few days, we will present the “How To” guide in 3 (or more) parts, each focusing on one of the aforementioned components. So stay tuned.

I try not to write such posts, but the frustrations expressed by my clients who hosts on Yahoo! Small Business compels me to point out the obvious shortcomings of a popular host. This non-exhaustive list is in no particular order, it’s just the top 4 reasons why I would not recommend or host any on my sites on Yahoo!

One-Click-Install of Outdated Software

A client recently used the one click install feature to add WordPress to her site, within days it was hacked and she lost everything she had moved from another CMS (luckily she still had her backups). The problem was the defunct version of WordPress that Yahoo! installed; WP version 2.0.2, which beats Al Gore’s hacked sites WordPress version. Yahoo! claims to be partners with WordPress.org and provide search capabilities for the official WordPress sites, yet the version they install on thousands of user sites is full of holes prone to malicious attacks and hijacks.

Forces to use Yahoo! Mail, no PHPMail

This is somewhat funny and restrictive setup that Yahoo! Hosting has in place to screw users from using phpMail functions. The most common addon on any new WordPress site is the contact form, yet Yahoo! wont allow you to use one. The only situation when it would work is if the from email ID entered in the Contact Form is from the same domain as the site you are on. For example, if you are hosting the domain example.com on Yahoo! Hosting, the only people who can use the contact form are those with emails like someone@example.com, essentially email ID’s set with the same domain! Does that even make sense? Their reason is, if you had access to send emails to and from your site, you might use the privilege to spam someone else. Privilege to Spam? Yahoo! assume that its subscribers are spammers and treat them like one irrespective of if you really are one or not. While there are ways around this issue, it is not worth the time and effort.

Restrictive Controls and no .htaccess Access

Although this feature is mostly used by advanced users, they don’t let users have access to their own .htaccess files. What this could mean is, you are not allowed to set up redirects, and if you do manage to set one up from within the WP install, Yahoo! will delete the file and if you are the ‘unlucky types’, it might even kick you out of the system completely without the opportunity to restore or reverse the .htaccess edits. Lame.

Customer Support

I ended up calling Yahoo! on behalf of my client and was on hold for a good 50+ minutes just to hear the guy on the other end tell me he will “get the engineers to look at the issue the next morning” and that “the issue will be resolved in 3 to 5 days“. I replied (in astonishment) “3 to 5 days?” and he replied very calmly, “that’s less than a week” (almost as if service in “less than a week” should make me feel special!). Obviously Yahoo! Hosting thinks your site is not important and can be down 5 days, after all, why bother rushing their engineer to look into petty matters when they could be spending it on keeping up the number 1 site in the world.

Need more?

I’ll let the readers add the rest using the comment form below.

1. Copy your code (HTML or PHP or whatever else) and paste it in the Postable post area (which at first will read “For your copy-and-pasting pleasure.”).
2. Click the “make me friendly” button
3. The code is converted to characters, for example < will be converted to & l t ;
4. Copy the characters and past it on your blog post or comment within code tags
5. That’s it.

In order to demonstrate how it works, I have copied and pasted a piece of code from one of our latest themes below using Postable conversion:

<?php if (have_posts())  >
<?php $postCount=0; ?>
<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post();?>
<?php $postCount++;?>
<div class="entry entry-<?php echo $postCount ;?>">
<h2 class="entry-title"><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" title="<?php the_title(); ?>" rel="bookmark"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>
<p class="meta">
Posted <?php the_time('m.d.Y'); ?> at <?php the_time('g:i a') ?> in <?php the_category(', ') ?><?php if (function_exists('the_tags')) { ?><?php the_tags(', ', ', ', ''); ?><?php } ?> received <strong><?php comments_popup_link('Have your say »', '1 Comment »', '% Comments »'); ?></strong>.
</p>

The code is then displayed in a format that can be copied and pasted and never executed. Works fine to me!

Update: Two other tools of significant use are SimpleCode by Dan Cederholm which I have adopted as part of the comment form on this site and elsewhere and the user submitted Asciible converters!

Users who have better things to do with their time than to upgrade their WordPress install once every few weeks, or those who are overwhelmed with the information presented below and would like someone else to do the dirty job for a meager fee, contact me.

Who should upgrade?

If you use WordPress at least once a day, go right ahead and upgrade. Casual user can refer the list below to check if it fits your bill:

1. You run a business online using WP to power your site
2. You run multiple sites using both WP and other CMS and would one day like to merge them all into one mega site
3. You are happy with your current install but like the new features WP 2.1 has to offer

Who should not?

1. If you have WP on your site but is seldom used as your site is all static
2. Your site is a Mashup
3. You are happy with your current install and do not feel the need to upgrade
4. No one

How do you upgrade?

If you decide to upgrade, here are two ways to go about it. Remember this is my personal opinion based on my experiences, there might be easier ways to go about, even plugins, but I think I have nailed the most painless and fool proof technique.