Ron Kernahan's Test Wordpress site

1. Lack of motivation. A talent is irrelevant if a person is not motivated to use it. Motivation may be external (for example, social approval) or internal (satisfaction from a job well-done, for instance). External sources tend to be transient, while internal sources tend to produce more consistent performance.

Why Intelligent People Fail from Michael Anissimov

Over the last few years I found the following plugins most helpful:

• Akismet (by Automattic): Comes bundled with WordPress, Akismet “blocks 99.9% of spam” from reaching your blog. (Ok, it does a decent job, but let’s not exaggerate Akismet, ok?)
• Broken Links Checker (by Janis Elsts): I only activate this occasionally to check for broken links, but it works well.
• Dagon Design Form Mailer (by Dagon): There are many Contact forms available, for some reason I stuck with Dagon’s.
• Dagon Design Sitemap Generator (by Dagon): This sitemap is internal and displays the way I want it. (I’ll actually be using a BuddyPress plugin for this sites Sitemap) …
• fbLikeButton (by Dean Peters): Another “Like Button” which allows Facebook users to like an article, share it and so forth, effective!
• Google XML Sitemaps (by Arne Brachhold): This plugin generates an XML sitemap to help Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com to better index the site.
• Greg’s Comment Length Limiter (by Greg Mulhauser): Long comments are unreadable and unhelpful, but I can limit them using this plugin.
• HeadSpace2 (by John Godley) / or All in One SEO Pack (by Michael Torbert): SEO plugins so you can add keywords, etc. Not needed for many new Themes, but still helpful.
• (Move Comments) [Deactivated until it's needed. This by Apostolos Dountsis works well]: Sometimes I move posts and want to move the comments too…
• Page Menu Editor (also built into All in One SEO plugin) (by Sarah Anderson). Many themes offer a top bar navigation where the Title is the same as the link (such as Home, Members, etc). To change the title tag use this plugin or the AIOSEO (assuming you don’t want to edit your theme header.php file).
• Page Links To (by Mark Jaquith): I moved some posts and pages and found this plugin helped clean up the links.
• RefTagger (Transform Bible references into links by Logos Bible Software): RefTagger supports all of the Bible book names and their standard abbreviations.
• Related Posts by Category (by Sergej Muller): I used to rely on categories to cross-reference posts, not so important now-a-days.
• Subscribe to Comments (by Mark Jaquith): Just a nice touch for those who post comments and want to see who responds.
• What Would Seth Godin Do (by Richard K Miller): Offers new and returning visitors different greetings, a friendly plugin.
• Widget Logic (by Alan Trewartha): Brilliant, lets me put different Sidebar content (widgets) on different posts, pages, home, whatever I need and want!!
• WordPress Security – see note below.
• WP-DBManager (by Leters Chan): A must have, to optimize, backup and otherwise manage the database from within the WP-Dashboard.

Plus a few others which are site-related

WordPress Security Plugins

There are quite a few plugins to help your WordPress site and there are several things you can do manually to improve security. Most of the manual steps are outlined quite clearly on the WordPress.org site and perhaps I’ll create a post with some links to other sites talking about this. However, there are a few things to remember:

1) Some security issues rest with your hosting company. Some issues I had in the past were taken care of when I checked with my host.

2) Some vulnerabilities are based on the version of WordPress, Themes, Plugins and so on you are using. The general rule is to update and stay up-to-date. When you login to your Dashboard, you will get a list of updates available.

3) Based on both these above points, you probably need to be careful taking advise or adding plugins which were written for older version of WordPress or specific themes. As I said above, I could add links to sites which have helped me in the past when security issues came up. However, some of the issues they mention have already been fixed in the latest version of WordPress.

Having said that, here are a couple of helpful plugins I use on certain sites:

• Secure WordPress (by jremillard): Gives the option to remove versions and protect against malicious requests (Malware).
• WordPress File Monitor (by Matt Walters): handy plugin which checks for added, changed or deleted files.
• WordPress Ultimate Security Check (by Eugene Pyvovarov): this free version does a check and tells you possible problems.
• WP Security Scan (by Michael Torbert): A set of Admin tools with quite a bit of info about your site including tools to fix many problems.

This illustration was made by Luc Viatour | www.lucnix.be

Friends, just a quick note to let you know there is a very real need to fight for those who are the underdogs and who cannot fight for themselves.

The thrust of this website has always been one of education. In the past while it was specifically educating about Pandemic flu, however, I want to use this site to reflect my own mission in life.

It’s going to take a while to re-shape this site (and get back some of the friends and faithful followers we used to have) but it will come. Please bare with me as I work on the logistics of this, creating new categories and sections, and in general doing some spring cleaning.

Thanks, Ron

PS. Advocacy is the active support of an idea or cause etc.; especially the act of pleading or arguing for something.

Advocacy is the pursuit of influencing outcomes — especially on behalf of those who have little hope of influencing outcomes for themselves.

The advocate is one arguing in favour of, or supporting something; the practice of supporting someone to make their voice heard.

An advocate is someone who speaks on behalf of another person, especially in a legal context. It is used in reference to the system of Scots law, Anglo-Dutch law, Scandinavian and Israeli law, among others.

The headline that dominated the year 2009 was easily the H1N1 pandemic. On 11 June, 2009, WHO declared the start of the first influenza pandemic since 1968. These were the daily headlines from February 2010 about H1N1 Swine Flu and other influenza and Bird Flu (H5N1) topics.

NOTE: As of 21 February 2010, worldwide more than 213 countries and overseas territories or communities have reported laboratory confirmed cases of pandemic influenza H1N1 2009, including at least 16226 deaths as reported by WHO (the World Health Organization).

Read the rest of this entry →

Just received this interesting idea … it’s called the Band of Blessing

This is an arm band which serves as a reminder to be a blessing. Cool.

See the site too: bandofblessing.org

Record-breaking snow has hampered telephone company’s efforts to hook-up new streets with the basic wiring for Telephone and Internet communications. And yes, that happens to effect me!

Record Snow for 2010

It is unclear as to when our telephone company can get connections normalized; certainly not until the ground thaws somewhat.

Please have patience if you are not getting through to us!

Thanks in advance! (or “Don’t call us, we’ll call you” since we have little choice)

The headline that dominated the year was easily the H1N1 pandemic. On 11 June, 2009, WHO declared the start of the first influenza pandemic since 1968. These were the daily headlines from December 2009 about H1N1 Swine Flu and other influenza and Bird Flu (H5N1) topics.

NOTE: As of 27 December 2009, worldwide more than 208 countries and overseas territories or communities have reported laboratory confirmed cases of pandemic influenza H1N1 2009, including at least 12220 deaths.

Read the rest of this entry →