The Last Modified plugin for WordPress is a one-step installation plugin that adds the date and time that a page was last modified (edited) to that page. You can see it in action here. A plugin like this is nice because it reminds you and shows others when a page was last accessed and updated. This can be useful for your own records, or for visitors who are looking to see how recent your website content is.

Once you have installed and activated the plugin, you put it to work by editing your page.php template and add the following code to it, wherever you would like the last modified date to show up:

php mdv_last_modified();

You can change the format of the date by using the variables that are listed on the PHP.net website. Here is how I have mine configured for jenn.nu:

php mdv_last_modified(’F j, Y’);

WordPress 2.6.1 has just been released! Read more information at the WordPress blog, or download directly here.

Fixes in this version include:

• fix of dot zero bugs

Last night, another blog of mine was hacked. When I say hacked, I mean that someone or several someones managed to access the home directory of my website, where all file are contained, and delete each and every one of those files. I was foolish enough to not have made backups of the files, but I was smart enough to make weekly backups of what really matters: the database that contained all entries, comments and general settings for the blog. It was annoying to have to re-download WordPress, install it and then configure things with themes, but at least my writing was saved. Saved for two reasons: the hackers didn’t bother to or couldn’t get to the database, and I had backups stored on my computer.

Learn from my mistake: always back up your stuff! Back up manually, or generate backups if your hosting account is with a webhost that uses cPanel, or another type of account management area that generates backups. If you are using WordPress, you can also make use of the WP-Backup plugin to automatically create a copy of your database and email it to you on an hourly, daily, weekly or monthly basis. For more information on that plugin, see the following article: WordPress plugin: WP-Backup.

The Maintenance Mode WordPress plugin is a great tool for a blogger who wants to make changes to their website, without those changes being unveiled to visitors. When Maintenance Mode is activated, the blogger continues to see their website in its fully functioning form. Unregistered/users who aren’t logged in, on the other hand, see a page that is something like the “under construction” pages and animated graphics from the early ’00s.

This is what a blog under Maintenance Mode will look like to unregistered users and registered users who aren’t logged in:

WordPress 2.5, the culmination of six months of work by the WordPress community, people just like you. The improvements in 2.5 are numerous, and almost entirely a result of your feedback: multi-file uploading, one-click plugin upgrades, built-in galleries, customizable dashboard, salted passwords and cookie encryption, media library, a WYSIWYG that doesn’t mess with your code, concurrent post editing protection, full-screen writing, and search that covers posts and pages.

Read more at the WordPress blog, or just head straight to wordpress.org/download to grab a copy for yourself!

I’m going around now and updating each of my blogs. I’m sure the process will be relatively painless.

From the WordPress blog:

WordPress 2.5 will be released very soon! New features include the ability to upload multiple files at once, galleries built right into the core of WordPress, plugin upgrades done with just one click, and overall better Dashboard setup and faster load time!

Check out some of the screenshots:

WordPress 2.3.2 has just been released! Read more information at the WordPress blog, or download directly here.

Fixes in this version include:

• security flaw in registrations

WordPress 2.3.2 has just been released! Read more information at the WordPress blog, or download directly here.

Fixes in this version include:

• eliminating a bug that can be used to expose draft posts
• the supression of error messages that can give away database information

WP-Ban is an easy to use WordPress plugin that allows you to easily ban IP address, hosts and even specific referring domains or individual pages from your blog. It works the same way as manually editing your .htaccess file, except that it does the editing for you. It used to be that if you wanted to ban a pesky spammer or annoying drama stirrer from your website, you would have to FTP to your public files, download a copy of the (usually hidden) .htaccess file, add the blocked IP addresses to it, and then re-upload it. Or, login to your hosting account’s cPanel or hosting account management page and ban IP addresses from there.

WP-Ban integrates the banning process right into WordPress, and as mentioned above, adds a few extras. You can ban IP address, or entire ranges of IP addresses. Ban a specific host, or ban a specific referring website. You can also exclude an IP address from being banned — useful if you’re worried you might accidentally ban yourself and have a heck of a time getting back into your website later.

WP-Ban also generates a 403 error page for you, which you can completely customize from the administration page.

Once upon a time a server my blog was on hiccuped, and I lost everything. Everything amounted to five months worth of blog entries. Not much by any means, but those were five months of my life documented in writing, gone forever. My host had no backups, which infuriated me. But I was also angry at myself for not taking responsibility for something that meant a lot to me.

I learned my lesson, and immediately wrote myself a post-it note, reminding myself to download a copy of my website once a week.

If you’re using WordPress, you won’t have to leave yourself post-it notes and go through the hassle of making backups. It can do it for you, with a handy plugin called WordPress Database Backup. This plugin requires a simple file upload and activation, and then you’re set to browse to its administration panel. From there, you can specify that a backup be made of all of your posts, comments, categories and links, and any other optional tables (usually containing information generated by other WordPress plugins), and uploaded to the server or emailed to you, on a daily, weekly, bi-weekly or monthly basis. You can also download backups on the fly.

This is one of my most favorite WordPress plugins, because it saves my ass in the event that my blog goes down and my host doesn’t have backups.