Gabfire Widget Pack Plugin Now Available

Charlie Patel May 6, 2013 Announcements 1 Comment

The Gabfire Widget Pack plugin contains 12 useful widgets to extend your WordPress site. It is a FREE plugin that will work with any theme, not just a Gabfire theme.

What’s Inside the Gabfire Widget Pack?

The Gabfire Widget Pack contains 12 awesome widgets:

• About Me
• Archive Search
• Flickr Images
• Search
• Social Icons
• Post Tabs
• Author Badge
• Feedburner Email Subscribe
• Related Posts
• Social Sharing
• Gabfire Text+ Widget
• Random, Recent, or Popular Posts

For more details on each of the widgets, click here.

Why a Plugin?

There are several reasons why we released the Gabfire Widget Pack plugin. Here are a few:

1) Contribute to the WP Community – Some of our widgets are quite popular, and we received several emails asking for the code. So rather than limit them to only the Gabfire community, we decided to package our most common widgets into a plugin that could be used by the entire WordPress community.

2) Give End-User Control – Our themes are quite robust in features and options. We found that some users took advantage of the various widgets, however some did not. Therefore, in an effort to allow the end user to decide which widgets they wanted on their site, moving the widgets into a plugin made more sense. Now, you can decide which widget to enable or disable on your site, and users can take advantage of them on any theme.

3) Less is More – There are plenty of plugins and widgets available through WordPress. Depending on your needs, some may be relevant and useful, whereas some are just extra bloat on your site. By transferring the widgets into a free plugin, our themes are lighter out-of-the-box.

Where do I download plugin?

Similar to any other WordPress plugin, you can grab the Gabfire Widget Pack plugin from the WordPress Plugin repository. Try it out. If you like it, give it a rating on the repository to let more people know about it. If you have any questions related to it, feel free to post a comment below.

DOWNLOAD HERE

Brute Force Attacks on WordPress – Tips & Plugins

Charlie Patel April 18, 2013 Announcements 7 Comments

I thought the widely covered brute force attacks on WordPress sites were worth discussing in case any users aren’t aware of the this hot topic.

What are Brute Force Attacks?

Unlike hacks, brute force attacks take the easier approach of consistently trying to guess your username and password. Unfortunately, this works since not all site owners have the strongest credentials, especially those who still use the dreaded default ‘admin‘ username. Since brute force attacks don’t halt after a single failed attempt, they can take a devastating toll on your server memory causing performance issues.

How can you prevent brute force attacks?

To prevent these attacks on your WordPress site, follow these precautionary steps:

1. Do NOT use the ‘admin‘ username. Create a new user with Administrator rights. Log out and log back into WordPress as the new Adminstrator, and delete the user ‘admin‘.
2. Set a strong password with numbers, characters, and upper and lower case letters. Unfortunately, we occasionally see site owners with passwords that either match their domain, or are simple number strings such as 123456.
3. Protect your site using plugins. These are 3 plugins that I highly recommend – use the one (or two) that meet your needs:

• Limit Login Attempts – does what the name says.
• Google Authenticator – allows two-factor authentication to login to your WordPress site. For some, this may seem like overkill, but you can never be too safe.
• WordFence – a robust security plugin with built-in firewall, virus scanning, and a premium version to block specific countries.

Better Safe Than Sorry

Now that you’re informed, spend a few minutes to protect that awesome site. While you’re at it, take out the trash, spam, and erroneous users. Any questions or comments related to these brute force attacks, just ping us in the comments below.

We’re Hiring a PHP and WordPress Developer

Charlie Patel April 10, 2013 Announcements 3 Comments

We are looking for an awesome PHP and WordPress Developer to join our team. We’ve got some great new and exciting projects in the pipeline and this lucky person will be actively involved in seeing them from concept to finished product. So if you’ve got the skills, love a flexible work arrangement, and just like working with awesome people, get in touch today.

Responsibilities?

Working alongside our small team at Gabfire, you will be responsible for taking on special projects and developing cool new functionality for upcoming products. If you can take a set of requirements and build something functional using finely crafted code, this job is for you. Projects may range from special WordPress theme features, plugins, to application-based functionality. To apply, you should rock at PHP / WordPres / MySQL. After all, we have to  produce awesome functionality, features and applications.

Work Details

• Location: Anywhere – it doesn’t matter. None of us are located in the same country!
• Time: Whenever – work at your own time, but just get things done.

Interested? If so, contact us here and tell us about yourself and what you bring to the table. More information is always better.