Here’s the Q and A:

Question: I’m having a hard time getting e-mail from me@address.com.

It seems it takes about 30-40 minutes for one to show up. Any ideas on how I can get them quicker ?

Answer: This is a Gmail issue, easily (but inconveniently) solved.

In the upper right hand corner of your account, you’ll see your name with a ‘cog’ icon beside it.

Click on the cog, then “mail settings” from the dropdown menu.

Under “Settings”, choose the “Accounts and Import” tab.

Scroll down to “Check mail using POP3:” and click on the “Check mail now” link.

This will force Gmail to check the server and download your email.

Not to fear though. The folks over at WordPress are great technicians and programmers. They are (and always have been) working feverishly to keep WordPress safe and secure. Just keep up to date on the version you’re usinhttp://www.dashwebconsulting.com/wp-admin/update-core.phpg.

Not sure which version of WordPress you’re running? Starting with version 2.7, the folks at WordPress added a little message at the top of the admin panel that alerts you when you need to upgrade. If you haven’t upgraded in a while and you do not have that little message at the top, chances are you need to upgrade. And if you do have that message at the top, you need to upgrade.

If you are afraid of what the upgrade might do to your site, I promise that a worm can do a lot more damage to your site than an upgrade ever could.

* If you’re worried about your theme breaking due to a WordPress upgrade, contact your theme designer or check his/her site to see if the theme has been upgraded. If your theme is outdated too, it might be a great time to go with a new theme. There are lots of great free themes available out there.
* And if you’re worried about your plugins not being compatible, it’s time to upgrade those too. Determine which is the most important to you: keeping a plugin or safeguarding your entire blog?

And don’t rely on a “safety” plugin to keep you safe. The best line of defense is a good offense and the very best thing you can do is to keep up with your WordPress upgrades.

Don’t leave the door open and your site unsecured. Update your WordPress today.

To learn more about WordPress design and safety, visit us at Inspired Design Studio, home to our favorite Blog Designers.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/3019075

Nicolas and I have each have two computers, and he has a smart phone. In addition to preordering from Redbox, we each need to be able to check our bank accounts, edit websites, check email, pay tuition, order postage, and so forth and so on. There’s no way that either of us can remember to tell each other what passwords we create.

So we came up with a system that will allow us – usually – to know what a password is for any site – without yelling into the other room.

First of all, we developed a ‘root’ password. We start with a word or phrase we will remember

nohack

We replace letters with numbers in this root password so it won’t have a full word in it.

n0ha3k

Then we sandwich it between two symbols

!n0ha3k?

That’s our ‘root’ password. It’s in all lower case letters.

Finally, we sandwich the root password between the capitalized first and last letter of the url we are visiting.

Examples:
gmail.com, that would be G!n0ha3k?L
webmaster.com – W!n0ha3k?R
Redbox.com – R!n0ha3k?X

All you have to remember is the root password.

Until you get to a site that doesn’t allow characters, or requires all lower case letters, or one that forces you to change passwords every three months.

That’s why we use Roboform anywhere. Each of our computers has Roboform Everywhere installed. So last night, when we changed the Redbox password, the new password was automatically passed to all of our computers.

And yes, it’s very, very safe. Much safer than using your pet’s name.

Check out Roboform at www.aldash.com/roboform. You can read about how secure it is and who recommends it (besides us!) on the Roboform page.

They have a free trial. You really should give it a go before someone else rents that Redbox movie.

Right. In real life, the hacker isn’t a person. It’s a computer, and it can figure out your password a lot faster. A whole lot faster. And if you use something simple, like lovebug or sweetpea or mydogskip, you’re not even giving the hacker a challenge. Hacking software has a ‘dictionary’ of words and names, ordinary numbers and letter sequences, and they try these first.

Virtually every article on password hacking gives an estimate of how long it would take to crack a password of a certain amount of characters. The later the article is written, the faster that time is, because computers are faster and software is more sophisticated and more accessible.

Bottom line – you need to have really good passwords to protect your important data.

A good password should include upper and lower case letters, one or more digits, and one or more symbols. It should be at least eight characters long, preferably much longer. And it should not be any recognizable word or common number.

So #8s9eo$Q would be a good password…

If you could remember it. But unless you have a better memory that mine, you’re going to have to rely on a different system. Tomorrow’s post will give a good system.

But an even better one is to use the encryption that Roboform gives. Read how to get a free trial of Roboform at www.aldash.com/roboform .

Life’s a lot more complicated now. Now we have passwords and pins for so many things it’s impossible to remember them all. Over the next three days, we’re going to talk about passwords – how important it is to have secure ones and how to create relatively safe passwords that you can remember.

But first we’re going to introduce you to a piece of software that will remember all your passwords for you. Even if you have as many as we do. And as many computers as we do.

It’s called Roboform, and you can get a free trial at www.aldash.com/roboform .

Here’s how to redirect a domain to your Facebook page with a GoDaddy account:

1. Create your Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php (Make sure you make your page visible to everyone – not just people who ‘like’ it.)
2. After you finish creating, log out of your account, then go back to your page, and copy the url, which will look something like this:

   http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/name-of-site-/227690568269096?ref=search

3. Take off the http:// from one end, and the question mark and everything behind it from the other end, so you’ll end up like this:
   www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/name-of-site-/227690568269096
4. Log into your godaddy account.
5. In the left hand column, under “My Account” and “Domain Related” click on “Domain forwarding”.
6. Click on the domain you want to forward. A popup window will appear. Leave the option at http://.
7. Type in the Facebook URL that you’ve modified.
8. Click ok.

And yes, we create those beautiful Facebook pages, too!

Did you know…

• If you use Outlook, you can sync it to a Google calendar. If you have Outlook on two computers, you can sync all three. There are other email programs that sync with Google calendars, too. Google it for more details.
• If each person in your family has a Google calendar, you can share them with each other, so that everyone in a family sees a color coded calendar which shows the entire family’s events.
• Google will email you your schedule for the next day. (It emails you at 5 am your time. No choice on the time. I wish it would email me 9:00 pm the night before.)
• Google will text you event reminders.
• AND you can add events to your calendar via TEXT.

For example, today I texted myself an appointment. It went to my Google calendar, which is visible on everyone else’s calendars in the house. It also appears on the Outlook calendars on BOTH of my computers. So noone has the excuse of “you didn’t tell me the family reunion was this Sunday”. It’s on your calendar, son.

Here’s how it all works together
First of all, you have to have a Gmail account, which has a calendar attached. And you have to be using the calendar. If you’re not (and I wasn’t) the good news is that you can sync most email client calendars to your Google Calendar. Here’s how to sync your Google calendar to Outlook, for example.

How to sync the Google calendars for a family or business.

1. Click settings>calendar settings
2. Click the “Calendars” tab
3. Click on the calendar you wish to share. A new window will open.
4. Click the “Share this calendar” tab
5. in the “Share with specific people section”, enter the gmail addresses of the people with whom you want to share.

You are now synced!

How to connect your Google Calendar to your cell phone. (Only one Gmail account per phone number.)

1. Go back to “Calendar Settings”.
2. Click on the “Mobile Setup” tab.
3. Fill in the fields for your cell phone. Watch those preferences – Google will text, popup or email you before each event.
4. Google will text you a confirmation code.
5. OPEN the text message. If you don’t you won’t see the code, and you may confuse Google’s text number for it.
6. Enter the verification code and click “Save”.

How to add events to your calendar with your NON web enabled phone.

If you’re away from your desk and you want to add an appointment to your calendar, you can! Just text GVENT (48368), and write the appointment like you would on your calendar. “Appt with realtor in Mebane at 1 pm on September 10.” Or “Chamber of Commerce meeting tomorrow at 12:30.” And Google will figure out what you mean, add it to your calendar, then text you that they’ve done it.

You can also:

Get your daily schedule emailed to you.
Get text reminders from your Gmail calendar.
Check your Google calendar from your phone.
And lots more.

This is another example of how Google Apps offers ways for you to be more productive, save money, and save time.

Here’s our calendar.

There are so many features in Aweber, that even we are continually surprised by the possibilities. Yesterday we sent an email, and noticed a cool trick. After you send an email, you can check to see who opened it. Then you can send a second, followup email to those who have. Segmenting your customers this way allows highly targeted messages. Cool – yes?

Try it out for yourself by filling out the form below:

Anyhow, the new button is out, with three standard options and the chance to mess around in the code and create your own. When you click on the button, a window pops up with your Tweet window in it.

So…here it is. Tweet away:

Tweet

We’ve always been almost perfectly pleased with this host. They knew me by name. They didn’t care that there were few scripts I couldn’t break. For years they faithfully fixed my messes, restored broken sites, explained unfamiliar concepts. They were our friends.

And then I installed my first blog. To make a long technical story short, I was constantly having to change security settings and permissions, and uploading pictures to a blog was sketchy at best.

At the recommendation of many friends, I had already decided to give Hostgator a whirl. I couldn’t believe the difference in how easy it was to administer a blog. Installing themes and plugins, updating WordPress, uploading pictures – all way easier.

And today, I had a rather complicated situation that the support people at Hostgator understood and set up while I chatted with them online for five minutes. This is just the latest in a series of really great support sessions I’ve had with them, because I’m always learning, always discovering, and I sometimes break things in the process. (My dad always says the best way to learn to fix something is to break it.)

I’m a convert. Or maybe I’m unfaithful. In any event, right now I’m happy with Hostgator, and am considering switching some of our other hosting accounts to them.

In my spare time…but that’s another story.

BTW, right now, Hostgator has a 20% off hosting coupon code. Look for it when you order your hosting with them.