Doodlebee

Well, yeah. If you left your files at 777, then most likely they went right for the wp-config.php files and now have access to your database. If you haven’t changed your WordPress password (as well as the password, and probably the username too – for the database) then they can just get in over and over again.

All of your files should be set at 644 or 666, all folders should be 755. At this point you should take care of that, and then go into your hosting control panel (or whatever you use) and set a new database user and password. You’d have to reflect those changes in your wp-config.php file so your WordPress can have the new connection settings. You might also want to contact your host before you do anything and let them know – because if they *did* get into your database, it’s possible they could compromise the entire server. You should let the host know what’s going on, and let them see the activity the hacker has been doing so they can take appropriate action to prevent further loss (if any has occurred). They’ll also help you figure out how to secure your own site so you don’t get hacked again.

You also might read this.

As has been mentioned several times here in the forums, using query_posts messes up your pagination because makes *you* define what you want done with your posts. If you want pagination, you have to define it. There’s a few solutions on how to fix it. (Kafkaesqui is the man.)

Sounds like you did the right thing (good for you, figuring that out all by yourself 🙂 ). For future reference, if you don’t have an .htaccess file on the server, you can upload a blank file named .htaccess and set the permissions to 766. Do your permalink setting and WordPress will auto-write the stuff for you in the file. Once that’s done BE SURE you change the permissions back to 644 for security purposes.

As for “necessary” stuff – no. .htaccess is a nice little tool to use if you *want* to do things, but it’s not required. You can use .htaccess for all kinds of things, from rewriting permalinks, to preventing your images from getting hotlinked to banning people from doing referer spam (among other things). It’s all neat stuff, but not required stuff. You usually end up figuring out what it is you want to do in your .htaccess file when you get to a point where you want to do something specific – then find out you *can* with .htaccess 🙂

If you want to do security stuff – especially for your WordPress blog – you might want to read this: Hardening WordPress

Why do you need a plugin for this? All you have to do is edit your theme files to remove references to the date and time. It’s a lot easier, and a lot less server usage to just take it out of the theme altogether.

Can you clarify? Your content *is* centered on the page (meaning the outer container). Are you talking about removing the sidebar? you don’t have much in your sidebar, but that’s the only “dead” space I see.

Why don’t you use the Role Scoper or Role Manager plugin to create your own defined User Roles?

You might use this function to customize your output.

yeah – that second example is messed up.

All you have to do is replace your “showposts” with the number of posts you want to show.

<?php $recent = new WP_Query("cat=1&showposts=3"); if($recent->have_posts()); ?>
<div class="featured">
<?php while($recent->have_posts()) : $recent->the_post();?>
<h2><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>
<?php the_content('read the story &raquo;');?>
<?php endwhile; ?>
</div>
<?php endif; ?>