How confident are you with your current WordPress setup? Is your blog safe, secure and protected? Check out these 10 great plugins to help to increase your WordPress security and protection.

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Some of you may be having issues with images in posts using the new WordPress 2.5 image upload. If you find that your theme isn’t placing the images correctly you will want to take a look at your current themes style.css file to make sure the alignment rules have been written.

Note: Always, always and yes .. always make a backup before you go messing with things.

Admin > Design > Theme Editor > Current Theme > style.css

You will want to look for the following or something similar:

.alignleft {
float:left;
padding: 4px;
}

.alignright {
float:right;
padding: 4px;
}
.aligncenter {
float:center;
padding: 4px;
}

If these css rules (alignleft, alignright, aligncenter) are not currently in your style.css file simple copy and paste them in at the bottom. You can make changes if you would like; add a border etc.

I do believe there are plugins available for this but really I don’t think its necessary. You can quickly add your own “About the Author” or “Author Bio” box to your blog posts with only a few lines of code. It should take you maybe 2 minutes to complete this task. Super easy stuff. This is a nice addition to any blog and helps to promote your blogs contents by associating your site with real people - and it just looks good!

Note: Always, always and yes .. always make a backup before you start messing with things.

Open your current themes single.php file
Admin > Design > Theme Editor > Your Current Theme > single.php

Find the following:

<?php the_content(’Continue reading »’); ?>
<?php link_pages(’<p><strong>Pages:</strong> ‘, ‘</p>’, ‘number’); ?>

Now right below add this:

<h3>About The Author</h3>
<?php echo get_avatar( get_the_author_email(), $size = ‘50′ )?>
<p>Written by <?php the_author_link(); ?>
<BR>
<?php the_author_link(); ?> is <?php the_author_description(); ?></p>
<p>Other posts by <?php the_author_posts_link(); ?></p>

You can change the above to get things looking how you would like. The above example will give you a similar look to what we have here on STCFX.

The Author description is taken from the user profile area. Whatever is typed there will be displayed in this area.

Sometimes having trackbacks and comments posted together can really mess with your design. Especially now with the new WordPress 2.5 where we have Gravatar functions built in to show the comment authors avatar next to the comment they have posted. When trackbacks are posted they are showing the default Gravatar because there is no comment author. Also is can be annoying to have to scroll through a ton of trackbacks in order to read what others had to say about the post.

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Many users have sent in questions regarding WordPress 2.5, now rather than addressing each one by one I have decided to post this FAQ list. Many of the common questions have been addressed in the following list.

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