Archive for the ‘Developing’ Category
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Monday, September 28th, 2009
A while ago I thought about writing a simple cheat sheet for WordPress, mainly because I find myself looking for the same template tags over and over again.
Few days ago I stumbled on a couple of very well done WordPress cheat sheets that I’d like to share with you:
Liquidicity WordPress Help Sheet
Ekin Ertaç WordPress Cheat Sheet
Tags: Cheat Sheet, Resources, Template, Theme, Wordpress
Posted in Developing | No Comments »
How to secure your WordPress blog
Wednesday, August 19th, 2009
A couple of days ago, I decided to add a small javascript in the footer of my blog and by accident I found out that there was a hidden div with hundreds of links. Obviously someone hacked into my blog, and added those links to increase their Page Rank at my expense.
After few minutes of panic and desperation, I decided it was time to start securing my blog (something I’ve honestly been overlooking for a long time). Luckily, there are a lot of cool plugins that can help with this, and I’d like to share them with you.
First of all, it’s important to have periodical backups of both your files and your WordPress database. To accomplish this, you can use the very creatively named plugin called WordPress Backup. It performs regular backups of your uploads (images included), current theme, and plugin directories. Backup files are available for download and can also be e-mailed to a specified address.
To backup my WordPress database I’m using WP DBManager, this plugin not only lets you backup, but it also allows you to optimize, repair, restore and delete your database, and manage your tables. This plugin, like the one previously mentioned, automatically schedules database backups and optimizations.
Now it’s time to check your blog for security vulnerabilities and take corrective actions. A very comprehensive tool is a plugin called WP Security Scan.
Here’s few things I learned from this experience:
- Always update your blog to the latest version as soon as possible. If the WordPress folks found out about an exploit, be sure hackers did too.
- When you setup your database, change the prefix of your wordpress tables to something different than the default “wp_”
- Make sure your WordPress version is hidden (some plugins, like Secure WordPress), can do this for you.
- Check that your database errors are turned off (WP Security Scan will check that for you). If not, ask your hosting company to turn them off for you.
- Get rid of the Admin user. Just create a new one with admin privileges and use that to delete the Admin user.
- In the wp-config.php file of your blog there are three KEY phrases that can be changed. You won’t have to remember the phrases later, so make them long and complicated.
- Make sure you have granted the right permissions to your WordPress folders (WP Security Scan will check that for you as well).
- If you’ve already been attacked, make sure you check for any suspicious files or scripts (in my case, there was a file called wp-atom2.php) that can be used as a backdoor, and change your passwords.
There are a lot more steps that could be taken, like protecting your admin area via .htaccess or using plugins like Login Lockdown to limit the number of login attempts by a particular IP adress.
Is your blog secure? Is there anything in particular that you have done to protect it from hackers?
Tags: Plugins, Security, Wordpress
Posted in Developing | 5 Comments »
What we learned from Tr.im’s (almost) surrender
Tuesday, August 11th, 2009
There are several things that I never did like about the URL shortener business.
First of all, you never know how long these services will last. Tr.im’s surrender may lead to the If Tr.im kept their decision to shut down their service, we could have lost millions of links, unless some other company were to buy them out. You could try to use only extremely successful services like Bit.ly, but it will defeat its own purpose in the long run: Bit.ly is already using 5 characters after their URL, not making it that short anymore. If you go with less used services you might have shorter urls but you could end up using a service that, in few months, may be out of business.
On top of that, you are really wasting a lot of “link juice,” vital for ranking better on search engines. Even when you are linking to your own site, if you use these services, you are linking to them. And they can do whatever they want with that link. They can even decide to place your whole site into a frame, adding ugly ads at the top, or their own “toolbar,” like Digg did, without asking your permission; and there won’t be anything you can do about it.
The best solution to all these problems is to have your own shortener. You don’t need to be an expert developer to do it, you don’t even have to be a developer at all. There are several open source scripts and plugins to accomplish URL shortening. Here’s a short list of services I found:
- YOURLS – It’s probably my favorite and the one that will, very soon, power my own URL shortener. It supports custom keywords URLs, it has basic stats and an API. It also has its own WordPress plugin, which can automatically shorten your posts and links.
- Shorty – This URL shortener had a nice-looking admin interface, where you can edit and delete your URLs. It offers simple stats as well.
- PHPurl – Super simple PHP & MySQL script, it offers the option of choosing a custom keyword.
- phurl – If you are thinking of offering your shortener to the public, this script features CAPTCHA and re-CAPTCHA, just in case you fear bots.
- TightURL – This script offers some public protection as well. It checks submitted and accepted URLs against spam databases to prevent abuse by the Bad People of the Internet.
Tags: Resources, Twitter, URL shortener
Posted in Developing | 5 Comments »
Integrating Facebook Connect in your iPhone app
Saturday, June 20th, 2009
For the June South Florida iPhone Meetup Ben Bloch, gave a very interesting presentation about the integration of Facebook Connect and iPhone applications.
I personally believe that the integration between iPhone apps and existing social networks, like Facebook or Twitter, could really play an important role in your marketing strategy for your applications. Some of my applications already let you post your scores on your Facebook wall and I’m planning to integrate Facebook Connect on almost all the remaining ones.
A special thanks to Mobuilt for sponsoring again our meetup.
Tags: Facebook Connect, iPhone application, Meetup
Posted in Apple, Developing | 1 Comment »
How the iPhone 3G S will change the apps scenario
Monday, June 15th, 2009
Next friday the new iPhone 3G S will be available for sale and the iPhone OS 3.0 will be released. All this will have a huge impact on the iPhone applications’ market.
In-app purchases
This new feature will allow developers to keep making money even after selling an application and we’ll start seeing a lot of applications engineered to be expandable. Another (positive) effect is that it might “clean up” the iTunes store. Right now there are many applications that could be easily combined in a container application plus additional modules.
For my project Art for iPhone, in order to sell each individual artist, I had to release one application for each of them. Of course that made feel good the artist for having an application with their own name, but at the same time is much harder to promote the applications and to cross promote the artists.
In the iTunes store there are plenty of other examples like tourist guides or other applications that could work better if assembled in a single one. If I buy a tourist guide with the Italy module for it, next time I’ll have another trip I will most likely buy another module from the same application instead of going digging again between 50,000 applications to find another guide.
More power, less market
Yes, the new iPhone is an incredibly powerful portable gaming platform, and now software houses can start releasing games with even better graphics, but I don’t think they will go all the way with this. If they start releasing games that works only on the new iPhones they are cutting out a 40 millions devices market, and that would be plain stupid. So my guess is that they will wait until there will be more iPhone 3G S around, and that the iPod Touch will be updated.
Video support
A lot of application will have finally access to video recording. Right now the iPhone is the most used mobile device for uploading pictures to internet, also thank to a killer editing interface iMovie style.
I bet soon it will be also the most used device to upload videos. For sure there will be a massive number of updates from applications like Twitter clients, and that will make flourish a number of sites dedicated to short videos, space currently dominated by Qik, Seesmic and 12seconds.
GPS Navigation device
Thanks to the compass now the iPhone can finally be used as a full GPS Navigation device. this could be a big shift for all the GPS device companies out there as they will probably more software oriented than manufacturing hardware.
Do you think the iPhone 3G S will bring big changes to the mobile market? If so, how? Don’t be shy and leave a comment.
Tags: Mobile
Posted in Apple, Developing, Marketing | 15 Comments »
SoFla iPhone Meetup: Eat Will Grow (I know it will)
Thursday, May 28th, 2009
Last week (yes, I know, it took me a week to upload the videos, mea culpa), at the South Florida iPhone Meetup Group we had the pleasure to have Ben Hopkins present his iPhone game, Eat Will Grow (iTunes link).
Ben, who has been writing software for 14 years on a variety of platforms ranging from game consoles to desktop to mobile.
In his presentation, Ben also spill a couple of very good tips that I personally didn’t know, like places where to submit Apple related press releases or applications to check your daily rank.
I also had a chance to announce my next project, Get Apps Done, a no-frills job board where iPhone developers and people/companies who need iPhone applications developed can meet each other. If you in one of those two categories or you are just curious, please sign up at www.GetAppsDone.com to find out when we’ll go live or read our blog blog.getappsdone.com for more information.
If you are in South Florida and you are interested in iPhone developing (you don’t need to be a developer), don’t be shy and join us.
(more…)
Tags: iPhone application, Meetup
Posted in Developing | No Comments »
How to build an iPhone application in 20 minutes
Monday, April 27th, 2009
Auston Bunsen, founder of Mobuilt, gave a great presentation at South Florida iPhone developers’ April meetup on how to build an iPhone application in 20 minutes using frameworks like or Safire, builded by Auston, or PhoneGap.
Safire should be released in the next couple of weeks, and I’m really looking forward to trying it myself.
Check out also my presentation “Marketing thoughts about the iPhone apps business” from the same meetup
Tags: Developing, iPhone application, Presentation
Posted in Developing | 35 Comments »
iPhone applications: where to start?
Thursday, February 12th, 2009
Last time (a couple of posts ago) I talked about the possible revenue models for an iPhone application, but what it’s the real first step? Very simple answer: the Idea.
The answer is actually simple, but having the right idea is the hardest part of the all process. You can pay somebody to program your application, you can pay somebody for the design and maybe somebody even to market it, but to be successful it’s need to be a good idea.
I know, tons of fart applications making thousands of dollars might induce you you think that the function of an application isn’t important, but even the most stupid application to be successful need to answer to a demand. Fart applications, even if stupid, like iBeer applications fill the need of showcasing the iPhone with friends.
Also it’s important to research the competition. Once a friend asked my opinion about an idea he had for an iPhone application: a weather app. These are some of the questions I immediately asked him: do you really think you can make a better weather application than the other 100 already existing? Are you going to tap a specific niche (big enough to guarantee you some profit)? Are you sure you’ll be able to collect all the informations you need to “feed” your application? Can you compete with the big players in your niche?
If you can’t answer yes to all this maybe you need to re-think you application.
Third, and very important thing you need to consider is your budget. Are you going to code the application yourself or are you going to hire a team? My suggestion is always to start small. It’s a new market, it’s really eclectic and hard to predict. On top of that you are at Apple’s mercy, so don’t invest thousands of dollars in an application Apple might not even approve. Not all the applications will make $40,000 in 2 days. Actually probably you’ll never be able to do that.
Go small and safe, even if sounds too little $5-10 per day isn’t a failure if you only spent $400 to build your application. Build few small application to create a constant revenue stream, and then, once you build a small capital, you can try something bigger and more risky.
Do you want to know what I think is the best way to create a revenue stream? Cloning.
Build an app, something that could be easily cloned and reused with a different theme or topic. In this way you can pay once for the developing process and multiply your income.
Easy, isn’t it?
Tags: iPhone application, Making money, Micro-developing
Posted in Apple, Developing | No Comments »
iPhone Valentine’s Day Game Preview
Friday, January 30th, 2009
Tags: Games, iPhone application, Valentine's Day Game
Posted in Apple, Developing | No Comments »
Possible revenue streams for iPhone applications
Monday, January 26th, 2009
After almost 3 months of experience in the iPhone application market I think it’s time to make some considerations.
First of all, you need a business plan. A lot of people think that just because iPhones and iPhone’s Apps are hot, then they will get rich overnight.
Wrong.
You need a business plan: an idea of the developing costs and have some sort of revenue projection. Most important, you need to take in count that if you think you app would sell between 10 and 50 copies per day you probably need to make your projections on a 5 sales/day.
In this post I’ll try to cover the revenue stream part.
Where the revenues come from?
- Sell your application. This is of course the most immediate solution. Buying applications on the iPhone (and iPod Touch of course) is just one password away. That’s a huge friction reduction during the sale process. When you buy some desktop software you need to look around for your credit card, fill up at least 2 or 3 forms, here you just need your iTunes password. It’s that easy. People spend tons of money in apps and they don’t even realize it.
Pros: Once a user buys your app you are done. It’s up to you to keep providing support and keep working on the application. Also you don’t have to deal with nobody else than Apple.
Cons: Once a user buys your app you are done. Meaning that you can’t make any more money from that user anymore (or hardly). Unless your app is really requested and successful, one single app won’t feed your family. - Advertising. Many people give away their applications for free and makes money with advertising.
We could divide ads on iPhone applications in three category: 3rd part managed, direct and self promotion. 3rd part managed you need to use services like AdMob. The good thing is that you don’t have to worry about looking for advertisers directly, but on the other hand you can’t negotiate the earnings and how much you sell your ads for. Direct advertising offer you more control on the ads you show, but you need to spend time in order to find advertisers. With self promotion you basically promote on your free application other application you made that are for sale and there is where you actually make money.
Pros: Free applications are downloaded at least 10 times more than the same application for sale. Lots of people will download your application even if they are not really interested in it just cause it’s free.
Cons: Still if you want to generate real money it might not be enough. With ads you don’t need just downloads, but you also need the users to keep using your application. Sure, making a fart with your iPhone is really cool, but the life span of that application is really short compared to an application that people would use daily. Also there is not an official analytic tool from Apple as far as applications usage, so unless you use a 3rd part SDK (like the AdMob one) you need to build your own analytic system. - Freemium system. Actually there is not a real freemium system cause you can’t upgrade the very same application from free to paid. You need to have a free application as well as a paid one at the same time on iTunes. Basically you can offer the free one with some limitation or ads supported while the paid version is a full application ads free.
Pros: You give a chance to your users to try your application before they spend money on it. If your free version has ads you can make money also from that big chunk of market that doesn’t like to spend money for iPhone applications.
Cons: People can discover how much your application sucks before buying it, so make sure your application has some real value.
Of course there could be other ways to monetize an application, but these are for sure the 3 most common and Apple proof.
Tags: iPhone application, Making money
Posted in Developing, Marketing | 6 Comments »
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