July 22, 2015 by Effrosyni Moschoudi

A post about summertime!

Hello All! Today, I’m on a holiday mood, seeing that I’m off to Corfu for a week soon, so before I go, I thought I’d write a little post about my favorite season… Every year, I tend to hibernate during the winter and start coming alive in the spring. But, I love the summer more than any other time of year, and this is no surprise, seeing that I’ve spent most of the summers of my earlier life in an earthly paradise.

This is a a photo from the old quarter of Moraitika, my grandparents’ village on Corfu; this very tree and the lanes around it were my stamping ground where I played dodgeball, hide-and-seek, and a few games of cards with my cousins and friends as a child and teenager. Mind you, I even hung up my gran’s sheets from that very tree one year–couldn’t have been older than thirteen–to create a scene and a curtain as to produce a little play that I wrote. The other kids and I never advertized it and only did the show for our own pleasure. One of the village boys, Pakis, offered to participate as spectator. Before the show, I asked Pakis to pay his ticket. He reached inside his shorts pockets and handed me all its contents: 11 drachmas. After the show, we all went to the shop at the square and I used that money to buy everyone sweets. I believe Pakis had the most! That is just one of the myriad sweet memories I have from my childhood in the village, a place I love so much that I had to write a book or two set in it.

And, after showing you my favorite village corner, on the right in this picture, you can see my beloved pyramid-shaped mountain that is mentioned in The Ebb (book 1 in my trilogy). The locals call this mountain Mataouna. You can also see the sports pier on the beach at Moraitika – now you know what Sofia’s pier looks like in the book!

I will spend a week there as of this Friday, and hope to catch up with lots of people I love, but most of all, with my beloved 91-year-old grandmother, Antigone. She called me yesterday to say my aunt Danda brought her a cabbage from her garden knowing grandma would love to treat me to my favorite meal, Lahanodolmades (cabbage leaves stuffed with mince and rice in egg and lemon sauce). If you haven’t tasted this meal, take it from me, you haven’t lived! If you’re ever in Greece, try to find a restaurant that serves it… your taste buds will be grateful.

Speaking of food, I’d love to share another of my favorite Greek summer recipes that I recently posted on Effrosyni’s blog: GEMISTA (peppers and tomatoes stuffed with rice). Another yummy Greek meal I can’t get enough of!

Well, this is it from me! If you’re going on holiday this summer, whether it’s the sea or the mountain you’re headed for, make sure to relax and unwind, connect with family and friends and not so much to the internet! Our lives are always so hectic, we deserve to unplug from the greater world every now and then, if anything, for old times sake.

Till we speak again, have fun this summer whatever you get up to!

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May 14, 2015 by Effrosyni Moschoudi

The secrets of a strong password

You’re on the internet every day, and while you’re having fun, learning, connecting, or doing a job or a hobby, you know you’re in a vulnerable position every single moment. The internet can be a dangerous place, especially for those who roam the cyberspace carelessly. I am talking about security. Obviously, you know the basics. You have a series of passwords for an endless list of sites, because you know that using the same password everywhere is asking for trouble. And of course, you take precautions by keeping your passwords secure. But how much do you know? And more importantly, how strong would your password prove to be if a hacker were to target you? Would it hold or would it fail you, allowing the intruder to wreak havoc with your website, your blog, or your social media accounts?

How long do you think it would take a hacker to find your password?

Here’s what Bloomberg says:

If your password is 6 characters long (lowercase only), it would take a hacker just 10 minutes to crack it.

BUT:

If your password is 9 characters long, and it contains upper and lowercase characters, numbers and special characters (e.g. $, &, *, etc), then it would take 44,530 years to crack it!

TIPS TO MAXIMIZE YOUR SAFETY ONLINE

Generally, your password should be a minimum of 8 characters long, and it should contain upper case and lower case characters, numbers and special characters.

Don’t use words that can be found in the dictionary. Don’t use family member names, pet names, as well as the most absurd password in the world: the word ‘password’ itself! (Oh yes, you won’t believe how many people combine laziness and stupidity, enough to choose this!)

The trick is to use a catchphrase you love, or a song title, then type one letter for every word to make up your password. Say, for example, you love the song “I wanna dance with somebody who loves me” by Whitney Houston. Your password then could be:

iwdwshLM

Note I added two uppercase characters in the end to make it harder for that nasty hacker! Now mix it up by adding a few numbers (no birthdays or special days!), then add some special characters and you’re done! Isn’t that a beauty?

iwdwshLM3265#$%

Let that hacker then try to break into your account. If it takes him 44K years, he and his great grandchildren can die trying, right?

I can’t tell you how many alerts I have received from Wordfence, the free WordPress plugin I have installed on this site.

It seems every now and then hackers will try to take control of my site from various IP addresses all over the world (mainly Ukraine, Russia, and China, for some reason). Do you think I’d still be here posting this, my peace of mind intact, if my password was something stupid like ‘ilovecake’? No, of course you don’t. If you have a WordPress site like me, do yourself a favor and install Wordfence. It’s free, and it’ll tell you all about the threats you’ll be happily bouncing, as long as you have a strong password.

Also, occasionally, people I connect with on Twitter send me very strange tweets, and then a day later they’ll write and apologize, saying their account had been hacked. Why risk it? Why go through that?

Here are some more tips:

Never type in a password from a device you don’t own, like in an internet cafe. A hacker could get your password by detecting your key strokes.

Never type in a password from your own device using a free wifi hot spot. Anyone could steal it from you via the wireless network, but of course, they could also be looking from behind your shoulder.

Careful how you dispose of any notes with your passwords on them. The stories of ‘dumpster-diving’ we all hear from time to time are absolutely true!

Don’t leave paper notes lying around in a public place containing your password and whatever you do, do not store them electronically in a file on your computer. They say this is like hiding your house key by hanging it outside your front door and I couldn’t agree more.

Unless, you’re Einstein or maybe a savant like Dustin Hoffman from Rain Man, you’ll never be able to remember all these passwords by heart, especially as you’re required to change them periodically. So where should you keep them? Personally, I keep them all in one place, in a pocket-sized notebook that I use only for this purpose. I keep it near my desk and make sure to record there every change of password at once, so that I don’t forget.

Of course, there is still a minor risk by keeping this little book in my study, I know, but if an actual robber breaks in and chooses to take this instead of my TV and my stereo, I’ll take the risk! I think it’s way less likely than a hacker looking for any passwords among my computer files.

One last note: I can’t stress enough the importance of having a good antivirus program and a firewall installed. I use F-Secure Safe, which I think is the best of paid options. If you cannot afford to pay, download AVG – a very good FREE antivirus program.

Beware and stay safe!

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February 4, 2015 by Effrosyni Moschoudi

How to add an RSS feed to your site nice and easy

Have you created a site but having trouble adding an RSS feed to it? Are you looking for a way to prompt people to follow your blog but don’t know anything about code as to set this up as a widget? Fear not, for today I’m blogging about all this in full detail. I promise to set you up nice and easy in just a few minutes! What’s more, it’s all been tried and tested already by yours truly and it works like a charm!

As mentioned in the very first post on this blog, How to create your own website as if you were a pro, the tutorial I had followed to build this site did not include instructions on how to get people to follow the blog. Plus, I knew nothing about RSS feed. However, by watching a couple of helpful YouTube videos and with a bit of tweaking, I set up my RSS feed and the widgets without any problems within an hour. So this is me today, paying it forward and showing you how to do it too!

For my RSS feed set up, I chose Feedburner. Why? Because it’s a Google company and in my universe, it being the indie one, I go for Google every chance I get, simply because I feel it’s the best search engine in the world for a reason. This is why I didn’t use Mailchimp to set up a campaign instead. Some may find it easier to simply set up a Mailchimp campaign as to get their subscribers to receive notifications for their posts too. This is a personal choice. As I said I wanted to go for Google, plus I realize many people use RSS feeds to read posts so I wanted this option to be available.

Ok, here we go!

So the first thing I did, is set up the RSS feed. You do that, by going to https://feedburner.google.com

Now, I presume you already have a gmail account, i.e. the one you use on Google+ and Youtube. If you don’t have one, go to https://gmail.com and set one up.

Use your gmail account to sign on Feedburner.

Click on ‘Burn a feed right this instant’. Put in the link to your website followed by ‘/feed’ without spaces. For my site, it was http://effrosyniwrites.com/feed

It will say ‘complete’ and it will show you the link to your new feed. Copy it somewhere safe. You may need it for your Author Central Page for example as to insert your RSS feed there.

Click ‘next’.

‘Clickthroughs’. Tick it.

‘I want more’. Tick it.

‘Next’.

(Now, you’re going to add a few helpful free services.)

Make sure you’re on the ‘optimize’ tab and click on ‘edit feeds’.

‘Smartfeed’. Activate.

‘Feedflare’. Tick all the boxes on the left column. Activate.

Click on the ‘publicize’ tab.

‘Headline animator’.

(This is where we give your visitors the option to subscribe to the feed).

The oblong theme it shows by default (468×60) won’t fit on the right sidebar if you’ve used the same tutorial to build it as I have! This is where I did the tweaking. Change the theme by clicking on the drop down arrow. Choose 180×100 (choose white or black). Activate.

Scroll down to ‘Add to…’

Choose ‘Other – just give me the code’. Next. Copy the HTML.

Keep that screen open and create a new tab on your browser.

Go to the dashboard on your WP site. Go to Appearance, widgets. Add a new text widget to your right sidebar. Add a title e.g. ‘Subscribe to the feed’ and paste the HTML. SAVE. If you view your site now, you should see the widget for the feed showing (yay!)

Go back to the Feedburner screen.

‘Buzzboost’. ‘Display link to the feed’. Activate.

‘Email subscriptions’.

(This is where we give your visitors the option to follow the blog by email notification).

Activate. Copy the HTML.

Go to your WP dashboard again.

Create a new text widget for your right sidebar. Add a title e.g. ‘Follow this blog by email’ and paste the HTML in it. SAVE. Again, if you view the site, this too should be showing now!

Back to the Feedburner screen:

‘Pingshot’. Activate.

‘Feedcount’. Activate. Save.

‘Socialize’. Activate this service only if you want Feedburner to automatically publicize your new posts on the social media.

A note from me about publicizing your posts: I have not taken this option as I prefer to do this manually. It takes me seconds to go around Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and Facebook after I publish a new post. Create the message you want and just copy paste with minor differences, i.e. I use more hashtags on Twitter, I don’t use Twitter handles in other social media and I tag people on Facebook too. I recommend you do this manually as well. The benefits are far greater than the measly seconds you will save by using the ‘Socialize’ service via Feedburner.

At this point, you are done and you’re all set up. Your visitors can now follow the blog either by email or by directly subscribing to the feed.

One last bit of tweaking that I’ve done… and you may benefit from this too.

Make sure to follow your own blog with one of your email addresses. The email notification can take up to a day to reach the mailbox but you can play around with the delivery time in Feedburner to adjust that. For me, it is not such a big problem that the notification is not instant. However, I did have an issue with the formatting of my posts the way they showed within the email notification message. All the images were on the very left even though on the blog everything is nicely centered. Feedburner says the styling for this is not compatible with all internet browsers. I use Mozilla Firefox and it looked all wrong. I didn’t want a single one among my blog followers to see such an unprofessional presentation again, therefore I went back to Feedburner and investigated, looking for a fix. In the end, it was a compromise:

Under the Optimize tab, I found the service ‘Summary burner’.

Basically, you go in there and add a teaser phrase such as ‘this is a short excerpt only. Click on the title of this post to read it on the blog in its entirety’.

Once you activate this service, the email notifications no longer display the whole post. They list the first couple of lines only and not even the image that you may have included before the text starts. This means there are no styling issues, and I don’t think the readers will have a problem to click on the title and visit your trusted site. After all, they’ve already chosen to follow the blog and they should be interested enough to read what you have to say, right?

Make sure to revisit Feedburner frequently and check on your stats. Among other things, Feedburner provides you with a list of the actual email addresses of your blog followers (subscribers).

Good luck! If you try this and get stuck, just ask. Leave a comment if you’ve been successful and kindly let me know. It would make my day!