Go to the Settings section of your Dashboard and change the two URLs there to the location that you want to move WordPress to. Don’t panic, this will effectively kill your blog until you move all of the WordPress files to their new location.

You may need to re-generate your permalinks at Settings/Permalinks in your Dashboard.

Once that’s done, see our handy guide for changing links and images after a move.

Moving a WordPress installation is not too much of a complicated procedure, but feel free to contact the WordPress Support Forums if you run into trouble.

First of all, do you really need open registration? If not, uncheck “Anyone can register” from the Settings area of your Dashboard.

So, what if you need open registration? First, stop the bad bots from even visiting your blog with Bad Behavior.

Now, you could certainly use a CAPTCHA on your registration form, but I wouldn’t bother with that. Several CAPTCHA have been broken by a simple program, and they just aren’t accessible. Instead, use Ban Hammer, which compares registration email addresses with your comment blacklist (just add them if you notice a trend) and the collective blacklist at Stop Forum Spam.

Like comment spam, registration spam will be a constant battle, but Bad Behavior and Ban Hammer should at least make it easier on you.

By far, the most popular audio plugin is WordPress Audio Player. Video plugins are significantly less popular, probably because video files take up so much space and bandwidth, and it’s so easy to embed videos from external providers.

When embedding audio and video, I prefer to use the Degradable HTML5 Audio and Video Plugin. Sure, it may require some file conversion, but it’s a great way to embed both audio and video files that use the browser’s native (non-Flash) player while also providing the option of a Flash-based player for browsers that don’t support HTML5 embeds.

If you’d rather embed videos from an external provider, it’s easy to do (as mentioned above), but Viper’s Video Quicktags providers a few additional features and customizations, plus it uses XHTML-valid embeds, which most external providers tend to avoid for some strange reason.

Embedding audio and especially video opens your blog to a whole new world of content. Give it a try, you may enjoy it.

The first thing to do is to confirm the existence of a malware infection by running the Exploit Scanner plugin. Once you have confirmed the existence of malware, refer to this handy Codex guide. Why simply link to the guide? Because this handy guide is updated by WordPress’ volunteer community to present the latest tips and tricks to clearing the latest malware infections from your blog.

Of course, the best way to prevent a malware disaster is to regularly backup your database and files, but WordPress’ volunteer community has also compiled a list of recommended security measures.

This is the fourth entry in our hopefully long-running WordPress FAQ series. What did you think, and what questions would you like us to answer next?

Most WordPress users can easily find and install plugins from the official directory via Plugins -> Add New in their Dashboard, but some may need to complete a manual installation. To install a plugin manually, download it and then use an FTP or SFTP client to upload the decompressed archive to your blog’s /wp-content/plugins/ directory. Once the plugin has been uploaded, you should be able to activate it from the Plugins section of your Dashboard. If it isn’t appearing, the plugin may have additional installation instructions.

Plugins are not free from the dangers of malware, and can sometimes be far more dangerous than themes. Unfortunately, the plugin directory does not have a volunteer review staff like the theme directory does, so users need to be extra careful. Always check a new plugin’s tagged support topics before installing it and run the Exploit Scanner plugin before activating it. If it finds any results for the plugin files in the “Level Severe” category, just delete the plugin and find another. If you are ever uncomfortable with any of the results from the Exploit Scanner plugin, delete the plugin and find another.

Plugin malware is a serious issue. By simply installing and activating a plugin, you could instantly lose all of your data, subjecting your visitors to invasive scripts, or leaving your blog open to malicious attack.

To be safe, always run the Exploit Scanner plugin before activating a new plugin.

This is the third entry in our hopefully long-running WordPress FAQ series. What did you think, and what questions would you like us to answer next?

Without a doubt, the best place to find free WordPress themes is the official WordPress Theme Directory. Themes can be submitted to the directory by almost any author, but the themes are thoroughly checked for quality and safety by a team of dedicated volunteers. With over 1,200 free themes and a handy tag filter interface, you’d have a hard time not finding the perfect theme for your blog.

There are certainly other places to find free themes, like Theme Lab, but how can you be sure that the theme you downloaded is safe? If you plan to download themes from anywhere but the official WordPress Theme Directory, you should install both the Exploit Scanner and Theme-Check plugins.

Run the Exploit Scanner plugin immediately after installing the theme. If it finds any results for the theme files in the “Level Severe” category, just delete the theme and find another. If the Exploit Scanner gives it a pass, activate the theme and run the Theme-Check plugin. If the Theme-Check plugin gives the theme a pass, you should be good to go.

If you are ever uncomfortable with any of the results from the Exploit Scanner or Theme-Checker plugins, delete the theme and find another.

It’s generally safe to download and install a free theme from the actual developer’s site, but you should still run both plugins just to be sure.

Theme malware is a serious issue. By installing a free theme from any source except the official WordPress Theme Directory, you could be unknowingly running spam ads, subjecting your visitors to invasive scripts, or leaving your blog open to malicious attack.

To be safe, make sure that you either get your free themes from the official WordPress Theme Directory or at least run the Exploit Scanner and Theme-Check plugins.

This is the second entry in our hopefully long-running WordPress FAQ series. What did you think, and what questions would you like us to answer next?

Even though you may have changed your main URL during the move process, your internal links and images will remain unchanged, leaving images broken and internal links pointing toward the old domain or directory. Sure, you could manually edit every single post or page, but there are other ways.

The easy way is to use a plugin called Velvet Blues Update URLs. It’s a very simply plugin. You just enter your old URL, then enter your new URL, and this plugin take cares of the rest. I know, it almost seems too easy, but in this case it really is just that easy. Of course, if you want to make it a little bit more difficult, we sure can.

What if Velvet Blues Update URLs disappears and you’re left to fend for yourself? You can use the Search and Replace plugin to search for your complete old URL and replace it with your new URL. A note on searching for the complete URL, don’t take shortcuts. If you moved from maindomain.com/blog/ to maindomain.com, do not simply search for and replace all instances of /blog. This will all affect all instances of /blog, including links to other sites and blogs that may have /blog in the URL. Instead, search for maindomain.com/blog/ in its entirety and replace it with maindomain.com.

What if you can’t use plugins? What if you have an illogical need to do everything the hard way? Well, we haven’t forgotten about you. There’s a hard way to do just about anything. Simply backup your database and open the .sql file in a plain text editor. As above, search for and replace all instances of the complete old URL with the new URL. The same warning about shortcuts applies here as well. Once you’re done, save the file and restore your database.

As always, if you run into any problems, the volunteers in the WordPress Support Forums will be more than happy to help.

This is the first entry in our hopefully long-running WordPress FAQ series. What did you think, and what questions would you like us to answer next?

Q. Is there a way to see a count on the number of comments you have total?

A. I’ve looked around for that particular detail and it has been omitted from WordPress 2.5. However, the good news is that a ticket has already been made (Ticket #6471) According to the change history, it looks like this will be one of those things that will come along with 2.6 and not WordPress 2.5.1.

Q. What happens if i don’t upgrade to WP 2.5?

A. This is open to opinion but I’ll point out the obvious. If you don’t upgrade, you are putting your blog at risk of being exploited by any known security vulnerability that may have been discovered for your version of WordPress. More specifically, if you are running 2.3.2 or earlier, you are at risk with the exception of 2.0.11 which contains all the security patches for the 2.0 branch. Also, the longer you wait to upgrade, the worst off you’ll be as the last thing anyone wants is to upgrade their blog and one week later, they have to upgrade again.

Q. Where can I find “Multi-file upload with progress bar” as described by Matt on his launching WP 2.5 post?

A. In WordPress 2.5, there is not a button specifically for uploading multiple files. After clicking on any of the ADD MEDIA buttons, click on the CHOOSE FILES TO UPLOAD BUTTON. You can select multiple files and then click on the upload button and each file you selected will then be uploaded to WordPress. You can also select a directory where all files within that directory will be uploaded.

Q. What happened to my Import Links ability?

A. It’s still there, it’s just a little more hidden. You can access the link importer by logging into your WordPress administration area and selecting WRITE – LINK – IMPORT LINKS. Note that the IMPORT LINKS will show up under the RELATED box in the right hand sidebar.

Q. Why can’t I “Save and continue editing” anymore?

A. At first, it may seem like this option doesn’t exist anymore but the SAVE button now acts the same as the old SAVE AND CONTINUE EDITING button.

Q. Some examples of code that uses the [gallery] feature of 2.5

A. WordPress 2.5 introduced something called the gallery shortcode. It looks a little something like this [gallery] The shortcode can be used in either a post or a page and displays a thumbnail set of gallery images attached to that page/post. Here are a few examples in how you could use this shortcode.

columns – specify the number of columns. The gallery will include a break tag at the end of each row, and calculate the column width as appropriate. The default value is 3. If columns is set to 0, no row breaks will be included. For example, to display a 4 column gallery:

For Example: [gallery columns="4"]

id – specify the post ID. The gallery will display images which are attached to that post. The default behaviour if no ID is specified is to display images attached to the current post. For example, to display images attached to post 123:

For Example: [gallery id="123"]

size – specify the image size to use for the thumbnail display. Valid values include “thumbnail”, “medium” and “full”. The default is “thumbnail”. For example, to display a gallery of medium sized images:

For Example: [gallery size="medium"]

Some advanced options are available:

orderby – specify the sort order used to display thumbnails. The default is “menu_order ASC, ID ASC”.

itemtag – the name of the XHTML tag used to enclose each item in the gallery. The default is “dl”.

icontag – the name of the XHTML tag used to enclose each thumbnail icon in the gallery. The default is “dt”.

captiontag – the name of the XHTML tag used to enclose each caption. The default is “dd”. For example, to change the gallery markup to use div, span and p tags:

For Example: [gallery itemtag="div" icontag="span" captiontag="p"]

Special thanks to the folks who put this information in the Codex which you can view here. (Using The Gallery Shortcode)

Q. How do I edit Widget Configuration?

A. Login to your WordPress back end and browse to DESIGN – WIDGETS. Look on the right hand side under CURRENT WIDGETS and click on the EDIT link for any widget you would like to configure the settings for.

If you have any more questions, keep them rolling in as this quite possibly might be a regular feature here at WeblogToolsCollection.com. Also, be sure to read the Codex first if you encounter any issues with WordPress as it’s the best source of documentation available.