Rick's Daily Tips

Add super-secure Two-Factor Authentication to your WordPress blog in 5 minutes!

Posted on December 28, 2016

Update: Although it is absolutely awesome, I can no longer recommend installing the Clef Security plugin described in this post.

The company has just announced that they will be shutting the Clef service down in June 2017.

I have switched all of my WordPress blogs over to the fantastic Google Authenticator plugin/mobile app and I recommend that you install it on your blogs as well.

The original post continues below…

If you own and/or maintain a blog built on the popular WordPress platform you probably worry that a hacker could break into your blog’s admin section and take over your blog at any time.

And with hackers attacking blogs right and left these days, you are definitely right to be worried about the security of your blog!

A while back I wrote a post explaining how to set up Two-Factor Authentication on WordPress by installing the popular Duo Security plugin, but I stopped recommending that method after I was unable to resolve several serious issues I was having with it.

After removing the Duo plugin I started looking around for an alternative. I quickly found a plugin/service called Clef Security that turned out to be nothing short of amazing. [Read more…]

Review: Toshiba Satellite C55-C5241 15.6 Inch Laptop

Posted on December 26, 2016

toshiba-satellite-c55-c5241-laptop Windows 10 laptops have now firmly taken over the market and I’ve had the opportunity to check a number of them out.

Today I’m going to tell you about the sleek new Toshiba Satellite C55-C5241 that I recently took for a spin.

This laptop comes equipped with a bright 15.6-inch widescreen HD 1366×768 TruBrite display, a powerful 2.2 GHz Core i5-5200U CPU, 8GB of 1600MHz DDR3 RAM and a spacious 1TB hard drive. That all adds up to plenty of power for most anyone who isn’t into competitive gaming. [Read more…]

Microsoft admits they went too far in pushing Windows 10 onto their customers

Posted on December 26, 2016

For many Windows users, the biggest frustration of 2016 was having to fight Microsoft tooth and nail just to prevent their PCs from being automatically upgraded to Windows 10.

As you probably remember, the company was determined to get as many users to “accept” the free upgrade to Windows 10 as possible during the free upgrade period.

They kept getting more aggressive by the day as the calendar approached the end of the free upgrade period on July 29, and it finally got to a point where I asked if the “Get Windows 10” app hadn’t actually morphed into the realm of malware.

A lot of people agreed that the app had indeed morphed into malware, but many of the tech experts and pundits that I follow disagreed even though the evidence was quite compelling.

Well, it turns out I was right, and Microsoft themselves just admitted it (in a round-about way). [Read more…]

Q&A: Why did Windows install over 160 updates after I re-installed it?

Posted on December 24, 2016

Question from Marisol F.: My laptop got a virus and I had to re-install Windows 7 on it. After it finished over 160 Windows Updates were installed.

Is this normal? I’ve never seen anywhere near that many updates installed at one time before. Do you think I need to re-install Windows again?

This is the first time I’ve ever had to do this so I’m a little confused.

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]