Over the last year or so we’ve been monitoring WordPress hack attempts. Everyone knows using an account named, “Admin” (which was the default WordPress login years back) is ripe for brute-force login attacks. What’s interesting is that the same sites often get attacked repeatedly with the same login username – but from the same IP – just at later dates.

Recently there’s been a major uptick in these WordPress brute force botnet attacks – while the attackers generally never get through, since we all have strong passwords, it does take away server resources. 

Here’s an alphabetical listing of the top 15+ usernames attempted. Of course all capitalization variants are also tried from the differing IPs.  Surprisingly, since it’s also easy to determine most usernames on a WordPress install, I’m baffled as to why these particular usernames are the ones in current circulation – I assume it’s just low-hanging fruit.

• Last user attempted: %%%nofind%%%
• Last user attempted: 1234567in
• Last user attempted: aaa
• Last user attempted: adm
• Last user attempted: admin
• Last user attempted: admin1
• Last user attempted: administrator
• Last user attempted: adminka
• Last user attempted: anna
• Last user attempted: contributer
• Last user attempted: manager
• Last user attempted: qwerty
• Last user attempted: root
• Last user attempted: support
• Last user attempted: sysadmin
• Last user attempted: test
• Last user attempted: user

The easiest thing would be to simply move the login page (or access to it) to another location on the server.  We’ll see what the folks at Automattic do in the coming months.

The American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine (ACVIM) is an organization that is dedicated to the discovery of new medical knowledge in the field of veterinary science, they increase public awareness of advances in veterinary medical care and they educate, train and certify veterinary specialists. ACVIM chose BadCat Design to redesign their website for them, which included changing the visual look of the site, but also reorganizing some of the navigational structure and architecture of the content to help users have a better online experience.

The purpose of ACVIM’s website is to provide informational resources to people in the field of veterinary science. Due to the nature of what ACVIM does, there’s a lot of resource content to maintain and keep organized on their website. It’s important to ACVIM that their users are provided with the answers they need and that the content is easy to access and navigate to on their website.

Specifically there were many changes made within the structure of the nav to help users get to their desired content more easily. Design decisions were made that not only visually brightened up the design to make the site look better overall, but to add heirarchical cues so the information is presented in a more readable way.

Some new features that were added and/or redesigned on the ACVIM site include:

• New consistent font and color styles on all pages
• Colorful redesigned page templates
• Home page rotating jQuery slideshow
• Home page Search for a specialist form
• News headline bar at the top of the page
• Diplomate/candidate log-in area on every page
• Easier page by page access to the General Information Guide

http://acvim.org/

http://www.bellguilmet.com/

Patrick Bell and David Guilmet are owners of an eponymous design firm based in Solebury, Pennsylvania. They specialize in interior, architectural and project design for collectors of art and antiques. Their projects range from tasteful private home interiors to large event planning. Bell Guilmet needed an online presence that would stand out and support the elegance of their brand and at the same time showcase some of the unique projects they have designed, organized and executed.

Most of Bell Guilmet’s clients operate in a fast pace working environment so it was important to them that their site can go anywhere, a lot of focus was placed on multi-device compatibility. In addition to multi-device compatibility, it was only appropriate to let the amazing work they do speak for itself. The project gallery is full of large rich images of individual projects they have worked on across the country. The slideshow that is used on these pages is easy to use on your desktop, laptop or portable device. The toolbar was customized to be subtle so that the main focus is always on the stunning images of each project.

• Multi-Device Compatibility
• jQuery Slideshows
• Large High Res Images

Visit: www.bellguilmet.com

http://musicworks4kids.com/

MusicWorks 4 Kids is a program that works closely with Kindermusik to expose children to use music at a young age and to use instruments as tools of self expression. Musicworks 4 Kids has been around since 1995 and their classes and music programs focus on the child and their family.

The Doylestown MusicWorks 4 Kids new website needed the ability to reach out to children and their families to teach them about the programs that are offered. Specific technologies were utilized to make the content easier to access to the user. Some of these technologies include:

• WordPress as a CMS
• Custom Fields Plugin
• CSS3 animation
• Calendar of Events

WordPress was used so that adding content would be easy and quick for the admin. They are able to add information from anywhere at anytime with WordPress and it has an intuitive backend that is comfortable to use. A custom field plugin was also used in the template so that adding and removing information would be easy for new and old classes. CSS3 animation was added to the home page to animate the words to the right of the jQuery slider area. Instead of using cumbersome javascript, the CSS animates the text simply. Google fonts were used to add live text to the site with a lot of style. Fonts were chosen that would complement the branding of MusicWorks 4 Kids. Finally there is a calendar of events that was designed so everyone knows when their classes are going to be held.

http://musicworks4kids.com/

http://www.probertconstruction.com/

Probert Construction Company was founded by Chris Probert, an experienced builder boasting over 15 years of custom building experience. Located in the Bucks County area, Probert Construction has worked on a variety of projects such as custom new homes, construction consultation, additions, renovations as well as outdoor spaces and pools.

Probert Construction prides themselves on their work and reaching the goals of each individual customer. This core value is why is was important, when designing their new website, that a variety of different projects were displayed in great detail. When a new client visits the site it’s important to make sure that the hard work that was put into these projects is fully understood. On the Home page you are greeted with a slideshow of beautiful photographs of some truly amazing projects they have completed. The jQuery galleries that were implemented are limitless, so if there is a project with a lot of detail, the gallery can adapt to a higher volume of images.

• jQuery Slideshow
• jQuery Gallery

http://www.probertconstruction.com/

Vascular Disease Foundation has been educating the public and professionals and advocating on vascular health for over ten years. Founded in 1998 by Dennis Newman, VDF has grown into a large network of companies, patients, partners and professionals dedicated to providing information about Vascular Disease. The Vascular Disease Foundation has two sister organizations, the Peripheral Artery Disease Coalition (PAD Coalition) and the Venous Disease Coalition (VDC). These three organizations maintain an invaluable web presence but recently realized a need for a better way to manage their content. 

With the decision to combine the existing websites (PAD, VDC with VDF), the Vascular Disease Foundation had to put in place a more efficient way to maintain their resources. Starting as three separate html websites with more than 450 pages each on average, the WordPress multisite feature was chosen as one solution to their content entry and management needs. Multisite is a built in feature available since WordPress 3.0. With multisite you are able to create a network that has the ability to run all three of VDF’s sites as one. It makes plugin installation and access less redundant, VDF can create pages containing content that can be shared by any of the three organizations and updating WordPress is an easy one instance update.
Other Features WordPress is now providing VDF with are:

• Custom Post Types
• Link Lists
• Customized Mega-Menus

Custom post types make it easy to add important press releases and keeps them organized while feeding them into the page automatically. Link lists are generated instantly, making managing long members lists and sponsors list pages simple and fast. Finally, menus makes removing and adding content easy, which wasn’t always the case with their previous html site. Check out the new VascularDisease.org!

After frustration of keeping a consistent look with title typography on our WordPress sites, friend and fellow designer/developer @sauldraws and I came up with FriendlyCase for WordPress. It’s based on Saul’s original function code that I took and built into a simple WordPress plugin. Pretty Simple and keeps the ALL CAPS issue in check.

Turn Post and Page Titles from:
THIS IS A REALLY GREAT PLUGIN!
to:
This is a Really Great Plugin!

It’s currently a 1.0 release but seems to work as intended and I have it running a several sites. Check it out here for progress updates: FriendlyCase for WordPress or download it directly – FriendlyCase at WordPress Extend. We hope to add some more functionality and user options in the next few weeks.

Local Philadelphia photographer, Michael Leslie, enjoys shooting weddings, mitzvahs, as well as portraits, and commercial photography in the Philadelphia suburban area. His web presence not only promotes his business, but incorporates a blog and showcases examples of his work. Leslie’s website also displays recent events he has shot, allowing clients to view their special day online. This Philadelphia area photographer, turned to BadCat Design to refresh the website they had designed for him a few years prior.

Major Updates to Michael’s site include:

• Look and feel with Child Theme
• WordPress/CMS driven
• Easy social media access
• HTML5

The pages of his site were polished with some new earthy colors and tones, a new navigation was implemented and his identity was cleaned up. The images remain bold and the focus of the site.

Links to Leslie’s social media outlets are easily accessible on every page. Clients and interested prospects can stay in-touch with what Michael is shooting or doing professionally.

The new site was created with WordPress. This allows for Leslie to utilize it’s intuitive user backend, which ensures ease of updating. Blogging is a breeze with WordPress also making his daily commentary and photo snippets easier for him to post. Finally, with the combination of WordPress and HTML5, Leslie’s site is confidently thrust into the new generation of websites, development software and web standards.

Visit: Michael Leslie Photography

We’ve used quite a few of these and of course have our favorites, but many have their own advantages. The tools change rapidly as does HTML5 and CSS3, so you’d need to check them out for yourself. We’ve listed them by alphabetically by name, version, tagline, url and price, as currently available.

Adobe Edge

Preview 3
Create animated Web content using HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript.
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/edge/
Currently Free Beta

Hype

v 1.0.5
Create animated and interactive web content.
http://tumultco.com/hype/
$29.99

MotionComposer

v 1.0.3
Create interactive Web content using Flash® and HTML5!
http://www.aquafadas.com/en/motioncomposer/
$149.

Purple

v 1.0.2
Timeline-based animation editor with HTML5 and CSS3 export.
http://www.purpleanimator.com/
$19.99

Radi

v 0.7
Create video, animation and realtime graphics for the modern web.
http://radiapp.com/
Currently Free Beta

Sencha Animator

v 1.0
Create CSS3 animations for WebKit browsers and touchscreen mobile devices.
http://www.sencha.com/products/animator/
$199.

Over the years animation on the web has certainly changed. We’ve worked with GIF89A, Shockwave, FutureSplash- then Flash, DHTML, to name but a few. Given the need for high quality interactive animation for Mobile devices such as iOS, CSS3 animations, coupled with JavaScript and HTML5, have really taken off.

We’ve been fortunate to work with a new update to the very cool tool from Sencha called simply, Animator. Check out the new Sencha Animator. We’re looking forward to showing some new projects utilizing CSS3 and HTML5. Stay tuned.