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Add an audio file to A WordPress post

Wizard will tell you there are shortcuts to do this but I like to have a little more control so here goes. Please note I am using Ubuntu Linux for this demo so some of the pictures might look a little different. Please also note that I am using the new Gutenburg

First Upload the MP3 file to the Media Library by clicking Media–>Add New from the menu.
Either Drag and Drop the audio file from your file manager or click on select file. I am clicking on Select File for this demo.
Click on the file you want to upload and open/select.
The file will upload and appear in the media library. Now you can create your post, or if you have already created your post insert the block with the mp3 file.
In your post or page you add a new block. Normally you can hover your mouse below whatever text you have on your screen and the little plus-sign-in-a-circle will appear or you can click the plus-sign-in-a-circle on the top left side of the page. You can see on my picture above that I have the little musical note on the right side with is the symbol for an audio file. That shows up because I’ve used it frequently. If it is not there when you click the little plus-sign-in-a-circle you can open up the section called common blocks and you should be able to click on the musical note, or search for a block called audio. Click it and it will change the block to an audio block.
Now that you have an audio block, you can go to your media library where you have already uploaded the mp3 file.
You will probably have more files to choose from, however you want to click on the file you uploaded at the beginning of this demo and then click select on the bottom right side of the screen.
Voila! you will have an embedded mp3 file now on your page that a user can click to play or right-click to download.
Remember, like any regular post you will want to make sure the categories have been selected on the left side of the editor, if you use categories. Make sure you are clicked on the Document Block for the categories section. Select whatever category will place this post in the correct section of your blog.
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WordPress Exploit

This weekend during ARRL Field Day I was posting to Twitter, Facebook and the club website. Toward the end of the day I was ready to upload some pictures to the gallery so I tried to log in to the site. I was told that because I had logged in too many times and failed that my account was locked. Apparently this is a function of the iThemes WordPress Security module.

This is a bit of an inconvenience so I asked one of the officers to see if he could get in and unlock my account. Surprise, surprise. he was locked out as well. This was going to be more inconvenient that we expected.

After viewing the activity against the site we found what appeared to be some script kiddie who had found our ids, probably from one or more posts that we created and then went about trying to guess our passwords. This only worked until the system locked out any further attempts, frustrating the script kiddie and us.

Our admin then tried to log in and got the same error. Now of course we can fix the issue by getting into the MySQL database and fiddling with the data. Kinda messy. However our admin had another trick up his sleeve. In a moment I watched him switch usernames and log in with no trouble at all. Whaaaa?

Apparently his strategy is to create administrative user names that he never uses to post or create content. It appears that if you only use it to administer the site and not create content there is no way to easily discover the user name from the front end.

So, that is what I am doing. For each of the wordpress sites I administer I am creating a user named, for example, “oV9T450RxgDt” with a password of “H9umpELvcJWl” (trust me, this won’t work on any of my sites). Of course this is only practical if you use a reliable password management program like LastPass or KeePass. I’ll let you know if I get hacked with this in place. I’m sure that security wizards will tell me that there are a ton of other things to do but I’m guessing this can’t hurt. I think the key is to NEVER post using this ID.

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How do I remove the Category Title at the top of a category menu page

In Content Management systems I like to create my pages dynamically out of posts that are categorized.

In WordPress, I create a category and then I create a menu related to that category.

This way I can have dynamic content and add and remove articles whenever I want without wrestling with the whole page to get new content on that page.

The problem I keep having to remind myself, when I update a theme is how do I get rid of the Category: Category Name page title. Every time I click around and stumble and search for help on the internet to figure it out.  I want to have the tile of each post that I have created but not of the page itself, particularly not “Category: Category Name!”

Now this is no guarantee for the theme you are using, however it works for me. With the theme active, from the Dashboard menu click on Appearance –> Theme Options. On the row of tabs on that page click on the tab named General. About half way down the page you will see an option “Display Post Category” click on the toggle and set it to off. Voila! Those annoying page titles are gone. Remember to scroll to the bottom of the page and click Save Options or you will end up scratching your head. Again.