I guess you have three choices to come around this issue.

1. Modify the WordPress core source code

I found this solution from seorankings.com. This solution is quick and dirty. It may happen that you will have to apply the hack again when you update your WordPress version.

To modify open the file wp-includes/category-template.php and find the function wp_tag_cloud(). Change the number assignment from 45 to what ever you need.

function wp_tag_cloud( $args = '' ) {
 $defaults = array(
 'smallest' => 8, 'largest' => 22, 'unit' => 'pt', 'number' => 45,

2. Add the tag cloud function call to your template

Another option is to add the wp_tag_cloud() function call into your template. I’ve not tested it but it should work when you add the call into your sidepar.php:

wp_tag_cloud(‘smallest=8&largest=22&number=30′);

Now you can easily adjust the number of tags in your cloud. For this option it’s needed to remove the tag cloud from your widgets within the wp-admin I guess.

3. Use a Plugin

Optionally search for a configurable tag cloud plugin and use it.

Pretty nice. But it needs minor modifications in your template code after installation. In my case I had to replace the following lines of code in a few .php files in my template.

<div id="pagenavi">
<!--
 <div><?php posts_nav_link('','','&laquo; Previous Entries') ?></div>
 <div><?php posts_nav_link('','Next Entries &raquo;','') ?></div>
-->
 <?php wp_pagenavi(); ?>
 </div>

Simply find all code places with the posts_nav_link(..) function call, remove them and add the wp_pagenavi() function call. That’s it.

Plugin Homepage: WP-PageNavi WordPress Plugin

He recommends to protect your wp-admin area using the Apache .htaccess file. Here in detail access is only allowed from IP addresses from where you are logging in. It’s definitely a good way to protect you blog, but often people don’t have a fixed IP address. The DSL provider assigns a different IP address on every dial in. Unfortunately there is no easy way to obtain the network addresses of your DSL provider which can be entered in your .htaccess file.

Another important recommendation: Always keep your server software and WordPress software up to date!

Also remove the following line from your header.php which will show hackers your WordPress version:

<meta name=”generator” content=”WordPress <?php bloginfo(’version’); ?>” /> <!-– leave this for stats please -->

So let’s concentrate on the restricted access in the wp-admin area. It’s a little bit tricky to get the address list of your DSL provider. I’ll explain and show an example script below. First let’s have a look at the video from Matt Cutts.

As step one you have to find out your own IP address. Let’s assume your IP address assigned from your provider is 213.168.95.20 (this is just an example!). Next do a whois lookup:

server:~# whois 213.168.95.20
...
inetnum:        213.168.95.0 - 213.168.98.255
netname:        NC-DIAL-IN-POOL

Have a look at the netname NC-DIAL-IN-POOL. Usually provider assign  a common name for all DSL dynamic address. But we want to add all IP addresses or better all network ranges into our .htaccess file. Ok now we need to get all address ranges with this netname. This can be achieved using the Linux whois tool:

server:~# whois -h whois.ripe.net NC-DIAL-IN-POOL
...
inetnum:        194.8.209.0 - 194.8.209.255
...
inetnum:        194.8.205.0 - 194.8.205.255
...

Fine we get a list with all network ranges from our provider now, but still not the correct netmask format and a lot of other output which we don’t need. Basically it’s possible to manually generate the .htaccess file now. Not big fun… So I’ve created a small perl script which does the job. As small bonus it creates the needed format for .htaccess file which means you are able to directly add the output to your .htaccess file in the wp-admin folder.

Important: Before usage you have to add the netname of the dial-in pool of your provider. How to find it out is described above. Below is only an example. The output will look like:

server:~# ./gethtaccessranges.sh
allow from 194.8.209.0/24
allow from 194.8.205.0/24
allow from 195.14.226.0/24

Finally generate a .htaccess file in your wp-admin/ folder with the content:

order deny,allow
deny from all

and add the output of the script gethtaccessranges.sh below the two lines. That’s it! Now access to wp-admin is only allowed from dynamic IP address from your provider. Sure it’s not the perfect solution but I’ll prevent you from many other hack attempts from all over the world.

At the end of the script there is also an example in case providers use number in their netnames.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
# gethtaccessranges.sh
# Harald Kraemer 08.08.2010
# www.technnitip.net
#
# NET::CIDR and NET::Whois is need to run this script.
# On debian you can install using apt-get:
# apt-get install libnet-cidr-perl libnet-whois-perl
#
# Important: Replace the netname "NC-DIAL-IN-POOL" at the end of the
# script with the dial-in netname of your provider! Use the command
# whois <my-ip-address> to find out the netname.

use Net::CIDR;
use Net::CIDR ':all';
use Net::Whois::Raw;
use strict;

sub getRanges
{
  my($netname) = @_;
  my $whois;
  my @whois_array;
  my @ranges;

  $whois = whois( $netname, 'whois.ripe.net' );

  @whois_array   = split( "\n", $whois );
  @ranges        = grep( /inetnum:/, @whois_array );

  foreach ( @ranges )
  {
    s/inetnum://g;
    s/ //g;
    s/ - /-/g;

    foreach my $item ( Net::CIDR::range2cidr( $_ ) )
    {
      print "allow from " . $item . "\n";
    }
  }
}

getRanges('NC-DIAL-IN-POOL');

#for( my $i=1; $i <= 30; $i++)
#{
#  getRanges('DTAG-DIAL' . $i);
#}

For security reasons you should add four new keys to your wp-config.php in the root directory of your WordPress installation. The easiest way to generate the keys  is to use the key generator from wordpress.org. Copy the generated keys to your wp-config.php and finally log in again to wp-admin. As a result you will recognize the update wp-admin skin.

• codex.wordpress.org

I’ve used the automatic upgrade within the administration panel on two blogs with different plugins installed. On both blogs I could not detect a problem after the automatic upgrade.

WP 2.8 comes with many changes, but I could not detect one which is important for me.

Problems

After installation the MaxBlogPress Favicion on the TechniTip.Net blog all pages were returned empty to the browser. I don’t know exactly what did cause this issue, but could solve it  by changing the plugin code injecting mode:

Enter Settings->MBP Favicon->Advanced Options and checked [x] wp_head() instead of Buffer Caching.

Afterwards everything was fine.

Installation

• Install via download from MaxBlogPress Favicion and unpack it to your plugin folder
  
• Or search for “MaxBlogPress Favicion” in the plugin section in your WP-Admin if you have WordPress 2.7 or newer installed

Links

• MaxBlogPress Favicion

See the difference:

The single post view:

Installation

If you have WordPress 2.7 or newer installed, the installation can be done with a few clicks:

• Enter the admin page and select “Plugins”
• Scroll down to the section “Get More Plugins”
• Select “Plugin Browser/Installer”
• Search for “WPtouch” and install

Otherwise you have to go the manual way.

Problems with WP Super Cache

If you are using WPtouch together with the WP Super Cache plugin you may run into trouble, I solved it with the following steps:

1. In Settings->WP Super Cache add the following Recected User Agents:
   iPhone
   iPod
   aspen
   dream
   incognito
   webmate
   BlackBerry9500
   BlackBerry9530
2. Add the following line in your .htaccess
   RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !^.+(iPhone|iPod|aspen|dream|incognito|webmate|BlackBerry9500|BlackBerry9530)
   This line should be inserted above the following existing line:
   RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/wp-content/cache/supercache/%{HTTP_HOST}/$1/index.html -f

Links

• WPtouch: WordPress on iPhone, iPod & Android
• WPtouch iPhone Theme

• Social bookmarking plugin
  Add links on your posts to popular social bookmarking sites.
• Google sitemap generator plugin
  This plugin generates a XML-Sitemap compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog. This format is supported by Ask.com, Google, YAHOO and MSN Search.
• All in One SEO pack plugin
  Automatic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) out of the box for your wordpress blog.
• NextGEN Gallery plugin
  Really nice and easy to use gallery script for wordpress.
• Askmet plugin
  Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not and lets you review the spam it catches under your blog’s “Comments” admin screen.
• Google Analytics plugin
  The Google Analytics for WordPress plugin automatically tracks and segments all outbound links from within posts, comment author links, links within comments, blogroll links and downloads. It also allows you to track AdSense clicks, add extra search engines, track image search queries and it will even work together with Urchin.
• Cross-references plugin
  Useful plugin for manually setting a reference to another post or page. It will generate backward references automatically.
• WP Super Cache
  This plugin generates static html files from your dynamic WordPress blog. After a html file is generated your webserver will serve that file instead of processing the comparatively heavier and more expensive WordPress PHP scripts.
• WPtouch: Mobile Plugin&Theme for WordPress
  It automatically generates pages for perfect display on mobile devices from your WordPress blog.
• MaxBlogPress Favicon
  Adds a favicon icon to your WordPress blog with 100 pre installed icons.
• Yet Another Related Posts Plugin
  Gives you a list of posts and/or pages related to the current entry.
• WP-PageNavi
  Adds a more advanced paging navigation to your WordPress site.