Boy, we’ve got a ton of news for you here. First of all, I want to thank those of you who’ve stayed subscribed to this newsletter since I’ve been away for so long, but we’ve made some big changes at Thrilling Heroics Consulting in the past few months. Many of you know that I’ve been working remotely from Thailand since November 2009, and I’ve put in months of time re-structuring the business and expanding our wide array of services. I’ve also recently given the business website a redesign, so please stop by and check it out.

I’ve got some new partners, new joint ventures, and new projects I’m working on here in the Southeast Asia region. First off, I’m working with Dwight Turner of In Search of Sanuk (sanuk is the Thai word for “fun”) to do charity fundraising and promote humanitarian causes here in Thailand, such as the Urban Garden Project Dwight has created, to build public vegetable gardens in Bangkok’s slums. Dwight is partnering with me to offer some new social media coaching and management services to our clients, and we are working on setting things up so that 5% of all Thrilling Heroics profits will go to local charitable projects in the region soon. Dwight and I travel to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in search of fun tomorrow and we hope to find some ways to make a positive impact during our stay, so wish us luck.

In addition to our new social media profile setup & management services, we now also provide monthly blog maintenance & support plans for clients who don’t have the technical knowledge to keep everything updated and stay on top of troubleshooting issues that come up. There are two plans available, one which includes some affordable one-on-one web-based coaching, ideal for freelancers & small companies who need occasional help with their blogs and social media presence. A monthly plan guarantees answers to all of your email questions and will give you peace of mind. If you sign up for the basic plan, we’ll stay on top of all the tech stuff for you, updating your blog core software, plugins & database, keeping your site safe from security threats, and sending you regular blog backups—so you can continue to concentrate on turning out good content. Both plans include some plugin support and troubleshooting help when you need it for well below our normal hourly rates! If you need ongoing WordPress blog management, sign up!

For those of you interested in expanding your global audience and doing remote work via the web, my new partner Brooke Ferguson is also available to provide business strategy consulting and location independent business coaching. We’re cooking up a lot of ideas, and there’s much more news, but I’ll save it for next week, so please stay tuned.

Cody McKibben
http://twitter.com/codymckibb
http://www.thrillingheroics.com

Stefan Esser recently warned developers of the dangers of SQL Column Truncation and the weakness of mt_rand().  With his help we worked around these problems and are now releasing WordPress 2.6.2.  If you allow open registration on your blog, you should definitely upgrade.  With open registration enabled, it is possible in WordPress versions 2.6.1 and earlier to craft a username such that it will allow resetting another user’s password to a randomly generated password.  The randomly generated password is not disclosed to the attacker, so this problem by itself is annoying but not a security exploit.  However, this attack coupled with a weakness in the random number seeding in mt_rand() could be used to predict the randomly generated password.  Stefan Esser will release details of the complete attack shortly.  The attack is difficult to accomplish,  but its mere possibility means we recommend upgrading to 2.6.2.

Special Offer for Urgent Security Upgrades

Need help upgrading your core software? The normal cost for a core software update is $45, but to help you get your blog secure again, if you get in touch before midnight PST Saturday, September 13, I’ll offer a special discounted upgrade of your core files for just $25.

[source: WordPress 2.6.2 on the WordPress Development Blog]

For several years, Sun CEO, Jonathan Schwartz has lobbied the SEC to allow disclosure of financial information through corporate blogs. In a landmark announcement, it seems that Mr. Schwartz may indeed get his wish, and with it, a historical decision that could break the age-old shackles that bound businesses to traditional media and distribution channels in order to satisfy full disclosure.

If you’re a corporate blogger, this may make your life easier. See the recent TechCrunch article SEC To Recognize Corporate Blogs as Public Disclosure. Can We Now Kill the Press Release?

Well, the exciting news is that there are a ton of businesses on there using it to improve the lines of communication with their customers, and there are many professionals building up a huge following and improving their credibility at the same time. Yesterday I published a detailed tutorial at our sister site about what Twitter is and some of the ways to best utilize the service for personal branding and to increase your leads. If you’re curious what this new social network is and how your business might benefit from you, I invite you to read Tweet and Grow Rich: A Beginner’s Guide Plus 5 Tips to Rock Your Business With Twitter at Thrilling Heroics!

I also highly recommend Brian Clark’s article Three Ways to Maximize Your Twitter Time for Networking, Marketing and Fun at the Copyblogger blog.

Technorati staffer Ian Kallen had this to say:

“This is a follow up on our post regarding a problem affecting thousands of WordPress blogs, Patch or Upgrade Your Wordpress Installation, Now. WordPress has since released version 2.5. However, we’ve noticed that a large number of blogs remain vulnerable to the security issue addressed by the 2.3.3 release.

Blogs that have been compromised by this security vulnerability are typified by having links to spam destinations inserted onto the blog page. These link insertions may be invisible to casual observations; the links are often obscured by style attributes that render them invisible. These links are still seen by crawlers such as Technorati’s, Google’s and Yahoo’s. You can find these links by viewing the source of the blog pages or, when using Firefox, looking under “Tools” -> “Page Info” -> “Links”. Blogs hosted on wordpress.com are not affected by this issue; only blogs hosted on their own installations of WordPress from wordpress.org require concern.

Because of this ongoing problem, we’re discontinuing processing crawls of blogs that exhibit common symptoms of being compromised. We strongly recommend upgrading your WordPress installation. Even if you haven’t been afflicted by a compromise, by the time you are aware that you have been a number of negative consequences may have already occurred (for instance, flagged spam by Technorati, Google or Yahoo!) — this has been reported by many WordPress users.

If you have questions about installing WordPress or maintaining a WordPress installation, please refer to the WordPress Documentation or the WordPress Forums. If you feel that your blog is not vulnerable to this hack but your WordPress blog is not being updated, please contact Technorati support staff.”

Special Offer for Urgent Security Upgrades

The normal cost for a complete software update is $65, but for clients who are still running WordPress 2.3.2 or below ONLY, to help you get your blog secure again I’ll be offering a special discounted upgrade of your core files and plugins for just $35, but you must contact me before midnight PST Saturday, August 9.

[source: Vulnerable WordPress Blogs Not Being Indexed on Technorati Weblog]

Brian Clark, the successful writer behind Copyblogger (with over 40K subscribers!), along with Tony Clark of Success From the Nest, have been running a fantastic training program for online marketers and content producers for the last several months. Many of the world’s top bloggers, from Australian Problogger Darren Rowse to Maki of DoshDosh have been raving about the Teaching Sells program ever since it started up in October 2007, calling it the best program for kick-starting your online content marketing and creating awesome paid-content membership sites.

Teaching Sells is a multiple-course educational program that encourages internet entrepreneurs like you and me to “Teach and Grow Rich.” Brian and Tony will walk you through all the specific strategies that online marketing gurus are using right now to make a fortune from setting up members-only multimedia learning environments online and sharing their expertise with others. If you’re a coach or consultant, this program is the perfect fit—and if you’re a blogger or online publisher, these guys will show you how to leverage the authority and exposure you’ve built with your online presence and funnel it into paid-content and create additional revenue streams for your online business.

Click here to learn more about and enroll in the Teaching Sells program.

Teaching Sells has nearly 1000 Charter members already and they will be closing their doors to new members Thursday night, July 31, so I finally bit the bullet and joined the program. I’ve worked through the first course and the program looks really well put together—the subscription cost is just $97/month, but it certainly looks well worth it. Access to the members’ area includes tons of great articles in easily-digestible chunks, audio and video files, interactive assignments, helpful user discussion boards, and even a library of valuable private label rights content that you can republish and repurpose to fit your needs.

The program currently includes over ten detailed courses (and more to come!):

1. How to Create Content That Sells
2. How to Effectively Market Membership Sites
3. How to Create Killer Multimedia Content with Quick and Easy Tools
4. Seven Profitable Business Models for Interactive Content Developers
5. Your Blueprint for Building Membership Sites with Open Source and Low-Cost Software
6. “Under the Radar” Marketing: Persuasive Educational Content That Sparks the Buying Process
7. Quick, Easy, and Inexpensive Niche-Focused Membership Sites
8. Explosive Content: Delivering Your Message Payload with Multimedia Storytelling
9. The Winning Difference: Advanced Positioning and Creative Adaptation Strategies
10. Launch Strategies for Membership Sites and Training Programs
11. The “Entreproducer” Model for Online Business Success
12. Under the Radar Affiliate Marketing
13. Quick and Easy Content Strategies
14. How to Explode Profits with Seminars and Workshops

Teaching Sells even has a 30-day money-back guarantee if you’re not totally impressed with the material, and you can opt to discontinue your membership anytime you choose.

At the time of printing, there are currently 36 seats left, and when Teaching Sells re-opens its doors to new members several months down the line, the subscription cost will increase at least threefold as they continue to roll out new material. Just like I did though, you can still get in before they close on Thursday, and take advantage of all the new features and benefits they have planned at a much lower price. To learn more about the program and the curriculum, check out their free report first.