This is one of the big reasons why I don’t use comprehensive security plugins …
Discontinued Security Plugins Expose Many WordPress Sites to Takeover – SecurityWeek
And why I don’t use site builders …
WordPress Site Builder Closes – Devs Forced To Rebuild Client Sites (searchenginejournal.com)
I think this is pretty funny – iThemes Security Review | Sucuri, and Sucuri Video Review: Cory Miller, CEO of iThemes (screen shot below).
Read more Pretty funny – iThemes uses Sucuri for WP security
Back in September 2019 I developed my Greetings byGosh plugin, got it approved, and uploaded it to the WP Plugin Repository. Just recently, I released an updated version, following this guide: How to update an existing WordPress plugin SVN repository.
Read more Updating My Plugin in the WP Repository – Major Security Hole
When I first installed a contact form plugin I went with the most popular- Contact Form 7. Contact Form 7 is very popular for good reasons, it is very capable and full-featured. Just a bit complex for me. I just need a simple contact form.
I’m a fan of the Health Check & Troubleshooting plugin. I’m also a fan of the Yoast SEO Plugin. Both have been very helpful on multiple occasions. But … on all of my sites Health Check is suddenly giving me a “Critical” – and, it turns out, fake – SEO error: “Your site cannot be found by search engine”; “This was reported by the Yoast SEO plugin”. Read more What is Yoast playing at?
The news is being breathlessly announced in numerous news items like this one, and this one. WordPress 5.5 will add the the long-awaited, eagerly-anticipated ability to auto-update plugins and themes! Yea!
Read more New! Auto-Updates for Plugins and Themes are Coming!
A hacker outfit calling itself WP-VCD has become a prevalent source of malware infections by exploiting a basic human weakness – our love of free stuff.
Greetings byGosh is my initial attempt to build experience in WP development, and my first plugin to be accepted into the official WP repository.
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I launched my first website way back at the dawn of the millennium. It features public domain literature. From the start, it cried out for text-to-speech capability, but I could find no practical solution. I could have recorded my reading of each page in an audio file, but that would have been way too time consuming and storage-intensive (at the time, disk space was dear).
Cloudflare Apps are a lot like WordPress plugins. Each App adds specific functionality to my website. Like plugins, Apps are available in multiple categories such as SEO, Security, Social & Communication, etc. Another similarity – some Apps are free, some are not.
Shiver me timbers! Me favorite contact form plugin – Free and Simple Contact Form by Pirate Forms – be abandoning ship. Pirate Forms was acquired by WPForms, who are retiring my favorite contact form in favor of a migration path to their signature WPForms Lite. Either by remarkable coincidence or due to a wry sense of humor, the scallywags at WPForms made the announcement on International Talk Like a Pirate Day.
When a favorite plugin is lost at sea.
I take a number of security precautions to keep my sites free of malware. But what if malware gets past my defenses? I need to be able to detect it so that I can eradicate it. With WP malware scanners, as with everything else WP, I prefer free. I know of three types of free WP malware scanners: Host-based; Web-based; and Plugins.
Is Gutenberg the WP Waterloo? An editor too far? The doomed charge of the CMS brigade?
Choosing images to use in my pages and posts can be a minefield. How do I steer clear of unintentional copyright infringement? I could pay for commercial images from a reputable supplier, but that would violate my guiding principal of not paying for web stuff when at all practical. My preference is to always use images that are verifiably public domain. When I can’t find or create an applicable public domain image I resort reluctantly to Creative Commons, though I cringe at the hypocritical requirements and restrictions.
An interest of mine, in addition to WP, is document accessibility. Over the years I’ve learned quite a bit about it, in particular relating to PDF files. My website on the topic is TaggedPDF.com. I know much less about web accessibility, just have never made it a focus of study since from an income perspective (another interest of mine) it seems to be well-covered by others. So, I got to wondering, how are my sites when it comes to WP accessibility?
