WordPress security has become a popular topic as there have been a number of posts lately talking about just how secure WordPress is or is not. From what I’ve read so far just about all of them boil down to one of two things: 1.) the author has a stake in WordPress as part or all of his/her business so it’s secure and, 2.) my site got hacked so WordPress is not secure. Add to that a number of posts on how to improve WordPress security and the ever-growing number of security plugins in the WordPress.org plugins repository and it can all get pretty confusing. So who is right? Is WordPress secure or isn’t it? [Continue Reading...]
Notes and Observations on WordPress Security
May 23rd, 2013 5 Comments
Securing WordPress – The Full Video of my 2012 WordCamp Austin Talk
May 21st, 2013 1 Comment
Some things are better late than never, right? I like to think so and as such here is the full video of my talk last year at WordCamp Austin. The session was titled “Securing WordPress is Easier Than Making Coffee” and included a number of tips and tricks designed to help you keep your WordPress site from falling victim to the attacks that seem to plague all too many users. [Continue Reading...]
Moving Sites and Managing Domains – WordCamp Austin 2013
May 19th, 2013 2 Comments
For the second year in a row I had the incredible opportunity to speak at WordCamp Austin this weekend. This year, instead of security, my talk focused on a different issue for many in the WordPress community: how to move your site to a different host or change your domain name. The hour-long session included tools, tips, checklists, and things to things to watch out for such as making sure you always have a good backup and changing the caching time (TTL) on a DNS record. Below are my slides from my presentation as well as a list of links to the tools and other items featured in the presentation. [Continue Reading...]
Announcing Better WP Varnish
December 21st, 2012 3 Comments
If you’ve spent any amount of time trying to get your WordPress site to run fast you’ve probably heard of Varnish. If you haven’t Varnish is a http proxy that can be put in front of any major web server where it stores and serves out cached copies of your web pages at lightning speed. The problem with it, at least as far as WordPress is concerned, is it can be a pain to purge items from the cache when you update a page, add a post or a comment, or change anything else.
Enter Better WP Varnish. This new plugin, based on the older Varnish as a Service plugin, will purge posts, comments and other pages automatically when an update is made. In addition you can automatically purge the whole cache or a single page right from the admin bar thereby making development far more efficient.
It’s so new yet that I haven’t even put up a page for it here on Bit51 but it will be coming shortly. In the meantime try it and let me know what you think.
If you use Varnish make sure you check it out!
Protecting Your Site From the Perils of Free and Open Wi-fi
May 28th, 2012 2 Comments
If you have ever used a free public wi-fi connection to do work your website chances are you’re exposing your site to an attack. The local coffee shop, library, etc might seem like a great place to work and it while it might be great for your productivity as a web developer/blogger/etc it is also a great place for attackers to steal the login credentials to your website (and many other sites you use) exposing both your site and yourself to a major security hole that can lead to compromised websites, spam, and in some cases even identity theft. [Continue Reading...]
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