Due to its popularity, WordPress is a favorite target of hackers looking to exploit any vulnerability to gain access to your site. Once inside they can do things like compromise your files, deface your website and start gobbling up all your server’s resources until you are shut down. With services like BruteProtect gaining traction and…
Early this morning, the WordPress.org plugin repository set a mile stone by hosting the 30,000th plugin. I didn’t think it would happen until a few weeks from now but it shows you how many plugins are approved and added to the repository every day. Jan Reimers on Twitter celebrated with a whoop! I second that…
Not every WordPress website is the same. But if you build with WordPress often enough, you might find that you prefer using the same set of plugins to provide basic functionality like contact forms, sharing buttons, SEO, caching, etc. It’s handy to have a set list of plugins that you can bulk-install whenever necessary. A…
If you use the Better WP Security plugin, keep an eye out for an important update next week. According to iThemes, the plugin will be renamed to iThemes Security to be more in line with the other products in the iThemes family. Because of the name change, users will need to re-activate the plugin after…
Multi-author WordPress blogs often have many authors working together to push out content, but not every author needs access to post to all categories on the site. In fact, there may be times when you want to limit an author to posting in just one assigned category for contributions. Restrict Author Posting is a new…
Yesterday, we featured WP Inject, a plugin that makes it easy to insert Creative Commons licensed images into WordPress content. High quality CC-licensed images are incredibly easy to find these days. The vast majority of the collections include images that fall under the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 2.0 license. While these images are fine for blogging,…
Last week, Getty Images announced its new open-embed program, which removes the watermark from many of the images in its library for non-commercial use. In exchange, Getty’s iframed images are plastered with its logo and force a row of large, unattractive social sharing buttons on each embed. Getty reserves the right to remove content from…
After the rush of listing a theme or plugin on WordPress.org, the reality of providing support will soon set in. The best way to stay in touch with your user base is to subscribe to the support forums, since that’s the first place people generally go when looking for answers. Subscription options vary, depending on…
The “Uncategorized” category is a generic bin where WordPress posts go when you forget to assign a category. It’s rather irksome to discover that you’ve published a post as “Uncategorized,” since it doesn’t do much to connect your readers with more useful information on your blog. One easy solution to this problem is to edit…
UserPress is a new free plugin that aims to be the ultimate wiki solution for WordPress. It provides a comprehensive set of user-friendly features that will transform your site into a collaborative hub for creating wiki content. Richard Smith, the plugin’s author, created UserPress to provide functionality that he believes is often missing from existing…
Sometimes, after moving a site from a development environment into a live production environment, users and developers can forget to uncheck the “Discourage Search Engines From Indexing Your Site” box located within the Reading Settings. It’s a terrible feeling to realize months after a site has gone live, that search engines failed to index the…
Last week, we announced the release of Jetpack 2.9 which introduced a related posts module and multisite support. Unfortunately, the release also contained a bug that prevented posts from being published if the Spelling and Grammar module was enabled. More specifically, if you have the module configured to automatically proofread posts and pages before they…
One of the biggest features to land in WordPress 3.7 were automatic updates. When automatic updates are completed, an email notification is sent to the address specified within Settings > General which is typically the website administrator. However, if you maintain websites for clients, you probably want those notifications to be forwarded to you and…
Chris Wiegman of iThemes has announced the latest update to the Better WP Security plugin contains fixes for vulnerabilities discovered in 3.6.3. The updates address compatibility with InfiniteWP, the removal of their in-dashboard support form, and FooPlugins support form code. While support for InfiniteWP was removed in 3.6.4, it’s been restored in 3.6.5 as they…
Admin Bookmarks developed by Brad Vincent, allows you easily bookmark posts, pages and custom post types. This is especially useful if you find yourself repeatedly editing the same pages or posts. Upon activation, a new dashicon in the shape of a star will appear next to the title of every post, page, and custom post…