BeeWUG

Summary of discussions

What’s Been Happening in the WordPress World Last Month

• BuddyPress 2016 Survey Results Show 54% of Respondents are on PHP 7.0+, https://wptavern.com/buddypress-2016-survey-results-show-54-of-respondents-are-on-php-7-0
• New WordPress Plugin Shows Users Where a Plugin’s Settings Link Is Upon Activation, https://wptavern.com/new-wordpress-plugin-shows-users-where-a-plugins-settings-link-is-upon-activation
• Hacked Home Routers are Launching Brute Force Attacks on WordPress Sites, https://wptavern.com/hacked-home-routers-are-launching-brute-force-attacks-on-wordpress-sites
• Advanced WordPress Facebook Group Moves to Curb Low Quality Content with Admin-Approved Posts, https://wptavern.com/advanced-wordpress-facebook-group-moves-to-curb-low-quality-content-with-admin-approved-posts
• WordPress Editor Experience Survey Shows 75% of Respondents Don’t Use Distraction-Free Writing Mode, https://wptavern.com/wordpress-editor-experience-survey-shows-75-of-respondents-dont-use-distraction-free-writing-mode, full results here, https://make.wordpress.org/core/2017/04/07/editor-experience-survey-results/
• Yoast SEO’s PHP Upgrade Nag is Producing a Significant Increase in Sites Upgrading to PHP 7, https://wptavern.com/yoast-seos-php-upgrade-nag-is-producing-a-significant-increase-in-sites-upgrading-to-php-7
• Blog Helper: An Alexa Skill for Managing a WordPress Blog with Your Voice, https://wptavern.com/blog-helper-an-alexa-skill-for-managing-a-wordpress-blog-with-your-voice – Interesting to see where things are heading and what is possible now the REST API is available
• Manage Multiple Social Media Accounts in WordPress With Social Media Suite, https://wptavern.com/manage-multiple-social-media-accounts-in-wordpress-with-social-media-suite – While you can do this, you probably shouldn’t. There are better technologies available to manage social media accounts rather than WordPress
• 10up Releases WP Docker, an Open Source Docker Configuration for Local WordPress Development, https://wptavern.com/10up-releases-wp-docker-an-open-source-docker-configuration-for-local-wordpress-development – Docker is a system to containerise server infrastructure securely without the need for traditional Virtual Machines to be spun up
• Shopify Discontinues Its Official Plugin for WordPress, https://wptavern.com/shopify-discontinues-its-official-plugin-for-wordpress – When WooCommerce is available, this is no real surprise
• Watsonfinds WordPress Plugin Uses IBM’s Watson to Determine Most Likely Emotional Response From Readers, https://wptavern.com/watsonfinds-wordpress-plugin-uses-ibms-watson-to-determine-most-likely-emotional-response-from-readers
• 2017 Open Source Security and Risk Analysis Report Shows Widespread GPL License Conflicts, https://wptavern.com/2017-open-source-security-and-risk-analysis-report-shows-widespread-gpl-license-conflicts – Always keep your WordPress website secure
• WordCamp Europe 2017 Introduces Small Business Sponsorships, https://wptavern.com/wordcamp-europe-2017-introduces-small-business-sponsorships with full information here, https://2017.europe.wordcamp.org/2017/03/23/wordcamp-europe-2017-sponsorship-exclusively-for-small-business/
• WordPress 4.8 Will End Support for Internet Explorer Versions 8, 9, and 10, https://wptavern.com/wordpress-4-8-will-end-support-for-internet-explorer-versions-8-9-and-10 – Woo! Supporting older technologies is often more trouble than its worth where in fact it is just better to encourage your users to upgrade their systems – We’ve even seen some companies adding additional charges onto ecommerce orders for customers using older browser technologies in the form of a tax, which can be removed should they upgrade their technology – an interesting idea for sure!
• New Plugin Offers Better Plugin Recommendations in the WordPress Admin, https://wptavern.com/new-plugin-offers-better-plugin-recommendations-in-the-wordpress-admin
• WordPress 4.7.4 Fixes 47 Issues, https://wptavern.com/wordpress-4-7-4-fixes-visual-editor-incompatibility-with-upcoming-version-of-chrome – Again, keep everything up to date folks
• Google introduces new methods for search quality based on user feedback, https://blog.google/products/search/our-latest-quality-improvements-search/
• Google Maps now remembers where you parked your car, although probably best not to completely rely on this information, https://www.blog.google/products/maps/remember-where-you-parked-google-maps/
• Google has announced more changes to highlighting non-SSL websites to encourage more people to migrate to HTTPS. If you haven’t done this yet, you need to be planning this as soon as possible, detailed guidelines on how to implement this yourself can be found at the bottom of this page, https://www.contradodigital.com/2016/09/01/claim-your-free-ssl-certificates-for-https/

Thanks to Mark Wilkinson from Highrise Digital for his talk on Hidden Features Within the WordPress Admin!

The next meetup is on Wednesday 7th June, full details here, https://www.meetup.com/Blackburn-WordPress-Meetup/events/239048780/

Get involved and book here, https://www.meetup.com/Blackburn-WordPress-Meetup/events/238835029/

Be sure to subscribe to the mailing list on the right hand side to keep up to date with all future events and BeeWUG news.

BeeWUG is a community driven event, meaning that it is what people make of it. If you are interested in WordPress, use WordPress professionally or just want to know what WordPress is about, come along and find out more.

WordPress is awesome, get involved!

Event Format

• 18:00 — Arrivals
• 18:30 — Prompt start –  Talk – WordPress news
• 18:45 — Q&A – For topics covered and Michael’s WP update
• 19:00 — WP Clinic – Bring your laptop and get the hands on help you need from the WordPress community in the room
• 20:00 —Break & Networking
• 20:15 — In Depth Talk – Hidden Features in the WordPress Admin by Mark Wilkinson from Highrise Digital
• 21:00 — End

 

Event Information

Be sure to review the details about BeeWUG and how to get here. If you’d like to speak at one of our future events or even sponsor a future event, let us know.

Summary of discussions

What’s Been Happening in the WordPress World Last Month

• Stack Overflow Jobs Data Shows ReactJS Skills in High Demand, WordPress Market Oversaturated with Developers – https://wptavern.com/stack-overflow-jobs-data-shows-reactjs-skills-in-high-demand-wordpress-market-oversaturated-with-developers – We’re not too convinced with the stats surrounding WordPress, but it’s interesting never the less. The reality is that there are a lot of people around working with WordPress, although in our experience there are very few skilled WordPress Developers. There are many ways to build WordPress websites, many bad practices around with a core set of solid principles to build solid WordPress websites.
• Following on from above, the annual StackOverflow Developer Survey is always an interesting read for those interested in the skills within the general web and software development markets, https://stackoverflow.com/insights/survey/2017#most-popular-technologies
• Google Launches Invisible reCAPTCHA – https://wptavern.com/google-launches-invisible-recaptcha – Everyone hates these, but the reality is that they do significantly help reduce spam and in some cases even completely stop spam altogether. You can download the WordPress Plugin for this here, https://wordpress.org/plugins/invisible-recaptcha/
• Google is Retiring Its Adsense for WordPress Plugin in May 2017 – https://wptavern.com/google-is-retiring-its-adsense-for-wordpress-plugin-in-may-2017 – Information for anyone using this on their WordPress website to monetise their blogging activities
• WordPress.com Releases Chrome Add-On for Google Docs – https://wptavern.com/wordpress-com-releases-chrome-add-on-for-google-docs – This is serious cool. Essentially you can write on Google Docs and publish straight to WordPress as a Draft blog post. So no more copying and pasting between documents when you’re writing elsewhere prior to uploading to your WordPress website. This is only for WordPress.com at the moment, so it will be interesting to see when this comes out for self-hosted WordPress installations.
• WordPress 4.7.3 Patches Six Security Vulnerabilities, Immediate Update Advised – https://wptavern.com/wordpress-4-7-3-patches-six-security-vulnerabilities-immediate-update-advised – As always, keep your WordPress website up to date and secure at all times to minimise the risk of being hacked
• WooCommerce 3.0 has launched with a bunch of new features – https://wptavern.com/woocommerce-3-0-brings-major-improvements-to-product-gallery-introduces-crud-classes-and-a-new-cli
• Blog in a Box Project Integrates WordPress with Raspberry Pi – https://wptavern.com/blog-in-a-box-project-integrates-wordpress-with-raspberry-pi – A bit of a random piece of news, but this just goes to show the power and flexibility of projects like WordPress and the Raspberry Pi – Have a go at building this yourself if you have a bit of time on your hands, it would be great to see someone build this and bring it along to one of the future BeeWUG events – https://inabox.blog/
• WordPress App for Android Adds Better Support for Jetpack-Enabled Sites – https://wptavern.com/wordpress-app-for-android-adds-better-support-for-jetpack-enabled-sites
• Community Team Releases Plugin That Displays WordPress Events Nearby – https://wptavern.com/community-team-releases-plugin-that-displays-wordpress-events-nearby – This is quite handy and can be installed here as a Plugin – https://wordpress.org/plugins/nearby-wp-events/ – We’ve just installed this ourselves and it’s quite a handy little plugin. It only shows the data in the Admin Dashboard at the moment, so it would be great to see an option for displaying this on the front end of the website too.
• New WPstats.me Site Displays WordPress.org Plugin Download Stats – https://wptavern.com/new-wpstats-me-site-displays-wordpress-org-plugin-download-stats – Again for anyone who loves data, like me, this is seriously awesome. You can see the number of downloads for plugins in total and how this changes on a day by day basis which is such powerful data, have a play here, http://wpstats.me/?#plugin/wordpress-seo – To test any of the other 50,000 plugins from the WordPress Plugin directory, simply change the URL slug at the end and you’ll see data for that plugin instead. It would be great to see this same data for all of time which would show some really interesting trends over time too.
• Data From Theme Reviews Shows Authors Need More Education on Developing Secure WordPress Themes – https://wptavern.com/data-from-theme-reviews-shows-authors-need-more-education-on-developing-secure-wordpress-themes – This isn’t really any great surprise. In my personal experience, I deal with a lot of poorly built company WordPress websites that have been built extremely badly and need full re-builds. Hopefully this will change over time and sharing best practices within the WordPress and business community through events like BeeWUG and others are one step towards making this better for everyone.
• WordPress Relaunches Plugin Directory with New Design and Improved Search Algorithm – https://wptavern.com/wordpress-relaunches-plugin-directory-with-new-design-and-improved-search-algorithm – This should hopefully help you find the right plugins you are looking for. The old search functionality was extremely bad so it’s great to see this has been improved.
• PHP 5.6 Is Now the Most Widely Used PHP Version – https://wptavern.com/php-5-6-is-now-the-most-widely-used-php-version – This is a step in the right direction. The current version of PHP is 7.2 so there is still a long way to go, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PHP
• GoDaddy Acquires Sucuri – https://wptavern.com/godaddy-acquires-sucuri – Interesting…
• Foxhound Is the First REST API Powered Theme on WordPress.org – https://wptavern.com/foxhound-is-the-first-rest-api-powered-theme-on-wordpress-org – With the awesome REST API now available, we expect to see a lot more of this over the coming years as more people create much more dynamic websites using WordPress and even, dare I say, basic web applications.
• Adding Images to WordPress Sidebars Is About to Get a Lot Easier – https://wptavern.com/adding-images-to-wordpress-sidebars-is-about-to-get-a-lot-easier
• Yoast SEO 4.5 Urges Users to Upgrade to PHP 7 – https://wptavern.com/yoast-seo-4-5-urges-users-to-upgrade-to-php-7 – It’s good to see companies pushing this
• Display All Images Sizes Plugin – https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/display-all-image-sizes/ – This is a seriously handy plugin that I came across recently. By default when you upload images to WordPress, multiple versions of that image are created in varying sizes, so that your website doesn’t load a huge image for people accessing on mobile devices for example. Although quite annoyingly, it is remarkably difficult to find out what these varying images sizes actually are as width and height attributes as there is no standard. This handy little plugin will let you know what the various images sizes are and what the specific URL is for each of the image sizes. This is super handy as you may want to use a specific size for something.
• Finally, handy WordPress statistics for reference – https://wordpress.org/about/stats/

The next meetup is on Wednesday 3rd May, full details here, https://www.meetup.com/Blackburn-WordPress-Meetup/events/238835029/

Get involved and book here, https://www.meetup.com/Blackburn-WordPress-Meetup/events/238093976/

Be sure to subscribe to the mailing list on the right hand side to keep up to date with all future events and BeeWUG news.

BeeWUG is a community driven event, meaning that it is what people make of it. If you are interested in WordPress, use WordPress professionally or just want to know what WordPress is about, come along and find out more.

WordPress is awesome, get involved!

Event Format

• 18:00 — Arrivals
• 18:30 — Prompt start –  Talk – WordPress news
• 18:45 — Q&A – For topics covered and Michael’s WP update
• 19:00 — WP Clinic – Bring your laptop and get the hands on help you need from the WordPress community in the room
• 20:00 —Break & Networking
• 20:15 — In Depth Talk – Understanding the WordPress Template Hierarchy by Michael Cropper from Contrado Digital
• 21:00 — End

 

Event Information

Be sure to review the details about BeeWUG and how to get here. If you’d like to speak at one of our future events or even sponsor a future event, let us know.

Summary of discussions

What’s Been Happening in the WordPress World Last Month

• Emails can be easily faked, never trust them. All secure information will be within your account on the relevant platform, always go directly to that website without clicking on any links. Email deliverability is also not great on many systems, a good analogy provided was that email is like writing a letter and throwing it out of the window and hoping it gets there. Sometimes it does, sometimes it get lots in the post. For business use, if you want things to work, use Microsoft Exchange or Google Business Emails and here’s why, https://www.contradodigital.com/really-simple-guide-business-email-addresses/, https://gsuite.google.com/pricing.html
• Over 4 million websites using CloudFlare may have been compromised and may have revealed usernames and passwords for user accounts on those websites. A full list can be found here if interested, https://github.com/pirate/sites-using-cloudflare, most importantly, it’s good password practice to use a unique password for every service, use a long pass phrase (i.e. the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog on 01-02-2017!@20:20) – This password is crazy strong now and is virtually impossible to crack. Better yet, use a password manager and make sure your main password is super strong.
• Amazon Web Services had a bit outage recently which may have impacted you. AWS can be a great option to scale computing power as needed if you have the skills to set this up as needed, it’s rather challenging if you aren’t very technical, https://aws.amazon.com/
• To view the latest WordCamp schedules see here, https://central.wordcamp.org/schedule/
• Google Manufacturer Centre has opened to everyone to self sign up, https://adwords.googleblog.com/2017/02/google-manufacturer-center-opens-self.html – It’s important to see where this is all heading with a technology/marketing aspect
• Something always worth reiterating is that whenever you are doing planned maintenance on your website, make sure your website is showing a 503 error to Google as this will avoid losing search rankings if Google indexes your website when it isn’t there. Full information can be found here, https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2017/02/closing-down-for-day.html
• Google is experimenting with using machine learning to include more swear words in online conversations to become more real, https://blog.google/topics/machine-learning/when-computers-learn-swear-using-machine-learning-better-online-conversations/
• WooCommerce now powers over 42% of ecommerce stores which is awesome, https://automattic.com/year-in-review-2016/
• WordPress has been ranked as the fastest growing Content Management System (CMS) in 2016, https://w3techs.com/blog/entry/web_technologies_of_the_year_2016
• Let’s Encrypt, the free certificate authority has passed 20 million installs, https://letsencrypt.org/2017/01/06/le-2016-in-review.html. If you aren’t using an SSL certificate, you need to be, see here for guides on how to set this up yourself, https://www.contradodigital.com/2016/09/01/claim-your-free-ssl-certificates-for-https/ and with more than 50% of website traffic now running over HTTPS, you can’t afford to wait around to migrate, https://twitter.com/letsencrypt/status/786977436109934592
• Using Accelerated Mobile Pages plugin for WordPress and the AMP Analytics plugin for WordPress are a super simple way to speed up your website and win some brownie points from Google, https://www.contradodigital.com/2016/05/09/wordpress-accelerated-mobile-pages-amp-speed-test/ and since Google has updated AMP to allow sharing of the Canonical URL this shows the importance of getting this set up, https://wptavern.com/google-updates-amp-to-allow-sharing-of-canonical-url
• WP Super Cache has patched multiple XSS vulnerabilities, https://wptavern.com/wp-super-cache-1-4-9-patches-multiple-xss-vulnerabilities, so as always, make sure you’re keeping all your WordPress Core files, Themes and Plugins up to date, https://wptavern.com/wp-super-cache-1-4-9-patches-multiple-xss-vulnerabilities. On a similar vein, NextGEN Gallery also patched a critical SQL Injection vulnerability which could allow attackers to delete the entire database, https://wptavern.com/nextgen-gallery-patches-critical-sql-injection-vulnerability
• Google Search Console (aka. Google Webmaster Tools) has started to inform website owners when their WordPress websites are out of date, https://www.contradodigital.com/2017/02/09/google-search-console-informing-webmasters-about-wordpress-security-updates/, it’s important to not rely on this though as there are many vulnerabilities that could be present that Google would not make you aware of.
• Over 200,000 websites have been impacted by the latest REST API vulnerability https://wptavern.com/wordpress-rest-api-vulnerability-exploits-continue, so update your WordPress core to the latest version to avoid your website being next
• Make sure to sign up to the BeeWUG newsletter on this page so you can keep up to date with what is happening.

Following on from the handy session to collate a list of recommended quality Themes and Plugins, here is the starting point of discussions, https://beewug.uk/resources/recommended-wordpress-plugins-themes/

The next meetup is on Wednesday 5th April, full details here, https://www.meetup.com/Blackburn-WordPress-Meetup/events/238093976/

Get involved and book here, https://www.meetup.com/Blackburn-WordPress-Meetup/events/237468371/

Be sure to subscribe to the mailing list on the right hand side to keep up to date with all future events and BeeWUG news.

BeeWUG is a community driven event, meaning that it is what people make of it. If you are interested in WordPress, use WordPress professionally or just want to know what WordPress is about, come along and find out more.

WordPress is awesome, get involved!

Event Format

• 18:00 — Arrivals
• 18:30 — Prompt start –  Talk – WordPress news
• 18:45 — Q&A – For topics covered and Michael’s WP update
• 19:00 — WP Clinic – Bring your laptop and get the hands on help you need from the WordPress community in the room
• 20:00 —Break & Networking
• 20:15 — In Depth Talk – API Driven Development by Michael Cropper from Contrado Digital
• 21:00 — End

 

Event Information

Be sure to review the details about BeeWUG and how to get here. If you’d like to speak at one of our future events or even sponsor a future event, let us know.

 

Get involved and book here, https://www.meetup.com/Blackburn-WordPress-Meetup/events/236100017/

Be sure to subscribe to the mailing list on the right hand side to keep up to date with all future events and BeeWUG news.

BeeWUG is a community driven event, meaning that it is what people make of it. If you are interested in WordPress, use WordPress professionally or just want to know what WordPress is about, come along and find out more.

WordPress is awesome, get involved!

Event Format

• 18:30 — Prompt start –  Talk – WordPress news
• 18:45 — Q&A – For topics covered and Michael’s WP update
• 19:00 — WP Clinic – Bring your laptop and get the hands on help you need from the WordPress community in the room
• 20:00 —Break & Networking
• 20:15 — In Depth Talk – API Driven Development by Michael Cropper from Contrado Digital
• 21:00 — End

Summary of discussions

What’s Been Happening in the WordPress World Last Month

• Make sure you’re using Google Analytics on your website – https://analytics.google.com – It’s free and awesome. Once you’ve set this up, install a Google Analytics plugin and configure the settings accordingly. Simple
• A handy plugin that may websites use is JetPack which comes with a bunch of features that many websites use – https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/jetpack/ – Take a look, it’s not always right for every site as it can be overkill if you aren’t using most of the features
• Details mentioned about automating email marketing campaigns with content from blog posts – https://www.contradodigital.com/2016/09/22/automating-your-email-marketing-campaigns-with-wordpress-and-mailchimp/
• Live demo of how quickly you can build websites using front end editing technology – https://www.creopressto.com/websites/barbers-websites/
• Understanding different email technologies mentioned – https://www.contradodigital.com/really-simple-guide-business-email-addresses/
• How to debug email deliverability issues from your WordPress website – https://www.contradodigital.com/2016/04/04/debugging-email-deliverability-issues-cpanel-whm-imap-exchange/
• Handy tool to check how responsive your website is when people are accessing it from different devices – https://www.responsinator.com/
• Handy Membership plugins, https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/members/ and https://premium.wpmudev.org/project/membership/
• Good Appointments plugins, https://premium.wpmudev.org/project/appointments-plus/ and https://woocommerce.com/products/woocommerce-bookings/
• A few good quality Themes and resources added to the list – https://beewug.uk/resources/
• WordPress Glossary added to Resources page above
• WordPress 4.7 has launched which is awesome – https://wordpress.org/news/2016/12/vaughan/
• WordPress to only recommend hosting companies who use SSL in 2017 – https://wptavern.com/wordpress-will-only-recommend-hosting-companies-offering-ssl-by-default-in-2017 so make sure you’re using an SSL certificate on your websites, lots of technical details at the bottom of this blog post – https://www.contradodigital.com/2016/09/01/claim-your-free-ssl-certificates-for-https/
• Take the WordPress 2016 survey to let people know how you use WordPress – https://wordpressdotorg.polldaddy.com/s/wordpress-2016-survey
• Make sure to sign up to the BeeWUG newsletter on this page so you can keep up to date with what is happening.

The next meetup is on Wednesday 4th Jan, full details here, https://www.meetup.com/Blackburn-WordPress-Meetup/events/236100017/

Have a good Xmas & New Year everyone!

 

Get involved and book here, https://www.meetup.com/Blackburn-WordPress-Meetup/events/235964272/

Be sure to subscribe to the mailing list on the right hand side to keep up to date with all future events and BeeWUG news.

BeeWUG is a community driven event, meaning that it is what people make of it. If you are interested in WordPress, use WordPress professionally or just want to know what WordPress is about, come along and find out more.

WordPress is awesome, get involved!

Event Format

• 18:30 — Prompt start –  Talk – WordPress news
• 18:45 — Q&A – For topics covered and Michael’s WP update
• 19:00 — WP Clinic – Bring your laptop and get the hands on help you need from the WordPress community in the room
• 20:00 —Break & Networking
• 20:15 — In Depth Talk – TBC
• 21:00 — End

Summary of discussions

What’s Been Happening in the WordPress World Last Month

• The internet broke with a massive DNS level attack on Dyn – http://thehackernews.com/2016/10/dyn-dns-ddos.html
• WordCamp Manchester took place – https://2016.manchester.wordcamp.org/
• BitBucket put their prices up – https://wptavern.com/bitbucket-pricing-hike-increases-cost-per-user-by-100
• There may be some interesting changes on the horizon to allow users to edit CSS within the WordPress Customiser instead of using a Child Theme style.css file – https://wptavern.com/the-days-of-creating-child-themes-for-simple-css-changes-may-soon-be-over
• The AMP plugin from Automattic now allows a bit of custom styling to better represent your brand – https://wptavern.com/wordpress-com-adds-customization-for-amp-pages-pushes-update-to-amp-plugin and if you aren’t familiar, you really need to be using Accelerated Mobile Pages as they are awesomely fast, https://www.contradodigital.com/2016/05/09/wordpress-accelerated-mobile-pages-amp-speed-test/ but make sure you don’t accidentally break your Google Analytics setup on your AMP pages, https://www.contradodigital.com/2016/09/30/make-sure-youre-using-amp-analytics-when-using-amp/
• WordPress 4.7 will allow developers to build custom Bulk Actions for Posts and Pages which is pretty cool – https://wptavern.com/wordpress-4-7-will-allow-developers-to-register-custom-bulk-actions-in-admin-list-tables
• You can now use Twitter Moments to summarising content such as events and conferences, https://wptavern.com/twitter-moments-now-open-to-all-users-wordpress-4-5-supports-embedding which you can then embed into your WordPress website by simply copying and pasting the link which will then display like this, https://beewug.uk/2016/11/02/wordcamp-manchester-2016-review/, it’s a super simple way to create some quick content for your website
• Twenty Seventeen Theme has been merged into Core, so watch this space when WordPress 4.7 launches fully, https://wptavern.com/new-wordpress-default-theme-twenty-seventeen-merged-into-4-7
• WordPress API Content Endpoints have been officially merged into the 4.7 release which is amazing – https://wptavern.com/wp-rest-api-officially-approved-for-merge-into-wordpress-4-7. Up until now, this required a plugin to achieve the results which meant that many Plugin developers simply didn’t support the API as they weren’t sure if it was going to stay around. This is the first step that will give confidence to Plugin developers that the WordPress API is here to stay and hence we should see some exciting developments in this area over time. Here’s an interesting project we did recently which uses the WordPress API as a backbone to two mobile applications, https://www.contradodigital.com/case-studies-2/mend-muslim-engagement-development-case-study/
• Various discussions around cyber attacks and hacked data. Take a look at https://haveibeenpwned.com/ to see if your email address is included on any of the many large scale breaches over the last few years. If your email address is found, it’s probably a good idea to update your passwords.
• There has been a bit of a tiff between Matt Mullenweg, the co-founder of WordPress, and Wix about licensing of code under GPL, https://wptavern.com/mullenweg-takes-aim-at-wix-over-gpl-abuses-wix-response-fails-to-address-licensing-issue
• A rather uneventful tweak in WordPress 4.7 is that they are removing the underline and strike through options from the visual editor, https://wptavern.com/wordpress-4-7-removes-the-underline-and-justify-buttons-from-the-editor which I find a little odd since this is not based on data, only what seems to be someones opinion that these aren’t used.
• Lots more exciting changes as part of WordPress 4.7 including PDF Previews in the Media Library and User Admin Languages which can be different from the language of the website, https://wptavern.com/wordpress-4-7-beta-1-now-available-for-testing along with Custom Page Templates soon to be available for all Custom Post Types, https://wptavern.com/wordpress-4-7-brings-custom-page-template-functionality-to-all-post-types
• Discussions around Page Builders and the variety of options available. A handy review from Pippins over at https://pippinsplugins.com/wordpress-page-builder-plugins-critical-review/ to help you get up to speed. Avoid anything that locks you in is the top tip all round and here’s a quick live preview of Divi in action, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUp0km3upI4.
• Various discussions around Security Plugins available including iThemes Security, https://ithemes.com/security/, All in One WordPress Security and Firewall, https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/all-in-one-wp-security-and-firewall/ and Wordfence, https://www.wordfence.com/ – all of which are great, although interestingly at a recent talk at WordCamp Manchester it was highlighted that security plugins often contain security vulnerabilities their self, so be aware and keep everything up to date, http://www.slideshare.net/ottokekalainen/wordpress-security-101-wordcamp-manchester-2016, slide 25. One of the most famous security breaches recently is with Mossack Fonseca, aka. the Panama Papers leak, https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2016/04/mossack-fonseca-breach-vulnerable-slider-revolution/ which is suspected to have been caused by an old and un-patched version of the Revolution Slider Plugin being exploited.
• When discussing between the self-hosted WordPress.org against WordPress.com, some interesting statistics about WordPress.com includes that there are over 409 million people accessing websites every month on WordPress.com which equates to over 23 billion page views which is unbelievable, https://wordpress.com/activity/

 

Guest Talk

The guest talk this month was from Michael Cropper of Contrado Digital who talked about WordPress Fundamentals – The Advanced Topic About Getting the Basics Right

• There are many ways to use WordPress
• But very few you should
• Make sure you have good web hosting in place, you really do get what you pay for. You’re generally paying for CPU, RAM, Hard Disk Space, Bandwidth and Priority. A whole managed service whether on a Shared Server, a Virtual Private Server (VPS) or a Dedicated Server
• Take Web Server Security seriously and make sure you are covered at the Physical Firewall DNS Level, you have adequate Server Level Security Software configured and your Website Level Security is set up correctly too. Then make sure everything is fully automated and you are monitoring everything that is happening.
• WordPress Core, simple. Keep everything up to date
• WordPress Themes, When using a Theme from the WordPress Theme Directory, you can easily update this through the WordPress Admin area. Likewise, you can too with quality Premium Themes. On the other hand, when purchasing low quality Themes, often from Theme marketplaces, you have to manually update the Theme which most people simply do not do. So be aware of these issues.
• Some interesting Theme usage statistics about what is currently in use, https://www.contradodigital.com/2016/07/01/divi-preferred-choice-wordpress-theme/
• Always use Child Themes when customising your Theme
• Take a good look through the WordPress Template Hierarchy for the specific files you need to customise, https://beewug.uk/resources/
• When dealing with Plugins to enhance the functionality of your WordPress website, the same applies when reviewing Themes as discussed above. Don’t go adding poor quality Plugins to your Website and introducing security holes that can be exploited. There are now almost 50,000 Plugins within the WordPress Plugin Directory which have been used almost 1.5 billion times. Crazy numbers.
• When looking to customise your Plugins, never edit the PHP files directly. Instead, many leading Plugins can be customised by adding the files to the Child Theme such as with WooCommerce. Likewise many Plugins have a variety of Hooks available which you can then use Actions and Filters for within your Child Theme’s functions.php file to customise as needed.
• Backups. Make sure you have both Server Level and WordPress Level backups in place which are fully automated, are full backups which include both files and databases and they are stored in a remote location with multiple restore points. This is a minimum requirement.
• Some of the common mistakes people make include; Doing things on the cheap…; Purchasing low quality Themes and Plugins from marketplaces…; Cheap web hosting…; No backups…; No security updates to the Web Server, WordPress Core, Themes or Plugins…
• As mentioned, there are many ways to use WordPress, yet very few ways to use WordPress correctly.

We’re always looking for guest speakers for the events, so get in touch if you want to speak about something you’re working on at the moment or something you want to share with the community.

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The next event will be on Wednesday 7th December. Hope to see you there. Spread the word.