This Week in WordPress #271

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 9th October 2023.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 9th October 2023.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 2nd October 2023.

Today we're joined by Dan Knauss, a technical content generalist at SolidWP (formerly iThemes). The episode focuses on the importance of hardening WordPress websites for enhanced security. Dan discusses their approach to security, which includes targeted security measures rather than trying to cover every potential vulnerability. They emphasise the need for timely updates and advocate for working with a reliable host that provides hardware and software firewalls. Dan also addresses the limitations of traditional security plugins, referring to WordPress malware scanners as "fundamentally flawed" and proposing an external line of security through application firewalls. The conversation highlights the upcoming rebranding of iThemes to SolidWP and touches on their premium security product, Solid Security, which prioritises tried and tested features over added "bolt-ons".

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 18th September 2023.

This is third of four podcast episodes related to WordPress security. It's the third of our four-part security mini series. Prior to that, the other episodes featured Calvin Alkan as well as Akshat Choudhary. This is Thomas from, we watch your website giving his impression of the state of WordPress security. I did the spiel before, but I'm going to do it again in order to not put anybody's noses out of joint and to make it as fair as possible. I recorded four episodes with Calvin, Akshat, Thomas, and in a future episode, Dan Knauss from SolidWP. They all have that chance to explain the malware madness as we'll get into a little bit later. How WordPress security plugins do or don't, depending on your point of view, protect your WordPress website. Thomas is giving his opinion today and we go into loads of ground. We talk about such subjects as security plugin, and cleanup processes, previous attacks, challenges, and vulnerabilities, security features, Thomas' expertise, protecting your WordPress by blocking IPs, the motivations of hackers, and so much more.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 4th September 2023.

This is second of four podcast episodes related to WordPress security. For the first time ever (well second time I suppose!) I feel like I need to add some context to the show notes so that you understand the context of what I'm doing here. A little while ago there was some news in the WordPress space about the merits of using plugins for securing your WordPress website. Researchers (see the previous episode for more on this) had discovered ways in which the effectiveness of the plugins might be compromised. There were several posts on social media which amplified the issue, making it harder to gain an understanding of what happened, and when. I decided to reach out to a number of people to get 'their side of the story'. Today you're going to hear from Akshat Choudhary from Blogvault and Malcare putting his case for why WordPress firewalls and scanners are useful.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 28th August 2023.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 14th August 2023.

his is first of four podcast episodes related to WordPress security.
For the first time ever, I feel like I need to add some context to the show notes so that you understand the context of what I'm doing here.
A little while ago there was some news in the WordPress space about the merits of using plugins for securing your WordPress website. Researchers (Calvin being one of them) had discovered ways in which the effectiveness of the plugins might be compromised. I'll leave the audio (and transcript) of the podcast to explain the technicalities here, but there were several posts on social media which amplified the issue, making it harder to gain an understanding of what happened, and when.
I decided to reach out to a number of people to get 'their side of the story'.
Also a first for this podcast, I set some ground rules for the interviews to take place:
Each participant (there are four in total, one per episode) was told who the other guests were
Each participant was told that their episode would not be published until all four recordings had taken place
Each participant was told that their episode would be published in a random order
What you're listening to today is the first of that random publishing schedule. The other three episodes will come out in the following weeks.
This was done to ensure that the guests did not have. a chance to listen to the other participants episode, and therefore had. a chance to 'better prepare'.
With hindsight, which was likely overkill as all the guests were very thoughtful and polite. They do in some cases mention rival products and describe areas where they think that errors were made in code and communication. That being said, there was no general sense of mud slinging that I detected.
The guests are (in random order):
Calvin Alkan - Snicco
Akshat Choudhary - Malcare
Dan Knauss - iThemes (now SolidWP)
Thomas J Raef - We Watch Your Website
I'm going to keep my commentary here to a minimum to avoid getting embroiled in the debate, but there's some additional information about what we cover in the show notes of the post.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 7th August 2023.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 17th July 2023.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 10th July 2023.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 3rd July 2023.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 3rd July 2023.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 19th June 2023.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 12th June 2023.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 5th June 2023.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 29th May 2023.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 22nd May 2023.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 15th May 2023

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 1st May 2023.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 24th April 2023.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 17th April 2023.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 3rd April 2023.

Today, it's all about WordPress security and what you can do with the WP Vulnerability API / project. In the podcast you're going to meet the wonderful Javier, and I thought that I'd let him take over the show notes, as he wrote such wonderful notes prior to our chat. So… over to Javier… Hello, I'm Javier, and I'm around the Internet since 1994. In 1997, I created my first website, and in 2005, I created my first WordPress (with WordPress 1.5). Today we are talking about WPVulnerability.com, a project focused on democratizing WordPress security information. This project is a 100% open and free API, for access by any WordPress user, with the sole purpose of improving the security of a site, thanks to this information. Although is an API, with some colleagues, we created the WPVulnerability plugin, that checks your site looking for vulnerabilities and showing them in the Site Health section. Find out more by checking out the podcast.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 20th March 2023.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 13th March 2023.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 6th March 2023.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 27th February 2023.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 20th February 2023.

The WordPress news from the last week which began Monday 6th February 2023.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 30th January 2023.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 16th January 2023.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 9th January 2022.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 2nd January 2023.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 5th December 2022.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 28th November 2022.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 21st November 2022.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 7th November 2022.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 31st October 2022.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 24th October 2022.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 10th October 2022.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 3rd October 2022.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 26th September 2022.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 19th September 2022.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 12th September 2022.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 15th August 2022.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 8th August 2022.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 18th July 2022.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 11th July 2022.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 4th July 2022.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 27th July 2022.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 20th June 2022.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 6th June 2022.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 30th May 2022.

The WordPress news from the last week which commenced Monday 31st May 2022.

This week's WordPress news for the week commencing Monday 16th May 2022.

This week's WordPress news for the week commencing Monday 9th May 2022.

This week's WordPress news for the week commencing Monday 2nd May 2022.

This week's WordPress news for the week commencing Monday 11th April 2022.

This week's WordPress news for the week commencing Monday 4th April 2022.

This week's WordPress news for the week commencing Monday 7th March 2022

This week's WordPress news for the week commencing Monday 28th February 2022

This week's WordPress news for the week commencing Monday 21st February 2022

So today we're talking about security, but not what you might expect. This episode is not about the features which are in a WordPress security plugin. This is about the very nature of hacking and the issues that face us all online. What do people do hacking at all? It's a pretty reasonable question! It's now simply assumed that the internet can be a dangerous place; your details could be stolen, your website could be hacked. But why? What's in it for the hackers? Robert Abela is on the podcast today to discuss this and many other topics, and it's a really interesting chat? What security posture should you adopt based upon what you do. It's somewhere between 'do nothing' and 'live in a bunker'! What software is out there which might be worth looking into for all your security needs, and what resources does Robert recommend if you discover that you're curious to learn more? Check out the podcast...

This week's WordPress news for the week commencing Monday 7th February 2022

This week's WordPress news for the week commencing 24th January 2021

This week's WordPress news for the week commencing Monday 10th January 2022

This week's WordPress news for the week commencing 3rd January 2022

This week's WordPress news for the week commencing Monday 29th November 2021

This week's WordPress news for the week commencing Monday 15th November 2021

This week’s WordPress news for the week commencing Monday 8th November 2021 Another week, and we’re bringing you the latest WordPress news from the last seven days, including… Pagely has been bought by GoDaddy – what does this mean? WP…

This week's WordPress news for the week commencing Monday 1st November 2021

It was going to be V for Virus, but we have probably had enough of the word right now, and vulnerabilities perhaps better describes what we are really talking about here - WordPress security. This is where we are different and roles are reversed. Nathan listens to podcasts on IT security and sees the worst that can happen. David remains relatively clueless and feel invincible! He's fixed about 7 hacked sites. None due to his management and the issues have not returned. It made him feel like he was king of the world! We're not experts in this by any means, but we do like to think about it and talk about it... So check out the podcast today and let us know what you think...

This week's WordPress news for the week commencing Monday 4th October 2021

This week's WordPress news for the week commencing 27th September 2021

This week's WordPress news for the week commencing Monday 20th September 2021

This week's WordPress news for the week commencing 13th October 2021

This week's WordPress news for the week commencing 16th August 2021

So you might not have heard about the WordPress security company Patchstack before, but you will likely know about them! You see, until recently, they were called WebARX, but they decided that this was a somewhat confusing, and hard to pronounce name, and so changed it to Patchstack. We talk today to founder Oliver Sild, and get to the bottom of why and how the re-branding went as well as what new features have been added to the platform at the time of the changeover. You might be able to assist their security efforts and get paid into the bargain with their Red Team initiative. Go check out the podcast...

This week's WordPress news for the week commencing Monday 5th July 2021

This week's WordPress news - Covering The Week Commencing 15th March 2021

This week's WordPress news - Covering The Week Commencing 26th October 2020

This week's WordPress news - Covering The Week Commencing 19th October 2020:

This weeks WordPress news - Covering The Week Commencing 21st September 2020

This weeks WordPress news - Covering The Week Commencing 14th September 2020

This weeks WordPress news - Covering The Week Commencing 7th September 2020

This weeks WordPress news - Covering The Week Commencing 17th August 2020

This weeks WordPress news - Covering The Week Commencing 10th August 2020

I got into building WordPress websites because I like building websites. Now that is a breathtaking insight I know! But it's important to think about this for a minute. I have no metrics on this, but I know for certain that I spend quite a but of my week just patching up and maintaining websites that I've already built. This is covered by my care plans but I'm not all that sure how profitable my WordPress website care plans are, one month I might do very little, another, I'm inundated! Today on the WP Builds Podcast we have Brad Morrison from GoWP who is here to tell us how they can take this support burden away from you. They'll do all the maintainance, support, updating and content edits for you. Their new service will even build your webpages for you! Have a listen and see if it's for you...

This weeks WordPress news - Covering The Week Commencing 13th July 2020

This weeks WordPress news - Covering The Week Commencing 1st June 2020

This weeks WordPress news - Covering The Week Commencing 25th May 2020:

This weeks WordPress news - Covering The Week Commencing 18th May 2020