Web Musings

I’m teaching an introduction to programming class in Python starting September 3rd!

If you’re in the Clarksville, TN area please check it out here.

Recently I have dealt with several WordPress websites that have fifty or more plugins installed.

Unfortunately having that many plugins makes it very difficult to isolate issues. As plugins can conflict with each other, there are at least thousands of possible combinations of conflicts with fifty plugins.

More plugins also makes updates more difficult, as there are more to keep up-to-date, and brings with it a higher risk of security issues as there are simply more plugins that could be vulnerable.

Before you install a plugin think, “Do I really need this?”. Should you do decide that you need the plugin, document what the plugin is for, as it is easy to forget over time, especially if you have more than a few plugins. If you no longer need a plugin, deactivate it and uninstall it.

Should you get to the point where you have more than about 10 or 15 plugins consider hiring a professional WordPress developer. He or she may be able to find a better solution.

Why choose WooCommerce over Shopify?

1. Control your data and store – no “lock-in”. Why would you want to allow someone to have the keys to your store?
2. Customization to your heart’s content!

This article is an excellent comparison and contrast of WordPress and Wix.

I found Better Search Replace today. It seems to work quite well, though the database I used it on was only 10MB. Thanks Delicious Brains!

Checkout this article from iThemes “Is My WordPress Site Hacked? 7 Signs of Infection”. Overall it’s a good start to determining if your website has been hacked, but a scanner is quite useful in determining that as well. Some examples are Wordfence and Sucuri SiteCheck.

We’ve released an update for our WordPress plugin MCM Random Baby Name Generator. It displays a form for randomly generating a baby name by gender, the first letter of the name, length of the name, and popularity of the name.

We’ve just released an update to our WordPress plugin MCM Protected File View 1.7. It protects uploaded files so they can only be viewed by logged-in users.

WordPress 5.0, the next major release, is scheduled to come out on November 19, 2018. It will come with a new editor known as Gutenburg.
However if you install and activate the “Classic Editor” plugin before upgrading to WordPress 5.0 you can continue using the current editor.

Gutenburg still seems to have a fair amount of kinks to iron out. Also, many plugins are not yet compatible yet. For now we recommend using the Classic Editor.

A recent US Supreme Court ruling has opened the door to states collecting sales tax on purchases from out-of-state e-commerce sites (source). We can help setup your online store to calculate and collect the correct sales tax.