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WordPress – The Year Ahead

WordPress – The Year Ahead

by | Jan 26, 2021 | WordPress News

Year Ahead with WordPress

Minutes – Sandy Mush WordPress Meeting #005
Tuesday, 26th January 2021

Topic – What to expect from WordPress in 2021

  • Gutenberg Blocks – are not going away.
  • Full-site editing in core before the end of the year.
  • WordPress 5.8 (June 2021)

New WordPress Slack Channels 

Announcement 

Friday, January 29th, 2021, at 11AM EST – REGISTER FOR EVENT

Gutenberg Times: All-things about the WordPress Block Editor and Gutenberg plugin in development

Pauli-Haack plans to cover all the latest updates on full-site editing, block-based themes, and global styles. The panel will also touch on the navigation and widget screens, as well as what features will most likely land in WordPress 5.7.

Discussion Topic

MVP – minimum viable product – “a version of a new product which allows teams to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least amount of effort. 

Discussion Group
🎧 Podcast - Gutenberg Times

MVP Definition

“The ultimate goal of an MVP is learning. Because unless you’re getting valuable insights from the MVP, it doesn’t matter how many engineering hours you spent or how fast you got it to market. It’s not about proving if you can build it or even how, but why customers should even care in the first place.”

📰 https://envato.com/blog/whats-an-mvp-testing-a-minimum-viable-product/ 

MVP Tests

Minimum Viable Product tests that I run for my clients can range from vague AdWords tests to early prototypes.

Run Ads
What is the response. 

Create Landing Pages
Present information to customers. 

Paper Prototypes
Cheap mock ups of products. 

Fundraising

Demonstration Video 

Visual Prototype 

End of Year Chart

End of Year Chart

by | Dec 19, 2020 | My Design Blog

BOOKS

The Vegan Slow Cooker
Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet
Conversations with Friends
A Man With One of Those Faces
Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir
Life Photographers: What They Saw
20 Ways to Draw a Tulip and 44 Other Fabulous Flowers: A Sketchbook for Artists, Designers, and Doodlers
The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek
Marian Bantjes: Pretty Pictures
Homegoing
Tomorrow I'll Be Brave
Tomorrow I'll Be Kind
Dear Girls: Intimate Tales, Untold Secrets, & Advice for Living Your Best Life
Native Son
Your Power to Create: From Wishful Thinking to True Manifestation
Anatomy of the Spirit: The Seven Stages of Power and Healing
The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon
Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World
The End of Your Life Book Club
The Snow Child

Top Ten Books for 2020

  1. The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek – Kim Michele Richardson
  2. The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon – Tom Spanbauer
  3. Range: Why Gerealists Triumph in a Specialized World – David Epstein
  4. Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet – Andrew Blum
  5. Pretty Pictures – Marian Bantjes
  6. Homegoing – Yaa Gyasi
  7. Queenie – Candice Carty-Williams
  8. Freehand: Sketching Tips and Tricks Drawn from Art – Helen Birch
  9. A Man With One of Those Faces – Caimh McDonnell
  10. Your Power to Create – Caroline Myss

2020 was a good year for reading.

Only three of the books from my reading list were published in 2020.
Nine of the books were published in 2019.
With 44 of the books published this millennium. 

View Books for 2020 Reading List.

2020 Reading Challenge

2020 Reading Challenge
Gary has
completed his goal of reading
52 books in
2020!
hide

MUSIC

Put your hands together one more time mix. It was great fun making the mix and thank you for the wonderful feedback. 

2020 Playlist

2020 was quite a good year for music.

Jessie Ware, Roisin Murphy, Elder Island, and Dua Lipa were all on heavy rotation.  

2020 – Song of the Year

Note sure why my song of the year didn’t hit the heights it deserved. 

The only thing that could make Honey by Wildligh and The Polish Ambassdor any better would be to obtain a copy of the lyrics.

PODCASTS

My Top Ten Podcasts

  1. Talk Art
  2. Design Matters
  3. The Art Angle
  4. Wordfence
  5. The CSS Podcast
  6. Getting Curious
  7. In Our Time: Philosophy
  8. History of Japan
  9. The History of Rome
  10. This Way Out

I didn’t include links to the podcasts – as the same content is available on different Podcast services. Simply look up the podcast with the Podcast service you use.

If the podcast is not available. Search for the podcast online.  

 

2020 is the Year of the Podcast.

While everyone is now publishing content. I found that I had to limit how many podcasts I could follow.

Art, Design, Coding, Philosophy, and History are my main interests.

With TalkArt & Design Matters topping my list of favorite podcast for 2020. I actually listened to the entire back catalog of TalkArt – so feeling inspired. 

You couldn’t listen to a better creative blog than Design Matters by Debbie Millman. Debbie Millman has been broadcasting independently for over 15 years. And sets a high bar for quality  content. 

SOCIAL MEDIA

2020 End of year chart Social Media
2020 End of year chart - social media
2020 End of Year chart - Social Media posts

The Impact of WordPress Plugins

The Impact of WordPress Plugins

by | Nov 21, 2020 | SEO Services, WordPress News

What is the Impact of WordPress Plugins 

What is the real impact of using plugins to enhance WordPress performance?

The WordPress Plugin library offers an endless depth of enchantments for your WordPress site.  You name it – I am sure there is a plugin or two that can handle your need. It is important to remember that WordPress plugins are developed by Third-party developers (and not the WordPress team). Plugins do adhere to guidelines to help ensure that plugins remain secure and safe for users.

The importance of site speed

Other than the obvious – that people do not like using a slow website.

A slow loading website creates a bad user experience.
And is more prone to errors.

And you do have Google monitoring your site speed while determining your site ranking. Slow websites rank lower than fast loading website.

Impact of WordPress Plugins

With each plugin installed there is an exchange.

Site Speed

Plugins can slow down the loading speed of your WordPress website.

 

Security

Hackers use plugin vulnerabilities to access your website.

How do plugins impact your website speed?

WordPress PageSpeed Without Plugins Installed

Mobile 98 / Desktop 100

WordPress PageSpeed With 3 Plugins Installed

Mobile 68 / Desktop 79 / Grade F

PageSpeed

Mobile 80 / 75 / 84 / 81

Desktop 88 / 87 / 93 / 90

Grade E / F / B / C

PageSpeed

Mobile 80 / 91 / 80

Desktop 95 / 87 / 86

Grade B / D / B

PageSpeed
(Not Connected)

Mobile 99 / 96 / 99

Desktop 96 / 93 / 95

Grade B / B / B

PageSpeed (Connected)

Mobile 89 / 9o / 97

Desktop 91 / 89

Grade D / A 

The importance of site security

No one wants to interact with your hacked website. End of Story. 

Once your site is hacked – you have no idea to what may be happening to your site, your content, or your end user.

You can only clean up the mess and hope for the best. With the best outcome being that the hack was small and impacted as few users as possible. 

Infections Comparison

WordPress is the most popular CMS to be infected.

2020 = ??%

2019 = 94%

2018 = 90%

2017 = 83%

Plugins that have been hacked

Hacking Trends

Page Builder by SiteOrigin.

  • Redirect administrator.
  • Create new admin accounts.
  • Inject backdoors.

For more information:

Discount Rules for WooCommence

  • SQL injection
  • Authorization Issues.
  • Unauthenticated stored cross-site scripting.

For more information:

 

WP Product Review

  • Unauthenticated stored cross-site scripting.

For more information:

 

File Manager

  • Upload Webshells hidden in an image. 

For more information:

 

Google Sitekit

  • Hack

For more information:

 

What Changes are Hackers Making to Your Website

Redirect Administrator

Locking Admin Out of the Site.

Create New Admin Accounts

Hacker can take over your site.

Inject Backdoors

The most popular hack.
The Inject Backdoor provides the hacker access even after webmaster changes passwords or patched vulnerable software.

Malware 

Malware can reverse security
(WordPress Malware Disables Security Plugins to Avoid Detection).

SQL injection

Hacker interfere with the queries that an application makes to the database.
Can gain access to passwords, credit card information.
Compromise the underlying server and back-end infrastructure.

Unauthenticated Stored Cross-site Scripting.

Type if injection in which malicious scripts are injected into your website.
Can circumvent origin policy that segregate websites.

Web Shells

Malicious script that is the second step of an attack to maintain persistent access on an already compromised web application.

The Seven Most Popular Attacks