August 2022 – A2Z Web Design Tutorial

Open Source Explained By LEGO
WordPress has benefited greatly from being Open Source software licensed under the GPL. But what does Open Source actually mean? The folks over at Bit Blueprint in partnership with Moving Monday released a video using LEGO bricks and toys to explain the subject.

Open Source Explained By LEGOs

While the video is not 100% accurate since Free Software and Open Source are two different movements with different ideological motives, it does a great job of introducing people to the subject.

We are aware of the fact that the Free Software and Open Source movements have both similarities and differences.

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Web Development

Aug 8 2022

Akismet Update Adds Security and Anti-Spam Improvements

Last week, we wrote about a report published by Sucuri that explained how 162,000 clean WordPress sites were used in a DDoS attack through the pingback functionality of XML-RPC. Alex Shiels who works on Akismet mentioned on Twitter the security team was working on a solution.

An update to Akismet is now available containing bug fixes, security, and anti-spam improvements. Notably:

Include X-Pingback-Forwarded-For header in outbound WordPress pingback verifications.
Add a pre-check for pingbacks, to stop spam before an outbound verification request is made.
According to Shiels, anti-spam checks were performed after a pingback was verified and WordPress didn’t pass

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Web Development

Aug 8 2022

Better WP Security To Be Renamed, Undergoes Major Changes

Just Re-activate The Plugin To Fix This Error
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 upgrading or else you’ll see the following error.

Just Re-activate The Plugin To Fix This Error

Besides the name change, a number of features will be added such as:

The ability to add multiple reporting email addresses for backups and notifications
Streamlined settings for easier

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Web Development

Aug 8 2022

How To Bulk Install All Your Favorite WordPress Plugins

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 question posed by Angie Meeker on Twitter inspired me to dig deeper into the best options available for doing this:

Can we tag a bunch of plugins in the repo through our own profiles, then install those tagged plugins all

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Web Development

Aug 8 2022

Web Development 101: Top Web Development Languages in 2022

When it comes to choosing the best web development language for your website, it’s important to remember that there is no single best language.

Instead, a web developer will choose the option that best suits your project, based on the specific functionality or features you want. Which programming languages are most likely to come up in conversation?

An earlier post in this series, “What is Web Development,” described the three parts of web development: client-side scripting

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Web Development

Aug 8 2022

Unique BuddyPress Themes With Support For Third-Party Plugins

BuddyPress themes are still few and far between, despite the popularity of the social networking plugin for WordPress. After theme compatibility was introduced, effectively making BuddyPress able to work with nearly any WordPress theme, the market slowed its production of new products tailored specifically for BuddyPress.

When you see a theme that highlights BuddyPress features in a big way, it’s worth taking note. (M) Social is one such theme from the folks at GavickPro. Although new to the WordPress theme space, the GavickPro team is well established in the Joomla community with more than seven

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Web Development

Aug 8 2022

FiveThirtyEight and Facebook

Two cool new WordPress launched on VIP: Nate Silver’s new FiveThirtyEight site, and the Facebook Newsroom, which I believe is the first WP-powered Facebook site. (Hopefully the first of many!) Also congrats to 10up and Beyond respectively for working on each of these sites.

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