2014
-
Software: Cautionary Tales
Sept 29
Sometimes we only learn from personal experience. Learn from my mistakes so you don’t have to live through them yourself.
-
WordPress Database Encryption
Sept 26
How reasonable is the suggestion that WordPress encrypt its database? Really?
-
Be Aware of Context
Sept 24
Nothing is more annoying than a customer service representative responding out of context to a customer concern.
-
DNS and Cross-Site Scripting
Sept 19
One of the first things on any security auditor’s list is checking to see if a site is vulnerable to cross-site scripting (XSS).
-
Interesting Hacking Attempts
Aug 11
When someone hacks a plugin or theme, it’s bad. When someone hacks the foundation of those systems (WordPress), it’s worse. When someone hacks the base upon which WordPress is built (Apache, Nginx, or whatever server you use), it’s tragic.
-
Varying Vagrants Evolved
Jun 27
I’ve cleared out my old Mac virtual machines and started with Varying Vagrant Vagrants anew. Here’s how!
-
Surprising Search Results
Jun 6
I found out that my top referrer so far this week is the search result page for “decrypt wordpress password hash online.” What’s going on?
-
What is your Digital Footprint?
May 4
Applications that used to fit in a few megabytes now consume a gigabyte – or more – to do essentially the same thing. I find this development a bit disturbing.
-
WordPress Core Proposal: Data Service
Mar 26
Rather than pitch a feature that is a must-have within the ecosystem, I want to explain something that would be nice-to-have from a developer perspective.
-
Dynamic CDN: PHP and Checksums
Mar 21
The general gist of Dynamic CDN is to scan page content before returning it to the browser and dynamically replace locally-hosted assets (images, scripts, styles, etc) with their CDN-hosted equivalents. The trick is returning consistent CDN urls for hosted assets – the plugin uses PHP to generate a checksum for asset references so it can…
-
WordPress Core Proposal: Portability
Mar 12
This is less a proposal for a new feature, and more a discussion about a drastically lacking capability in WordPress: It’s not portable.
-
Vagrant and Windows
Mar 5
I often brag about the fact that I’ve dumped heavy tools like XAMPP in favor of Vagrant. I’m quite proud of this accomplishment, and I urge every other developer I meet to look into Vagrant.