Monthly ArchivesNovember 2017

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If you’re anything like me, you’re full of ideas for projects you’d love to work on if only you had the time. I’m a writer, and I have no end of ideas for essays, blog articles, and books I’d like to write. Most of us are the same; whether it’s writing, photography, music, podcasting, art, or any of an unlimited variety of creative projects, we have an idea that we’d love to share with the world, but our daily responsibilities get in the way and we just can’t find the time.

But, as I’ve learned, it almost certainly doesn’t take as long as you think to create something worth sharing. A couple of hours a week is probably enough, if you have access to the right tools. For me, WordPress is that tool. WordPress is the world’s most popular content management system, and it’s the perfect platform for publishing your content. I prefer WordPress to social media networks like Facebook because, although I share on Facebook too, everything I publish lives on a site that I control.

Get Up-And-Running In No Time At All

The idea of setting up a website may seem daunting, but in reality you can be up and running with a WordPress site in a couple of minutes. The best WordPress hosting companies install and configure WordPress for you, and all you’ll have to do is choose a theme and start publishing.

Choose From Thousands Of Designs

Speaking of themes, WordPress provides a rich variety of designs so that you can choose the perfect look for your side project. There are thousands of high-quality free themes available in the official repository, and, if you don’t mind spending a few dollars, thousands more premium themes.

WordPress Can Make Your Vision A Reality

WordPress is modular and extensible. In simple terms that means developers have created thousands of plugins to add functionality to your WordPress site. In fact, if you can think of it, there’s probably a plugin for it. Take a look at the official WordPress plugin repository and search for something you’d like to do with your side project — you’re almost certain to find a plugin that will make it that much easier.

Plugins aren’t just about making WordPress easier to use; they also provide a wide range of extra functionality for the content management system, including plugins for SEO and eCommerce.

WordPress Is Fast And Secure

There are two secrets to ensuring that WordPress fulfills its potential as a fast and secure content management system.

First, choose a WordPress hosting provider that cares about performance. The best managed hosting providers invest in networks and servers that make the most of WordPress’s performance capabilities.

Second, make sure you keep your WordPress site up-to-date. The majority of security problems that WordPress site owners have are due to outdated plugins or WordPress installations. Updating is simple: most of the time it happens automatically, and for major updates, all you have to do is press a button.

If you have a side project that you’ve been putting off because you’re worried about the complexity of creating a website, try WordPress. You’ll be up-and-running with a beautiful, feature-rich website in no time at all.

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WordPress

Photo by Yuriy Rzhemovskiy on Unsplash

One of the most compelling parts of the WordPress ecosystem is the huge number of high-quality plugins. If you want to add a feature to your WordPress site, there’s almost certainly a plugin that will do the job. Plugins allow WordPress to be flexible without becoming bloated and they allow the WordPress ecosystem to advance more quickly than a centralized development model ever could.

But plugins are software, and as with any software, WordPress hosting clients should be aware of potential security risks. The majority of plugin security issues can be avoided by updating plugins regularly. Updates bring fixes to security vulnerabilities; plugins that aren’t updated are quite likely to be vulnerable. Updating plugins is easy: all WordPress users need to do is press a button in the WordPress dashboard when they’re notified that a new version of a plugin is ready.

The update system works perfectly most of the time, but what happens when a developer never releases a new version of a plugin? The update system relies on developers to fix security vulnerabilities in their plugins. Sometimes that doesn’t happen. Developers may decide they no longer want to work on a plugin. Outwardly, there’s no obvious way for a site owner to tell if a developer has abandoned a plugin without investigating — the plugin is just never updated.

In some cases, a plugin is removed from the repository because it is discovered to contain a particularly bad security vulnerability, but that happens rarely. There are tens of thousands of plugins and the WordPress project doesn’t have the resources to check every one. The onus is on site owners to check that plugins are regularly updated and to investigate if they suspect a plugin might have been abandoned.

• If a plugin hasn’t been updated for six months, investigate to see if it’s still being actively developed.
• Investigate if a plugin isn’t promptly updated to make it compatible with the most recent version of WordPress.

In many cases the plugin won’t be abandoned and there’s no reason to stop using it. But I’m more than willing to spend the time checking — most of the information I need is available in the “more details” section of the “Plugins” pane of the WordPress dashboard.

Manually checking for abandoned plugins is workable if you have a small number of plugins on one site. But if you manage lots of sites or install a lot of plugins, you might want to think about an automated solution. WordFence recently added the ability to check for abandoned and removed plugins to their well-regarded WordPress security plugin. WordFence will let you know when a plugin may have been abandoned and any outstanding security issues.

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WordPress