Tag: wordpress

Ways to harden your WordPress website without using bulky plugins

You can add security plugins to your website, but if you don’t know exactly what they’re doing, not only can you silently break things, but you can slow down your site with a lot of extra code. They’re great, but it’s not like there isn’t risk in blindly activating any plugin. I develop plugins and try to predict how things can go wrong, so I know just how bewildering the number of things that can go wrong feels. When I can simplify things on my own sites, I always go that route. I recently decided to stop using a security plugin because I’ve implemented security measures of my own, and my server handles SSL redirection. I love the Really Simple SSL plugin but didn’t need it in this particular instance. Really Simple SSL had a couple nice features I decided continue reading…

The Most Common WordPress Mistakes People Make

For several years I’ve been scanning the support forums at WordPress.org and helping where I can. I’ve been using WordPress since it came out in 2003, and because it’s at least partly free and open-source, I like to contribute. Aside from the obvious — helping others — contributing helps me keep abreast of what’s new in WordPress and hones my skills. On top of occasionally answering questions in the general support forums, I also wrote and support two plugins in the wordpress.org plugin repository. I frequently see quite a bit of misunderstanding on a basic level about what WordPress is and what it can do, and I’d like to toss in my thoughts about that here. I hope I can help clear up a few reasons some people think “WordPress sucks.” WordPress is WordPress is WordPress Not true. WordPress has continue reading…

How to get a WordPress Media (attachment) ID

There are several ways to go about getting the attachment ID (of the ‘attachment’ WordPress post type, stored in the wp_posts WPDB [Wordpress DataBase] table. Here are some of them: From the Media Library: Navigate to Dashboard -> Media. Here you will see your WordPress uploads (Media), either in grid view or list view. They’re both fine, it’s just a preference thing. Instructions for both are below. List View If in List view, navigate to the item by scrolling or using the search bar at the top right. Then hover over the title of that file, like so: Grid View In grid view, it’s a little bit different. You’ve got to click on the media file. A popup window will open up. Take a look in your browser URL bar and you will see the attachment ID there, after where continue reading…