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Our informal AI policy
As it happens, in my senior year of college, I took a year-long coordinated studies program called Computability and Cognition. We studied the mathematics, logic, computer theory, cognitive science, philosophy, and ethics behind artificial intelligence, including what were then very early models of modern Large Language Models. Mind you, the average smart thermostat today has…
Read MoreWhy I’m optimistic about all the open-source bug reports
So the intertubes are all abuzz about reports of newfound vulnerabilities in open-source software. For instance, consider this breathless headline: WordPress Tightens Bug Bounty Scope After Monthly Security Reports Nearly Double to 773 Sounds awful. But to see why I’m less concerned, see what I think is the key paragraph in that post “Last month…
Read MoreDo you need to know a coding language in order to learn WordPress?
Short answer: no. Longer answer: probably not. There are different levels of “learning WordPress.” Not to sound like clickbait but “the last answer may suprise you.” If (but maybe only if) you’re going to code plugins, themes, and blocks then yes, you’ll need to learn to code. If you’re going to routinely build sites for…
Read MoreCelebrating more than 10 years of WordPress maintenance and support
3,717 days! Almost every day since switching from building new WordPress sites to maintaining, refurbishing, and updating old ones, I’ve logged into my InfiniteWP console and backed up and updated all my maintenance clients’ websites. The reason I chose IWP all those years ago is that it is self-hosted and doesn’t have per-site charges. There…
Read MoreIs blogging for SEO worth it?
The short answer is maybe blogging helps random strangers find one of your posts on the internet… but that’s not the best reason for blogging. Blogging instead establishes your authority, credibility, and availability. The chance of getting freelance work from random search (eg “web developer near me”) is pretty low vs the odds that they…
Read MoreWhy it’s a bad idea to use text in background images
This is an awesome meme (the text at the bottom is intentionally cut off.) It nicely illustrates why including text on background images is a bad idea. Because background images get cropped as the screen changes sizes. On particularly small screens, the background image may also shrink too far to be readable. (This readability issue…
Read MoreDo I need to setup SMTP to get WordPress to send email?
Why do contact forms and password-recovery email messages work fine with some websites and not with others? A lot of it has to do with the way the web server is configured and/or the security settings for the client’s domain email. Most web servers can send simple email messages. Others, especially depending on what email…
Read MoreShould you give a developer access to your hosting account?
When you hire a WordPress professional to work on your site it’s pretty common for them to ask for It makes sense that they’d need to log into your website as an administrator. If they couldn’t they couldn’t add or remove plugins, make changes to the theme (colors, fonts, menus, widgets, footers), or run fairly…
Read MoreNote to self: fixing “weird” Unicode characters like ‘Â’ and ‘’’ in a WordPress SQL database
This post is based in part on a more detailed post from Jeff Starr at Digging Into WordPress. I’m posting it here so I can easily find the recipe I most often need. Definitely visit Jeff’s post for a full explanation. 99.999% of WordPress users are unlikely to need to import from an older archived…
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