MainWP Blog - Sebastian Moran

Convesio is one of the newer options for hosting your MainWP Child sites. After you have created your account from an invitation link via email, you should be able to sign into the account. Click on the New Site button, and then select which version of WordPress, PHP version and location. The default for a new site is WordPress 5.1, PHP 7.2 and the location should be the United States. Follow the regular WordPress install screen to create the admin Continue reading the post...

You may have heard the term Black Box spoken in relation to Facebook or Google. Black Box is unclear in how it works, and it is not open as to how it is actually using your data. ProPublica have published a number of articles about various companies’ black boxes. These articles have touched on how black boxes work and what is being used to determine the results. The use of Black boxes can lead to machine bias. Machine bias is Continue reading the post...

“I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.” ~ HAL900, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) Artificial Intelligence has long moved past something that existed only in sci-fi films and books. One of the biggest technology growth areas is AI, with many options that can be used on your child sites to either recommend content, to customers, or using AI to power a chat bot on site, which will give intelligent answers based on the customer’s questions. IBM is one Continue reading the post...

While we strive for excellence in our professions, mistakes are a part of who we are. We err so we can learn. Creating a checklist focuses the mind on the most important characteristics of our tasks, which helps us to overcome our mistakes. It takes practice to produce and use checklists effectively, but when we do, the benefit us tremendously. Checklists help people communicate and work together better and help organizations to be better prepared for unexpected occurrences. The value Continue reading the post...

First, have a definite, clear practical ideal; a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends; wisdom, money, materials, and methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end. ~ Aristotle When we’re stressed out and swept up in the daily grind of workflow, trying to A-Team our way through, occasionally a pile of problems can seem like one too many. Here are some things you can do to help better prioritize multiple projects and lessen Continue reading the post...

With the breaking changes for WooCommerce if running versions earlier than 3.5.x due to WordPress 5.x release, now is the time to create a staging site. A staging site can be used to test the active theme updates, the WooCommerce-related plugins, and the WooCommerce plugin. Creating a staging site allows you to test plugin updates without having to cause issues on the live child site. In the case of child sites using WooCommerce for e-commerce, this can mean a live Continue reading the post...

Client projects are always interesting and rewarding to work on, but without setting very clear expectations with your client before the scope and specific deliverables for the project, projects can easily go awry. Clear communication from the start will help set what the client expects, the deliverables, and the dates set for each stage of a project. Brainleaf has a very clear post which covers how to come up with the scope of work (SOW) for your client project. Forbes Continue reading the post...

The majority of the time, people are in a Beta state of consciousness; we’re functional, we’re working, we’re constantly thinking and organizing and strategizing. There’s nothing wrong with this, but what we need to focus on is achieving an Alpha state. An Alpha state is when you meditate, visualize, relax, or simply close your eyes for two minutes. It’s during Alpha states when creativity is at its peak. You are less anxious if you take regular breaks to gain clarity. Continue reading the post...

MainWP now has a very useful way to track changes made on both the MainWP Dashboard site, as well as tracking changes to connected child sites using Activity Log for MainWP extension. First, you will need to install the WP Activity Log plugin on all of the connected child sites, which is very easy to bulk install plugins on your MainWP Dashboard site. Next, you will need to install the Activity Log for MainWP extension on your MainWP Dashboard site. Continue reading the post...

WordPress in its core has a function called XML-RPC, which a limited number of plugins still use like Jetpack. More plugins used to use it when the only method would have been to use the XML-RPC. Most plugins now use the WordPress REST API to connect to a site to pull data from it, by either read or write access. XML-RPC is still targeted for brute force attacks on WordPress sites. A number of CDNs like Cloudflare and Sucuri will Continue reading the post...