MainWP Blog - Tips & Tricks

To reduce the number of spam user account registrations on your child site, it is helpful to verify the validity of emails for those user accounts. There is a new service and WordPress plugin, which will help reduce those spam account registrations. The plugin is called EVA Email Validation. The plugin requires that you sign up for an account at the EVA site. With the plugin installed and activated, it will add a new admin menu for: Settings > EVA Continue reading the post...

Site images can take up the bulk of the site size of a child site. Additionally, uncompressed images in your site’s media library will cause performance issues on the front-end of the site. One of the solid plugin and services for image optimization is ShortPixel. ShortPixel has a free plan which includes 100 images per month, a number of well-priced monthly plans, and one-time plans which you can pick from. After you have signed up for ShortPixel, you will need Continue reading the post...

W3 Total Cache is a plugin which is used for page caching, minification and Redis integration, but it does come at a price. The codebase is old, and if not configured correctly, it can cause issues on the site it is being used on. Using a different plugin or plugins for page caching, minification, and Redis object caching is possible, but means you need to remove all traces of the W3 Total Cache plugin. W3 Total Cache plugin on deactivation Continue reading the post...

Needing to use a staging site for testing client site updates is an essential practice. You do not want to send customers any site emails by accident since the site that has a staging site for testing had a membership or affiliate plugin active. To make sure emails are disabled on a staging site, use the Disable Emails plugin. The plugin has no settings and should disable site email on the staging site in most cases. One extra step to Continue reading the post...

Stream is a plugin from XWP which works, but compared to newer security audit plugins such as WP Activity Log, it is quite limited. Stream can also bloat the site database, depending on how long logs are being stored by. To  reset the database of entries that Stream has created, you can do so from wp-admin; Stream > Settings > Reset Stream Database When you deactivate and delete the Stream plugin, the two custom database tables that the plugin creates Continue reading the post...

Site image will be one of the heaviest assets on your child site. The easiest way to speed up a site is to have a CDN compress images when uploaded, and then have the CDN serve those site images for users of the site. One solid Image CDN which has an easy-to-use WordPress plugin is Gumlet. First, you will need to sign up for a Gumlet account. After you have signed and verified your account, you will need to setup Continue reading the post...

Jetpack provides a number of modules which can benefit the site it is connected to. But for Jetpack to be used, Jetpack needs to use a WordPress.com account to connect to your site. What does it mean for your site to be connected to WordPress.com to be able to use Jetpack? What is being copied over? Well, more than you’d think of the site database is being copied over to create a clone of your site on WordPress.com server. If Continue reading the post...

Hummingbird is a caching and performance plugin with over 70k active installs, but the plugin can cause issues and does not work well as a page caching plugins. The plugin deactivation in Hummingbird will not delete the advanced-cache.php drop in it adds, nor will it remove the constant added into your site wp-config.php. The file to remove if you no longer want to use Hummingbird and use another lightweight solution is; wp-cache.php in the wp-content/wphb-cache folder. You can delete the Continue reading the post...

If you have comments enabled in the form of comments on posts on a site, or if you have reviews enabled in WooCommerce, spam can be a major issue. There is a solid and easy-to-use plugin to stop spam on your child site, called Stop Spammers. After you have installed and activated the plugin on your child site, it will add an admin menu called Stop Spammers. The sections that will show under that admin menu are broken down as Continue reading the post...

If you want to create a setup so when a user logs out of a child site, they are redirected to the homepage of the site, one easy-to-use plugin solution is the WP Logout Redirect plugin. After the plugin has been installed and activated on the child site, it has no settings to be changed. An example would be if you used a membership plugin or WooCommerce, then you needed to have a customer or user redirect on logout back Continue reading the post...