MainWP Blog - Tips & Tricks

REM and non-REM sleep play an important, ongoing role in both physical and cognitive development. A person goes through 4 or 5 sleep cycles throughout sleep, which involve gradual descent into deeper stages. Each stage takes around 90 minutes. Most people are familiar with the movie, “Inception,” and how in the person (or “architect’s”) dream, they delved deeper and deeper into dreams within dreams. The first stage is called slow-wave REM sleep, or the emergent stage, and marks a new Continue reading the post...

If you are using the Social Warfare plugin on any child sites (including the pro version of the plugin), deactivate the plugin on any child sites and wait for an update to be released. Wordfence has more about the issue in the plugin, which states that it is a stored Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability.  Sucuri also put out a post about the specific issue. Wordfence has updated the original post to include more information about the attack and what exactly Continue reading the post...

If you are using the plugin Easy WP SMTP for sending site emails using SMTP, make sure that you update to version 1.3.9.1. Do not delay updating any of your child sites, as using the unfixed version of the plugin gives your child site a high chance of being hacked. For more information about the critical zero-day vulnerability issue in Easy WP SMTP plugin, you can read this post. WPScan also has more information. The hack will take the form Continue reading the post...

When installed, WordPress will add a number of files which can be safely deleted on any of your child sites. The first of those files is readme.html, which is an information HTML file as part of the famous 5-minute install of WordPress manually. The second of those files is wp-config-sample.php, which is an example of the wp-config.php file, which contains all the site’s database credentials and its salts, along with any constants being used. Remember not to delete the wp-config.php Continue reading the post...

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...