MainWP Blog - plugin

Mailchimp is a solid provider for sending out email campaigns. Mailchimp recently made a change to expand out as a full service, all-in-one marketing platform, which means the pricing will increase, as Mailchimp will include the number of users who unsubscribed on a list to the total count. There is a solid alternative to Mailchimp, which also includes reasonable pricing at all list count levels, EmailOctopus. EmailOctopus uses AWS SES to send out emails, which means email campaigns are reliable Continue reading the post...

VaultPress is a backup plugin, built by Automattic. VaultPress can also cause the site installation to bloat the database for postmeta and option entries. Some of the examples of the bloat will be in these option names, created by the plugin; vaultpress vaultpress_allow_forwarded_for vaultpress_service_ips_external_cidr _vp_ai_ping _vp_config_post_meta_name_ignore _vp_config_should_ignore_files _vp_current_scan _vp_signatures The option name which can cause the most issues is _vp_ai_ping. On some sites, _vp_ai_ping  has entries which have been known to bloat the site’s options database table with 300-500MB of Continue reading the post...

iThemes Security plugin is an easy to use security plugin for your child sites. One of the lesser known things about iThemes Security is that the plugin includes a number of constants, which can be added to your child site’s wp-config.php file to set certain things on or off. MainWP has an amazing code snippets extension, which allows you to set constants from the MainWP Dashboard site. This means that any of these constants for iThemes Security plugin can easily Continue reading the post...

WooCommerce Admin is a feature plugin for WooCommerce, which uses React and the Gutenberg block editor to improve certain lacking core features, such as reporting and analytics in WooCommerce. Reporting in WooCommerce can be slow, as well as being MySQL resource heavy if you have high order levels on the site, whilst the WooCommerce Admin is a step in the right direction. Though the WooCommerce Admin has been in development for a number of months, the feature plugin is still Continue reading the post...

The single biggest child site issue that you can end up dealing with is why is the site email not being sent. You could use an SMTP plugin and then use SMTP creds to connect. But using a transactional email provider makes it easier in knowing that your child site email will be delivered correctly. The delivery of site email can be a pain to deal with on child sites. If a site is using WooCommerce or a form plugin Continue reading the post...

Two major, well-known WordPress plugins have recently implemented certain changes which have not gone down well with the WordPress community. Jetpack in version 7.1, made a change with Jetpack active when you go to /wp-admin/ Plugins > Add New If a Jetpack module has similar features to the plugin keyword you are searching for, the first result will be the Jetpack module. The Jetpack PR shows the original proof of concept of the plugin suggestion feature. If you already have 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...

What are transients are and why WordPress uses them WordPress uses transients to store data, that can be retrieved short-term from the options database table. But the problem ends up being when different plugins are using transients, but then not deleting that data when it has expired. It can cause performance issues over-time and cause the options database table to group. So ideally you would want to delete expired transients on any of the MainWP Child Sites you manage to improve Continue reading the post...

In this month’s roundup, we are talking content. Specifically, 9 types of content that will fail. Also, we are looking at a list of “massive online publications” that use WordPress for their content platform. It’s October, a time for cooler weather, Halloween, and things scary. Today, we are going to look at ways to not create scary content featuring an article about content that will always fail. In addition, we will look at some massive online publishers and a new Continue reading the post...