WordPress Archives

May 29, 2018 at 9:47 pm

Lightning Base Review: Managed WordPress Hosting

If you’re looking for the best managed WordPress hosting provider then you’ve come to the right place.

Since Day one, back on March 26th, 2016, the day I signed up for Lightning Base, I knew that it was going to be the place I call home for News47ell.

As I begin this Lightning Base Review, I’m going to say it now: Sign up. If you are looking for the most secure, fastest and the best managed WordPress hosting provider, look no more, because Lightning Base is all of this and much more.

Keep reading my Lightning Base review to get an in-depth look at Lightning Base and it’s exclusive features that make it one of the best managed WordPress hosting providers out there.

February 14, 2018 at 11:47 pmFebruary 20, 2018 at 11:47 pm

Slack Notifications by dorzki WordPress Plugin Review

by Ahmad Al Maaz

These days, our phones are in our pockets all the time. Yes, phones as in multiple ones, is it just me?
Back to the main subject, most of the time you have your phone with you and you are out of the house doing your job and all you can think about is your precious WordPress site and what’s happening with it. Again, it’s not just me, right?

When I am out, I like to always know whenever a new plugin, theme or core update is available. Whether someone managed to log in to my account, edited something without my permission or when an article is published on schedule.

You can push all of these notifications easily to your phone and as a bonus, they can all be pushed to your Slack channel, which is what I do.

Let’s dive into this Slack Notifications by dorzki WordPress Plugin Review and learn How to integrate Slack with WordPress.

February 7, 2018 at 9:39 pm

How to Roll Back WordPress Themes and Plugins

by Ahmad Al Maaz

Has this ever happened to you? Having enabled WordPress automatic updates and the developer of your favorite WordPress theme pushed an update with a code that changed something in the theme that you weren’t ready for. So, therefore, you needed to rollback to a previous version of that same theme but you didn’t know how and when you learned how to do it, you found the steps too cumbersome?

This never happened to me but it could’ve happened to you. It could happen to any one of us and when it does, you should be ready to quickly rollback to any version you want of your favorite theme or plugin.

If you’re looking for an easy way to rollback your favorite WordPress theme or plugin to any previous version that your heart desires, then there’s a solution for you and it’s called WP Rollback Plugin.

Today I will share with you How to Roll Back WordPress Themes and Plugins using WP Rollback plugin.

January 15, 2018 at 9:17 pm

Authy Deprecating It’s WordPress Plugin

by Ahmad Al Maaz

In a surprise announcement by the head of Product for Account Security at Twilio and the previous founder of Clef, B Byrne said on January 12th, 2018, that Authy Deprecating It’s WordPress Plugin.

Authy plugin for WordPress allowed you to enable Two-factor authentication on your WordPress site. It’s a product close to my heart since I wrote multiple articles about it and a complete review.

November 27, 2017 at 8:25 pm

How to Enable Automatic Update for WordPress

by Ahmad Al Maaz

One way to keep your WordPress site secure is to keep it and everything in it up to date. Meaning that you have to update the core software which is WordPress and the theme you are using. In my case, it’s GeneratePress. One last thing to update are the plugins you are using and in my case… that’s…well…. that’s a long list for another time.

Instead of checking your WordPress update section all the time anticipating a new update, there’s a way to enable automatic update for WordPress. You just set it once and forget it.

Today, I will tell you How to Enable Automatic Update for WordPress.

November 8, 2017 at 9:39 pmFebruary 10, 2018 at 9:39 pm

How to Protect WordPress Login Page

by Ahmad Al Maaz

Being the number one¹ CMS in the world, websites running WordPress are a great target for hackers who want to take control of other people’s websites. Hackers will ask for a ransom, sell personal information that belongs to the site’s owner/s and it’s users, distribute malware, send spam or simply, to eliminate competitors.

One very popular way of getting administrative access to a WordPress site is by attacking the login page.

Thy name is wp-login.php.

We all know it and you should know that everyone knows it. Hackers will use it since it’s the gateway to your site and you should do your best to Protect your WordPress Login Page.

Using a technique called Brute Force Attack, hackers take advantage of a few weak points that come with every WordPress installation. You should harden those weak points as soon as possible to keep intruders outside and your site safe and protected.

In this tutorial, you will learn How to Protect WordPress Login Page from Brute Force Attack

June 28, 2017 at 11:14 amMarch 7, 2018 at 11:14 am

Keyy Review: Best Clef Alternative

by Ahmad Al Maaz

I still remember the excitement that I felt when I found out about Clef, the no-longer-available two-factor authentication app that helped me get rid of the password that I use to login to News47ell’s admin dashboard. It was magical, but sadly, the excitement didn’t last for too long. Clef shut down and the team moved to join Twilio to work on Authy.

I was left with the same old, boring login method for my site.

Today, I get to be excited again thanks to the great people over at UpdraftPlus because they released their promised app they claim is going to be the heir of Clef.

Keyy two factor authentication, a brand new WordPress plugin, iOS & Android app by the developers of the popular WordPress backup plugin UpdraftPlus, is going to bring back the good old days of not having to enter that hard to remember password¹every time I want to login to my admin dashboard.

So go ahead and read my Keyy Review: Best Clef Alternative and kiss your WordPress login password goodbye

May 25, 2017 at 8:51 pmOctober 10, 2017 at 8:51 pm

UpdraftPlus Working on a Clef Alternative Called Keyy

by Ahmad Al Maaz

UpdraftPlus released their Clef Alternative: Keyy. You can read my full review here.

The people over at UpdraftPlus have been hard at work making a Clef alternative. For those of you who don’t know what Clef is, it was one of the best, coolest and most innovative two-factor authentication apps that I have ever seen in my life.

With its blue signature bar-code, Clef managed to become the favorite two-factor authentication app amongst many people in the WordPress community because of the following reasons:

Easy to pair your WordPress site with your Clef account using your phone’s camera.
Easy to log in using your camera by scanning their uniquely designed barcode.
Ability to hide login form, disable passwords and make Clef the only way to log in.
Set up timed sessions.
Sign out of your WordPress site from the app.

Now that it’s gone, people are looking for an alternative. There’s one company out there that dared to make a Clef alternative and that company is called UpdraftPlus.

So let’s take a look, who are they? What do they do? And how are they going to make a Clef alternative that is worth using?

December 11, 2016 at 7:54 pmDecember 27, 2016 at 7:54 pm

How to Create Site Specific WordPress Plugin

by Ahmad Al Maaz

I‘ve been silently doing a lot of minor and medium size changes to News47ell since the redesign. With those changes, I had to find a way to keep my code as organized as possible so that I can understand it when I go back to it later along the road. Because I use WordPress, I decided to convert all my code into Site Specific WordPress Plugin.

Each plugin does a specific thing on the site and it includes a PHP file, JS file & CSS file. They are all served from my server over at Lightning Base so I can reduce the number of HTTP requests required to render the page.

October 1, 2016 at 7:49 pmJune 18, 2017 at 7:49 pm

How to Implement Prism Syntax Highlighter into WordPress

by Ahmad Al Maaz

If you want to display code blocks on your WordPress site in a beautiful and unique way then you arrived at the right place because in this tutorial I will teach you how to implement Prism syntax highlighter into WordPress.

As a regular CSS-Tricks reader, I’ve always wondered how Chris display code blocks in his site in this unique way. A bit of research and I discovered that he uses PrismJS.