Category: Plugin Reviews

Recently, I’ve had to deal with a client’s site being attacked by hackers. While the WordPress plugins & themes I write are secure, there are some parts of WordPress that need to be protected. After doing some research, I’ve found a few different plugins. The two main ones I found are Sucuri and Wordfence, but both of those plugins are limited unless you pay for the premium version. The one I recommend is actually neither of those. All-in-One WP Security & Firewall is not limited in favor of a premium version, as well as not being a drag on performance. Features include: failed login log, automatic failed login IP blocking and much more. Rather than me gushing about the plugin, I’ll let their video explain the the features.

 

One widely used plugins, even in professional circles, is Advanced Custom Fields (ACF). While I understand the use of it, I don’t necessarily think it’s a good idea as a long term solution.

In most cases, if you’re storing extra data with a post, that data is directly used by a plugin or the theme. If a theme or plugin is written properly, it should have an interface to save that data. If there isn’t, to me, that’s a sign of a lazy developer.

Although ACF is highly configurable, it’s a lot of code & server-load for what can be simply replaced with a single function , get_post_meta(). Too much processing on a poorly hosted server will interrupt the loading of the website and show the server message 503 SERVICE UNAVAILABLE.

All I’m saying is, if you’re an experienced WordPress developer, you shouldn’t depend on a plugin like ACF.

Of the plugins I am willing to install, one of them is the Force Regenerate Thumbnails.

If a theme is written properly, it will have image sizing code, that will scale an image for every size when an image is uploaded. When these sizes are added to or removed, it’s handy to have all the images get their various versions regenerated. That’s where this plugin comes in.

To be honest, this is more of a developer’s tool than a content creator’s tool. One main warning: If you have a site with a large amount of images in it’s Media Library, running this plugin will go thru every single one. So if you have a thousand images, it could take a long time to finish going thru them all. Doing so could also put a load on the server that hosts the site and thus slow down the site. If you’re going to run this on a large Media Library, do it when site traffic is slow.