When submitting a support request for a WordPress plugin, one of the things you will commonly be asked for is a database dump of your site. A database dump allows the support technician to load your data into a test site to receive insight about the state of your particular site. Having a database dump provides an enormous amount of information to make support responses not only faster but more accurate. WordPress and PHP provide several processes for exporting a database dump. We're going to … [Read more...]
Category: Hosting
Pointing a Domain to a Server Using Your Hosts File
The Purpose of a Hosts File In order for a domain to point to a server it must be mapped to a DNS resolver. For instance if you type onpointplugins.com in your browser, you are sent to IP address "108.62.123.43" and the website loads. Almost always, the DNS resolution happens through an exchange of DNS servers both within your computer, router and servers located in the cloud. A Hosts files allows you to override all other DNS resolvers in favor of file's contents for specified domains. … [Read more...]
Continued Security Push With HSTS
If you have been following along with much of my community involvement lately, you've probably noticed I've been very preoccupied with security lately. This new found push for rigorous security overhauls all started when I accidentally learned how to hack websites using XHR. Previously, remembering to use POST instead of GET for handling user data was enough to protect against CSRF. NOT ANY MORE! The past few weeks have taken me down many security roads including SRI , XSS, CSRF, CSP … [Read more...]
Case Study: Getting a site indexed on foreign search engines
One of my awesome clients recently gave me the challenge of getting their website indexed on some foreign search engines. This task was a great fit for me because of my long time background working with localization. While I was confident from the start that I could deliver, it was certainly not without challenges. Unique challenges: Considerations WMPL: If you have worked with localization before, you have surely heard of WPML. WPML is great. It is a fully featured translation … [Read more...]