Securing the platform that runs the site: hardening WordPress, plugin attack surface, malware cleanup, and lessons from defending and remediating real WordPress installations.
AI AdoptionWhen a commercial tool annoys me, I build my own with Claude. My booking system took 44 versions and one bug silently threw away bookings, and the habits I learned from it apply to any writer or small business owner.
CybersecurityCloudflare's free plan runs a writer's website well for nothing. I started free, it worked, and then I bought pieces as I needed them. The free tier covers more than most writers need, and the pricing models to fear are…
AEOGoogle's Core Web Vitals are three numbers that measure how your website feels: the wait at the door, the ignored question, and the moving shelf. What each one means, how to diagnose them with Search Console, PageSpeed Insights, and GTmetrix,…
CybersecurityEvery article in this series was secretly about security. The capstone: why the green checkmark is a component and not a defense, what a working posture looks like in practice, and the five questions no product can answer.
CybersecurityThe attack that reached my site did not come at it. It came through it, riding a trusted update channel. Why supply chain attacks scale, why they extend to hardware, and how to manage a chain you cannot eliminate.
IT InfrastructureBefore installing any software, ask how many people keep it alive. The number is public, takes five minutes to find, and predicts more grief than any feature list. The story of an excellent theme with a bus factor of one.
HostingPlugins are generally in better shape than themes, but they grow sideways: the tool you installed for one job quietly becomes a platform doing fifteen. An afternoon audit puts the stack back on a diet.
SEOI have left two page builders: one because it was hurting my site, one while genuinely admiring it. Both exits cost the same, because the price was never about quality. It was about depth of embedding.
HostingI opened up the theme running my website and found dead code, three settings systems, and an animation for an element that never existed. Here is why commercial themes end up this way and what you can actually do about…
CybersecurityA plugin folder appeared on my site that I never installed. It was caught before it did damage, and the investigation changed how I run every part of my WordPress stack.
CybersecurityThe email said malware had been quarantined on my site and I had three days to fix it. Deleting the file took a minute. The forensics took two days, and the trail ended somewhere worse than a break-in: the plugin…
Authority Through AuthorshipElise announced 50,000 views on her book trailer, and three months later texted her Amazon dashboard: twelve copies sold. Those views were digital applause, lovely to hear, impossible to bank. Authors fall for vanity metrics every time. The number that…
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