Cory's Cogitations

My thoughts on web development and design, programming, graphic design and the world.

Posts Tagged ‘wordpress’

Securing WordPress: A passive method for preventing unauthorized requests to wp-admin and wp-login.php

January 7th, 2010

I’m not sure why WordPress doesn’t allow you to change the URL for the admin and login pages, but they don’t. It seems to me that putting define ( ‘ADMIN_PATH’, ‘/wp-admin/’ ); in wp-config would be an easy and a good fix–but for whatever reason, they don’t and we are stuck with a security hole.

I will first review the methods that currently exist as workarounds to this problem that we shouldn’t have in the first place, and then will go on to detail my method which I hope is a little easier to setup and maintain.
» Read more: Securing WordPress: A passive method for preventing unauthorized requests to wp-admin and wp-login.php

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Posted in Web Development, security

Tags: admin htaccess password protect directory prevent access securing wordpress unauthorized wordpress wordpress security wp-admin wp-login

Securing WordPress: Plugging the WordPress version leaks

July 12th, 2009

WordPress is probably the most commonly used blogging platform around. Mostly because it’s free. Being #1 brings a lot of headaches as it makes the software a target for hackers and spammers.

As with securing your home, the best you can do is make your WordPress install a little more secure in the hope that that hacker or spammer will move down the line to the next install on their list. Nothing you can ever do will make you invincible.

WordPress loves advertising the version number of the install for statistical reasons. The problem with this is that when a bad guy knows the version of your WordPress install, they will know which vulnerabilities to use to break into it. By not letting them know this version number, it makes it just a little more difficult to break into your blog.

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Posted in security

Tags: security version leaks wordpress

A couple hack fixes for the WP Twitter Updater plugin

March 16th, 2009

I needed a plugin that would simply send a tweet to twitter every time I posted a new article on one of my sites. The answer I found was Twitter Updater.

The problem with the plugin is some pretty huge bugs. For example, at the very least, it will post 2 duplicate tweets for your post. Depending on how you have it configured, it could make up to 5, 6, or even 7. Pretty annoying and unusable.

I’m not a WP junkie and have no plans of becoming one, but I did create a quick and dirty hack to fix this behavior in Twitter Updater. It does nothing to fix the real bug. » Read more: A couple hack fixes for the WP Twitter Updater plugin

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Posted in Web Development

Tags: bugs PHP Twitter Updater Plugin wordpress