Much time hadn’t passed since the recent news of GoDaddy hack blew up, and it’s pretty ironic how it was regarding their SSL private keys getting stolen. Ouch!

Following the news, I saw people going berserk on social media, counting their losses. I got intrigued to explore more about the infamous domain & hosting provider and was surprised by the recurring incidents, which gave birth to the question of why people are still trusting their service?

So What Really Happened?

Just three days back, users reported getting an email that they had fallen prey to a MASSIVE GoDaddy security breach affecting over 1.2 million+ WordPress websites. Businesses and individuals didn’t take this notice less than the death news of their loved ones, as it was nothing less than a demise of their online careers.

GoDaddy released the following press release and tried to calm down the furious users with their “ongoing investigation.” Too late honey!

Source: GoDaddy

Allegedly an unauthorized third party gained access to the customer id, associated emails, their initial WordPress Admin login details, and SFTP database usernames and passwords (which is pretty much all that a hosting provider pledges to protect). 

GoDaddy data centers leakage translates to the horrifying fact that an unauthorized party may be accessing your WordPress service and altering the published content. To top it all, your login details being exposed may mean EVEN BIGGER LOSSES.

Maybe we are going a bit too hard on them? But are we? I mean, three GoDaddy breaches in two years speak volumes about their services. 

How is their giant hosting service the only one that always falls vulnerable to security breaches? Only if GoDaddy prioritized their customer’s data and understood its importance would they have dealt with these issues better.

How Are GoDaddy Users Mourning Their Losses?

While GoDaddy is trying to cool their customers down, I guess the users aren’t falling for the false hopes this time. They are still in the trauma of losing their customer’s trust and their personal information.

“Trust is like a mirror, you can fix it if it’s broken, but you can still see the crack in that ******* ****** reflection.” – Lady Gaga (take notes GoDaddy)

When I took a personal look at the first-hand sufferers, I got SHOOK-ETH by the scary claims and conspiracies made by the users (they sounded true though).

Among many users narrating their sad stories, one stood up as they warned everyone not to search for new domain names on GoDaddy. When a user searches for a domain, and if it’s cheap, their bot buys it and later resells it for more. That’s cheap GoDaddy, if true.

Many users were also seen clueless, looking for better alternatives. While I can’t say for everyone, in my experience, managed cloud hosting has always been my salvation.

These days, the top providers are also serving major discounts following the Black Friday deals, so I mean, now’s the perfect time to switch to a better option and ditch GoDaddy once and for all. Although if anyone is still using their services, then they surely don’t care about their data.

Still….Why Is GoDaddy so Popular???

One thing is beyond my human mind; a hosting service with the time and budget to promote its ads on giant events doesn’t have the adequate resources to strengthen its security?

Maybe GoDaddy is relying on a monopoly to survive. With them booking the costly time slots during Super Bowl and ensuring their presence on all advertisement channels, they have made the general public believe they are the only hosting provider. Looks like this third wave in the past 2 years is strong enough to wipe out their dirty tactics.

Another reason for their fame could be their cheap rates as a domain provider, which separates them from their competitors, attracting users with affordable rates to opt for their services.

Bye Bye GoDaddy

As the stream of affected users is already moving on to better alternatives, those who haven’t are digging their own graves. It’s time to bid farewell to the infamous domain & hosting provider and welcome a managed hosting provider that prioritizes its security more than making cringe advertisements. What’s your opinion on GoDaddy’s best alternatives; enlighten others in the comments below.

With all the brutal responses emerging from the community, I feel GoDaddy is a fine option for individuals whose primary concern is not security. However, mid to large-sized businesses should not fathom choosing them, given the recent scary incidents.

What’s your opinion on GoDaddy’s best alternatives; enlighten others in the comments below.

The post GoDaddy Hacked! It’s Time to Migrate. appeared first on WPblog.

New Admin Interface

WooCommerce users will now be able to work on the new admin interface that is sleek and extremely mobile friendly. The admin interface is the first step towards a javascript driven experience of the WooCommerce core.

The dashboard includes new and improved reports with an all new notification experience. You will now be able to filter and compare data and will also be able to view an overview of your store’s performance to see how it is performing.

The new activity panel will improve order management and consistency between mobile and desktop experience.

Action Scheduler 3.1

The Action Scheduler is the background technology that is already in the WooCommerce core. The new version that comes with WooCommerce 4.0 utilizes custom tables that provide consistent experience even on larger stores.
Improved Onboarding Experience

Users will now be able to experience the all new onboarding experience which will help them get their shops up and running much faster.

• More WooCommerce 4.0 Updates
• Fixes for WooCommerce Blocks package
• Updates related to Brexit and VAT
• Enhancement to Order Edit screen
• Optimization for payment gateways

Decided To Move To WooCommerce 4.0?

After reading about all these amazing WooCommerce 4.0 features, one can’t help but quickly shift to the new version. So if you have decided to move to WooCommerce 4.0, here are some things you need to be careful about:

• WooCommerce 4.0 is not completely backward compatible with previous WooCommerce versions.
• You would need to run a few post update database upgrade routines once you have moved to WooCommerce 4.0
• It is recommended that on a large database you run the upgrade routine with WP CLI command wp wc update instead of through the admin interface.

To know more about WooCommerce 4.0, head over to the official announcement.

The post WooCommerce 4.0 – Everything You Need to Know! appeared first on WPblog.

My client sold face masks.

Let’s just say – when I say that his business exploded that would be an understatement. Long story short not only did his online store explode but he also took the opportunity to advertise on Instagram in various Asian countries – and soon his store was basically printing money (you may have an issue with this morally – I am only the messenger).

The unfortunate thing is his (crappy) server balked under the pressure – and soon it was up to me to come in and fix some of the problems – while I had worked with the client for a while we didn’t have an active relationship – however he needed my help and quickly.

So we had to deal with a problem that for many e-commerce stores sounds more like a dream – what to do when your online store is so busy making money that your server is incapable of handling the load?

So – as I worked to fix these issues I (admittedly) – made some mistakes – and I hope the person reading this will learn from them should these issues happen to you.

So your server is balking under the load of your store and you need to vacate ship – here are 5 mistakes you need to avoid – including ones you should have known before going to the crappy server in the first place.

Let’s get started.

Mistake #1 – No Chat Support, No Can Do

The first mistake is having a crappy host to begin with. For the record I wasn’t the one that chose the host for my client – and I really shouldn’t say the host’s name… but let’s say it rhymes with Bet Registry… anyway when it comes to choosing a host – choosing the wrong host can create huge nightmares.

Many people – when deciding on a host look at things like how fast the servers are, what the CPU power is, how many concurrent visitors there are on a website.

For me – this is the last thing on my mind.
Instead I do one thing – very simply. I call the host’s support phone number and see who answers the phone. Do they have a thick overseas/outsourced accent? To me that’s the first give away that the host is cutting corners – hosts that outsource their support staff are usually cutting corners in other areas too.

The other is chat support. Simply put if a host doesn’t have chat support – and they expect you to create online tickets they don’t care about you as a client – that speaks volumes.

‘Bet’ Registry didn’t have chat support, their online tickets were major slow (think literally 3 days to get a response) – and their phone support was horrendous – with people with thick accents that you could barely understand telling my client that the issue was with the website – and not their crappy host plan.

Mistake #2 – Trusting Auto Migrators

So after upgrading the crappy server and seeing no improvement (and of course the server blaming our site – which crappy servers tend to do when they have no solution and want to save face) – I knew we had to move server.

Now this is not a dig at SiteGround – I love SiteGround as a host – but no one is perfect. SiteGround has a popular tool that allows you to migrate your WooCommerce/Wordpress site to their server. You simply install their plugin on your current site – enter in a special code and they transfer the entire site to their server.

Which is what I did – only to find out the next day – once the new nameservers on my client’s domain propagated – that the site migrator failed – it had not put over any of the plugins – the client informed me in the morning about it – and I had to do the transfer manually.

What did I learn from this?

Don’t trust any migrating site plugins – do it yourself. Download the database and files – and move them over.
One especially glaring issue is if you migrate your site to the new servers – and the preview URL which is sent doesn’t work. Since the domain’s name servers hadn’t propagated yet I wasn’t able to see what the site looked like – and the preview URL didn’t work.

Long story short – when it comes to moving a site – get in there dirty and do it yourself – because when you trust a server’s migration tools – no matter how good the server is – something may fail.

Mistake #3 – Your Data Will Become Mangled, Accept It

If you are migrating a WooCommerce store from one server to another – you are going to have mangled data – this is something you just have to accept – especially if you have a popular store.

Let me explain.

Let’s say you’re getting a new order every 5 minutes (red hot server) – and you need to move your site as the server keeps crashing. If you move your site over to a new server and then update the name servers – it will take 3-4 hours for the domain to point to the new server. In those 4 hours you’re going to get another 50-100 orders – and when the domain finally points to your new name servers those orders are going to be stuck on the old site. So now you will have mangled data – with 2 sets of the same order.

This is going to happen – just accept it.

To get around this I exported and uploaded the old site with the orders that weren’t moved over to my server and exported those orders using WP All Export and sent those to the client to organize the packing.

It kind of sucked that certain orders had the same order # but life (and business) is not always perfect – and that’s ok.

Mistake #4 – Getting a 9-5 Drone instead of a Trusty Developer

This is difficult to find but having a developer that’s really in your corner and will help me through your growth spurts is very important.

My client’s store was pulling $700 per hour – which means that every hour the site is down the client is losing about $210 (client is operating at approximately 30% margin).

Many people go with an e-commerce company that assigns them a 9-5 drone that works on their project – this is all well and good… until sh*t hits the fan. And you try to get a hold of the developer and find out that he’s out at a dirt rally track or mountain climbing and won’t be back until Monday.

When it comes to web developers you need someone in your corner – that understands your business and that you talk to directly.
This issue happened on Friday and I had to work on it on that day and Saturday morning – if the client wasn’t able to reach me and I had been a simple drone ina company he would have had to wait until Monday for urgent support.

There are a lot of other reasons you want to go with a one on one developer – but this is a big one when it comes to your eCommerce store blowing up.

Mistake #5 – Don’t Let Your Server Convince You That You’re the Problem

Whenever a host is confronted with an issue about your website and all they can respond with is “there is something wrong with your site” without actually investigating further about what is wrong – 9 times out of 10 – I’ve found – the problem is with the host or a server setting.

Since many servers of my clients try this trick these days I’ve had to resort to a simple solution – basically I take the client’s site and move it to my server – then I tell the crappy server to go look at my server and look at their server.

In the end though – if you’re with a host that just wants to shift blame around without giving any concrete answers then your best bet is to cut ties – and don’t let incompetent people convince you that you’re the problem.

The “the issue is with your site, we can’t say what it is but that is all” is a cop out – and it’s the sign of a bad host who doesn’t care about you. Period.

So that’s my story – eventually I moved my client to SiteGround’s e-commerce hosting and we’ve been happy ever since – there are about 2,000 visitors coming from paid sources. One of the biggest frustrations for myself is dealing with a horrible host who is unable and unwilling to help you. As you can see most of the mistakes above relate to hosting issues. Make sure you pick the right host – I’m not affiliated with any particular host but I have had very good experience with SiteGround.

Good luck and hopefully soon you will have a similar problem to what my client had with your own e-commerce store! And hopefully this guide will be of some assistance.

Read More: Share your business story here.

The post The Corona Virus Boom – 5 Mistakes I Learned from My Client’s Sudden WooCommerce Success appeared first on WPblog.

The purpose of this release is to test the features and report bugs to the WordPress core team. It’s highly recommended that you do not test this beta version on your running site.

There are two ways for you to check and test this beta version: use the beta testing plugin or download the zip file from WordPress official page.

Beta 3 – Highlights

The WordPress team is continuously working around the clock to make WordPress 5.4 stable, powerful, and a full-site editor with blocks.

People from around the WordPress community tested the previous beta versions and reported the bugs to the core team. Around 17 bugs have been fixed and a total of 24 tickets have been closed throughout the week.

Key Highlights:

1. Gutenberg Fixes
2. Site Health Check Dashboard

WordPress 5.4 is still in the development process and it will be released on 31st March 2020. If you want to keep up with all the news regarding this major WordPress release, subscribe to our newsletter, and we’ll make sure you don’t skip any updates!

The post WordPress 5.4 Beta 3 Is Out! appeared first on WPblog.

WordPress 5.4 Beta 2 is available for testing purposes via the WordPress Beta Tester Plugin or directly downloading the beta in a zip file.

It is highly recommended, though, that you do not test this new beta release (or any future beta releases, for that matter) on your live production site. Beta software is in the development phase, and potential bugs could cripple your site. 

But let’s focus on what’s new in WordPress 5.4 Beta 2.

WordPress 5.4 Beta 2 Highlights

27 bugs have been shown the door since beta 1, and some changes that will lead to beta 3, of course.

Changes in Block Editor

• Columns now grow equally in the Block Library. They previously had unassigned widths.
• Multi-languages added to the custom gradient picker.
• The color formatter doesn’t show up when there’s no option to choose colors.

Privacy

• The privacy request form fields are more consistent on mobile after adjustments.
• The top of All Pages in the admin area will no longer show the notice for offering help when you edit the privacy policy page.

Site Health

Failed REST API error codes now display correctly.

WordPress 5.4 Beta 2 is out for testing purposes only and does not have a barrage of features or changes. However, the final release of WordPress 5.4 is sure to bring a load of features and enhancements for the end-users.

If you want to keep up with all the news regarding this major WordPress release, subscribe to our newsletter, and we’ll make sure you don’t skip any updates!

The post WordPress 5.4 Beta 2 Now Available For Testing appeared first on WPblog.

There are two ways for you to test the beta version: download the zip file from WordPress official page, or use the beta testing plugin.

It’s highly recommended, though, that you give WordPress 5.4 beta 1 a spin on a testing site, and not your live site to avoid any inconvenience.

What’s New in WordPress 5.4?

While version 5.4 will bring many new fixes and enhancements, I’d like to highlight the most important ones like new block editor feature enhancements and improvements and developer-focused changes.

Block Editor Improvements

The developers from around the world are contributing continuously to improve and make Gutenberg, the block editor, better and a full-site editor for WordPress users.

From Gutenberg 6.6 to 7.5, all 10 previous Gutenberg plugin releases will be merged in this core update. For the first time, you will see a welcome guide model that contains four different slides with a short description.

There are two new blocks (social link and button), for adding social media icons to any page and button linking to other pages. Now you have more color options for buttons, background, and column blocks, etc. You can now easily set image sizes in the gallery block, drag and drop a featured image, and change the title attribute for the image block.

This means numerous new exciting features are waiting for core editor users, and it’s also a good opportunity for classical editor users to test these features.

The block editor team has improved site performance and achieved a 14% loading time reduction compared to WordPress 5.3. There’s a new widget on the dashboard for site health checks that notify the users about the issues that could affect the site’s performance or security.

For Developers

There is a list of developer-focused changes in version 5.4 that will help developers use WordPress in a better way.

Calendar Widget
To improve accessibility and design, WordPress 5.4 moves the navigation links outside of the <table> element and the previous and next month links have been moved to <nav> element.

Function apply_shortcode()
To distinguish the function difference between action and filter, a new apply_shortcode() is introduced as an alias for do_shortcode().

Other changes
Support has been added for Tiktok and in WordPress 5.4 you can easily embed Tiktok videos.

You can check their official release page where you will find the full documentation of enhancements, bug fixes, and more information.

The post WordPress 5.4 Beta 1: A Look at the Features & Updates appeared first on WPblog.

Last night, the WordPress community and the 2 million+ AIOSEO customers were surprised with the news that the popular plugin has been acquired by Awesome Motive, the company behind WP Beginner, OptinMonster, and WP Forms.

The entire AIOSEO team has joined forces with Awesome Motive following the acquisition except for the plugin’s founder, Michael Torbert.

Syed Balkhi, Owner of Awesome Motive, also announced that he’ll be adding more team members to the SEO plugin team to deliver an even better experience to its customers.

What Does This Acquisition Mean to AIOSEO Users?

Personally, I think the plugin is going to get even better. Syed Balkhi and his team have ample experience in buying amazing tools and growing them beyond their potential. OptinMonster, WP Forms, SeedProd, and RafflePress are examples of the tools that have seen immense success under Awesome Motive.

Many AIOSEO users, though, will undoubtedly be a little skeptical of this move. There has been no reason to switch to another plugin up till now, thanks to AIOSEO’s consistent performance. But Balkhi addressed the hesitation by ensuring users that they’ll keep getting the same level of performance as before.

“With exception of Michael, the entire All in One SEO team joined Awesome Motive. This means that you are still being supported by the same talented people.

On top of that, we have added more team members from Awesome Motive that will be working on the All in One SEO project (including myself).”

We can’t really say what the future holds for AIOSEO and its users, but what we can say is that the SEO plugin is in safe hands, and we can only expect great things from Awesome Motive for all the AIOSEO users out there.

The post All in One SEO is Now a Part of Awesome Motive! appeared first on WPblog.

There are numerous improvements and enhancements but version 7.3 is mainly focused on navigation block, block collections API, and new post layout blocks, also this time Gutenberg team has made major performance improvements on page load time.

But before checking out the features it introduced, let’s take a look at performance improvements of Gutenberg 7.3.

The performance improvement on page load time is the star achievement of this release and they’ve successfully reduced the average time of an input event by almost half compared to the previous version. Along with that, the loading time is also reduced by 29.25%.

This significant change is achieved by avoiding rendering of every block and making block DOM tree lighter by removing extra div wrapper, removing inner div wrapper, rewrite drop zone with hooks and other actions.

Now, let’s take a look at what’s new in this release.

Navigation Block

Gutenberg team has made a few improvements in the navigation block and now you can easily set the text and background colors to the navigation menu.

You can select any text or background and even create your own custom color of your choice in the navigation block.

New API – Block Collection API

New API, block collection is introduced in Gutenberg 7.3 which is mainly focused on developers. Through this new API developers can easily register all groups of blocks to their custom block collections.

registerBlockCollection( namespace, { title, icon } );  // this enables blocks to be added to both collections and categories

Also, various new APIs are introduced in this release like ImageSizeControl component, text component, warning package, etc.

Post Layout Blocks

Gutenberg added three new post layout blocks through which you can easily insert a date, author and excerpt to your post the same as Post Title and Post Content blocks.

1. Post Author block
2. Post Date block
3. Post Excerpt block

There’s a lot more to Gutenberg 7.3, and you can check it out on their official release page where you’ll find the full documentation of enhancements, new APIs, experiments, and more information on the new Gutenberg release.

Do you have any questions? Ping me at farhan@app61.cloudwayssites.com!

The post Gutenberg 7.3: Every Thing You Should Know About This Update appeared first on WPblog.

WooCommerce 3.9 was in the development stage since November right after its previous release i.e., WooCommerce 3.8. It’s a minor release with 600 commits by 18 contributors, and it’s also backward compatible with the earlier releases. However, run a compatibility test before updating it to the newer version.

Let’s check what’s new features WooCommerce offers in this release.

What’s new in WooCommerce 3.9?

WooCommerce Blocks

WooCommerce 3.9 is compatible with WooCommerce block 2.5.11, and now you can easily select and display your products on posts or pages in a new and flexible fashion.

There are many new improvements, such as brand new product blocks with filtering and pagination features introduced to help customers find products.

For more details, click here.

Integration with MaxMind Geolocation

WooCommerce was first integrated with the MaxMind Geolocation database in February 2015 with WooCommerce 2.3. In short, WooCommerce uses the MaxMind GeoLite2 database for customer’s country identification.

Now, due to the end-user license agreement (EULA), MaxMind needs all user’s approval to download the GeoLite2 database, and that’s why for using this feature in WooCommerce, you need a MaxMind license key.

WooCommerce 3.9 Requirements

Now, there’s a minimal WordPress and PHP requirement for WooCommerce 3.9, and for starting with this version, you need to use WordPress 5.0 and PHP 7.0 or later versions.

Stores and eCommerce sites using older versions than PHP 7.0 and WordPress 5.0 will not be able to update to WooCommerce 3.9.

Enhancements

There are numerous enhancements and fixes in this release like:

• WooCommerce 3.9 introduces a Payment Gateway API to support pay buttons.
• A new show button is added for the password fields.

So, WooCommerce 3.9 offers various new features, new APIs, enhancements, and many more. Still, there’s a minimal version requirement to start with WooCommerce, like the requirement of WordPress 5.0 and PHP 7.0 (or later versions).

Don’t forget to create a backup or test it on a staging site before updating to WooCommerce 3.9!

The post What’s New in WooCommerce 3.9 appeared first on WPblog.

Version 5.3.2 is mainly focused on maintenance features as 5 fixes and enhancements are addressed in this release. Also, these all fixes are going to be merged in the next major release of WordPress, i.e., version 5.4 that’s currently a work in progress.

Almost all the older versions were focused on security fixes but in this release, no security fixes are addressed which means WordPress is improving its core platform.

To download WordPress 5.3.2, go to Dashboard > Updates and click Update Now. But If automatic updates are enabled on your WordPress, then this version should already be installed on your site.

Let’s see what issues are addressed and what fixes the WordPress core implemented.

Maintenance Updates

The WordPress core team has resolved these maintenance issues, the following are high-priority bugs:

1. One of the highest priority issues found in the date/time component (an issue in handling the modified post) where they fix the get_feed_build_date() function and now it correctly handles a modified post object with an invalid date.
2. There was an upload issue (conflict in naming the files), and fix in wp_unique_filename() function to avoid the file name collision while uploading a file with upper case extension on non-case-sensitive file systems.
3. Another issue related to wp_unique_filename() which shows PHP warnings when a destination directory for an uploaded file is unreadable and now it has been fixed.
4. There was an issue in non-default admin color schemes related to active button text, background, etc., and the WordPress team fixed the colors in all color schemes for buttons with the .active class.
5. Posts, Post Types: In wp_insert_post(), when checking the post date to set future or publish status, use a proper delta comparison.

List of Files Revised

wp-admin/about.php

wp-admin/css/colors/_admin.scss

wp-includes/version.php

wp-includes/feed.php

wp-includes/functions.php

wp-includes/post.php

wp-includes/version.php

You can check out on their official release page where you will find the full documentation of enhancements, bug fixes, and more information.

Do you have any questions? Ping me at farhan@app61.cloudwayssites.com!

The post WordPress 5.3.2 – Maintenance Update appeared first on WPblog.