clever-wordpress-translations

Don’t be “clever” with the translatable strings in your WordPress plugin or theme

Since I translate a lot of WordPress themes and plugins, I sometimes come across plugins who try to be clever with their translations. This tends to not work so well in reality.

August 6, 2017 · 4 min · Bjørn Johansen

Do people struggle with Yoda conditions for real?

I’ve been using, and advocating for others to use, Yoda conditions for a long time. Sometimes, I read or hear about someone who doesn’t like them, without actually describing why. From time to time I read a blog post that advocates against it: And it’s always the same reason.

August 4, 2017 · 2 min · Bjørn Johansen
wordpress-emails

A reference of all outgoing WordPress emails

As you may know, WordPress sends out email notifications from time to time. Actually, as of WordPress 4.8.1, there are 24 different occasions when WordPress will send an email message. Don’t you think it would be useful to have a reference of all outgoing WordPress emails?

August 3, 2017 · 1 min · Bjørn Johansen
matt-wceu17

The bus factor in the WordPress project

During WordCamp Europe 2017 in Paris, there was a Q&A session with Matt Mullenweg. I wanted to ask him a question, but due to high demand and restricted time, I never got to ask him. I guess Matt is a busy person, so I don’t expect him to actually answer this question himself. But maybe someone in the WordPress community has answers, insights or ideas? A person is the CEO of one of the most important WordPress-related companies....

June 18, 2017 · 3 min · Bjørn Johansen

Proper RFC 4122 UUIDs as GUIDs in WordPress

UUIDs (Universally Unique IDentifier), also known as GUIDs (Globally Unique IDentifier), is a string that identifies a piece of information in computer systems. WordPress use GUIDs to identify each individual post, but use URLs (kind of) for GUIDs, and thus does not follow the standard definition (RFC 4122) of a UUID (or GUID).

June 10, 2017 · 7 min · Bjørn Johansen
secure-email

Secure email: Encrypt and sign your emails with PGP/GnuPG

Email is fundamentally insecure. There are such a plethora of issues with it, it is crazy to think about the kind of information sent with it. It is probably even crazier when you realize we’ve had a solution for sending secure email since 1991.

May 25, 2017 · 5 min · Bjørn Johansen
wordcamp-berlin-note

Six reasons why I love WordCamps

This weekend I was at WordCamp Berlin, met a lot of great people, and watched a lot of interesting presentations. WordCamps are actually quite informal by themselves, but at the afterparties, people are really letting their shoulders down and it often seems like people are long-time personal friends. If you open up to it, it won’t take long until people will give you feedback on whatever you have released in public.

May 15, 2017 · 2 min · Bjørn Johansen
hunter-tracker

DNS privacy: Use a DNS provider that doesn’t track you

Many ISPs and other DNS providers are slow or inject ads, track you, hijack DNS queries or do other nasty stuff. To mitigate this, you should use a fast, reliable and free service that respects your DNS privacy.

March 25, 2017 · 3 min · Bjørn Johansen
self-destruction

Self-destructing cookies: Real, forced Do-Not-Track for your privacy

This is the second post in my series of posts on some of the tools I use to stay a little safer and protect my privacy online. With self-destructing cookies, you get a clean sheet even with those who don’t respect the Do-Not-Track header.

March 24, 2017 · 3 min · Bjørn Johansen
forgery

How to perform and mitigate a WordPress session donation attack

WordPress doesn’t use a nonce for the login form, which opens up for you to perform a WordPress session donation attack.

March 22, 2017 · 7 min · Bjørn Johansen