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WordPress Password Reset Hacks

Today while going through my normal process I was about to reset one of my customer’s WordPress password and send over some billing instructions. As a WordPress administrator, updating someone else’s password via  triggers an automatic email to that particular user.…

Importing WordPress SFTP Credentials into Rclone

Rclone is an amazing command line app for syncing files virtually anywhere. With recent added support for SFTP it's become a core part of my daily backup script. You can connect any number of remote storage systems. If you're only working…

Identifying Bottleneck Plugins

This past month I had a number of customers report that their website was running slow. This seemed to affect every web request, with some requests taking well over 4 seconds. I suspected a bad plugin was causing the bottleneck.…

WP Engine’s SSH is Happening

Over the last few months I’ve had privilege to be part of WP Engine’s SSH alpha SSH access is a big deal for WP Engine and for the entire managed WordPress hosting ecosystem. It’s currently under limited beta, however I…

Cleanup with WP-CLI and Regex

Recently one of my customer’s WordPress sites was filled with random hidden span tags containing a single word: “Save.” The source is a mystery, however I suspect it came from bad code rather then something malicious. It was showing up…

Disabling Emails on WordPress Staging Sites

Using a staging site is great for troubleshooting, however you don’t typically want your staging site sending out email notifications. Luckily there is an easy solution to this problem by using both the Log Emails and Disable Emails plugins. With these two plugins…

Keeping Paid Themes & Plugins Updated

WordPress makes is fairly straightforward to update your themes and plugins. Tools like ManageWP make it easy to update everything for all of your WordPress sites. That said, keeping your paid themes & plugins updated can take extra effort. Here…

WooCommerce Keyless Activation System for Extensions

The main WooCommerce plugin is free but WooCommerce is more than just a single plugin it’s an entire ecosystem unto itself. Recently WooCommerce changed how they handle their paid extensions. They switched from license keys to a license activation system…

WP Engine and Email Notifications

Having your website send emails successfully is more difficult than it should be. Earlier this year WP Engine moved all of my dedicated servers over to Google’s infrastructure. Google’s has some pretty strict rules with emails which help keep their…