Disable WordPress comments (how-to)

When the WordPress comment option is abused by spammers, it becomes a real pain in the “@ss”. With thousands spam reactions, disabling -and removing- WordPress comments is the only way to go. Here is how to disable WordPress comments in both the WordPress Dashboard interface and in your MySQL database. As a bonus, I show you how to re-enable comments too!

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MySQL sleep() attacks

MySQL sleep() command injection attacks: how not validating your PHP user input can lead to Denial of Service (DoS) attacks against websites and back-end database servers. Simply by putting “AND sleep(3)” in the address bar… Here is how to put a MySQL server to sleep, happy SQL injection!

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High Performance MySQL

Convert MySQL MyISAM tables to InnoDB

Convert MyISAM to InnoDB for better database performance. In the earlier days of MySQL, the default storage engine for your database tables was “MyISAM”. InnoDB is the engine to use now, and MyISAM is no longer actively developed. Therefore all MySQL optimizations are for InnoDB, and it’s recommended to switch from MyISAM to this InnoDB storage engine for your MySQL database tables. Follow this tutorial on how to convert from MyISAM to InnoDB.

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WordPress wp_options table autoload micro-optimization

The autoload feature loads and caches all autoloaded options, if available, or all options. The default option is to autoload, and over time when the wp_options table grows, this degrades performance. Today I noticed a slow MySQL query coming from a WordPress database (WordPress wp_options table). This made me investigate and to optimize the WordPress wp_options table “autoload” feature.

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Optimize all MySQL tables with PHP/MySQLi multi_query

PHP script to make your MySQL database smaller, leaner and faster! The PHP MySQLi extension supports multiple queries, which are concatenated by a semicolon, with mysqli->multi_query. We use this to optimize all MySQL tables, in a single multi-query statement. Neat! Optimizing MySQL tables is important to keep tables small and fast. This boosts MySQL, PHP and website performance and we all love that, don’t we?

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Security?

Block WordPress comment spammers manually

Learn to block WordPress comment spammers manually. The less spammers hit your WordPress blog, the better your blog performs, is one of my opinions. A second is, the less unnecessary plugins you use on your WordPress blog, the better. So, a little while ago I decided to remove plugins like Stop Spammer Registration Plugin and do its work myself. Here is why & how.

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