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Add a delay to your WordPress login form

This plugin adds a three second delay when logging into WordPress, slowing down brute-force attacks on your website. But don't blatantly copy from other sites without proper testing, as this post points out.

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Web applications

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Optimize PHP OPcache configuration

Optimize PHP OPcache configuration and make it perform even better. After realpath_cache_size, the OPcache cache mechanism is the next important step to fine-tune. With just a few tweaks you tune OPcache to perform much better

blue elephant plush toy on black laptop computer -- Photo by Ben Griffiths

Web applications

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PHP 5.6 default_charset change may break HTML output

A change in PHP's default_charset php.ini setting causes HTML output to break if you try to set a different charset in your HTML head. It also might break functions like htmlentities() and htmlspecialchars().

Codebase

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Convert PHP ext/mysql to MySQLi

Learn how to convert a PHP class using the old ext/mysql functions to MySQLi, one function at a time, with a list of MySQLi equivalents.

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Web applications

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How to set a good PHP realpath_cache_size

Learn how to optimize PHP performance by checking and setting PHP realpath_cache_size. The realpath_cache_size size represents the total number of bytes in the path strings stored, plus the size of the data associated with the cache entry

blue elephant plush toy on black laptop computer -- Photo by Ben Griffiths

Useful

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Check website availability with PHP and cURL

A useful PHP script to check if your website is up and online available. It uses PHP and cURL. This script comes in handy because website uptime and availability is important, and you want your website to be always online available.

Web applications

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Exploit PHP's mail() to get remote code execution

Exploit PHP's mail() function for remote code execution. Apparently, if you are able to control the 5th parameter of the mail() function ($options), you have the opportunity to execute arbitrary commands.

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Security

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Increase in SQL injection attacks

Summer vacation's over? In August 2014 I noticed a huge increase in SQL injection attacks on various websites. These are their characteristics.

Person in a plague doctor mask holding a syringe, illustrating SQL injection

Security

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MySQL sleep() attacks

How not validating PHP user input leads to MySQL sleep() injection attacks that hang your database server, and how to fix and clean it up.

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Windows Server

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Magento maintenance script for IIS

A Magento maintenance script for Windows Server and IIS: clear Magento's MySQL log tables and var cache directories on a schedule for a faster webshop.

WordPress XMLRPC API

WordPress

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Huge increase in WordPress xmlrpc.php POST requests

How to identify, block, mitigate and leverage xmlrpc.php scans, brute-force, and user enumeration attacks on WordPress sites... Secure WordPress xmlprc.php interface and reduce service disruption.

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Web applications

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8 Tips to improve Joomla performance

Learn how to speed-up Joomla performance on Windows Server IIS using these 8 simple, but important, tips. Add caching, gzip compression, set your sessions & optimize MySQL database functions.