Recently, Jeff Starr wrote about blocking IP addresses posting random string comment spam. That post reminded me about my own older post about blocking WordPress comment spammers manually. With just a few manual steps, you create your own little blocklist for WordPress in either a .htaccess or web.config file. Here are the IP addresses I’m currently blocking. Note, this list can get long (loooonnggg).
Query all WordPress posts in MySQL not having a Yoast SEO meta description
If you just started using Yoast SEO it’s sometimes nice to know which posts don’t have a meta description yet. Knowing this, you can add the description which is good for your SEO results. Here is a query you can use to query all posts in WordPress not having a Yoast SEO meta description yet. You can run this on your MySQL prompt or in phpMyAdmin.
Convert SqlCe database to SQL Server
How can I convert an SqlCe database to Microsoft SQL Server? Now the SQL Server Compact (SQL CE) database type is unsupported, it’s recommended by Microsoft to upgrade to SQL Server. But how do you convert your SqlCe database? I’ll explain in this article, read on.
How to optimize Umbraco 8 performance
Out of the box, Umbraco is a well built and pretty fast content management system. However, it is still important you perform some steps to further optimize Umbraco’s performance and loading speed. Here on Sysadmins of the North, I wrote about 11+ tips to optimize Umbraco 7 CMS earlier, and in this post I write about implementing them in Umbraco 8.
3 Ways of blocking sendmail.php on IIS webserver
Here are 3 ways of blocking access to a PHP sendmail.php script on your Windows Server IIS webserver. This comes in handy if a websites on your webserver sends out spam and you need to block access to a script on a specific website or globally in IIS. You can use a web.config file for this purpose, and here is how.
How to extend TinyMCE in Piranha CMS?
Recently I started to use Piranha CMS on a project. Piranha CMS is a .NET 6 compatible content management system and comes with TinyMCE 5 as its editor. I wanted to extend TinyMCE and load additional plugins in my project. Here is how you can do the same.
How to add a trailing slash in Umbraco 8
This article shows you how to add a trailing slash to URL’s in Umbraco 8, using IIS URL Rewrite Module, without breaking the Umbraco backend. Forcing one particular URL avoids duplicate content, which is important for SEO.
Disable Joomla Contacts component (com_contact) in MySQL / phpMyAdmin
Often the built-in Joomla contact forms component (com_contact) is abused by spammers. These contact forms allow the sender to receive a copy of the form contents. All spammers need to do is enter the email address of the target as sender/from. This way, anyone can use the Joomla contact form for spamming anyone. This short article explains how to disable and combat this.
Disable WordPress XCloner Plugin logger in MySQL / phpMyAdmin
If XCloner Logger option is enabled, it will store a log file inside the xcloner-XXXXX folder inside the backup archive. The file is named xcloner-xxxxx.log. This can generate a huge amount of temporary files and log files on your file system. This short article provides you one SQL statement to disable XCloner log directly in your WordPress MySQL database, using phpMyAdmin.
How to Fix Yoast SEO for WordPress DeleteDuplicateIndexables MySQL error
In recent days, there are a number of reports about broken Yoast SEO database operations, related to the DeleteDuplicateIndexables function. The PHP function is located in the file wordpress-seo\src\config\migrations\20200507054848_DeleteDuplicateIndexables.php, and in this post I’ll provide you with a possible fix for this statement. Read on.
Count and display number of WordPress users in your Dashboard
Often when a WordPress site is compromised, the website owner doesn’t notice anything strange at first. First a lot of users are created, and it’s only later when posts filled with spam are created or existing pages/posts edited. In the time between compromise and creation of spam posts, a website owner might notice an increased number of users. If he has the means to. And that’s what this little plugin does.
Disallow direct access to PHP files in wp-content/uploads/
It’s recommended to disallow access to and execution of PHP files in wp-content/uploads folder. Preferably without the use of a security plugin. Blocking access to PHP files in WordPress wp-content/uploads folder is easily achieved with a .htaccess file on Linux Apache, or web.config accesssPolicy in Windows Server IIS, and here is how.
Delete spam comments after three (3) days
Here is how to change Akismet interval to three days instead of 15 days for deleting spam comments using the akismet_delete_comment_interval filter.
Reduce Wordfence CPU usage, disable Wordfence “Live Traffic View”
Whenever WordPress is using a lot of CPU and you have Wordfence Security plugin enabled, it is recommended to double check some settings. Unfortunately the Wordfence “Live Traffic Options” (“Traffic logging mode”) feature can cause high CPU usage and load issues for WordPress websites. Therefore, I recommend you disable this feature to improve the performance of your WordPress website.
Automatically flush Redis cache after publishing a WordPress post
In a previous post I explained that clearing PHP opcode caches before WordPress Updates helps in streamlining the update process. WordPress updates no longer fail because of cached file locations. Did you know you can automatically flush opcode caches like Redis when you publishing a post or page in WordPress? Doing so ensures you and your visitors see the newly created content immediately.