This morning, I was checking out some new prompts for ChatGPT, I thought of asking some Wp related queries, and asked questions for the following theme:

Merging different wordpress sites- Multisite, or merge with URL forward?

For brevity, I have collapsed the answers, and you will have to click on each response individually. This conversation (with inputs from WP users /tinkerers/ experts on LES) could become a handy resource for the community. Or so is the thought.

Questions for LES community:
a. Have you tried to maintain separate domains for blog and main site (or say, portfolio site and main site) ? What method(s) and CMS have you used?
Note: Atlesat one CMS shold be WordPress - to keep the topic in context.
b. Have you tried WordPress multisite? Was it a subfolder or subdomain? What pros and cons do you see for either?
c. Have you merged different domains and brought content under a single roof? Do you see any pros or cons to this approach?

First Prompt
Q. I have two websites, both use wordpress. One is the main site with the domain mysite.in. The second site is a blog, on a subdomain blog.mysite.in. I need to merge the two sites. What are my options to merge the blog with the main site? What will be impact on the URLs?

The response from ChatGPT was: (click details to read)

Second Prompt

Q. From the above options, if I want to choose the first option- Using WordPress multisite, what are the steps to follow?

Third Prompt

Q. Is the above option equivalent to creating a wordpress multisite with a subdomain option?

Fourth Prompt

Q. In the above example of moving my blog to wordpress multisite, will I have to change the DNS entries with my domain registrar?

Fifth Prompt

Q. I use cloudflare currently with two sets of DNS entries, one for blog.mydomain.in, other for mydomain.in. This is, because both sites are hosted on different servers which have different ip addresses. Once I opt for wordpress multisite, will my cloudflare entries change?

Sixth Prompt

Q. From the three options of merging my blog, let us say I want to opt for option 2: Merge the blog into the main site manually. What will be the steps I will need to follow?

Seventh Prompt

Q.From a seo and site maintenance perspective: Which option is preferred? Having a blog as a subdomain, or merge the blog into the main site?

Eighth Prompt

Q.My main site mydomain.in is on WordPress. However, I want to use a different content management system for my blog, which is on a subdomain. I want to host both mydomain.in and blog.mydomain.in on the same server. What should my setup look like?

@vyas @bikegremlin

Please keep in mind that, due to the nature of the course, there's likely gonna be the option to introduce either 5 plugins a bit more "in-depth", or about 10 plugins very superficially. The plugins should ideally not only be free(-mium), but also be easy to use and (if possible) require little config (less options means less walls the pupils can hit).
For example, WP Super Cache (while not necessarily my caching plugin of choice), has an "Easy" and "Advanced" configuration mode, where in the course probably the "Easy" mode would be addressed.

I am still waiting for more information and if this actually comes to pass, however, I already wanted to do some brainstorming so I thought, why not ask you guys

https://theseoframework.com/pricing/

Basically, you get a very good SEO plugin + a great spam-protection extension included. I love it. For (a lot ) more details: my The SEO Framework Pro review.

It's a known bug in the reporting, doesn't mean there's anything wrong with caching:

https://wordpress.org/support/topic/page-caching-not-detected/

Preferably (ideally), it would also enable visually impaired people to navigate the site:

• Navigating the site using the keyboard only (not everyone can see the mouse pointer).
• Making any changes that help auto-readers work properly.
• Increasing font size (I know there's an in-browser option to "zoom," so this would be a nice extra).

Google is full of "top X plugins" that are obviously written without any testing with a blind person. So rubbish.

PS:
It's now called "A11y," short for "Accessibility" (11 letters between the "A" and "y"). Lol.

Apparently, WordPress does not really shine when it comes to optimizing its DB table searches. This plugin supposedly helps add some keys to make the indexing of the often-used stuff faster.

Looks good for now (tested on staging and one website).

Of course, I wrote an article about WordPress database optimization, with a bit more details and a brief tutorial on how the above-noted plugin is used, in addition to LiteSpeed Cache and Advanced Database Cleaner Pro plugin for cleaning and improving the DP performance.

https://wptavern.com/webp-by-default-merged-into-core-for-wordpress-6-1

Looks like Shortpixel or similar image conversion tools (that convert to webp) may not be needed. Personally, I optimize and convert image before uploading. Others prefer the tools to do the honours.

What do you guys think? Excited? Disappointed? No opinion???

Chime in.

This could also be cool to further develop Pinegrow projects on the web, as it was software so far. With this plugin, it could become a self hosted web tool

https://forum.pinegrow.com/t/sneak-peek-at-the-upcoming-pinegrow-plugin-for-wordpress/7024

A new Pinegrow product is coming soon:

Pinegrow WordPress Plugin will let you use Pinegrow in the browser - self-hosted directly on your WordPress site - to create blocks, themes and static HTML projects.

Here is a quick sneak peek, recorded by @adamslowe:

For those not so familiar with the way how Pinegrow is used to build WordPress projects, take a look at why Pinegrow is not yet another page builder.

Hello everyone,
I created this mini-plugin over the weekend as I needed a solution for my clients after a german court recently ruled the use of Google Fonts (if not self-hosted) to be violating GDPR. It is safe to assume similar sentences would be applied to embedding Fontawesome via CDN (no legal advice).

So far it contains only the most recent version of Fontawesome fonts (v6.0.0). This, however, should be sufficient, as a client's site that was still on v5.x.x still worked so it appears to be backwards-compatible.
Moving forward, I will likely add a new plugin/folder in the Github repository when v7.x.x is released, or when an upgrade makes sense.

This has been tested with WordPress 5.9 (today). USE AT OWN RISK!

Github Link: Click

GitHub repository with all of my plugins: Click

For those too lazy, there is a pre-compiled latest.ZIP file of the plugin: Click

How to use:

1. Clone the repository and .zip the folder corresponding to the version of FontAwesome Fonts you want (e.g. v600-local stands for version 6.0.0.).

2. Upload Plugin to WordPress.

3. Activate Plugin

4. Use according to the FontAwesome syntax that applies to your version (e.g. for v 6.0.0: https://fontawesome.com/v6/docs).

If you run into any errors pm me or open an issue at Github
Enjoy!

If you are bored: Care to test if it works for you guys, too? ( @vyas @bikegremlin ):-)

https://gridpane.com/blog/automattic-invests-in-gridpane/

p.s: I am a long-ish time Gridpane user, we run multiple VPS'es and sites using their service. One of the better SaaS for Wordpress management, newbie friendly and good documentation.

Runcloud and Server Avatar could be among the next in line in this space.

GDPRess is developed by the same guy who also created the OMGF (Oh My Google Fonts) plugin that allows to embed Google Fonts in a GDPR-friendly way.

WHAT DOES THIS PLUGIN DO?
GDPRess scans your homepage for 3rd party scripts (JS) and stylesheets (CSS), and:

Allows you to download or exclude them from downloading,
Parses the stylesheets for loaded font files, downloads them, and rewrites the stylesheet to use the local copies,
Makes sure the local copies of each script/stylesheet are used in your site’s frontend.
In short, it makes sure no requests are made to external/embedded/3rd party scripts and stylesheets.

When CF is disabled (grey cloud, working only as a DNS, not proxy) - everything works fine.

Likewise, websites that don't use Cloudflare Pro (only the free plan) are not affected.

A bit more details - will keep it updated:

Cloudflare - WP Widget problem

This could be a rare problem - I suppose not many people use a similar stack, so it may have gone unnoticed.

Some usual names here - Clourways, GD, Siteground... but some new ones I came across too.

Based on my previous testing, hosting server location doesn't impact page-load speed by a lot.

However, while that holds true for most locations, Australia and southeastern Asia seem to be sort of cut-off. With notcieably longer, slower, average page-load times.

That, in addition to just stupid curiosity, was a reason for giving Cloudflare APO a try.
Unlike the free plan, APO allows Cloudflare to work as a real, proper CDN.
Taking care of cache invalidation, and caching even the dynamic WordPress WooCommerce pages, without any hiccups (mixing cart contents for different users etc.).
That works a lot more trouble-free compared to LiteSpeed.

I also gave Cloudflare Pro a try.
Some extra performance and security options.

This is my article, with step-by-step installation and configuration instructions, test results and comparison with LiteSpeed:
Cloudflare WordPress APO + Pro review

TL/DR - LiteSpeed Enterprise you get for free (included in the hosting price) with a decent shared/reseller hosting provider gets you 90% of the performance gains, so CF APO & Pro are nothing to write home about. But for websites making income, I think they can be a good choice.

I'd like to thank @Ympker for taking the time and helping out with the "visitor subjective feel" testing. Much appreciated.

Let us discuss all matters Wordpress here.

As a starting topic

For WordPress Fanboys and gals

Ranking of fastest WP themes by Kinsta

https://kinsta.com/blog/fastest-wordpress-theme/

Tagging a few random folks I know have tinkered with WP
@bikegremlin @SmallWeb @Ympker

Edit:
Of course the link that I posted from Kinsta blog was written for SEO, by a hosting company that offers managed ‘premium’ WordPress...That smell test they will never pass.

Coming to the themes, I use neve, and generate press and indeed they are one of the better ones

@dosai said:
Hi,

What basic plugins do you guys normally recommend?

I wrote an article about how to choose a high-quality WordPress plugin.
(desperately needs an update for the plugin recommendation list though)
Updated... for the most part (testing Cloudflare APO and its plugin)

And here's a more up-to-date list - BikeGremlin website plugins.
That too needs a minor update.
Updated

Waiting to hear from @vyas and @Ympker

I have been reading a lot (rather, quite a lot) for some our new podcast shows- and this afternoon caught up with some WP news. I thought 2 or 3 items were noteworthy - thought of posting them here.

1. WP- Godaddy flame war in the making:
   https://wptavern.com/matt-mullenweg-identifies-godaddy-as-a-parasitic-company-and-an-existential-threat-to-wordpress-future

2. WP specialist shops facing tough times?
   elementor aid off 15% staff, WP Lift on the block for sale.

3. WP.org encouraging theme developers to use locally hosted fonts.

@Ympker

https://make.wordpress.org/themes/2022/06/18/complying-with-gdpr-when-using-google-fonts

p.p.s: All my testing over the past week was done mostly on Limitless hosting Singapore shared. I think only once I got alert that the CPU resources had been exceed. Otherwise, the site and DA back end were quite snappy. Not so much for the DE location. Overall mighty impressed with service. Kudos @Lampard

So far I preferred Gridpane for creating the staging site, and then pushing it to live using Gridpane (again). Also tinkered around with Server Avatar and exporting a site using All In One WP Backup (not recommended - too many links to update :-_)

Today, I used the "Push to live" feature of Softaculous for the first time.

The catch:
Live site was, say

blog.domainA.tld

Staging site was

domainb.tld

Both were on same hosting plan of course (DA, Singapore- Smallweb).

A quick and not so elegant screenshot:

Now it's been bought out by Elementor. Elementor already offers Elementor Cloud (i.e. they provide the hosting infrastructure for your WP site).

I suppose this acquisition could let them provide a better performance, with lower hardware resources used.

Link to their announcement:
https://elementor.com/blog/elementor-acquires-strattic/

I thought that you WordPress fans would have been celebrating already

This was the first release back in 2003:

https://wordpress.org/news/2003/05/wordpress-now-available/

Reseller hosting accounts include DB usage with the shown "CPU usage," so take that into account.

WordPress hosting resource requirements

@Ympker and @vyas - I tried to make this one short. Let me know if you find anything missing (stats or info), and if this aligns with your experience.

Surely, with a bit of coding and patience (read: "Black Friday sales") the costs can be significantly reduced, but I wanted to make a "pessimistic/realistic" overview, 'cause we all know that only pigeon pictures are really free:

How much does a WordPress website cost?

I've had problems with LiteSpeed updates before. It's probably the best performing caching plugin, but I wonder how they test it.

The biggest problem is that caching errors are not always easily caught - and there's no way for me to add AdSense ads on a test-staging site, it's against Google's policies.

Disabling the plugin has solved the problem.

Some screenshots and error code:
https://io.bikegremlin.com/25709/google-adsense-problem-with-ads-not-showing/

Errors should be still visible on my blog - with LiteSpeed enabled:
https://blog.bikegremlin.com/

https://wpscan.com/vulnerability/6dae6dca-7474-4008-9fe5-4c62b9f12d0a

From the post

The plugins and themes use an insecure version of the Freemius Framework, which is lacking CSRF and/or authorisation in some of its AJAX actions. As a result, any authenticated users, such as subscriber could access the debug logs. Unauthenticated attackers could also make a logged in admin toggle the debug mode via a CSRF attack.

I found some interesting articles recently but still not sure if I really want headless WP.

Headless WP by Automattic:
https://frontity.org/

Headless WP Hosting Providers:

https://www.getshifter.io/

https://www.hardypress.com/

Some interesting articles I found:

https://dev.to/aws-builders/serverless-static-wordpress-on-aws-for-0-01-a-day-1b29

https://www.codeinwp.com/blog/serverless-wordpress-shifter-vs-hardypress-top-headless-wordpress-hosting-options-compared/

It just keeps getting better and better.
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/nine-wordpress-plugins-expose-over-1-3-million-sites-to-exploits/439276/#close

"Vulnerabilities in Nine WordPress Plugins
While there were many more plugins found vulnerable, the nine most popular plugins affected well over 1.3 million websites. The vulnerabilities were rated
The following are on the list of nine vulnerable plugins:

Header Footer Code Manager 300,000+ installations
Ad Inserter – Ad Manager & AdSense Ads 200,000+ installations
Popup Builder WordPress plugin 200,000+ installations
Anti-Malware Security and Brute-Force Firewall 200,000+ installations
WP Content Copy Protection & No Right Click 100,000+ installations
Database Backup for WordPress 100,000+ installations
GiveWP – Donation Plugin and Fundraising Platform 100,000+ installations
Download Manager 100,000+ installations
Advanced Database Cleaner WordPress plugin 80,000+ installations"

Edit: Fixed title.

Woocommerce. Single site only (no multi)
No clarity on GDPR- given the location

You know which site to visit :-)

https://wplift.com/best-wordpress-backup-plugins

They have not mentioned All In One WP Backup - my former preferred backup method. Interesting: reading the comments, looks like the article was originally published in 2016! Nice content refresh by these guys.

Also: Read about the Updraft Plus vulnerability
https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2022/02/vulnerability-in-updraftplus-allowed-subscribers-to-download-sensitive-backups

It seems to be getting less and less avoidable. What's the best way to implement it - preferably for free.

I found this - "CeokieYes" plugin.

Seems to be working OK, without slowing the sites down.

But I'm interested to hear any better ideas and recommendations.

Did anyone try this one before? I guess I should just revert to using XAMPP, or install on my vmbox that is running ZorinOS with Network Bridge.

https://localwp.com/

My original post:

Spent the last two days moving my blog to a subdomain. Moved to ClassicPress, with HTMLy as backup.

WordPress 5.9 makes me want to exit the ecosystem altogether.

To which @ympker response

Sounds like a valid strategy if you don't need all the "features" (and bloat) from regular WP. Good luck

@Unixfy commented

WordPress 5.9 looks very exciting. As someone who is maintaining some WP-based solutions for non-technical users, their increased focus on such people is much appreciated.

That said... as a technical person, I'm very much reconsidering whether I want to keep using WP for many of my sites, as I'm pretty happy with a classic editor and not much more..

@angstrom query

I see that there's been renewed activity on HTMLy. It had been abandoned for a few years. I'm wondering whether I should try it again, but it looks a bit too much like a one-man show, which gives me pause

ClassicPress is a fork of an earlier version of WordPress, together with a more conservative development model, right?

WordPress 5.9 makes me want to exit the ecosystem altogether.

Could you elaborate a bit? (I've never used WordPress)

@MichaelCee update

I spent the last two days exiting the ecosystem (For my biz blog). Only three articles so it was an easy copy and paste to HTML for me but for sure need to tweak the formatting.

Edit: I also tried HTMLy, seems decent and could be a contender for my other blogs.

@mfs commented

Customers want Wordpress even if you can bet they won't ever use most of the native editing solutions; nor they care about supposed enhancements to the default experience. Rather, they'd install plugins to revert to what they're accustomed to. On top of that, they'd need a specialized hosting to hold bloat + bloat to defuse the bloat
I see forks have started to appear here and there, the Wordpress singularity anyway is still probably quite far

Finally, @flips asked

Oh? Haven't read the changelog. What did they kill? Or just added bloat?

The above summarizes the "story so far". In case I missed anything, let me know.
I will post my thoughts in the below post.

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/wordpress-core-vulnerabilities/432042/

Rather sketchy details on nature of exploit, or the severity of threat.

If I click the tre vertical dots on the right and select Block Manager, there's lots of blocks, and they're all enabled ...
And the Blocks editor actually works for widgets stuff ... Any idea what to check or do?
(This is a Multisite WP installation, latest stable WP version.)

Check the themes and plugins in the list. If present. maybe disable!

The affected plugins and their versions are:

PublishPress Capabilities
Kiwi Social Plugin
Pinterest Automatic
WordPress Automatic 

The targeted Epsilon Framework themes are:

Shapely
NewsMag
Activello
Illdy
Allegiant
Newspaper X
Pixova Lite
Brilliance
MedZone Lite
Regina Lite
Transcend
Affluent
Bonkers
Antreas
NatureMag Lite – No patch available

Among the top 10 attack machines have
Contabo and OVH ips

( I had read 1.9 Mn sites elsewhere, the bleeping computer link mentions 1.6 Mn. Updated the title)

Demo site: https://2022.wordpress.net/

More info on the 5.9 Dev cycle : https://www.boldgrid.com/support/wordpress-tutorials/wordpress-5-9/