WordPress

WordPress has a very serious security issue that could affect up to 10,000 websites

Recently, it has been detected that around 10,000 WordPress websites are at risk due to critical flaws in the HT Contact Form Widget plugin. These vulnerabilities potentially allow for the takeover of the affected sites, posing a significant threat to the security of thousands of pages and their data. A security issue that can be serious The investigation, conducted by a cybersecurity company, has revealed that these critical flaws are related to a lack of validation in handling user inputs. This situation can be exploited by attackers who […]

Recently, it has been detected that around 10,000 WordPress websites are at risk due to critical vulnerabilities in the HT Contact Form Widget plugin. These vulnerabilities potentially allow for the takeover of the affected sites, which poses a significant threat to the security of thousands of pages and their data.

A security problem that can be serious

The research, conducted by the cybersecurity company, has revealed that these critical vulnerabilities are related to a lack of validation in handling user inputs. This situation can be exploited by attackers seeking to execute malicious code on vulnerable servers. It is important to highlight that the administrators of these sites must act promptly to mitigate the risk and protect their users’ information.

The HT Contact Form Widget plugin is widely used on various WordPress sites, increasing the potential impact of this vulnerability. Security experts have urged site owners to disable the plugin until an update is released to fix these issues. Failing to do so could expose not only admin credentials but also sensitive data of visitors.

The alerts issued by cybersecurity organizations have resonated in the WordPress developer community, who are now under pressure to ensure that their tools are robust and secure. Rumors indicate that a solution is being worked on, but the community is still waiting for an official statement on the steps to follow.

As the situation evolves, it is essential for website administrators to take proactive measures to safeguard their security. Maintaining constant vigilance over plugin and theme updates, as well as conducting security audits, are practices that can help prevent future incidents.

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A new malware threatens the security of WordPress

Cybersecurity researchers have revealed a serious vulnerability in WordPress sites, related to a hidden backdoor in the ‘mu-plugins’ directory. This type of plugin, known as must-use, is automatically activated in all WordPress installations and does not appear in the usual plugin list, making it an attractive target for attackers. What to do to avoid it The malicious PHP script, discovered by the web security company Sucuri, acts as a loader that retrieves a remote payload and stores it in the WordPress database. This payload allows for code execution […]

Cybersecurity researchers have revealed a serious vulnerability in WordPress sites, related to a hidden backdoor in the ‘mu-plugins’ directory. These types of plugins, known as must-use, are automatically activated in all WordPress installations and do not appear in the usual plugin list, making them an attractive target for attackers.

What to do to avoid it

The malicious PHP script, discovered by the web security company Sucuri, acts as a loader that retrieves a remote payload and stores it in the WordPress database. This payload allows for remote PHP code execution, facilitating persistent access for attackers, who can manage files and reinstall the infection if it is removed.

The malware injects a hidden administrator user called ‘officialwp’, allowing attackers to control the site and perform malicious actions without other administrators being aware. Additionally, the malicious code has the ability to change the passwords of administrative accounts to a default value, blocking access to other administrators and ensuring total control of the site.

The threat is amplified by the ability of the malware to steal data and redirect visitors to fraudulent sites, which significantly impacts web security. According to experts, this backdoor allows attackers to perform a variety of actions, from installing more malware to defacing the site.

To mitigate these risks, site owners must periodically update WordPress, themes, and plugins, use two-factor authentication, and regularly audit all sections of the site, including theme and plugin files. Maintaining security is crucial to prevent attacks that could compromise the integrity and trust of the website.

Duda: The design tool that’s making people leave WordPress

Duda’s tools can help take your website from zero to hero!

Our team is always looking for things we think our readers will value. If we make a content partnership like the one featured in this article, then we may receive compensation for publishing.

It’s no secret that WordPress is the most commonly used content management platform in the world. Among DIY solo-preneurs, web developers and design agencies alike, it’s become the industry standard.

And for good reason:

Incredibly easy to use and doesn’t require much technical knowledge to get started
Open source and comes with a complete, well-documented API
Fast, fluid, robust, and supports almost every platform and device
Has a growing community of designers and developers who’ve contributed to its extensive library of thousands of themes and more than 55,000 plugins

But this doesn’t mean that WordPress is the right platform for your agency. This is particularly true if you’re looking to scale up on your agency’s project load, for reasons we’ll get into shortly. Additionally, with WordPress, you don’t get some of the more important business-oriented features like client management, team collaboration, and white-labeling.

In other words, even though WordPress can do a lot of things really well, it offers them at the cost of reduced efficiency.

Lack of a built-in, centralized multi-site dashboard makes project lifecycle management across domains challenging. When you have several clients with different hosting solutions, development requirements, and content systems, if it’s all on WordPress, you’ll have no choice but to manage login credentials individually. And no, WordPress Multisite doesn’t do what it sounds like it does. This isn’t a sustainable option for a growing design agency.

Duda’s design platform, on the other hand, was developed as a platform that meets the needs of agency workflows.

Duda offers tools that bring efficiency and scalability to your work environment. In this article, we’ll take a look at some of the reasons why digital agencies have started leaving WordPress for Duda and why you may consider making the switch for your team.

Easier management of client relationships

One of the standout features with Duda is that it makes it easy for design agencies to manage client relationships. Its built-in client management tools enable you to improve interactions and communication between your team and your clients. This way you can deliver better work more quickly, retain clients over time, continue acquiring new business, and drive sales growth.

Duda’s “Site Comments” feature helps you keep your customers engaged in the site design process. By allowing them to post comments directly on design projects that are in progress, you’ll be able to reduce the number of changes required afterward.

The user roles and permissions tool lets you limit client access to the more advanced features. This way you can prevent them from accidentally messing with design elements or widget scripts. On the flip side, if your clients are power users, you’ll be able to give them administrative access. With that, they can make changes and manage accounts after transferring the site over to them.

Brian Lewis, the CEO of Colorado-based design agency WebAct, says, “Duda enables us to assign highly customized roles and permissions to our clients, so we don’t have to give them blanket access to a website. Some of our customers are tech-savvy enough to make minor site changes on their own, and others would just break everything. The ability to easily turn on and off access for individual clients has saved us from hours of site maintenance work and a lot of headaches.”

Your customers will be able to access their sites and make changes through a centralized dashboard. For instance, they can easily change site themes, connect domains, or edit SEO settings.

What’s more is that Duda makes it easy for design agencies to gather site content – including text and images – from clients. You can do this in one of two ways:

Set up automated emails that’ll ask them to send you the required site assets through an easy submission form.
Scrape content from their existing web database and insert it into your own libraries.

It also makes it easier for you to keep clients informed about site development and performance. You’ll be able to send progress tracking and regular analytics reports – personalized with your company’s logo and branding – to your clients using automated email sequences.

Allows you to offer subscription services

Duda is a complete website building platform. It offers design agencies fast and reliable hosting, e-commerce integration capabilities, a blogging platform, SSL certificates, one-click PWAs (progressive web apps), and several other useful features.

At web design agencies, customer churn is a major issue. Projects usually have finite scopes of work, and once they’re done, so is your client. Duda’s supported services make it simple to turn one-off projects into a recurring engagement.

You can even diversify the services you offer by creating subscription packages for existing clients. For example, if a client’s e-commerce store has a lot of seasonal product turnover, you can offer to maintain the product listing content. You can also keep it updated in exchange for a monthly service fee.

You might also do well to create tiered, modular monthly subscription packages for small to medium-sized businesses. Consider the following structure model as a starting point:

Subscription plan #1:

Secure web hosting
Round the clock security monitoring
Weekly analytics reports

Subscription plan #2:

Secure web hosting
SSL certificate
Round the clock security monitoring
Google PageSpeed optimization and global CDN

With Duda, you also get access to several useful integrations for building your sites. These include commonly used apps and tools such as PayPal, Google Sheets, YouTube, MailChimp, and a number of social media platforms.

Built-in functionality for team collaboration

Duda enables website developers and designers to assign and perform tasks in an organized way. This helps avoid common mix-ups. For example, it avoids having multiple people on the same design team creating the same section of a customer’s site – which is more common than you think!

It also lets you easily collaborate with your team members on different tasks. In addition to this, you’ll be able to import and reuse template designs in future website projects. You can also share your agency’s libraries of themes, custom page “section” designs and custom widgets, so that your team can use them across multiple projects.

Duda’s user roles and permissions functionality can also help you manage access to site settings. When working in teams, different members are assigned different responsibilities, for instance:

Team members #1 and #2: Designing the site’s layout for a wireframe, mockup, or prototype.
Team member #3: Optimizing the website’s metadata for SEO.
Team member #3, #4, and #5: Managing e-commerce and call-to-action microcopy.

By controlling access to specific sections of a site, your team will be able to focus on their designated tasks without overlap or distractions.

Nat Rosasco, Chief Creative Director and Owner of the Olive Street Design agency in Illinois, reports, “We could build a website with Duda in a third of the time it took us with WordPress, and we really liked that all of the features were geared towards a team organization. It really helped us manage our workflow much more efficiently, which meant we could scale up.”

You can also use Duda’s website comments tool to improve communication between your team members and ensure that correct and up-to-date information is conveyed to clients. Team members will be able to drop comments directly on a section of a site as it’s being built. Every individual element can be assigned a separate comment to help design teams easily convey their ideas and get responses from the same place. This way everyone involved can easily follow site development and distribute tasks when needed.

A white-label-friendly experience

Duda allows you to white-label your dashboard experience, which gives you the ability to put your company’s logo and branding on your client’s site back-end. This allows you to make the platform appear as if you own it, which reinforces the client’s trust in the experience of working with your brand.

Duda also lets you personalize pages on your back-end, including client login, dashboard, site builder, editor, and preview pages. In addition to this, your emails will carry your agency’s logo. For instance, login credentials emails, password confirmation emails, or monthly analytics reports will have your customized branding.

You’ll also be able to edit and set default branding elements like images, logos, colors, typefaces, image styles, graphic elements, background images, icons, and buttons. You can go even further and make changes to stylesheets. It also allows you to design engaging, custom-branded site previews (or functional prototypes).

Makes website personalization easy

Duda comes with some powerful site personalization tools that allow you to create and deliver different digital experiences to individual audience members.

Agency designers and marketers can do this by configuring triggers and actions which generate a predetermined response based on the site visitor’s interaction. For example, if a user visits your client’s speedboat dealership website you can display a pop-up that invites them to a boat show where the client has a booth, and offer a special discount.

From a marketing perspective, this has the potential for major impact, as it maximizes the sense of belonging that the visitor feels on your client’s web pages. From an agency business perspective, the personalization engine makes for some major opportunities for providing value beyond design.

As Shane Hodge, CEO of Australian agency The Camel, puts it, “Duda provides us with the ideal set of web design tools that allows our designers to do truly excellent work. The ability to customize a site per device and add website personalization into the mix has been hands down the greatest thing that ever happened to our business…. People have been told for years they need a website, and that’s true. But for way too many businesses, these sites end up as nothing more than digital brochures.”

“A business owner would hire a developer and spend thousands on it, and in the end they wouldn’t see any tangible ROI — Duda’s website personalization tools changed that,” Hodge continues.

Duda has a library of triggers and actions including the end user’s device name, their geographic location, and the number of visits. Although only one type of action can be triggered on a page at any time, you can choose to create several possible actions. The action that appears higher up on the list will be triggered first.

Takes care of the technical details

With Duda, you don’t have to worry about the technical stuff like finding the right hosting solution for clients or installing SSL certificates. Its built-in features take care of these “under the hood” aspects of web design work allow you to focus on your core business activities.

All Duda websites are hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS), one of the most reliable cloud hosting providers out there. Duda gives agencies access to unlimited storage and bandwidth, free hosting, SSL certificates, and mobile responsiveness. As a result, you’ll be able to deliver the best website design and development services around. All you need to do is point the domain’s DNS settings to Duda’s servers, and you’re good to go.

Additionally, Duda’s platform guarantees that your websites are GDPR compliant. It gives you ready-to-use resources like privacy policy templates, cookie notifications, and user consent forms.

All websites created on Duda’s platform are optimized for Google PageSpeed. It delivers your site content (like copy, images, and videos) to visitors through a global content delivery network (CDN), minifies CSS code, and supports lazy loading of below-the-fold elements.

Conclusion

With Duda, agencies are able to deliver fully white-labellable experiences and personalizations to clients that you simply can’t get with WordPress. More specifically, you’re able to:

Simplify client management.
Improve internal design team collaboration.
Look professional by delivering a fully white-labellable experience.
Diversify your offering by offering subscription packages.
Personalize client website using combinations of triggers and actions.
Stop worrying about the technical side of things and, instead, focus on growing your business!

What are some of the features you look for in an agency-focused site building platform? Let us know by commenting below!

6 best sites to create your website

From top to bottom, these website builders offer the tools you need for your site.

Whether for work or school, somewhere down the line you will probably have to dabble in building a website.

Choosing the right website builder can be a difficult process. There are so many factors to consider. Things like price, functionality, and compatibility can make your site sink or swim. If you don’t know what you’re doing, your site can stumble right out of the gate.

Thankfully, we’ve done the legwork for you. Below you’ll find the best web builders out there, along with what makes them good and what limitations they have.

Best sites to build your website

If you’ve ever designed a website, you’ve probably heard of (if not used) WordPress.

Definitely the most powerful web building tool you can find, WordPress actually comes in two variants depending on what you need. WordPress.com is typically more useful for blogs, while WordPress.org is much broader.

You can pretty much do anything with WordPress.org, making it the most customizable and adaptable web builder. However, this customizability comes at a price, with so many features, it can be a bit overwhelming to use and is not recommended for people who aren’t willing to learn a lot about the WordPress system.

Both variants have free plans that limit the features you have available to you. With a variety of different plans to choose from, you will open more features with each upgrade. We recommend trying the free version first before deciding to move up to a bigger plan. You can also design your website through WordPress, but host it through a service like GoDaddy.

WordPress is so popular that even business like Disney and PlayStation and celebrities like Beyoncé and Snoop Dogg use it. Millions of WordPress users can’t all be wrong, so it might be the right solution for you.

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Shopify

As the name implies, this site is all about e-commerce.

As such, the main people who benefit from building a website through Shopify, are people looking to sell a product. They have a huge range of options when it comes to setting up an e-commerce shop, and even have third party e-commerce integration.

They make everything easy for sellers, as they have built-in features to track your inventory and stats. If you’re looking to build a site to sell a product, then Shopify will make this easier than any other web builder you could possibly find.

This ease of use comes at a bit of a steep price, ranging from $30 a month to $300 depending on the plan you choose. However, Shopify offers a free trial so you can see if this is the service for you.

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Weebly

Most web builders require some basic knowledge of code to format pages and create your own features. WordPress doesn’t require coding knowledge, but it certainly comes in handy to reach the next level. Weebly provides a good looking website with no coding knowledge necessary.

Although this does mean you won’t be able to create any unique features or use a third party to add anything that Weebly might lack. However, Weebly provides enough features in its page builder that you may not need to get additional help.

Weebly plans range from free to $25 a month. These plans vary based on the features you want.

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Yahoo! SiteBuilder

Although it might not be your first choice for your search engine, Yahoo! could be your first choice for a website builder.

The website offers different packages depending on what you’re looking to create. For a basic website for beginners, there is a free version. If you are looking to create something more, there is a professional version for less than $10 per month.

The service has a library of themes for you to pick and choose. You can even host your website through WordPress is you prefer.

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Squarespace

One of the most secure and easy-to-use web builders, Squarespace is the perfect choice for anyone with limited web design skills. There is no complicated hosting process, and no programming knowledge is necessary to get to work on the site.

There are dozens of pre-built templates with each being very easy to edit. Also, since it has its own e-commerce program, you’re able to create a store on your site without any third-party programs.

No other web builder can beat Squarespace in terms of how easy it is to use compared to how professional your end result website will look.

The price ranges anywhere from $12 per month to $40, depending on the plan.

The only downside to Squarespace is that it lacks third-party integration. Also, the built-in e-commerce program is restricted to a few sources like PayPal. However, the service provided may prove to be more than enough for you and your site.

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Wix

Wix is a great and easy choice if you’re looking for a minimal effort web builder. It has templates for any kind of page you could possibly want, with a drag-and-drop feature that makes it feel just like a word processor.

It removes all the hassle of building a website while keeping a professional look. You even gain access to a large variety of apps and extensions you can add to your site from Wix partnerships.

The only major downside it’s a pretty complicated process to get your own domain from their site. Your site will also not be easily exported to a new hosting site from Wix since it lacks a lot of copyable code.

Wix offers a free plan, but you will be restricted to using their domain name if you stick with it. To gain your own domain it is about $10 per month, and to have an e-commerce plan it costs $27.

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Designing a winner

Each website builder has its own unique benefits, so think carefully before deciding which you feel is the best for you.

You need something cheaper to dip your toe into the web design community, or something professional for your business. At the end of the day, you have options.

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How to add Google Analytics to your WordPress site

Google Analytics can reveal a lot about your audience. Here’s how to add it to your Wordpress site.

Google Analytics may not be the only web analytics software, but it is one of the most popular. It’s also a great way to see exactly how your website is doing. Once installed, you can instantly see which posts are the most popular, how long people spend on your site, and where they came from. Then you can duplicate your efforts to draw in more readers.

But you can’t dig deep into your site until you install Google Analytics. Depending on your website, there are multiple ways to install the code.

How to add Google Analytics to your WordPress site

Installing Google Analytics

1. First, you need to create a property in Google Analytics. You will have to have a separate property for each website you own. This makes sense because you want to track the specific info from each site separately. You wouldn’t want all of that information jumbled together.

2. When that’s finished, head into your admin account. Choose the account you need from the account column. Then, choose the property you want from the property column.

3. Under the Property section, you will see an area termed Tracking Info and then Tracking Code. Click on it to reveal your tracking code. Your tracking ID will appear at the top of the page. Copy it.

4. Your tracking ID will look similar to this but you will replace the general GA_TRACKING_ID with your own code. This code will go after the <head> tag on each and every page of your website.

5. If you use WordPress, paste the Google Analytics Tracking Code before the closing </head> tag in your header.php file. Use your child theme so you don’t need to reinstall the code after every WordPress update.

Or, you can visit the WordPress Customization tab from your dashboard. Visit Appearance, then Customize. This section offers a live preview of your changes. It also typically provides space to install header and footer codes.

You will look for Header/Footer Scripts under Theme Settings. Just remember your Google Analytics code belongs in the header.

6. To see if your code is working correctly, jump over to the Real-Time reports in your Google Analytics dashboard.

Your website analytics

If it isn’t working, try again. You may have neglected to copy over the whole code or you may have installed the code in the wrong place. Ensure the tracking ID code is copied correctly, then double check the placement.

Once your code is installed, you will have more insight into your website than you ever thought possible. If you use a Mac, take a look at these blogging widgets for hassle-free ways to keep your website populated.