Alan’s Personal Techy Website

  • Setting up a Proxy Server on a VPS

    To set up a proxy on a Linux VPS, you can follow these general steps: Here are some more detailed instructions for installing Squid on Ubuntu: To set up a proxy on a Linux VPS, you can follow these general steps: Here are some more detailed instructions for installing Squid on Ubuntu: sql That’s it! […]

  • Open letter to the WordPress Plugins Review Team

    Dear WordPress Plugin Volunteers, I am writing to you today to express my sincere gratitude and admiration for your hard work and dedication in reviewing new plugins and ensuring the security of WordPress websites. I have personal experience both side of the above, security review of a legacy plugin and submissions of new plugins. The […]

  • WordPress Plugin Developers and Escaping late

    One major difficulty with passing WordPress org security reviews is escaping late. I wrote this article based on my experience of hardening the plugins I adopted. What does this mean? It means applying a function around any data that is output at the time of output that removes any risky output. What is risky output? […]

  • Activating Jetpack Modules

    It seems Jetpack has a mind of its own deciding what modules to activate by default, especially on a localhost install where you can’t connect to their servers. I wanted to test their default Contact Form against my Anti Spam but was having difficultly trying to understand why it was not active. After going down […]

  • Use OpenAI ChatGPT to generate Descriptions for WooCommerce

    This morning I got distracted by a tweet where someone mentioned perhaps someone’ is building an AI descriptions plugin for WooCommerce. So I thought well it’ll only take an hour and so I built one. It actually took a bit longer because I’m not a WooCommerce developer so I needed to find out where the […]

  • Becoming a WordPress developer

    I’m often ask how can someone become a WordPress developer. Without being glib I’ll outline some generic steps. WordPress is a popular and widely-used content management system that powers millions of websites and blogs around the world. As a result, there is a growing demand for skilled WordPress developers who can build and maintain WordPress […]