Anti Phishing Infographic

Posted on | by neathawk

The folks over at Digital Guardian created a helpful anti phishing infographic about Phishing. Since I won’t be making a better one any time soon I’ve included theirs below.

Primary things to know about phishing:

  • There are LOTS of scammers and they can send millions of scam attempts very cheaply. If they succeed only 0.1% of the time out of the millions of attempts they will still be quite profitable
    • For this reason they will never stop
  • Actions they commonly want you to take
    • Log in to their fake login page thereby giving them your password
    • Send money/crypto/etc directly to their account
    • Download this file that totally doesn’t have a virus 😉
  • They almost always present some kind of urgency by telling you things like:
    • Your account will be closed if you don’t…
    • You’re under attack! Click here to protect yourself
    • You were charged $$$$ click here to correct
    • Authorities are after you if you don’t do X now

How do you protect yourself from scams?

  • Don’t click links in emails unless you are positive it’s legitimate
  • If you’re unsure, just ask a coworker or someone. There’s no shame in getting verification about your suspicions.
  • Email or call the organization directly
    • DO NOT use contact info found in the same email
    • DO NOT use contact info found in recent emails either, they could have had their email hacked. Use an old email or a business card, or go directly to their website by typing the URL in your browser or doing a Google search
  • Check the links and addresses in the email.
    • If all the links go to the real website then it’s probably ok
  • It’s ok to skip the email link and go directly to the website. It may take you an extra minute, but it’s worth it.
  • Don’t give anyone private or financial info unless you initiated the contact yourself.
  • Scammers might have your name or other info. They can get it from social media or other websites. Don’t be fooled just because they know your name. Demand better ID from them or stop engaging all together.

The anti phishing infographic:

How to Recognize and Avoid Phishing Attacks Infographic

Infographic by Digital Guardian

Parallax Section – WordPress Plugin

Posted on | by neathawk

This is a Parallax WordPress Plugin. Very simple, only 2D. It works well in Twentytwenty and will probably work ok in many other themes, but that’s not something I can guarantee.

https://github.com/knighthawk0811/vi-parallax-section

It works by using a group block and giving it either the class name of “parallax-background” or “parallax-foreground”. You can set an image to be the background of the parallax section by giving it the class name of “background”. If you set multiple background images in a single section, only the first one will take effect.

Example:

parallax wordpress plugin background image

Here is some text inside of the parallax background area. This is a group with the class name “parallax-background”. Inside is an image with class name “background”. Also there are some paragraphs. You are free to include inner groupings in order to display background colors like I have here.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Etiam ac turpis eget enim euismod sodales. Donec eget aliquet dolor, eget pretium diam. Vestibulum feugiat metus lacus, at molestie arcu venenatis eget. Mauris magna turpis, interdum in nulla et, efficitur faucibus ipsum. Maecenas convallis ex vel odio aliquam malesuada. Donec a urna in urna consequat luctus ac rhoncus sem. Vestibulum ut lacus sed mauris facilisis viverra et ut nisl. Donec et ipsum eu nulla tincidunt auctor. Sed est mauris, porta vel ultricies eget, rhoncus nec ex. Proin tempor urna a lacinia lacinia. Integer nisl risus, ornare sit amet mollis vitae, vulputate non elit.

Nunc id massa lacus. Aliquam ac tortor magna. Nullam in odio tincidunt, auctor massa sed, venenatis est. In id metus fermentum, suscipit mi nec, elementum neque. Proin nec varius diam. Orci varius natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Donec non convallis lectus. Praesent lacus mauris, vehicula quis tincidunt ut, consectetur a massa.

This is the parallax foreground area

Bootstrap column
Bootstrap column
Bootstrap column
parallax wordpress plugin background image

Another parallax background area

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Etiam ac turpis eget enim euismod sodales. Donec eget aliquet dolor, eget pretium diam. Vestibulum feugiat metus lacus, at molestie arcu venenatis eget. Mauris magna turpis, interdum in nulla et, efficitur faucibus ipsum. Maecenas convallis ex vel odio aliquam malesuada. Donec a urna in urna consequat luctus ac rhoncus sem. Vestibulum ut lacus sed mauris facilisis viverra et ut nisl. Donec et ipsum eu nulla tincidunt auctor. Sed est mauris, porta vel ultricies eget, rhoncus nec ex. Proin tempor urna a lacinia lacinia. Integer nisl risus, ornare sit amet mollis vitae, vulputate non elit.

Nunc id massa lacus. Aliquam ac tortor magna. Nullam in odio tincidunt, auctor massa sed, venenatis est. In id metus fermentum, suscipit mi nec, elementum neque. Proin nec varius diam. Orci varius natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Donec non convallis lectus. Praesent lacus mauris, vehicula quis tincidunt ut, consectetur a massa.

Looking for a plugin that lets you show different content to visitors by their user role?

Download

Find the Parallax plugin for WordPress at GitHub

Plugin: Member Content

Posted on | by neathawk
Download

What

This plugin builds the shortcodes needed that allows you to create any number of sections in a single page or post that will display different content to different users based on their role. Visitors (or logged out users) also have an option to show their own section of content. The ability to set different content by user role is something that is needed so often that I had to make my own plugin to do it.

This is the first plugin that I have made where I decided to actually publish on WordPress.org. I have been making my own custom plugins for some time now and I have finally decided to have them published for others to use. That means I have to go back over them to make sure they are free of tests and dummy code that I used for experimenting, in short, I need to rewrite a lot of them.

Why

I have chosen to build them all under the moniker “VI: Name”. The reason for this is simple, for years I have simply called my development theme “Version iteration” where the iteration was whatever number I was up to. Currently I am up to 8 and looking at 9 soon. I figured I would add the word Plugin for plugins and theme for themes just so things could be well organized.

Interested in a Parallax Section Plugin?

The first plugin up is a very simple one called: Member Content. It provides a list of shortcodes that can be used to partition off content by logged in status as well as user roles/abilities. It’s absolutely a unitasker on purpose. It’s possible I could find this function in some other plugins. However, they will all come with their own overhead in the form of whatever else they do besides simply partition off content. I didn’t want that. I want a super simple plugin that does one thing, lets me set different content by user role. Not one the does 11 things and only 2 of them are useful to me.

This brings me to the next purpose of my plugins as I get the published. they will all be unitaskers (for the foreseeable future). So they are small and fast. If you don’t need a certain function, don’t install that function, simple. Maybe some day I’ll invent bigger plans, but today is not that day.

Plugin Review: Profile Builder

Posted on | by neathawk

First off let me link to the WordPress Plugin page for Profile Builder.
You can find all the documentation there, but if you still want to know how I use it then please read on.

Now a list of the key features of this plugin:

  • *Minimum password length/strength
  • *Enable/disable user login with email and/or username
  • *Content restriction
  • User Role editor
  • Email Confirm on new user registration
  • Show/hide the admin bar by user role
  • Profile Form Field Editor
  • Shortcodes
Continue reading →

next steps: after version 8

Posted on | by neathawk

I want to build this site up a bit next. I don’t think I want to apply version 8 to this site. I like it in its plain state right now. Also I want to keep this site as basic as possible, and what’s more basic than a stock theme.

ATM I’m treating this site as my web/dev diary so maybe my next thing for the site will be to dive into one of my favorite plugins. [https://profiles.wordpress.org/knighthawk/#content-favorites] I have a few to choose from but I think I want to do the Profile Builder plugin. My reasoning is that I use that for a couple specific functions it provides and I want to have a clear list of the things i like about it.

OK, so my first plugin review will be about the “User Registration & User Profile – Profile Builder” plugin https://wordpress.org/plugins/profile-builder/

version 8: finishing

Posted on | by neathawk

At least, this version of it.

You can s view/down load my theme on github https://github.com/knighthawk0811/jpnp_wp_version
I don’t update it as often as I should. And that will hopefully change. I have some work to do before I can be comfortable with the finished version 8 and finally move on to version 9. I already have a short roadmap.

What do I need to complete for version 8:

  • Make the customizer parts more future friendly.
  • Make the parent theme more overridable by the child.

That’s it. I am having a hard time with how short that list is. The thing is that I use this theme actively and if I finish it then it will be difficult to update. I guess I can always continue to “patch” it until version 9 is stable.

I just have to accept that this version will never be as polished as I would like. It never was going to be every since I decided that the next version was going to be the big OOP push. That always left version 8 as something that was intended on being just one step along a longer path and never truly complete in its own right.

OK, in the next few days I will be gathering and organizing my efforts to make a final push on version 8. ideally I can ride the wave of motivation and get started on version 9 right away. I see some big tasks there, but also some great things in terms of personal growth in my php abilities.

Hello World

Posted on | by neathawk

This new website is something I have been wanting to do but I didn’t have the motivation before to actually do it.

Goals:

  • Put my knowledge and newly learned things into a repository that I can go back to and I can share with others.
  • Build a website and document my challenges and all the steps I take.
  • Have a single website that holds all my best feature ideas and all the most up to date code for things that I build (things that are not proprietary of course)
  • Test out new things
  • build a network of sites
  • Just do general blog things that are about code

Those are my current goals, maybe later I will make a dedicated page of goals both past and present… because I intend on completing some of them and possibly editing them over time.

Where are things now and where are they going atm? Right now I have a working site that has all the stock settings save a few security things that I always do when setting uup a new site.

What are my immediate plans?

  • Finish up my current version of my personal theme (yes I have a personal theme)
    • My current theme is at version 8
    • version 9 will be re-written to use bootstrap (i think)
    • version 9 plugins will all be OOP (only some are now)
    • version 10 will be bootstrap + angular (yeah, crazy)
  • once version 8 is finished I will apply it to this site (and each subsequent version as well, bu I think I will make an archive in the network for each version starting with 8)
  • build a network
    • I already have a couple small websites that I want to use domain mapping to convert them to be a sub site on this network

Three things are enough to get started.