WordPress & Minimum PHP Version

For some website owners, they will have a surprise waiting for them if they try to update their version of WordPress to the scheduled new release of V. 5.2. WordPress has announced that version 5.2 will be released and along with that, the minimum version of PHP required will 5.6.20. If you are using anything…

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Woo Hoo! Waterloo! Fun Times And A Big Trophy

We (that means 4/5 of The Ian Scott Group) traveled to Waterloo, ON on Friday evening to cheer on David at the annual Canadian Karate Kung Fu Association tournament and conference. It would be David’s first appearance at a tournament in a few years and we were all happy to be there for him. Friday…

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Social Warfare WordPress Vulnerability

Earlier today, it was announced that the popular social media sharing plugin, “Social Warfare” has been found to have a serious security vulnerability. This is a “Zero-Day” vulnerability in that the proof of concept has been released before the plugin code writers have released a secured version. The full proof of concept may be found…

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Orangeville Web Design & Site Speed Considerations

rural orangeville area snow covered road

After writing our article on site speed a couple of weeks ago, we have had some interesting questions from Orangeville and area businesses about site speed issues relevant to the town. Orangeville has some unique issues due to its location – a town of about 30,000 people surrounded by a wide swath of rural area…

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Do Canadian Websites Need an “Accept Cookies” Popup?

cookie monster letter C is for cookie

I am going to say it: “One of the stupidest things some Canadian so-called web designers do is place an ‘accept cookies notice’ on websites.” Seriously. It is stupid, it is annoying, and it is not legally required in Canada. It is especially stupid and annoying on mobile devices, where the dumb notice covers up…

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New Website Ransomware Seen

There has been an interesting report about a website ransomware malware installed on a website, that resulted in the total loss of the website. Details are a bit sketchy, but apparently a hosting company that runs Linux Ubuntu servers had a customer that reported their website files were totally encrypted and a demand for 20…

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Bad Bots! Why Your Website Should Have Protection Against Them

Bad Bots! But Not The Russian Sort If you’ve paid attention to the media and politics recently, you’ve probably heard about allegations of bots – Russian bots specifically, that apparently exist to influence US (and now the upcoming Canadian) elections. We here have no opinion on these types of bots, that may affect Twitter and…

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How Often Do You Back Up Your Data? Try This If You Don’t

How often do you back up your data from your PC or laptop? If you’re like most people, probably hardly ever. You probably mean to do it, but every day, something else comes up and that full backup just does not happen. Hey – it’s happened long ago, to us as well. Long hours working…

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WooCommerce Payment Link When Not Logged In

All E-commerce platforms can be complicated and often, with security and other updates, functionality can unexpectedly change. Of course, store owners just want things to work as expected and often are not aware of reasons why something might change. Some of the reasons that functionality of an e-commerce platform can change include: Security issues that…

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