Frank Corso wrote an excellent plugin called Quote Master. It adds a widget that displays random quotes, as well as others features, which I’ve used to display "Murphy’s Law" on my sidebar for some time now. With a bit of a hack, I added my "Murphy’s Law" tidbits by replacing Frank’s quotes.
With Frank’s latest plugin release, his architecture completely changed, so I’ve removed "Murphy’s Law" from my site for a while. This situation got me to thinking about my view of WordPress security and the necessity to proactively perform upgrades.
Once upon a time, the upgrading ordeal consumed much of my time. Today, thanks to Matt and team, upgrading is a breeze. My favorite quote from Matt’s article, "How to Keep WordPress Secure" reads like this:
“A stitch in time saves nine. Upgrading is a known quantity of work, and one that the WordPress community has tried its darndest to make as easy as possible with one-click upgrades. Fixing a hacked blog, on the other hand, is quite hard. Upgrading is taking your vitamins; fixing a hack is open heart surgery. (This is true of cost, as well.)”
I use "Upgrade Notification by Email" By Konrad Karpieszuk to send me a daily notification if any of my WordPress installations are out of date. I believe in proactively upgrading the WordPress core as well as plugins and themes, so much so that I will loose functionality such as Murphy’s Law, for a brief time.
If I manage your WordPress installations, you can rest assured that your WordPress will be up to date and secure. If I don’t manage your WordPress installations, contact me.
