Author Archives: f2x

WordPress Plugin Spam

So to make a website these days, you actually need quite a lot. First you need a domain name. Next you’re going to need a place to host the site, and of course you are going to need a content manager. Unless you made it your life’s work, you probably didn’t code your own theme, and who the heck writes their own plugins? Basically in order to make a website you have to rely on the millions of hours of coding that came before you.

There are a lot of content managers out there today, but unless you want to spend way too much time to get less than mediocre results, you are probably going to go with WordPress. WordPress is running a full third of the internet, works fairly well, is very user friendly, has thousands upon thousands of “good enough” themes, and plugins as far as the eye can see. It is the obvious choice for many wanting to run their own websites.

However, there is a downside to being the hottest platform on the web. Ethically deficient code writers are having a field day by writing plugins that take a rather baleful approach to coding. Upon opening the plugin, you might be greeted with prompts to sign up with a service. This means your website will have a substantial portion resting upon an indemnified 3rd party who will more than likely have a tiered system where the useful bits all require an expensive subscription.

Then there are the ones that use your site’s back end to promote their other software and services. Now I don’t mind a promotional sidebar on their own plugin’s settings page, but when you start placing your ads on my Dashboard or any other settings page, you have demonstrated that you are a piece of shit and your plugin needs to be deleted immediately.

The worst ones try to stop you from deactivating/deleting their plugin. I swear to god, one of them somehow managed to reinstall itself. This, quite frankly, is outright malicious code, but somehow they are still being promoted on the WordPress.org/plugins page with absolutely no way to know the good guys from the bad.

At the very least the plugins pages should have some kind key or legend to indicate the kind of plugin you are about to try out. Are they truly free? Are they committed to staying truly free? Is it software as a service? Does it require registration to work? Are their multiple service tiers that provide additional functionality? Is telemetry data being collected from your site, users, or visitors? Until the plugin is installed and activated, you really have no way of knowing what the actual terms are.

So basically, plugins are like phone apps but for WordPress, and like those apps there are a lot of privacy and security issues that makes using them hazardous to anyone trying to run a website. What is most disturbing is the lack of any meaningful effort on the part of the WordPress Foundation to rein in bad actors using their platform to spread malicious code.

Kudos

Speaking of bad actors, I had several submissions this week from a spammer. Nice try, but I review the submissions in the text editor, so your poisonous hyperlinks have no power here.

A happy thank you to TOR for his contributions, and of course we can all thank reddit for filling out this week’s jokes. As usual, the submission page is ready to receive any jokes you would like to include (and apparently spam as well), so keep’em coming!

I think it’s really important for the independent web to have a platform, and to the extent that WordPress can serve that role, I think it’s a great privilege and responsibility. — Matt Mullenweg

Pax,

-f2x

So How’d That T-Mobile Thing Work Out?

OK, so recently I mention that I signed up for the T-Mobile Home Internet. No this is not a paid promotion for them, and no one is compensating me to say this… I can’t believe I’m actually uttering that cheesy line, but yeah… This is my own personal experience and not a sponsored promotion.

OK, so I have had a bit of a beef with my local ISP’s over the years. Mainly it has to do with the price. I personally don’t think that a low end connection to the internet (like an uncapped sub 25 Megabit per second connection) should cost more than $35/month, and that should be a forced available option for every hard line ISP in the US.

Sadly, the local offerings are about $70/month, but they advertise lower prices if you are willing to bundle, which I am not. After AT&T decided against being reasonable, I told them to piss off.

This is where I started using a wireless modem and a SIM card from a cheap MVNO such as Mint Mobile or more recently, Tello. That worked out pretty good, but I had to watch my data usage. With Tello I got 25000 Megabytes for around $40. Ultimately I was spending about $60/month and had to watch YouTube videos on 240p. Not ideal.

Enter T-Mobile Home Internet. It is a wireless home internet service that costs $60/month, but as of this writing is being offered for $50/month with what seems to be a permanent $10/month discount for being an early adopter. It is not available everywhere, but it is available where I live, so I signed up.

They called me back immediately and started asking me all sorts of uncomfortably personal questions like my SSN, driver’s license number, and the last 12 people I slept with. The process got a little hung up when they encountered my credit freezes. I had to temporarily unfreeze them. I was not happy about this process, and I think it would be a major turnoff for a number of potential customers.

But in the end everything went through, and after waiting for a month or so I got the cylindrical modem in the mail and set it up. Honestly, it just works like any other internet service, so nothing to write home about there.

But that is also where this service shines. I am paying $50/month for an unremarkably reliable internet connection with no data caps. The speed varies a bit, but I never have any problem with streaming HD video or keeping my smart home running, and it has impressively low latency that would make any gamer envious. Surprisingly, my home security cameras actually work better for some reason.

So for now, my internet seems to be doing fine. If T-Mobile Home Internet comes to your neighborhood and you are tired of being gouged by your local ISP, you might want to give it a shot. Other than the overly nosy background check, I really do not have any complaints.

Kudos

OK, so I’m not really sure if it was Big D or TOR who sent in the last 4 jokes, but thanks. As usual, here’s the link to the submission page, and be sure to check out the merch in our online swag shop.

Oh wait. We don’t have a swag shop… or merch.

Let me know if you think a Flush Twice T-Shirt sounds like a good idea.

Pax,

-f2x

The Perils of Platforms

From Shining to Shit

Back when I first started FlushTwice.com, I was doing the HTML primarily by hand… and poorly at that. Up until 2008, I was using a collection of page templates designed to be easily edited for daily use, but it was a manual process and only changed when I uploaded the changes. No database, no scheduling, and no way to update the look and feel without breaking everything.

But then I found Movable Type… which was awful so I switched to WordPress, which was much easier to use and had a much better selection of themes to give my site a unique look. This opened up a lot of possibilities, but most importantly it gave Flush Twice an automated schedule. Now I could upload a bunch of jokes and comics well in advance, then sit back and let the system reveal them in time. It also allowed for users to leave comments.

But it didn’t stop there. Oh no! This baby had plugins too! Back then I only used a handful, but today over 20 plugins are required to give Flush Twice its particular look and feel. Also to track visitors, but do it in a privacy respecting way. I could have used Google analytics, but then Google would use that info to… to… Come to think of it, I don’t know why I fucking care about that, but I do.

The thing here is this: This is my site. I have complete control. No one else can mess with it. It’s mine and… What’d you say? Auto updates? What about them?

Ugh!

In the end, the control is like a rainbow. Only an illusion. WordPress and those 20+ plugins run my site, and the scary truth is, any one of them can bring my site down. All it takes is one malicious update to make the whole thing go away. Of course I could turn off the updates, but that comes with its own pitfalls as well.

And then there is the other elephant in the room. Shady plugin developers that have flooded WordPress.org with plugins as a service. You install the plugin, and they handle everything on their own server… including analytics. And of course you’ll need to pay them for their services as well, or suddenly your site doesn’t feel so good. What’s more, if their site goes down, so does yours. Trying to find a plugin that doesn’t pull this crap is becoming rather challenging.

In the end, all of civilization is built on a house of cards. Best not to startle the table.

Kudos

OK, so to start out the week, we have a few jokes from reddit, followed by a couple jokes donated by my good buddy, Big D. The submission page is still a great way to add jokes to the joke queue, but sadly it doesn’t add comics to the comic queue. I’ll have to work on that one.

“Pop, I’m nothing! I’m nothing, Pop. Can’t you understand that? There’s no spite in it any more. I’m just what I am, that’s all.” ― Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman

Pax,

-f2x