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Category Archives: wp donottrack
Warning WordPress plugin users about their old PHP
After my initial disbelief about the amount of WordPress installations still on the slow and vulnerable PHP 5.2.17 (or older), I decided to warn users of my plugin with an non-dismissable warning on the plugin’s settings-page (and only there, so it’s not a default WordPress admin notice) cluttering the entire backend):
This is going in AO 2.0.2 (out later today) and will in the future also be added to WP YouTube Lyte and WP DoNotTrack (both of which have a smaller reach).
If you’re a plugin or theme developer and want to warn your users as well (without blocking them), here’s the code I used (do change the translation-domain from “autoptimize” into one that is applicable to your plugin):
<?php if (version_compare(PHP_VERSION, '5.3.0') < 0) { ?>
<div class="notice-error notice">
<?php _e('<strong>You are using a very old version of PHP</strong> (5.2.x or older) which has <a href="http://blog.futtta.be/2016/03/15/why-would-you-still-be-on-php-5-2/" target="_blank"> serious security and performance issues</a>. Please ask your hoster to provide you with an upgrade path to 5.6 or 7.0','autoptimize'); ?>
</div>
<?php } ?>
Crunching 2015’s numbers
So this was 2015 in numbers:
- blog;
- I wrote 107 blogposts, 41 ourTubes and only 8 in Dutch
- 211 comments were added
- Getting 98258 pageviews (up from 2014 (90K) but still significantly below 2013 (122K))
- Most popular posts:
- 5 tips to tackle problems with iframes might be an oldie, but it remains the most popular post with 20280 pageviews
- Requests for pages concerning Autoptimize combined totaled 17505 pageviews
- Quick tip: disabling WordPress author pages was the most popular 2015 article with 1767 pageviews
My WordPress plugins:
- wp-youtube-lyte: pushed out 3 minor and 1 major release, getting 40264 downloads pushing the total to 250545 and having +10000 active installs
- wp-donottrack: no releases for this one (except for some small readme.txt changes),
downloaded 2355 times bringing the total to 14364 and +2000 active installs. - autoptimize: 2 minor and 1 major release, downloaded 265299 times this year, bringing the total to 506930 and +100000 active installs
That was 2015. For 2016 my main goal is to work on Optimizing Matters.
Firefox: how to enable the built-in tracking protection
Just read an article on BBC News that starts of with the AdBlock Plus team winning another case in a German court (yeay) and ended with a report on how Firefox also has built-in tracking protection which -for now- is off by default and is somewhat hidden. To enable it, just open about:config and set privacy.trackingprotection.enabled to true. I disabled Ghostery for now, let’s see how how things go from here.
Bye 2014, it was nice knowing ya!
With 2014 finally behind us, we can start dwelling on that past as of yesterday. These are some of my 2014 facts & figures:
About my blog:
- I wrote 78 blogposts, 41 of which were OurTube’s and 16 were in Dutch.
- 341 comments got added (a significant amount of them actually being support-questions for Autoptimize)
- Got 90352 pageviews (significantly less then in 2013, got bitch-slapped by a panda)
- The busiest day was March 31th, with 480 pageviews
- Most popular post: 5 tips to tackle the problems with iFrames 15375 views
- Most popular 2014 post: Should you inline or defer blocking CSS? 2304 views
- Most popular Dutch-language post: Kate Bush live en bijna bloot 1110 views
- Most popular Dutch-language 2014 post: Nieuwe m.deredactie.be niet meer mobiel! 381 views
My WordPress plugins:
- Autoptimize
- 2 major and 7 minor releases
- 141324 downloads, bringing the total to 241650
- answered lots of questions and feedback on the support-forum, allowing me to improve both the code and the FAQ.
- 2015 will bring Autoptimize 2.0 (fixing the occasional WSOD & the cache-size problem) and Autoptimize Power-Ups (extensions for professional & power-users)
- WP YouTube Lyte:
- 2 major and 2 minor releases
- 36507 downloads, now totalling 210285
- 2015 will see continued improvements and WP YouTube Lyte Power-Ups (you guessed it, extensions for professional & power-users)
- WP DoNotTrack:
- 2 minor releases
- 4312 downloads, now 12009 total
- 2015 really should see a 1.0 release, which will finally include CSP-enforced protection.
Bye 2014, it was nice knowing ya, but I’m off enjoying 2015 now!
WP DoNotTrack whitelist & WordPress/ Jetpack stats
Although the number of pageviews of this blog already decreased from approx. 2100 pageviews per week before mid May to 1300 pv/week after (I never thought I’d ever be hit by a Panda), yesterday was an absolute disaster. Turns out that Automattic changed the domain of the Jetpack stats tracking pixel to pixel.wordpress.com, which WP DoNoTrack (for which I pushed out a small update in May) blocked as that domain was not whitelisted. The downside of white- instead of blacklisting.
Looking at 2013 disappearing fast in the rear view mirror
Another year behind us, another overview in numbers (as done previously for 2011 and 2012).
- My blog:
- 121,971 pageviews
- 129 posts (52 lifestream items, 77 real blogposts
- 410 comments (including trackbacks and my own replies)
- busiest day was April 25th with 1,395 pageviews, due to WP Caching plugin vulnerability debrief, which was also this the most popular post written this year (3677 views)
- most popular overall: 5 tips to tackle the problem with iframes with 18063 views
- My WordPress plugins:
- WP Youtube Lyte:
- 2 major (responsive at last!) and 5 minor releases
- downloads: 49124, bringing the total to 173778
- For 2014 I have some ideas for additional functionality. I would really love to be able to make YouTube vids truly mobile-friendly as well.
- Autoptimize, my adopted OSS orphan:
- 3 major and 10 minor releases
- downloads: 54680, which was over half of the total of 100,311
- Lots of ideas for 2014, the next release will be out later this month.
- WP Donottrack:
- releases: none
- downloads: 1862 of 7697
- 2014 should bring at least one maintenance release
- WP Youtube Lyte:
On a personal note, 2013 has not been the easiest of years, but our lovely daughter’s “lentefeest” (a non-religious rite of passage for 6-year olds) and our holiday in Italy were great highlights though.