Day: September 3, 2020 | The Blog Pros

September 3, 2020

Put the Smackdown on Spammers: 12 Top-Rated WordPress Antispam Plugins

If you have a WordPress site, there’s a good chance you welcome giving your users the option to comment on a blog, register for information, send you an email, or something else. It’s great to have folks communicate with you, but this also opens the door to (gulp!) spam.

Unfortunately, spam comes with the territory, as the WordPress CMS is so popular, it naturally attracts an increased number of troublemakers looking to hack or wreak havoc on your site.

If not dealt with, it can become like swatting mosquitoes away from your WordPress site — annoying and challenging to control.

Dev Man swatting away spam. — Dev Man’s swatting powers demonstrated while on a website without spam protection.

Luckily, there are plugins out there that can come to your rescue and defend your site against spammers, ensuring that only real users you want to connect with get through.

We’ll be looking at one dozen top-rated plugins that can help you fight against spam—keeping real engagement flowing and kicking any spammer attempts to the curb.

Continue reading, or jump ahead using these links:

12 Top-Rated Anti-Spam Plugins
3 Quick Tricks to Stopping Spam in the WordPress Dashboard
Like That, Your Spam is Stopped

Each plugin has specific features, and they’re all different. Take your pick. You might want to use just one or combine them as part of a full-proof spam protection strategy.

We’ll also look at ways to combat spam from your WordPress dashboard without a plugin.

12 Top-Rated Anti-Spam Plugins

1. Akismet

Akismet filters through the comments on your blog and marks any suspicious-looking one as spam. When they’re spotted, the comments will be sent to the spam section of the WordPress admin’s comments page.

To use Akismet, you need to get an Akismet.com API key. Keys are free for personal blogs, and there are paid subscriptions available for businesses and commercial WordPress sites. So, depending on what kind of operation you have set up, you can choose accordingly.

With over 5 million active installations, it’s the most popular combat against spam.

2. Defender

Our free Defender plugin is our answer to security and can quickly put the smackdown on spammers. With his powerful firewall, you can block hackers or bots before reaching your site with his defense.

He has IP banning, IP lockouts, 404 detections, the capability of automatically identifying bad acting IPs, and much more. Therefore, you can eliminate spam and anyone up to no good before they have a chance even to reach your website.

With a solid 5-star review and popular with over 30K active users, you’ll want to have Defender in your corner to stop spammers in their tracks.

For more information, check out our article on how to get the most out of Defender security.

3. WordPress Zero Spam

Instead of relying on visitors to prove they’re genuine users with CAPTCHA, the WordPress Zero Spam plugin makes spam bots jump through hoops so your users can enjoy a better user experience. After all, let’s face it, CAPTCHA can be complicated.

It uses AI in combination with effective spam detection techniques and a database of known malicious IPs from across the globe to detect and block spammers.

It can also integrate with popular 3rd party apps, such as Contact Form 7, BuddyPress, WPForms, and more.

Plus, it’s completely free to use.

4. NoSpamNX

NoSpamNX blocks comment spam by creating a field that only bots can see. Then, once bots fill it out, the comment is not published and can either be blocked or completely moved into the spam queue.

Instead of relying on CAPTCHA or calculations to defend you against automated bots, NoSpamNX automatically adds additional form fields to your comment form that are invisible to human users.

When a spambot blindly fills these fields out, the comment doesn’t get saved. Then, you can decide whether to block the spambots or mark them as spam.

5. Hivemind (formerly: Stop Spammers)

A useful plugin that blocks many forms of spam so you can use fewer plugins is Hivemind. This plugin helps block comment and registration spam, spam email, and spambots while also monitoring your login attempts.

It also features over 50 + configuration options for maximum personalization.

Stop Spammers works right away once installed without much to adjust. However, if you’d like more options, there is a Stop Spammers Premium option.

6. CleanTalk Spam Protection

CleanTalk is a universal antispam plugin. It blocks all bots from the forms on your site. That includes comment and registration spam, along with spam that comes through other forms on your site (e.g. bookings, shopping carts, widgets, etc.).

The one thing it won’t do is block manual spam; however, you’ll see a nice reduction in spam, considering most spam is created with bots. Plus, this plugin scans your site for preexisting spam.

It also includes a firewall, which helps prevent your site from DDoS and XML-RPC attacks.

7. Antispam Bee

Antispam Bee puts the sting on spam by blocking spam comments and trackbacks effectively, without CAPTCHA, and without distributing personal information to 3rd party services.

This free plugin will also schedule spam to be deleted and view stats on the blocked and deleted spam.

It’s one of the more popular options for combatting spam, with over 500K active users and a solid 5-star rating.

8. Titan Anti-Spam & Security

The Titan Anti-Spam & Security plugin has quite a few awesome features to prevent spam; it includes a firewall, antispam, malware scanner, site accessibility checking, and security & threats audits.

It doesn’t use CAPTCHA and includes an algorithm that ensures reliability and accuracy against spambots. It’s very well updated, and it always meets new versions of CMS.

9. Spam Destroyer

Spam Destroyer stops automated spam from bots that are sent to your default WordPress comment form. They make it as effortless as possible to use, because once you install it, it’s ready to go. It’s intended as a drop-in solution with no settings or configuration required.

For a free, simple, and easy to use plugin, Spam Destroyer is a great option.

10. Analytics Spam Blocker

The Analytics Spam Blocker works a bit differently than our previous plugins that have been mentioned, where it stops spam bots from reaching your site, so the traffic isn’t accounted for in your Google Analytics data. That means that you should only see genuine traffic reflected in your analytics.

A nice feature is you can also easily report referral spam domains with the Analytics Spam Blocker reporting tool.

11. Cerber Security

The Cerber Security, Antispam & Malware Scan defends your site against spam, hacker attacks, trojans, and malware.

It has features such as limiting the login attempts when logging in by IP address or subnet, custom login URLs, Cerber anti-spam engine, etc.

All the features that this plugin provides is worth checking out. With a 5-star rating and over 100K downloads, it’s a popular choice.

12. Anti Spam

As the name suggests, the Anti Spam plugin helps fight spam by automatically detecting comment spam. It does all of this without using annoying questions, quizzes, or CAPTCHA.

All that you need to do to get it working is to install it. This plugin features a free trial, and then there is an option to upgrade to the Pro version, which has features such as protecting your contact forms, the ability to stop fake user registration, run reports, and more.

3 Quick Tricks to Stopping Spam in the WordPress Dashboard

As you can see, to stop spam in your comment section, you have a wide range of plugins at your disposal.

There’s also a way to combat spam directly from the WordPress dashboard.

So, here’s a look at three ways to combat manual spam when a plugin might not be enough or when you want some added protection.

1. Make Users Register

One thing that may help is to make users register. Many drive-by spammers will not want to go to the trouble of registering to leave a quick spam comment. After all, they’re pretty lazy.

Go to Settings > Discussion > Other comment settings and check the box to make users register.

The user must register checkbox. — You’ll check the little box and be all set.

Some bots can attempt to register at your site, and while some may be successful, others will not. So even if some use automated software for registrations, it still puts up a wall that will work at least some of the time.

And if you notice a specific IP address causing trouble, you can block it with, for example, our Defender plugin.

The other thing to consider, of course, is your non-spamming visitors. If forced to register, users may go away. You’ll need to make a judgment call if registration is right for you.

2. Close Comments on Older Posts

Another way to combat spam is to shut the comment section down after a certain amount of time. Shutting down the comments can make sense if you have a highly publicized blog when published, and traffic dies down after a certain amount of time.

Go to Settings > Discussion > Other comment settings and check the box to close older articles’ comments.

From here, you can choose how many days old a post needs to be before shutting down comments.

Not all, but lots of spammers like to leave links on pages at least somewhat related to whatever it is they’re trying to promote. You may have posts that fit that bill, but when you close comments down after a certain amount of days, then the possibility of having comments open on such a post shrinks dramatically.

If you close comments after 14 days and a spammer finds a post from two months ago via search, the comments on that post will be closed by the time they arrive.

Just keep in mind that doing this may hurt non-spamming visitors. Some may want to leave comments on older posts.

That said, most older posts tend not to get many comments. Folks see that the post has some age, and the flow of initial comments has either slowed considerably or stopped altogether.

If you like this method but worry about closing down comments to genuine visitors, you could extend the time allowed for comments.

3. Hold Comments with Links

This setting lets you hold comments with a certain amount of links in the body of the comment.

Go to Settings > Discussion > Comment Moderation and set the number of links you’d like to allow.

Where you'll click to hold comments for moderation. — Want to hold a comment if it has two or more links? No problem!

You can decide how many links should trigger a hold here. Two is the default, but you could change that to one (or anything else).

Keep in mind, changing it to zero will hold all comments. That could get very time consuming to shuffle through them all in that setting.

Like That, Your Spam is Stopped

With all 15 anti-spam plugins mentioned in this post and ways to tweak your WordPress dashboard manually, you should easily combat spam on your site. Your WordPress site will be spam-free before you know it!

Spammers will be moving on to more vulnerable locations, leaving you more time to focus on actual users on your site and less annoyed.

If you’d like some more spam-tastic information, check out our Ultimate Guide to WordPress Spam.

On that note, go out there and put the smackdown on spammers.

September 3, 2020

Put the Smackdown on Spammers: 15 Top-Rated WordPress Antispam Plugins

Unfortunately, spam comes with the territory, as the WordPress CMS is so popular, it naturally attracts an increased number of troublemakers looking to hack or wreak havoc on your site.

If not dealt with, it can become like swatting mosquitoes away from your WordPress site — annoying and challenging to control.

Luckily, there are plugins out there that can come to your rescue and defend your site against spammers, ensuring that only real users you want to connect with get through.

We’ll be looking at 15 top-rated plugins that can help you fight against spam—keeping real engagement flowing and kicking any spammer attempts to the curb.

Each plugin has specific features, and they’re all different. Take your pick. You might want to use just one or combine them as part of a full-proof spam protection strategy.

We’ll also look at ways to combat spam from your WordPress dashboard without a plugin.

15 Top-Rated Anti-Spam Plugins

1. Akismet

With over 5 million active installations, it’s the most popular combat against spam.

2. Defender

Our free Defender plugin is our answer to security and can quickly put the smackdown on spammers. With his powerful firewall, you can block hackers or bots before reaching your site with his defense.

With a solid 5-star review and popular with over 30K active users, you’ll want to have Defender in your corner to stop spammers in their tracks.

For more information, check out our article on how to get the most out of Defender security.

3. WordPress Zero Spam

It uses AI in combination with effective spam detection techniques and a database of known malicious IPs from across the globe to detect and block spammers.

It can also integrate with popular 3rd party apps, such as Contact Form 7, BuddyPress, WPForms, and more.

Plus, it’s completely free to use.

4. NoSpamNX

NoSpamNX blocks comment spam by creating a field that only bots can see. Then, once bots fill it out, the comment is not published and can either be blocked or completely moved into the spam queue.

Instead of relying on CAPTCHA or calculations to defend you against automated bots, NoSpamNX automatically adds additional form fields to your comment form that are invisible to human users.

When a spambot blindly fills these fields out, the comment doesn’t get saved. Then, you can decide whether to block the spambots or mark them as spam.

5. Stop Spammers

A useful plugin that blocks many forms of spam so you can use fewer plugins is Stop Spammers. This plugin helps block comment and registration spam, spam email, and spambots while also monitoring your login attempts.

It also features over 50 + configuration options for maximum personalization.

Stop Spammers works right away once installed without much to adjust. However, if you’d like more options, there is a Stop Spammers Premium option.

6. FV Antispam

FV Antispam is a powerful and straightforward plugin that moves any spambot comments directly into the trash. It works with Akismet by combatting bot spam while Akismet combats human spam.

It’s a great solution, partially because of the low CPU load. It doesn’t burden your hosting or slow down your server, unlike many other effective antispam plugins.

7. CleanTalk Spam Protection

The one thing it won’t do is block manual spam; however, you’ll see a nice reduction in spam, considering most spam is created with bots. Plus, this plugin scans your site for preexisting spam.

It also includes a firewall, which helps prevent your site from DDoS and XML-RPC attacks.

8. Antispam Bee

Antispam Bee puts the sting on spam by blocking spam comments and trackbacks effectively, without CAPTCHA, and without distributing personal information to 3rd party services.

This free plugin will also schedule spam to be deleted and view stats on the blocked and deleted spam.

It’s one of the more popular options for combatting spam, with over 500K active users and a solid 5-star rating.

9. Titan Anti-Spam & Security

The Titan Anti-Spam & Security plugin has quite a few awesome features to prevent spam; it includes a firewall, antispam, malware scanner, site accessibility checking, and security & threats audits.

It doesn’t use CAPTCHA and includes an algorithm that ensures reliability and accuracy against spambots. It’s very well updated, and it always meets new versions of CMS.

10. Spam Destroyer

For a free, simple, and easy to use plugin, Spam Destroyer is a great option.

11. WPBruiser

WPBruiser is a security and antispam plugin that is based on algorithms that identify spam bots without any captcha images.

It takes care of spambot signups, spam comments, and brute force attacks. What’s great is it can stop bots from leaving spam in the first place, eliminating the need to go through and deleting spam manually.

It also integrates with numerous plugins, including Jetpack, Epoch, Postmatic, and more.

12. Analytics Spam Blocker

A nice feature is you can also easily report referral spam domains with the Analytics Spam Blocker reporting tool.

13. Bad Behavior

The Bad Behavior plugin blocks all incoming traffic from spambots so they can’t access your site. Therefore, it acts as a gatekeeper so that spammers can’t even get to the point of leaving spam.

Bad Behavior is set up to work alongside existing spam blocking services to increase their effectiveness and efficiency. So, if you choose to activate a few spam blocking plugins, this can be an excellent addition to include.

14. Cerber Security

The Cerber Security, Antispam & Malware Scan defends your site against spam, hacker attacks, trojans, and malware.

It has features such as limiting the login attempts when logging in by IP address or subnet, custom login URLs, Cerber anti-spam engine, etc.

All the features that this plugin provides is worth checking out. With a 5-star rating and over 100K downloads, it’s a popular choice.

15. Stop WP Comment Spam

As the name suggests, the Stop WP Comment Spam plugin helps fight spam by automatically detecting comment spam. It does all of this without using annoying questions, quizzes, or CAPTCHA.

3 Quick Tricks to Stopping Spam in the WordPress Dashboard

As you can see, to stop spam in your comment section, you have a wide range of plugins at your disposal.

There’s also a way to combat spam directly from the WordPress dashboard.

So, here’s a look at three ways to combat manual spam when a plugin might not be enough or when you want some added protection.

1. Make Users Register

One thing that may help is to make users register. Many drive-by spammers will not want to go to the trouble of registering to leave a quick spam comment. After all, they’re pretty lazy.

Go to Settings > Discussion > Other comment settings and check the box to make users register.

And if you notice a specific IP address causing trouble, you can block it with, for example, our Defender plugin.

The other thing to consider, of course, is your non-spamming visitors. If forced to register, users may go away. You’ll need to make a judgment call if registration is right for you.

2. Close Comments on Older Posts

Go to Settings > Discussion > Other comment settings and check the box to close older articles’ comments.

From here, you can choose how many days old a post needs to be before shutting down comments.

If you close comments after 14 days and a spammer finds a post from two months ago via search, the comments on that post will be closed by the time they arrive.

Just keep in mind that doing this may hurt non-spamming visitors. Some may want to leave comments on older posts.

That said, most older posts tend not to get many comments. Folks see that the post has some age, and the flow of initial comments has either slowed considerably or stopped altogether.

If you like this method but worry about closing down comments to genuine visitors, you could extend the time allowed for comments.

3. Hold Comments with Links

This setting lets you hold comments with a certain amount of links in the body of the comment.

Go to Settings > Discussion > Comment Moderation and set the number of links you’d like to allow.

You can decide how many links should trigger a hold here. Two is the default, but you could change that to one (or anything else).

Keep in mind, changing it to zero will hold all comments. That could get very time consuming to shuffle through them all in that setting.

Like That, Your Spam is Stopped

Spammers will be moving on to more vulnerable locations, leaving you more time to focus on actual users on your site and less annoyed.

If you’d like some more spam-tastic information, check out our Ultimate Guide to WordPress Spam.

On that note, go out there and put the smackdown on spammers.

September 3, 2020

Inclusive Design Series (2 of 4): The Limitations (and Possibilities) of Empathy

Throughout user research and UX design in general, empathy is a guiding force. “Put yourself in the user’s shoes to understand their perspective,” they say. While you can empathize with a user, you have not shared the same lived experiences....

The post Inclusive Design Series (2 of 4): The Limitations (and Possibilities) of Empathy appeared first on Treehouse Blog.

September 3, 2020

Sunlit 3.0 for iOS Released, Featuring New Post Editor and Improved Discovery Interface

Sunlit 3.0 was released this week and is now available in the App Store. The free photoblogging app is a companion app to the Micro.blog indie microblogging platform. Sunlit has some similarities to Instagram minus the deadweight of ads and algorithms. Users can follow each other, comment on posts, and timeline photos are displayed in chronological order.

“The idea is to get more people posting photos to their own blogs, whether that’s hosted on Micro.blog, WordPress.com, or a self-hosted WordPress,” Micro.blog creator Manton Reece said. Publishing to WordPress does not require any extra plugins, because the app uses the built-in XML-RPC support.

Sunlit uses Micro.blog’s infrastructure for the social aspect (replies and mentions). Users must be signed into a Micro.blog account (either paid or free) to view the timeline or reply to posts. In the current version, users are required to go to Micro.blog on the web to register first but Reece said his team is aiming to make this more seamless in the future so users can start using all the features in Sunlit right away.

“Some people use Micro.blog for their blog exclusively, and some people have a mix of a microblog or photoblog on Micro.blog, as well as a full blog on WordPress,” Reece said.

Sunlit also has support for following Tumblr photoblogs. In the app’s Discover tab, users can enter a Tumblr subdomain like “username.tumblr.com,” and then follow the blog even if the user is not on Sunlit.

“Micro.blog is based on blogs and IndieWeb standards so that it can integrate well with the rest of the web, not be walled off like a silo,” Reece said. “One aspect of this is that you can follow many blogs in Micro.blog even if the author of the blog hasn’t registered on Micro.blog yet, similar to how you can subscribe to blogs in a feed reader like NetNewsWire or Feedbin.”

Sunlit 3.0 has been redesigned with a new Discover interface and a faster, more flexible posting screen. Users can publish a quick photo or even a full blog post with text and photos uploaded to the users’ blog, along with the HTML layout for the post. This version also includes user search and support for mentions when replying to conversations.

Micro.blog is currently supporting the app’s development, and Reese said he has no plans to add any commercial upgrades into Sunlit.

“We support Sunlit as part of running Micro.blog,” he said. “Sunlit makes an existing Micro.blog subscription more useful, so it helps with the overall platform sustainability, even if not everyone using Sunlit is paying for a subscription. We hope that more people will sign up for a paid Micro.blog subscription, but it’s not required.”

Sunlit does not have an Android app but the teams would like to support Android in the future. The app is open source and available on GitHub under the MIT License.

“Because Sunlit for iOS is open source, this [Android support] might be something that comes from the community or it might be something we take the lead on. I personally have much more experience with iOS, so we started there.”

September 3, 2020

MX Announces New APIs and Developer Portal for its Financial Services

MX, a financial data platform that operates with the expressed aim of powering modern financial experiences, has announced a new platform designed to provide partners with APIs that can be used to develop personalized digital experiences. The all-new MX Open platform comprised of three core elements: MX Portal, MX Platform API, and MX Path.

September 3, 2020

Stroke Text CSS: The Definitive Guide

Whenever I think of stroked text on the web I think: nope.

There is -webkit-text-stroke in CSS for it, but it places that stroke in the middle of the vector outline of the characters, absolutely ensuring that the character doesn’t look right. Just look at this in Chrome or Safari. Gross. If you’re going to do it, at least layer the correct type on top so it has its original integrity. And even then, well, it’s non-standard and you don’t get cross-browser support.

John Negoita covers text stroke in a bunch of other ways. Another way to fake it is to use text-shadow in multiple directions.

Four ways, like the figure above, doesn’t usually cut it, so he gets mathy with it. SVG is capable of doing strokes, which you’d think would be much smarter, but it has the same exact problem as CSS does with the straddled stroke — only with somewhat more control.

I’d probably avoid stroked text on the web in general, unless it’s just a one-off, in which case I’d make it into SVG in design software, fake the stroke, and use it as a background-image.

It is possible to look cool.

Direct Link to Article — Permalink

The post Stroke Text CSS: The Definitive Guide appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

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September 3, 2020

Reasons Why Startups Must Invest in Cross-Browser Testing

Hassle in a startup is not a new thing. Most startups struggle to grow. They try everything and make sure to deliver the best things on time, however, some things are underrated or are confused to be of less importance. Cross-browser testing in a startup is one such thing.

Cross-browser testing is testing your website or web application in different browsers or browser versions or devices and operating systems to make sure that the web app or website works perfectly in all of them.

September 3, 2020

Serverless Batch Process With Kumologica

A batch job is a scheduled block of code that processes messages without user interaction. Typically a batch job will split a message into individual records, performs some actions on each record, and pushes the processed the output to other downstream systems.

Batch processing is useful when working with scenarios such as

September 3, 2020

Modifying Your Virtual Assistant to Use Custom Entities – Here’s How You Do It in Teneo

Virtual assistants and chatbots are great tools for improving customer service in any company. However, to be able to become a great customer service agent there is some work to do to make it fit your business needs.

Businesses today have their own way of naming things and the same way you would need to train any co-worker on the business vocabulary, you need to train the virtual assistant. That is when customization starts.

September 3, 2020

Reading AWS S3 File Content to Kafka Topic

Apache Camel

Apache Camel is an open-source framework for message-oriented middleware with a rule-based routing and mediation engine that provides a Java object-based implementation of the Enterprise Integration Patterns using an application programming interface to configure routing and mediation rules

Red Hat AMQ Streams

Red Hat AMQ Streams is a massively-scalable, distributed, and high-performance data streaming platform based on the Apache ZooKeeper and Apache Kafka projects.

September 3, 2020

LamasaTech Launches APIs for its Temperature Kiosk Solutions

Source: ATM Marketplace

LamasaTech has unveiled the release of its APIs which allow integration with its Zentron temperature kiosk range. This allows organizations to integrate temperature scanning stations into their existing visitor and personnel management processes as they adapt to operating post COVID-19 lockdowns.

September 3, 2020

Introduction to PDO Extension: How to Use PDO for Different Databases

In this article, we will talk about what a PDO is, why is it necessary, and how to work with it.

Let's start with the fact that for a long time php-programmers have been discussing the fate of the native functions to work with the database: mysql_connect, mysql_query, and others. The fact is that in upcoming versions of PHP data will be erased, these functions will go "Obsolete". Thus PHP developers should force on other tools to work with the database.

Currently, there are two alternatives solutions; mysqli extension and expansion of PDO. In this article, we will discuss PDO.

PDO - PHP Data Objects - is a layer that offers a versatile way to work with multiple databases.

This layer has several advantages:

PDO allows you to work with different databases, such as: MYSQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL and many others.
PDO allows you to work with a prepared statement

Now let's talk about all this in more detail.

Connecting to a Database Using PDO

Before you start working with PDO, you must make sure that you have the correct extension - php_pdo_mysql.dll. This can be verified through the function phpinfo(). If everything is okay, you are good to go.

First we need to connect to the database:

    PHP
   
xxxxxxxxxx

/ / MuSQL
    $Database = new PDO ("mysql: host = $ host; dbname = $Databasename", $username, $password); 
/ / PostgreSQL
    $Database = new PDO ("pgsql: host = $ host; dbname = $Databasename", $username, $password);
/ / MS SQL
    $Database = new PDO ("mssql: host = $ host; dbname = $Databasename", $username, $password); 
/ / SQLite
    $Database = new PDO ("sqlite: my / database / path / database.db");

As you can see from the example, each database connection string is slightly different from each other

You should always use try/catch when you are trying to connect to the unit, so that on exception we do not disclosed any data to the user.

    PHP
   
xxxxxxxxxx

try {
    $Database = new PDO ("mysql: host = $ host; dbname = $Databasename", $username, $password); 
} 
catch (PDOException $ e) { 
    echo "Unable to connect to database"; 
}

September 3, 2020

Browser Access to Postman Now Available

Postman has launched Postman for the web. The new browser interface offers developers easy access and increased collaboration with others. In a press release, the company described the new product as “somewhat of a return to Postman’s original roots.”

September 3, 2020

KPIs for APIs: How They Are Used in The Real World [Video]

APIs are an essential component of today's digitalization and digital transformation efforts. But how can you define and measure the status and success of individual APIs, API landscapes, API programs, and API platforms? Eric Horesnyi, Catalyst at Axway, conducted a study of real-world key performance indicators (KPIs) that large organizations are using for their API initiatives.

No organization would create and offer products without having a plan for how to manage them, and the very same thing is true for APIs.

KPIs for APIs

In order to manage APIs effectively, it is important to treat them as products, or rather, to make APIs part of the product management practice. And while KPIs are not the only thing necessary for managing APIs as a product, it is important to have them so that there are clear objectives about what should be achieved, and clear ways of how to measure progress and success.

September 3, 2020

WordPress Plugin Authors Should Avoid Confusing Users When Naming Blocks

On May 4, the StudioPress development team made a small but significant user-facing change to its Atomic Blocks plugin (now rebranded to Genesis Blocks). It removed the “AB” branding from its block titles. This minor update changed block titles such as AB Accordion and AB Button to Accordion and Button, respectively. On the surface, this change probably seemed of little consequence to the developers on the project. However, for at least one user, it created a massive workload.

Unless users religiously followed the GitHub code commits, they would have missed this update. Stacked with several other code changes for a seemingly unrelated ticket, the team left a message that read, “Remove unnecessary ‘AB’ from block titles.”

The change made it into version 2.8.2 of the plugin, which launched a day later.

The problem was that there was no message in the change log that noted this. Users had no indication that the blocks from the plugin were being renamed. Typically, this would not be a big deal since the plugin team had merely dropped the “AB” prefix from the otherwise unchanged titles. However, what happens when one of those blocks’ titles matches a core block title?

That was the issue that Marcus Tibesar ran into. The AB Button block suddenly became the Button block. Thinking he was using the core WordPress Button, he made liberal use of it throughout his site. Throw in his decision to drop the plugin after StudioPress rebranded its plugin to Genesis Blocks, it became a bit of a disaster to clean up.

“I have been using the Button block for months now only to discover that I’m actually using the Atomic Blocks button block!” wrote Tibesar in a comment on the Atomic Blocks rebranding post.

Theoretically, he should have needed to update only any lingering blocks from Atomic Blocks that he had knowingly used. But, he was stuck with blocks that he had unknowingly added to his posts and pages through no fault of his own.

This particular scenario was made worse because WordPress 5.4, released on March 31, introduced a new Buttons (plural) block. The old single Button block was removed from the normal inserter. While not all block-naming issues are so convoluted, it still begs the question: how can plugin authors avoid causing these types of user-experience issues?

It is easy to throw blame toward StudioPress — and the team could perhaps use a scolding for not being clear about the change when it happened. However, this brings forth a couple of things the greater WordPress community needs to figure out. The first is whether plugin authors need to use a consistent, prefixed naming scheme for their blocks. The second is what can WordPress do to help mitigate issues.

Prefix All the Things

Screenshot of adding button blocks from multiple plugins to the editor. — Buttons, buttons, and more buttons.

That is the common saying in the WordPress development world, right? Prefixing and namespacing guidelines generally apply to the actual code, which is where conflicts arise. However, there are times when prefixing public-facing text is warranted.

And those times are when plugins utilize a shared space.

The block editor is one such shared space. With more and more block plugins landing in the directory, it is time that plugin authors consider how block-naming schemes affect end-users. The issue is certainly not limited to Atomic/Genesis Blocks. This has been an ongoing trend with several block library plugins. Some do better than others, but it’s a toss-up each time a user installs such a plugin.

The easiest route is for plugin authors to simply prefix all custom blocks with their company branding (e.g., AB Button). On the other hand, not every block shares a title with one of the core blocks. For example, a block titled Product Carousel may not need to distinguish itself further from other blocks. It is unlikely that end-users are running multiple eCommerce plugins with blocks that share the same title.

“All, repeat all, should have a prefix,” said Tibesar. “The prefixes eliminate any confusion as to whether we users are selecting a core block or a third-party block. The most popular plugins appear at the top of the list, and it’s confusing from whence they came when prefixes are absent.”

At the very least, third-party blocks should have a prefix if their titles match one of the core blocks. End-users should not see two different Cover blocks in the block inserter, for example. Instead, they should see the core Cover and a second, uniquely-titled block. Prefixing is an easy way to do that. But, I could live with anything that does not cause user confusion.

Locating Instances of Block Usage

Screenshot of the Manage Blocks screen prototype for WordPress. — Manage Blocks screen.

In late 2019, the Gutenberg team released the first prototype of a potential block management area for the WordPress admin. The Manage Blocks screen from the prototype showcased an area that would allow users to manage every block on their site. One of the more important bits of information on this screen was an “Instances” count, which displayed the number of times a block was in use. It further linked to a screen with every post that had a particular block.

One of the reasons this feature is important is that it would allow end-users to locate posts that they may want to clean up. Using the Atomic/Genesis Button block as an example, Tibesar could track down all those old uses and make any changes he wanted.

He said he would absolutely welcome this feature in WordPress. “New users are tempted to load up on zillions of block plugins all to be forgotten later. Also, maintainers would use this tool when cleaning up broken sites. Just being able to see an overview of what blocks were used where, will allow publishers to dial back the number of block plugins installed on their sites, especially when new plugins and technologies emerge.”

Because this feature is not in core yet, he had to turn to the Find My Blocks plugin, which helped him identify 22 posts and pages where he had unknowingly used the Button block from Atomic/Genesis Blocks. In the long term, this is something that needs to be handled directly in WordPress. It is unlikely to be the last time a user needs to clean house and get rid of old blocks.

September 3, 2020

How to print error message when the search result is not found in file(c++)

The problem I face is since I use this type of loop to achieve the delete function, i really don't know where should i put the "else" statement when the searching result is not found in the file. Because the while loop need to run whether the result is found or not found. Someone pls help me tq!!!

#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
#include <fstream>
#include <cctype>
#include <cstring>
#include <conio.h>
#include<string>

int main() {
    cout << "   Delete Function    " << endl;
    int option;
    string line, name;
    cout << "Please Enter the ID of record you want to delete: ";
    cin >> name;
    ifstream myfile;
    ofstream temp;
    myfile.open("studentrecord.txt");
    temp.open("temp.txt");
    cout << endl;
    int total=0;
    while (getline(myfile, line)) {
        if ((line != name) && !(skip > 0)) {
            temp << line << endl;
        }
        else {
            if (line != ";") {
                cout << line << endl;
            }
            if (skip == 0) {
                skip = 10;
            }
            else {
                --skip;
            }
        }
    }

        cout << endl;
        cout << "You sure you want to delete the following record ?" << endl;
        cout << "[1=Yes]" << endl;
        cout << "[2=No]" << endl;
        cin >> option;
        if (option == 1) {
            cout << "The record with the ID " << name << " has been deleted " << endl;
            myfile.close();
            temp.close();
            remove("PropertyRecord_linebyline.txt");
            rename("temp.txt", "PropertyRecord_linebyline.txt");
            _getch();
            main();
        }
        else if (option == 2) {
            cout << "Press enter to back to menu" << endl;
            _getch();
            main();
        }


}

September 3, 2020

Reactive Vue 3 State

Introduction

There's been a lot of discussion about state management in the upcoming Vue 3 framework. Some writers go as far as declaring Vuex dead. Reactivity is all we need, is the claim. Just like blockchain was supposed to cure all problems of modern civilization ;-) Jokes aside, it does look like an intriguing possibility, so we've taken a challenge and explored it in this article.

TL;DR

Vue 3 Reactivity System, now free of UI confines, can be efficiently employed as a powerful tool to handle state. This requires extra plumbing though, with no batteries included. If you want to get straight to technical details, scroll down to Reactive proposal for application state chapter below.