Tips Tuesday – WP Core Dev Shift, The Importance of Human Creators

Tips this week include:

• WP 7.0.3 security update released
• Who is WP for – bloggers or enterprise?
• Defensive Data Design – the next stage for WP
• 20 new AI additions for WP every week
• Human creators matter more than ever now
• A new site scam
• What actually controls AI bot access?

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WordPress Tips

WP 7.0.3 Security Update Released

Another security update rolled out last week. Be sure your sites have auto updated to 7.0.3.

Due to AI, I suspect we’ll see more of these security updates from now on.

Both black-hat and white-hat hackers are now using AI to find vulnerabilities faster.

I’m just glad that there’s already a well-established community and privately owned companies of white-hat hackers to help us keep safe!! They report their findings to WP core and they sure are quick with getting patches out to us now.

FYI, there are plenty of folks scanning the free plugins we use now too. I hope the paid plugin folks are doing the same.

To give you an idea of the scope of these efforts, just in the last week 120 folks reported 225 plugin vulnerabilities that have been patched.

Who is WP For – Bloggers or Enterprise?

Matt Mullenweg made an interesting observation on his personal blog about the WP core development division between bloggers and what he calls builders, or those who create for enterprise-level sites.

He suggests that the core dev teams are heavy on the builder side – duh!!! It’s been that way for over 20 years, Matt!!!!

And he suggests that we should show more love to the needs of bloggers – you’re 10 years late to that thought, Matt!!!!

But, this is his latest wild hair. So I suspect we’ll see more effort put into the things he mentioned, like “RSS, ActivityPub, ATProto, blogrolls (link manager is still in wp-admin!), pingbacks” and more.

Hey Matt! NOBODY relies on those things anymore, dude!!!!!!

Defensive Data Design

On the other hand, Matt’s post on the Make WordPress Core site details where WP core dev is headed – straight into being safe but friendly to AI Agents. He calls it Defensive Data Design.

In fact, some of these new Agent “skills” are already shipping with Gutenberg.

And there are already folks who have Agents creating and running their sites including content and maintenance.

20 New AI Additions for WP Every Week

For the last year I’ve been taking note of how many new AI-related plugins and connected services become available for WordPress. 

This week alone I’ve read about:

• Full site builders
• Page builders – mainly for sales pages
• Auto content creation
• Internal site search that can dynamically provide replies with links to your content
• SEO analysis – that can also make the suggested changes
• CRM – Client Retention Management that integrates with the entire sales funnel
• Routine maintenance – for updates and auto checks regularly
• How to build your first AI plugin – new tutorial in Learn WordPress

And while all of that sounds like a major load of work being lifted out of the hands of site owners, none of it performs nearly as well as you doing most of these things yourself.

Nor is there any oversight or remedy built into these functions if something doesn’t go well.

Content Tips

Human Creators Matter More Than Ever Now

We all know that the AI snake is eating its tail.

And now with AI Agents creating and publishing content that no human verifies or edits, the internet is going to be full of garbage.

Being a trusted voice in a way that readers can tell that a human created it is going to be a gold standard soon.

You need to be that person and start showing up in ways that prove you are human.

I can think of no better way to do that than video.

That includes short clips of you doing stuff in the real world.

If you can speak while recording, that’s even better.

Just make sure that at least your face is on your content.

Take a photo of you eating that apple pie or such – it matters now!!!

New Site Scam

Because so many new sites are relying on AI to create their content for them, and because more of that content is junk from AI eating its own tail, a new site scam is emerging that endangers those of us who have been creating delicious, well-vetted content for years.

I can’t tell you what it is here as hackers follow me too.

But, I did send an email to my site audit Hub clients and my Webmaster Training folks about it – and how to protect themselves.

I can also tell you that who you host with matters more than ever because no hacker can pull off this scam without first being greeted by the guard at that door.

I am SO thankful we are with Iridium Hosting!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

The owner and head Sys Admin is personally looking out for me and my clients!!!

AI Security Tips

What Actually Controls AI Bot Access?

That’s a good question, as there are several different types of AI bots.

This post from the nice folks at Kinsta attempts to educate site owners and hosts on the different bots hitting a site and the different kinds of controls needed.

My clients and webmasters can rest assured that we are covering all of these bases such that the good AI crawlers and Agents can access our sites, but the bad ones cannot.

And let me tell you, keeping up with this mix constitutes 90% of my security and SEO testing time these days.