Weekly Links Roundup – Cookies, PHP, Store Locators, Mixed Content Warnings
This week’s top WordPress and web marketing links.
Seems like every website now has a cookies popup notification, right? In light of the GDPR and some new state-based privacy laws, like we have here in Colorado, it’s not surprising. But how do you get a cookie notice on your site? Here’s a great little tutorial on using the Cookie Consent plugin to do just that. In fact, I followed it earlier this week when I added a cookie popup to this very site you’re reading. It’s easy and quick to do.
I saw this post earlier this week and it made me sit up in alarm: 57% of WordPress sites will become less secure in December 2018. Yikes! What does this mean? It seems that 57% of all WordPress sites are running on host servers using PHP 7, PHP 5.6, or something even older than that. PHP is one of the software platforms that powers WordPress. And as of December 2018, those older versions of PHP will no longer receive any security patches or updates.
That means that if your site is sitting on one of those affected servers, it will become much more vulnerable to hacks and security issues. As new security problems are uncovered, they will not be fixed. Ever. The linked article shows how to find out which version your host uses. If you’re hosting with us, don’t worry – you’re covered and this will not affect you.
Now for something less scary. If you have multiple locations, or better yet if you have a lot of distributors or other providers related to your business, did you know you can easily add an interactive map of all those locations? This can be really helpful for your users. Here’s a review of the best WordPress store locator plugins. I’m a fan of WP Store Locator and have used in on a few client sites. Here is an example of WP Store Locator in action.
Finally… if you decided to make the switch from HTTP to HTTPS and secure your site (yay, you!), you may have been met with a surprise: a Mixed Content warning from the browser. This means your page has links that are https://, as it should, but it also has some leftover links to http:// too. Those need to be fixed, and depending on the size and complexity of your site, this can be a big hairy deal. Learn about Mixed Content warnings and how to fix them.
Did you find this information useful? Please share with your friends and colleagues! And comment below with questions or observations.