Unveiling WordPress Template Hierarchy, Security Flaws and Hotlinking Prevention Tips for Better Websites
This post was curated and edited by Ben Gillbanks. Ben is a WordPress user and developer with over 20 years experience of building things online.
Welcome to WP Briefs on Tuesday, May 30th, 2023. Today we have some interesting news stories to share with you.
First up, we have an article explaining the WordPress template hierarchy by WP Beginner. The template hierarchy is important for creating and customizing WordPress themes. It determines which template files are used for each page on your site, ensuring that every page has the correct template. Understanding how this works can help you create better themes.
Our next story concerns a security flaw discovered in WordPress via open embed auto-discovery that allows XSS attacks. This is a reminder that known software can still contain vulnerabilities that need to be checked regularly by pentesters or bug hunters. Finding bugs requires patience, but it’s crucial to ensure website security.
In our third story, we learn about hotlinking in WordPress and how to prevent it. Hotlinking means linking images or media files from another server directly onto your own website without permission. This can cause issues with bandwidth and copyright infringement if done without permission from the content creator.
Finally, we have a philosophical piece on the power of one connection by Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress. He emphasizes that having one meaningful connection with another human being is more important than chasing statistics like views or likes on social media platforms.
That’s all for today’s episode of WP Briefs! We hope you found these stories informative and helpful in your WordPress journey.
