[wp-hackers] wordpress security

[Otto]

Excuse my slightly offtopic rant for a moment...

On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 1:33 PM, Chris Jean <gaarai at gaarai.com> wrote:
> Some people are saying that only nerds need apply when running a
> WordPress blog. Really? Are we elitist now? The idea of WordPress is
> that even your average non-techy person can run their own site easily.

I've always disagreed with that.

If you're a non-techy person, then you shouldn't be hosting your own
website in the first place. You should be using a service to do it for
you, like WordPress.com or Blogger or *something*.

See, it's always the non-techy types that get into real problems
running a website, and they're always the ones that get all ticked off
when it's going to cost them to fix those problems (because they can't
do it themselves). And yet the auto-mechanic analogy is continually
lost on people...


Back to the topic:

> The fact of the matter is that having more non-techy people on WP helps
> WP keep growing and diversifying. How about we give the non-techy person
> a hand and help them deal with security in a smart/informed way?

If somebody is incapable of the absolutely minimal task of keeping
their software up-to-date with the current set of tools provided to
them, then it is my considered opinion that they should not be running
WordPress or any other self-hosted website system, of any kind.

Emailing them won't change this. More tools of any kind to make it
easier won't change this. The simple fact is that upgrading is
literally one-button click on many hosting systems right now (if you
ignore things like backups and such... I usually don't bother with
backing up before upgrades anymore), and they can't even be bothered
to do that.

Call me pessimistic, but you could have it sending flowers with a note
that says "please upgrade your freakin' website" to their house, and
they'd still not click that damn button.

Fact of the matter is that you can't help everybody. Adding yet
another notification system is useless feature bloat. The people here
discussing it won't use it, and those who don't upgrade will either
turn it off, ignore the emails, mark it as spam, or stop using
WordPress.

-Otto
Sent from Memphis, TN, United States