[wp-hackers] wordpress security

[Art Delano]

On Oct 16, 2009, at 2:01 PM, Jeremy Clarke wrote:

> On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 1:29 PM, Otto <otto at ottodestruct.com> wrote:
>> Question to those of you who like this idea of emailing the admin for
>> upgrade notification:
>>
>> Are you currently using this plugin?
>> http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/upgrade-notification-by-email/
>>
>> If not, why not?
>
> I don't use it because in my 5+ years of using WP and installing it
> all over the place I've worked out lo-fi systems (i.e. a text file)
> where i list all the WP installs I'm responsible for and their
> versions. When there is an update I learn about it on Twitter (because
> I follow tons of WP people, not something I recommend to normal users)
> and know to reconsider my text file and try to keep them all up to
> date.
>
> So I personally don't really need the plugin or the feature. I'd still
> use it, but going back to the old installs and installing the plugin
> is more than its worth for me.

After building a couple dozen WP-based sites for clients, last spring  
I scratched together a tool that does the version tracking for all of  
them, based on the current version as reported by wordpress.org.  
Status updates are one-button actions and results are cached for a  
fixed period.

If there's interest, I can re-hack this to make it more generally  
usable (right now it's pretty much hard-coded to accommodate my day  
job). Note that this is a standalone script, not a WordPress plugin.

And for whatever it's worth, I still depend on the WP Developers RSS  
feed for first alerts on updates (which I check through my mail  
client). And I think an email notification option for WP admin  
accounts is a fine idea.