Practical guides for securing, maintaining and troubleshooting WordPress and Joomla! websites. Learn how to solve common website problems, follow industry best practices and make site management easier — with or without Watchful.
Content Security Policy, usually abbreviated as CSP, is an HTTP response header that allows a website to tell browsers which sources and behaviors should be permitted when displaying its pages. A complete CSP can control many different aspects of a website. However, you do not need to implement a complicated Read more
HTTP Strict Transport Security, usually abbreviated as HSTS, is a security header that tells web browsers to access your website using HTTPS only. Once a browser receives an HSTS header from your website, future attempts to visit the site over HTTP are automatically upgraded to HTTPS. The browser will also Read more
The X-Frame-Options HTTP response header helps control whether pages from your website can be displayed inside a frame or iframe on another website. If this header is missing, another site may be able to embed your pages inside its own content. This can increase the risk of clickjacking, where a Read more
PHP is the programming language that powers WordPress. Depending on your server configuration, the exact version of PHP running your website may be included in its HTTP response headers. For example, your server might return: X-Powered-By: PHP/8.2.33 Visitors do not normally see HTTP response headers when browsing your website, but Read more
WordPress includes a built-in debugging system that can help identify problems with plugins, themes and custom code. When debug logging is enabled using the default settings, WordPress typically writes PHP errors, warnings and notices to: wp-content/debug.log The information in this file can be extremely useful when troubleshooting a website. Unfortunately, Read more
WS Form PRO is a powerful forms plugin for WordPress. Through our latest premium plugin integration, users can easily apply these paid updates safely and securely across all their sites at once with Watchful. Meet WS Form PRO Launched in 2018, WS Form has skyrocketed in popularity. This popularity is Read more
If you read this blog, you’ll know that we take website security very seriously. And we always recommend using the Cloudflare service as one of the tools in your security toolbox. In this post we will share a simple Cloudflare hack that blocks many of the WordPress brute-force attacks your Read more
In 2018, Watchful made a commitment to supporting privacy and the General Data Protection Regulation in the EU. As part of this commitment, Watchful account holders can complete a data processing agreement with us with ease. Here’s how. What is the GDPR? In 2018, the EU adopted a legal framework Read more
If you use Google’s Universal Analytics (UA) to monitor traffic on your website, you are probably aware that it will sunset and stop collecting data on July 1, 2023. You may also know that UA is being replaced by Google Analytics 4 (GA4). But did you know that the traffic Read more
Watchful is a collection of tools and services that simplifies the maintenance and management of websites. But Watchful cannot solve every maintenance need for every user. Thus, you can extend Watchful with apps that communicate changes on your website to your Watchful account. What are apps? Watchful apps are WordPress Read more