MailBag: Why Do You Do It?

Zaman dropped me a year end note. He’s been asking people, interviewing them, for a site, and had three questions about why I do what I do (and a little bit of how). It deserved a public reply.

1.You have been actively volunteering at WordPress support forum and with your solutions individuals and companies save big chunk of money. Your family and Job at DreamHost are your top priorities. Then your priority becomes the website you run (halfelf.org). You still manage to take out couple of hours to hit WordPress forum. You mention in one of your blog that some people volunteer because they enjoy it and some do it to master skills. What drives you to volunteer at WordPress?

What drives me to volunteer at WordPress is little more than a bit of technical socialism. I give back because I get back, and it seems only logical and fair and just to make the time to do these things. Admittedly, having my job actually be know WordPress’ ecosystem and keep a good relationship between WP and DreamHost makes this far easier for me than most. But at the same time, I was doing this before it was my job. And I did it because I could.

I have a hard time explaining the need to give back to people, because it’s something you either understand in your heart or you don’t. Call it a random act of kindness to the universe, I help with WordPress because I can, because I enjoy it, and because it makes me feel good to do it. I won’t deny I get awesome emotional props from doing it, a feeling of absolute satisfaction and pleasure knowing I can help people, but it’s really just that. I like doing it. I make the time for it.

2.Your insights on halfelf.org are remarkable and the blog “whose responsibility is it” in particular draws my attention. You convey it is the business owner responsibility and not the WordPress core or Webhosting Company to perform due diligence before they install plugin’s. You also call out there is a need for more security experts. Is there a shortage of wordpress security experts in general or in wordpress public support forum?

Do I think there’s a shortage of WP security experts? No, I think there’s a shortage of security experts in general. I think the masses of people would rather do awesome and create awesome than study security and delve into things. The fact that I can think of a hundred ways to socially engineer going to see a movie for free without breaking a sweat, the fact that someone like Frank Abagnale was able to pull off what he did underscores the issue.

At our heart, humans want to trust. We want to believe people won’t screw with us. And when you factor in just how complex computers and code can be, of course we have faith that the people who write code are writing the best code to their ability and know what they’re doing. And we have faith that, when a bug or a security flaw is reported, people will fix it as fast as they can.

WordPress complicates this, since there are so many plugins and themes out there that there isn’t a centralized place to reply a problem. Even if there was, there’s no way to enforce the bug is fixed, and there’s no way to be certain everyone will upgrade. Just look at the nightmare from the RevSlider situation. Once you add in the world of non wordpress.org hosted code, it’s impossible to maintain any control.

If more developers were security conscious this might be less of the case, but it’s a problem in Open Source. The Heartbleed vulnerability is a prime example of that. One change, missed by many. It’s not just WordPress, it’s how we develop in Open Source. The speed of our work makes issues like this sadly more common and possible. So we need more people who love hacking into things and breaking them and then responsibly passing on fixes to make things more secure. I do feel that Github and sites like it are actually a great step forward. I can file a pull request with a fix and pass on the help in that way.

This does require hobbyists to step up and be a bit more of a true developer, but they have the most to gain from it in the end.

3. Examining and reviewing the plugin software may not be possible for small businesses. Do you have a list of plugins that should be avoided or a checklist that should be considered before installing the plugins? I am not asking if you to list here. May be an article in halfelf.org will be very useful for WordPress community.

I don’t have a list. I can’t have a list. It’s impossible, given the rapidity with which plugins are updated, fixed, released, and closed. It’s just not feasible. I tried, at DreamHost, to keep tabs on plugins like that for about a week. Then I gave up. It would be a full time job.

And I disagree it may not be possible for a small business to have an audit done on their plugins and themes. They can hire someone. It would be expensive, certainly, but frankly I find the alternative untenable. If you had a physical store, you’d pay to have a security audit once in a while, if only by your security company. This too is a part of running a business. Period. You just can’t dismiss it as ‘not possible’ when it’s your career on the line. Complicated, expensive, and annoying I will grant you. But you have to do it. Even if it’s just once a year, you’re a step or ten ahead from where you were before.

I’ll say this, however. I would expect someone like Pippin over on Easy Digital Downloads to be reviewing all add-ons he lists on his site. Anything he sells, certainly, but also this big list of free add-ons should be checked for basic security before being listed. In this way, a small company can know they’re reasonably secure with that suite of plugins.

Are there plugins that should be avoided? Sure. I suggest you avoid anyone you can’t figure out how to contact in case of a security issue, anyone who encrypts their code so you can’t read it, and anyone whom, when you do contact them, blow you off.

Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)

I’m Mika (aka Ipstenu) and I’m complicated. I’ve been on the net since the days of dedicated terminals and Novation CAT modems and solved Missionaries and Cannibals (or Goats and Cabbages) before I was six, and blog about WordPress and technical/computer things at Half Elf on Tech.

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