Content management systems like Wordpress can be amazing tools, but they’re not without their issues.
The biggest source of problems with open-source content management systems are plugins.
Plugins are a where your Wordpress site goes from being built by an organization you trust to be quite good at building a secure, flexible, functional system that is updated on a regular basis, to being built by anyone that’s ever learned a little PHP over the years.
When you install a plugin, you’re putting your entire website in the hands of the developer of that plugin.
Most of the security vulnerabilities that are exploited in content management systems stem from three core reasons:
- Not updating your website’s core on a regular basis.
- Installing plugins that weren’t built properly.
- Not installing important security updates for your plugins.
If you’re thinking your website is unlikely to be a target for hackers, thank again.
One of the most common sources of errors I find in the logs of the websites I build (even those with low traffic numbers) are web crawlers searching my sites for known Wordpress vulnerabilities.
The other problem with plugins is that support for them can disappear overnight if the developer decides they just don’t want to maintain it anymore.
It's such a big problem that there's even a plugin dedicated to letting you know about the security vulnerabilities in your other plugins.
If you are using a plugin for your events, you might end up with all of your data (a.k.a. hard work) sitting in a plugin that’s no longer supported.
That means if a security vulnerability is found in that plugin tomorrow, it’s not getting fixed and you have to rebuild from scratch with something else if you want to protect your site from an attack.
That’s why we decided to build a better solution.
With a free Event Incite account, we give you a small piece of code that you can copy and paste onto any page of your website to embed an event calendar (similar to the way you would embed a YouTube video, or a Facebook or Instagram post).
Free accounts allow you to create and manage your own events. They also allow you to subscribe to a zip code and pull any events we have in our database for that zip code.
If you want to subscribe to regions (cities, metropolitan areas, etc.) or more zip codes, you can upgrade to a publisher account for added functionality.
The best part is that you're not installing a plugin so the software is updated for you automatically when we release new versions (which we do almost daily).
That means no more backups, updates, compatibility testing, or rolling back updates in the event of a failure.
We’re constantly working on updates and new features so be sure to follow us to be notified as new features are released!
