Common Plugins We got a new question submitted via the website courtesy of Ann-Marie. Her question was: I know that Jetpack is one of the first plugins a site should have. It was mentioned at the last meeting that Jet Pack may conflict with other plug ins Could someone speak as to what are the NECESSARY plug ins we should be using? Thanks. A great question, and one that many people have. With the options we have with WordPress and plugins, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by how many choices are out there. The group had a discussion about this question. First, I recommended we not use the word “necessary”, as every WordPress site is different, and even the most common plugins won’t be needed or used on some folks sites. So with that out of the way, we discussed some of the more common and useful plugins for the vast majority of WP sites. Security Plugins – If

This month for our users and bloggers meetup we have Connie Oswald Stofko from Buffalo-Niagara Gardening presenting on how to use images legally for the web, as well as a general Q&A. Below are the notes from Connie’s Presentation: How to Use Photos Without Getting into Trouble Notes for talk by Connie Oswald Stofko Buffalo WordPress Users Group May 7, 2015 A few of guidelines: Just because a photo is on the Internet, it doesn’t mean you can use it. Taking a photo from a website, then giving that site credit or linking back to the website, doesn’t constitute fair use. Even if a photo isn’t labelled with the word “copyright” or the © symbol, the photo may still be copyrighted. Always get permission before using a copyrighted photo. Start by contacting the website where you found the photo. If you can’t get permission, use a different photo. There are sites where you can find photos you can use. See

Connie asked a question about disabling comments on individual pages. Andy showed us how to do this on a single post and page; and on future posts. Enabling/disabling on a single post or page can be found under the Discussion area. When your post or page does not display a Discussion area, enable it under Screen Options. Ann Marie asked about FTP/SFTP. FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. SFTP is Secure File Transfer Protocol. Andy showed how to change to a SFTP connection in filezilla. Why SFPT? FTP sends info over the internet without encryption. SFTP is FTP over SSH – basically its an encrypted FTP. A more secure approach to file transfer. Ann Marie asked about creating a “dev” subdomain. A “dev” subdomain (dev.mysite.com) creates an area for your development hidden from visitors to your website. We talked about subdomains. Another approach is to use an “Under Construction” plugin to hide your site content during development unless logged

This month we had a small, discussion-heavy meetup. During our discussions we hit on how to continue to grow the group, easy ways to jump into WordPress without feeling overwhelmed and more. @AndyStaple demonstrated the picture element, and the picturefill polyfill that lets you use it today. WordPress is great for this as it can auto-create many sizes of images as you upload one. Ben and Marek both presented some specific problems with a couple of their sites. Marek had two WordPress sites, and wanted to move the user information from one to the other so we walked step-by-step through doing so in phpMyAdmin (bordering on an advanced topic, but it was worth it). Ben has a bug in a bit of code that doesn’t allow guests to see a post type and we haven’t sorted that one out yet.