Year: 2019

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WordPress 5.1.1 Patches Critical Vulnerability

Jenny Howell March 14, 2019 0 Comments
WordPress 5.1.1 was released yesterday evening with an important security update for a critical cross-site scripting vulnerability found in 5.1 and prior versions. The release post credited Simon Scannell of RIPS Technologies for discovering and reporting the vulnerability. Scannell published a post summarizing how an unauthenticated attacker could take over any WordPress site that has comments...
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[Infographic] Is Facebook becoming social media’s retirement home?

Chris Grant (he/him) March 14, 2019 0 Comments
Even though it might be a bit of a stretch to describe Facebook as social media's retirement home, the social network is experiencing an exodus of young people while increasing numbers of over 55s are signing up. Facebook is generally struggling to retain its user base and today, it has an estimated 15 million fewer U.S. users than it did in 2017. That's according to a report released...
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Former physicist Tim Berners-Lee invented the World-Wide Web

The world-wide-web turns 30, what’s next #ForTheWeb

Chris Grant (he/him) March 12, 2019 0 Comments
It all started rather innocently. In 1989, some scientists at CERN, the science research center in Switzerland, wanted to automatically share their information with fellow scientists working elsewhere in the world. Email already existed, but there was no easy way to transmit large amounts of data other than saving it on a disk and physically bringing it to another computer. So Berners-Lee, a...
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Say goodbye to Google+ from April 2nd, 2019

Chris Grant (he/him) March 11, 2019 0 Comments
If you’re wanting to read about why Google+ was a bad idea poorly executed, well, just Google “Google+” and you will be treated to more than enough diatribes about why this platform was an eight-year non-starter. But as for our blog, we’ll stick with the impact Google+ had on WordPress, Drupal and websites in general. First things first Firstly, make sure you act now to remove any...
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Controlling call flow in the Asterisk Dialplan using Curl and Json

Chris Grant (he/him) March 08, 2019 0 Comments
It's very common that we want to use external services from our Asterisk Dialplan, and many times those external services are accessible via HTTP (such as a REST HTTP API). In this article we are going to see how we can use cURL to query an external HTTP service and read a response in JSON format and take action on the values returned to control the call flow in our dialplan. Using cURL to...
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Grace Hopper

The most dangerous phrase in the language…

Jenny Howell March 08, 2019 0 Comments
Rear Admiral Grace Hopper was a U.S. Naval officer, and an early computer programmer. She was the developer of the first compiler for a computer programming language; at the end of her service she was the oldest serving officer in the United States Navy. Grace Hopper is also famous for a quote, that guides so many programmers and developers, including our team at O'Brien Media. The quote, "The...
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How not to back up your data & important information

Tom Furmanski March 07, 2019 0 Comments
Your customer files, your accounts, your website, your contacts, your designs, your images. Anything you can’t do without needs a safety net. Backing up isn’t just common sense – it could be a condition of your business insurance too. And not doing it the right way could mean your business insurance policy not paying out at the time you need it most. The good news is it’s easy. Back up,...
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[Infographic] For smartphone users mobile data can come with a hefty price tag

Chris Grant (he/him) March 06, 2019 0 Comments
For smartphone users fond of streaming, mobile data can come with a hefty price tag. The cost varies heavily between different countries and a new analysis of mobile data prices by UK-based price comparison website cable.co.uk shows where a gigabyte of data is cheapest and most expensive. The analysis focused on 6,313 data plans in 230 countries with India being named the cheapest. The analysis...
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Why you might need to refresh your website

Tom Furmanski March 03, 2019 0 Comments
As a website design business, you would think that our website would be immune from needing to update our look. But you are wrong. As website designers we are always trying to improve our website to make it better, easier to navigate, and more attractive to clients. And as marketing is ever evolving, then so must our website. Read our top 4 signs it might be time to redesign your website: 1. Your...
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Drupal 7 will reach end-of-life in November of 2021

Tom Furmanski February 27, 2019 0 Comments
Drupal 7 was first released in January 2011. In November 2021, after over a decade, Drupal 7 will reach end of life (EOL). Official community support for version 7 will end, along with support provided by the Drupal Association on Drupal.org. This means that automated testing services for Drupal 7 will be shut down, and there will be no more updates provided by the Drupal Security Team. When this...
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