I have an interview with robertavila this week. He is a Maltese colleague of Jean and I and the founder of WP activity log, an excellent WordPress plug-in. Robert will install more than 80000 plug-ins and WordPress. Org grew to an average of 4.8 stars out of the 5 stars. It was not a great undertaking, so we decided to ask him a few questions, where he came from, how to develop his career, and what will happen to Robert and WP in the future. To learn from Robert’s journey and draw inspiration from the lessons he has learned over the years, read on. The
Hey Robert, please give me a brief introduction to WordPress. Hello. Thank you for this interview. As the founder and CEO of WP white security, I am the developer of the most comprehensive word press activity log plug-in WP activity log and the plug-in word press password policy manager launched at the end of 2018. I dropped out of school and started working in it. I am 20 years old and have basic knowledge of computer. I started working on software testing. After 18 years of enterprise experience, I have worked in several security software start-ups and served in multiple roles, including support, system engineer, R & D, sales engineer, project manager, product manager and vice president of marketing. The
I was fortunate to have taken on these different roles because it gave me a good understanding of how departments work. Today, we will use the experience you have gained to run your own plug-in business. In 2009, I joined WordPress, the product manager of Acunetix, a software company that develops automated web vulnerability scanners. We wanted a blog for the site and chose WordPress. We also built an online WordPress security service, but unfortunately it didn’t work. I learned a lot from our mistakes and have been experimenting with WordPress ever since. In 2012, he started the blog of WordPress security. In 2013, he resigned from the company and became a freelancer. He began to develop the WP activity log as a profile project. The
Male Robert’s WP white documentary website. Visit the website. How did WP activity log start and progress? In 2013, when hacking and security enhancement were implemented on the WordPress website, I was surprised that WordPress was such a popular multi-user platform that it did not have an appropriate WordPress activity log (audit log) solution. So I started to develop WP activity logs. I am not a developer, but I can develop the first beta. Thank goodness it wasn’t made public! The first distribution was developed by my friend. The public responded very well, so we continued to develop. In the next two and a half years, I didn’t have developers. I worked with many outsourcing contractors. I paid freelancers with their income and hired other developers for other updates. The
In 2015, I introduced my first advanced add-on feature, email notification. I have some sales, but they do not serve as expenses. Despite the low sales, I saw the possibility of the project, so I didn’t give up. Started working with development agents in 2016. They can spend hours a week developing plug-ins. In 2016 and 2017, I also launched another four high-end addons. By the end of 2016, the plug-in project can continue on its own. I didn’t make a profit. I didn’t get anything at the cost of working long hours. At least I didn’t take money from my savings.
Can be paid to the agency. To ensure growth, we need people that are easier to find than agents. So we started looking for developers in early 2017. After six months of searching, I quit my company in the middle of 2017 and began to work with Ashar Irfan. I have worked with him since then. He is a very excellent and reliable developer. With his help, we actually accelerated the development. By the end of 2017, plug-ins had become a profitable business. The
Male Robert’s WP activity record website. Visit the website. In january2018, I started to work full-time on plug-ins. Things are much better now. We are two full-time employees and work with many subcontractors. Therefore, more regular employees should be recruited in the near future. So far, it has been a great experience, but it has also been a very challenging experience. In a few years’ time, it is difficult to work 80 to 100 hours a week without any cost. However, this is not a sprint, but a marathon. The few monthly sales are very encouraging. I found that the project had a lot of potential if it lasted longer. Today, I am very happy to finally have the opportunity I have always wanted. This is the opportunity to run my software company. The
How does the WP activity log plug-in help users maintain the security of WordPress sites? Keeping a WordPress activity log has many advantages, including enhanced site security. In fact, insufficient logging and monitoring of web applications were listed in the top ten most important security risks of OWASP in 2017. Security will not be resolved once and for all. The continuous process of strengthening, recording and monitoring, testing and improvement. Our plug-in is suitable for log and monitor. After using security plug-ins or security services to enhance the WordPress site, you must keep a log of what happens on the site. From the logs, you can learn about the user’s work and how the attacker hacked into the WordPress site. Logs are also used for accountability, compliance, and many other security related projects and tasks. The
We have developed several functions related to WP activity log plug-ins, which can build WordPress IDS (Intrusion Detection System), because we want to provide users with more activity log plug-ins. All in all, our plug-in can show WordPress webmasters what is happening on the site in real time and immediately notify them of important changes. It can also be used for distributed operations to find out how malicious hackers hacked websites in the unfortunate case of successful hackers. In wceu 2018 held in Paris, Jean galea of Robert and WP markets, vova Feldman of freemius and Kobe Ben Itamar. What is the biggest threat to WordPress security and why? The biggest threat to WordPress security is the lack of knowledge and understanding required to run users and websites. WordPress has such vulnerabilities in other software, but there are also considerable vulnerabilities. As long as the vulnerability is repaired in time, everything is normal. The
WordPress is very easy to use, so in some cases, many people without computers can own websites. Everything is good and excellent, but without experience, many people will ignore the basic. Use weak credentials and old software. Kinsta posted an interesting blog post highlighting this issue with numbers. If you can introduce a security feature on the WordPress platform, what is it? I have a very modular bell framework,
Why? The WordPress ecosystem has two specific companies that I respect very much. Blogvault: I have known akshat, CEO of blogvault, for more than 5 years. He really cares about his work. Therefore, his career has the same core values as ours. They are transparent, honest, do their best, and obviously have excellent products. Yoast: these people are excellent at what they do. And that’s something to sigh about. Many enterprises are good at their own work, but few are as outstanding and leading as yoast. I was impressed by the careful care. Even the automated follow-up email sent when the plug-in was purchased was well written. I also like yogurt, because it is a company of unusual people in a company of scale. First of all, I contacted them and gave them some suggestions about blog posts. They came back to me and really cared about my plug-ins and suggestions. We also continued to talk, and even provided help for problems unrelated to business! I would like to pay tribute to them who have set foot on the land. What can be expected in the WP activity log in the coming months and years? Better word press activity login plug-in! It sounds old-fashioned, but it’s true. Our main focus is to continuously improve plug-ins. We have been doing this for more than five years. We have learned a lot about plug-ins and marketing. Now we have entered the stage of processing foundation and preparing for the next step. Learned about common problems with new plug-ins, such as performance, product design, and similar issues. We hope to support many other plug-ins and continue to expand the scope of application. In addition, integration with centralized logging systems common in enterprises is also important, as shown by snak. Now we are busy improving the integration with woocommerce. We will also publish the integration with twiio, so SMS notifications can be configured! Therefore, please continue to follow the WP activity log plug-in blog. Thank you for taking the time to answer these questions. Congratulations on building WP activity log so far, and look forward to further development in the future. If you want to contact Robert, please leave a message below or visit the WP activity log website.
