Episode 674 Why I Built My Own Plugins With Ryan Waterbury
Show Highlights
In this edition of Agency Chat, host Rob Cairns is joined by Ryan Waterbury (One Dog Solutions) to discuss the real-world realities of WordPress security, performance, and why Ryan decided to build custom plugins for his agency. They dive into the overhead of heavy security plugins, moving protection to the server level, implementing Google Fraud Defense, and why daily web care maintenance is no longer optional.
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Show Notes
Key Takeaways & Discussion Points
- The Security Plugin Dilemma: Why traditional, bloated security plugins can slow sites down and how running firewalls at the server level (like OpenLiteSpeed / 8G Firewall) offers leaner, faster protection.
- Why Build Custom Plugins? Ryan breaks down his motivation for creating lightweight solutions like Simple Performance for WordPress to eliminate redundant code, manage REST API access, and streamline site hardening without feature bloat.
- Google Fraud Defense & reCAPTCHA v3: How integrating modern bot/fraud detection helps stop credential stuffing, form spam, and unauthorized account access beyond basic form fields.
- Non-Negotiable 2FA: Why Two-Factor Authentication must be implemented across all business and client sites to prevent compromise from leaked credentials.
- Moving Security Upstream: Taking advantage of network-level firewalls, proxy services (like QUIC.cloud), and server-level rules to handle malicious traffic before it ever hits PHP.
- The Reality of Daily Web Care: Why site updates, backups (both server-level and offsite), and active monitoring must be done daily—not weekly or monthly—in today’s threat landscape.
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