NEW YORK CITY - After acquiring Google Domains late last year after the internet giant decided to close down the service, Squarespace has seen a sharp drop-off of customers from the business in the subsequent months since the sale was completed, reports say. Back in July of 2023, Google abruptly announced that it would be ending its Google Domains service after nearly 10 years and would be selling the business and all of its assets to Squarespace, a New York-based website … [Read more...]
WordPress Offering 100-Year Domain Registration, Hosting Plan for $38,000
SAN FRANCISCO, CA – WordPress – which recently made headlines when they offered up to one million Google Domains customers free transfers to their service after the company's assets were acquired by Squarespace – announced this week a new plan where they will be selling domains with a registration length of 100 years for a one-time payment of $38,000. Known primarily for its content management system that allows users to create simple and easy-to-use … [Read more...]
44,000 Domains Have Taken Up WordPress’ Free Transfer Offer from Google Domains
SAN FRANCISCO, CA - After previously announcing on August 1st that they would be offering free domain transfers for current Google Domains clients following the sale of the company's assets to Squarespace for $180 million, WordPress creator Matt Mullenweg announced that 44,000 customers have taken him up on his offer so far, with many more expected to cross over as well in the near future. Customers of Google Domains – which sold off its assets in June, including … [Read more...]
WordPress Offering 1 Million Google Users Opportunity to Transfer Domains Free
SAN FRANCISCO, CA - One month after Squarespace entered into a deal to purchase Google Domains – which encompasses all of it’s assets, including approximately 10 million domains that are owned by millions of customers – web content management company WordPress has announced they would be offering former Google users free domain transfers for the first million domains that choose to move to their platform for a limited time. Currently, Google Domains customers … [Read more...]
Critical Vulnerability Exposes over 700,000 Sites Using WP Divi, Extra, and Divi Builder
WEST PALM BEACH, FL - This morning, the Wordfence Threat Intelligence Team published details about a critical vulnerability discovered in two themes by Elegant Themes, Divi and Extra, as well as the Divi Builder plugin. Combined, these products are installed on an estimated 700,000 sites. Elegant Themes provides some of the most popular WordPress themes in the world and includes a visual page builder. We initially reached out to Elegant Themes on July 23, 2020 and, … [Read more...]
It’s Only A Matter of Time Until You Need to Be Licensed to Operate A Web Server
PALM BEACH, FL – I have been thinking about this off and on for a few years now, but I have never really posted or written about it. That is because it is an awful prediction that I hate the idea of, but I think it is going to eventually happen. Here it goes…. I predict that to operate a web server sometime in the near future, you will be required to have a license, or have passed a basic course in IT security or Cybersecurity intrusion mitigation. Not at the single site … [Read more...]
WordPress Vulnerability for Sites Running WooCommerce with “Shop Manager” Role
NEW YORK, NY – If you're running a WordPress website and are utilizing the popular WooCommerce plugin, a shopping cart used by roughly four-million sites, there is a new vulnerability which requires that your WooCommerce plugin be up to date, or users marked as “Shop Managers” could hijack your site and virtually wipe out all data by compromising your administrator account. This new vulnerability was first reported to WordPress and WooCommerce in August when it was … [Read more...]
Big Deal: Another Popular WordPress Plugin Purchased by Nefarious User
NEW YORK - A few months ago in September, I wrote about a plugin (Display Widgets Plugin) which was sold to someone who used it to compromise over 200,000 websites as that’s about how many installs it had and sites it targeted with compromising intentions. Well, it was a big deal then and it’s an even bigger deal now because it has come to light that this same tactic of acquisition has been used yet again, with (Captcha Plugin) to compromise 300,000 sites. According to … [Read more...]
List of 424 New gTLD Domain Names Which Changed Hands This Year (NameBio)
NEW YORK, NY - I hate to sound like I am complaining, because no-one asked me to look into this, but I am pretty confident I just inspected the longest list of broken, junk, parked, meaningless web sites I've seen in a single sitting. Long, grueling, and very unrewarding we'll call it - as I've learned not much more than I already suspected before, which is that most of these new gTLD domains seem like hypothetical, wishful-thinking lotto tickets that will likely be bets (or … [Read more...]
New Threat to WordPress Sites Designed to Bypass All Ordinary Security Measures
NEW YORK, NY - It seems like a new security threat is born each day; maybe that is because there is. For those who operate WordPress sites, including myself, there is a new threat to consider that is designed to bypass ordinary security measures; a simple back door, you have already left wide-open, by choice. WordPress Plugins are great additions to any WordPress site as they create all sorts of easy plug-and-play options and make often complicated features simple to … [Read more...]
Best Thing Domain Owner, Investor Can Learn Is “Website Development”
NEW YORK, NY - There are a lot of good courses and books out there that will teach you how to buy, sell and/or choose the right domain names to invest in, or how to choose names which have great resale value or those domain names which will stand the test of time, as far as valuation, but one of the greatest things a domain investor or enthusiast can learn is domain name development. The ability to build your own domain name into a full-fledged website could very well be … [Read more...]
No More Procrastinating on Two Factor Authenticating Protect Your Domains
There is one thing that can come between you and your business regardless of whom you are and how safe you feel your security procedures might be and that’s theft – especially in the domain business. There is a lot that can go wrong in the Internet business as it is, but likely nothing would be as bad as someone stealing your entire Internet address. Poof, all the sudden your entire business is gone. In a brick-and-motor business, it’s not likely that someone will come along … [Read more...]
NamesCon 2017 Takes Place in Las Vegas, Jan 22 – 25, 2017; Be There or Be, ‘Square’
In just over two weeks the largest domain name conference in the World will take place in Las Vegas, Nevada, from January 22 to January 25. Over 1,400 guests are expected to visit the Tropicana Las Vegas on the south end of the Las Vegas Strip, specifically for NamesCon. The hotel has a 50,000-square-foot casino for night time fun and more than 72,000 square feet of meeting and exhibition space which the event will take great advantage of. Most everyone, who has anything to … [Read more...]