Speaker Spotlight: Mike Venables

Mike got involved with marketing in general and aerospace marketing in particular in 1980 and has been active in that field ever since. He has also developed and licensed GPS mapping software. His marketing activities got him involved with website development 2005. Since incorporating WordPress into his toolbox, this aspect has become increasingly significant. All client websites are now based on WordPress.

Mike is presenting: Hardening Your Website To Attacks or Making It Easier to Hack Into Someone-Else’s Website

1) Why do you like using WordPress?
It is straightforward to set up a website for a client wherever they may be. Most importantly, once the site is set up, the client can take ownership and maintain the website themselves. This makes it very easy to keep the website fresh and relevant.

2) Why did you decide to speak at WordCamp Ottawa?
I have seen many websites that have been built using the defaults leaving them exposed to hacking. I wanted to share a few tricks to harden a website against the most common attacks.

3) What is the one thing you want people to walk away with from your talk?
That it is easy to greatly enhance the security of a WordPress website.

4) What is your favourite WordPress plugin or theme? Why?
WordFence and BackWPUp as they watch my back automatically.