david246

Thank you, Joy and gmatzy, for your excellent responses. I found them kind of by accident, since this support forum did not send me notifications of your postings. Some fora send notifications instantly rather than batching them up, and I find this more useful for knowing what is going on.

I have ideas about creating my own website/app IDE, and I’ve actually done quite a bit of work toward that goal, but I’m months away from being able to create my own modern and professional-looking website, and Google is putting pressure on me to update my website to make it work better for advertising, so I’m not going to abandon my experiment with WP just yet.

The thing is, that what WP does best (serve many similar pages from a database) is just what I don’t have any need for, since there is only one product and just four services associated with that one product, but lots of static pages of explanation.

I need to find a way to go through the hundreds of themes that are available, so I can see what might work for me. I will check out Theme Forest, thanks.

Does anyone know of a free or low-cost product that handles design-each-page, full site editing? That sounds like a much better fit for my needs.

Also, I’m feeling doubtful that any plugin will provide the kind of detailed order form (looking more like a job application form) that has many specialized fields to ask about my clients’ relevant background details. I programmed my current order form in PHP to match my order input program, so I fully expect to have to do the same for my next website version, although I will need the style/appearance of the order form to match the rest of the website.

I just can’t wait six months until I develop my own ideas into working software. I need some way to update my website more quickly. Is WP that way?

That is fine, but it doesn’t go very far as the evidence shows.

I’ve written a program called wp-login.php to put on my websites (none of which run WordPress). This program keeps a record of each caller and replies with a threatening message. I hope it does something about all these malicious users who exploit the poor passwords and other security holes in WordPress.

So far, I’ve learned that most of these probers are single-use IP addresses. I have learned that some unscrupulous hosting companies have paid arrangements with regional Internet registry organizations like ARIN and RIPE to obtain as many IP addresse as they like.

While it may seem like the malicious probers are anonymous and cannot be touched, their very connections with these standard IP providers are their weak point. Programs like my wp-login.php could become honeypots to provide antivirus services with lists of malicious IP addresses which could then be traced back and put out of business quickly through their ISP, hosting, or domain name registry dependencies.

Also, perhaps someday WordPress itself might become more responsible in reducing the amount of malware that is distributed through it. There is a lot that WordPress itself could do to put the malware purveyors out of business, or just to block them from posting viruses. All it takes is the will to accomplish greatness.