What Can WordPress Agencies Learn from the Crowdstrike Meltdown?
Unless you’ve been in a cave (or maybe on a nice beach 🏝️), you’re keenly aware of the global IT meltdown that happened on June 19.
An errant update from cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike wreaked havoc on Windows computers around the world, bringing airlines, hospitals, banks, transportation systems, news organizations, and other critical services to their knees.
A week later, some companies (like Delta Airlines) are still struggling to recover.
Aside from switching to Mac (sorry, too soon?), what can we as WordPress Agency Owners learn from the Crowdstrike fiasco?
Check our own systems.Matt Mullenweg reflected on the Make WordPress blog that the disaster “is a good opportunity for us to brainstorm and review our defense in depth around updates… It’s our ethical duty as engineers to make sure these systems fail gracefully when something goes wrong, because it’s guaranteed that it will at some point.”
Communicate with empathy. Crowdstrike has been criticized for, among many other things, being factual but without empathy in their initial communications. Later statements were better.
Offer meaningful compensation. Crowdstrike attempted to placate affected customers with a $10 Uber Eats voucher. Many felt this was laughingly insufficient, and many of the vouches failed when used. A token gesture can sometimes make things worse rather than better.
Google Makes a U-Turn on Third-Party Cookies
Google has surprisingly (?) reversed its decision to phase out third-party cookies in the Chrome browser.
Instead, they have opted for a more advertiser-friendly approach while still providing privacy options that allow users to make choices.
This decision follows feedback from developers, publishers, regulators, and the advertising industry.
Chrome default settings will likely continue to allow third-party cookies for most users.
This move represents a significant shift from the 2020 announcement to eliminate cookies within a few years.
Regulators had expressed concerns about potential unfair advantage for Google over competitors, but exact details of new privacy options in the Chrome browser not yet revealed.
Comprehensive guides to new and existing features, best practices, and tutorials will be produced to empower developers to focus on extensibility, block development, and theme customization.
Blocks are the future of WooCommerce, and developers are encouraged to move away from shortcodes and legacy APIs.
The WooCommerce REST API will be improved with a focus on backward compatibility.
Other areas targeted for improvement include product management, order fulfillment, and the checkout experience.
This Webflow user experienced a 32x price increase overnight ($468/yr to $15,000) and they gave him one week to pay up or move out. Yikes! Read the Tweet here.
