tech tools

New WordPress plugins and themes are released constantly. As I was looking at different layout ideas for a new site I realized I was using a time-saving tool some people might not know about.

To tell me quickly what WordPress theme and WordPress plugins a site is using I use Themestats. Even before you look at the source code you can look under the hood. I know there are lots of ways to do this but I’ve found this to be fast and painless for me.

I’ve discovered plugins I didn’t even know about this way. If you’re like me you tend to have the same several plugins that you use as a baseline for all your sites. I get it, but I know there are a ton of other plugins that would be appropriate for some of my sites.

But who has time to go exploring?

This is a better way to discover new plugins because seeing functionality or a look that interests you is exactly the time when you should dig into whatever is creating that feature, a theme or plugin, and if it’s a plugin it could be a big help potentially over many of your sites and clients’ sites, from now on.

Just as an example, I never knew till today that there is a WP plugin–Right Click Images Plugin–that disables the right mouse button clicks that would enable a user to easily save an image to his hard drive. Handy, and it took me seconds to dig in to find it.

Usually it’s clear simply from the list of plugins that Themestats gives you which plugin is responsible for the feature you’re interested in.

And though I’m more inclined to add a new plugin than buy a new theme, it’s good to discover nice new themes this way too.

Along with rants about Internet marketing I try to regularly include pointer posts to tools and utilities that have made my life easier, if not changed it entirely. Today’s humble pointer falls closer to ‘life changer’ than it does ‘makes life easier’ and actually I’m not kidding about that.

Earlier today I was looking at Typeform to explore whether it can help me to put together some fast and simple lead-gen pages and quizzes for other email lists and websites I have. (Yes btw Typeform, if you haven’t played with it or used it–it’s another great tool with a generous free tier but I’ll resist going any further about it today!)

Anyway after a few a few seconds I decided Typeform was getting my email and we would get this party started. Then I did what I always do in these situations: I headed to the browser tab where I keep Lastpass(not an affiliate link) open at all times and typed in ‘Typ’ and within a second determined two things.

First, that I had already signed up for Typeform–who knows why and who knows when–and my login details were right there already in the form, filled out by Lastpass. The second thing I learned—affirmed existing suspicions really—was that when the AI comes I will be no damn match for it as even something as simple as Lastpass far outpaces my own memory, not just for the username and unique password that I’ve used to sign up for everything in the last 5+ years, but also even that I signed up for a given web site/service/etc. at all!

I know when I’m beaten.

Anyway, Lastpass is still working with me, not against me; i.e. it hasn’t sent any Terminators back from the future yet or anything, as far as I know.

If you haven’t used a password manager yet, can you just do it? Why? Because I said so, OK? Just trust me. I don’t ask for much. You can always stop using it if for some reason you end up thinking it’s a bad thing (which you will not).

The thing that will astound you when you do hook it up isn’t just that from then on you’ll have a way to generate unique 20-character passwords with numbers and symbols, and get usernames and the generated passwords saved automatically in your Lastpass account.

The thing that makes Lastpass SUPERNOVA is the ‘Inbox Importer’. This is Lastpass’ description of it:

Inbox Importer is a fast and hassle-free way to get started with LastPass and add all of your passwords and logins to your new vault. In just a few clicks, Inbox Importer scans your email inbox for existing accounts, resets and generates new passwords, and uploads them to your vault for convenient, secure access whenever you need to login to a website or app.

There is no way that you’d want to manually enter in un/pw combos for all your old accounts, going back years and years. Lastpass does that for you, even as I say the ones you don’t remember signing up for. I’d be very surprised if when I did this if it brought over fewer than 1000 sites with Login URL, username and password combinations. Are you kidding me?

OK right, maybe you have reservations about letting LP crawl your email looking for all the old login info. I understand, I really do. I know that the fact that I’ve had LP for at least 6 or 7 years now with no problems might not convince you, but I‘ll just throw it out there.

Remember that there is a time cost to trying to add hundreds or thousands of your old passwords to Lastpass. And if you have to do manually let’s face it: you won’t do it. That means you’ll stay with your current insecure passwords for your existing accounts. That defeats that whole purpose of this.

As you’d expect there are other features that I haven’t even gone into here, like giving you a secure pace to store sensitive info like credit card info, etc.

I use the browser extensions on my computers and spend a lot of time inside the Lastpass browser on iPhone.

Any downsides? Here’s one: for some sites on iOS anyway, the username and password are not automatically filled in. I’m not sure why. In this case I have to go back to my Lastpass vault and copy first my username and paste it into the username field on the site, then do the same for the password. Is it a hassle? Yep. But this happens with just a few sites and in the larger scheme of things I don’t find it to be a big deal.

In closing it goes without saying that password managers are more secure than the way 98% of us are currently managing our passwords. Admit it, your ‘system’ has to be straightforward enough not to confuse you and I’ll bet you still have multiple tries for passwords for old accounts, most likely on a daily basis. I’ll admit it: I sure did!

But no more.

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