Authy for WordPress v0.3

Development of my Authy for WordPress plugin continues with today’s release of version 0.3. There are two notable improvements contained in the latest revision.

First, administrators now have control over what role a user must have to enable two-factor authentication on his/her account. Subscribers don’t need Authy? Not a problem. Running out of API requests each month? Ensure that only those user roles with access to sensitive aspects of WordPress are protected by Authy.

Second, API keys can now be set in a site’s wp-config.php file. Intended for WordPress Multisite users who network-activate the plugin, this enhancement eliminates the need to set API keys for every site on the network.

In addition to these changes, a number of improvements to the plugin’s interactions with the Authy service are included in this release.

The latest version of Authy for WordPress can be downloaded at http://wordpress.org/plugins/authy-for-wp/ or installed/updated via the WordPress dashboard.

Authy for WordPress v0.2

Should only those users with smartphones benefit from two-factor authentication? Authy didn’t think so, so they let users receive their tokens via a text message.

Tonight I’ve updated the Authy for WordPress plugin to support SMS-based tokens. Upgrade to version 0.2 to take advantage of this feature.

No additional plugin configuration is necessary, but Authy does ask that you have at least their free Starter plan to use this feature.

Authy for WordPress can be downloaded at http://wordpress.org/plugins/authy-for-wp/ or installed/updated via the WordPress dashboard.

Authy for WordPress? Jetpack Photon for NextGEN Gallery?

I’ve been busy this week writing some new plugins.

First, I released Jetpack Photon for NextGEN Gallery, which extends the WordPress.com CDN capabilities in Jetpack to galleries built with the NextGEN Gallery plugin. I built this one after building Jetpack’s Photon module and noticing that NextGEN Gallery images weren’t benefitting from the Photon CDN.

Then, I enabled two-factor authentication on my CloudFlare account. CloudFlare uses a hosted service, Authy, rather than a local codebase, to handle the verification process using an installed app and a hosted API. Surprisingly, there wasn’t a WordPress plugin that integrated the service, but there is now: Authy for WordPress. It’s in use on this site, in fact.

Both plugins are available in the WordPress.org plugin repository. Development can be found at http://github.com/ethitter/Authy-for-WP and http://github.com/ethitter/jetpack-photon-for-nextgen, respectively.

Video killed the radio star, and Facebook killed the Share button

On July 17, 2012, Facebook completely dropped support for the Share button. As a result, my Simple Facebook Share Button plugin no longer serves any purpose. I removed its functionality in version 2.1 and strongly suggest deactivating and deleting the plugin.

Thanks to everyone who downloaded it over the years. It’s been a good run (87,461 downloads as of today), but it’s time to move over to the Like button.