What is XML-RPC and its role in WordPress blogging
From the very first days, WordPress has an inbuilt functionality which makes it possible to connect to its blogs remotely. This allows numerous apps to help you to manage your WordPress blog or, what is more importantly, your multiple blogs, quickly and easily. No need to login each time you wish to update themes or plugins, read insights or add new users, and of course when you wish to publish or schedule new posts.
Remote authentication and data transmission in WordPress is done with a help of XML-RPC. XML-RPC is a protocol that connects your blog with external applications. It uses HTTP as the transport mechanism and XML as encoding mechanism. Why is it so popular? It helps automate your blogging and saves time and efforts managing your blogs network.
But nowadays XML-RPC is increasingly mentioned in connection with security risks and vulnerability. Brute force attackers use XML-RPC to gain access to WordPress sites. A pingback feature supported by XML-RPC is also abused by intruders. That’s why you often see recommendations to deactivate XML-RPC in your WordPress blogs. And that’s why many security plugins overtly or covertly block XML-RPC functionality. Lately we started to notice many hosting providers, like Bluehost, restricting access to XML-RPC as a part of their security policies.
Use RSS Ground plugin for secure automated posting
In the last weeks, we have received many reports from our users who had problems with blog authentication in their WordPress posting campaigns. Based on our investigation, in most cases the problem was with the XML-RPC functionality that was blocked. It was blocked either by a security plugin or by a hosting provider.
We have decided to develop our own WordPress plugin which will help connect to your blog avoiding the use of XML-RPC. This plugin is secure and reliable. It will work same way as XML-RPC, and will require minimum modifications in your current posting campaigns.
Please read our tutorial on how to install our plugin in your WordPress blogs and how to tweak your running campaigns to work with it.
To avoid any failures, we recommend installing our WordPress posting plugin and tweak your campaigns to work with the plugin now, before you start experiencing problems.
Feel free to contact our support if you have any additional questions about this matter.
