How To Replace the Screen and LCD on a Samsung Galaxy S3

My wife’s Galaxy S3 got dropped a couple of times and the outer screen glass was badly cracked but the phone still worked fine. We got a few quotes to fix it locally, all well over €100 so I wondered about the possibility of fixing it myself cheaply seeing as I used to work in mobile repair & electronics centers. I got hold of a replacement glass screen for about €10 on eBay and sourced a few YouTube videos outlining the replacement process. Seemingly you could use a hairdryer to loosen the glue under the glass and it would peel off easily, HOWEVER, this is not what happened when I finally got around to trying it!

As I was heating up the glass and trying to prise it off with the tools provided in the replacement glass kit, the LCD underneath also came up and cracked into hundreds of different pieces rendering the phone useless and getting me into a spot of bother with the Mrs! My advice is to avoid trying this yourself as I doubt it’s possible to remove the glass without breaking the LCD unless you are a full repair center with proper equipment etc.

The phone after I finished trying to remove the outer glass with a hairdryer!

samsung1

I ended up having to buy a full LCD/Glass replacement part and managed to source one for €90 (RRP is about €130) off a guy on Adverts.ie. Here is the process involved in fitting it. Not too difficult if you like taking things apart and have ever messed with electronics:

Tools Required:

  1. Small Magnetic Phillips Screwdriver,
  2. Plastic lever – A guitar pick worked well for me,
  3. A metallic knife or blade to remove LCD,
  4. A Hairdryer to soften adhesive.

Step 1:

Remove Battery, SIM & Memory Card and loosen the screws holding the main protective back cover (in red). Both back cover parts need to be gently prised off after screws are removed as they are held in place with compression:

samsung2

Step 2:

Remove the remaining back cover around the speaker and camera (in red):

samsung3

Step 3:

Remove the Circuit Board connections show below. Use a plastic lever and be gentle! Lift off the circuit board when connections are free:

samsung4

Step 4:

Flip the phone over and remove the entire LCD from the area shown in red and as much of the adhesive residue as possible so that the new LCD can fit in comfortably. This is hard work and very messy. A hair dryer to loosen the adhesive and goggles to protect your eyes from shards of glass is recommended:

samsung5

Step 5:

Fit the new Screen/LCD assembly by passing the LCD Connector Ribbon through the slot in the casing (see pic above) and put the phone back together temporarily (minus screws) to test the new LCD. If all is well, disassemble once again and remove the green adhesive backing from the new LCD and fit in it’s place permanently:

samsung6

Step 6:

Reassemble the phone by reversing the above processes making sure everything fits snugly paying special attention to the circuit board connectors making sure they are fully engaged.

Here’s how the final phone looks with a new pink case added for good measure. A far cry from the first pic!? Marriage possibly saved..

samsung7

Leon

Pay for Reverb Studios Services Via STRIPE

Stripe, the new’ish, Irish Credit Card payment processor has recently gone live in Ireland and has today been added to my invoicing system Zoho for clients to use. You will now have a choice of whether to pay using a credit card via Paypal or Stripe on checkout. Simply click the “Pay Now” link in my invoice email and you’ll see the following screen:

Stripe

To pay with Stripe choose the “Credit Card Payment” option as above then click “Proceed”. You will then see this:

Stripe

All fields in the credit card form need to be filled in so if you don’t have a Zip/Postal Code then just put in something like n/a. Click “Pay” then you’re done!

Stripe also has a virtual terminal of sorts which allows me to take manual credit card payments over the phone etc if clients would prefer that..

Leon

Plugin and Theme Fault Finding in WordPress

Just a quick tip or 2 to help troubleshoot faulty WordPress plugins and themes. If you have a major WordPress issue it’s usually always the fault of rogue plugins or themes and if you contact your hosting company or Google around for advice you’ll see a lot of people say deactivate and reactivate each plugin in turn to find the culprit. With around 50 plugins in my own site, that would take forever.

Tip 1 (Plugins):

If you have access to FTP or a hosting File Manager for your site go into the remote “wp-content” folder and change the name of the “Plugins” folder to “Plugins2” or similar. This will quickly deactivate ALL plugins and tell you whether your issue is with plugins at all or not. Reload the site with the plugins folder renamed and see if the issue persists. If it does then it’s not a plugin issue so go back and rename the plugins folder properly and the site will be as was.

If the issue is fixed then one of your plugins is acting up. Rather than go through them one by one, take groups of about 3 or 4 plugins and deactivate/reactivate them.

Tip 2 (Themes):

If the above doesn’t fix your issue then the problem might be with your theme. Try switching theme’s temporarily and switch to a well known and stable theme like WordPress’s own “Twenty Twelve”. The first thing I always do when it’s obvious the theme is at fault is go into the theme’s “Functions.php” file and make sure there’s no white space at the start or end of the files php code. After that I might go and see if there’s an updated version of the theme available.

Tip 3 (Error Reporting & Debugging):

If nothing else works you can try a bit of debugging by turning on WordPress’s own error reporting tool. You add the following line in the “wp-config.php” file in WordPress’s root directory:

define(‘WP_DEBUG’, true);

You can also enable php error reporting in your site’s root “.htaccess” file with the below code which puts the errors in a log file on your site rather than show them to the public:

php_flag log_errors on
php_value error_log /home/path/public_html/www.YourWebAddress.ie/PHP_errors.log

Leon

20% Discount On All Design Services!

To celebrate…well nothing in particular really…summer and good weather maybe, I’d like to offer a 20% discount on all invoices for new design services ordered from now until August 10th 2013.

Simply add the coupon code below on either my Contact Form or my Paypal Payment page*:

SUMMER13

*Your payment amount will automatically be reduced by 20% before hitting Paypal on my payment page or I will discount your quote manually if entered via my contact form. The discount is limited to the first 10 clients only.

My standard prices are available HERE.

Please spread the word!

Leon

Hootsuite Social Media Manager Review

I think I’ve tried most social media apps for phone and desktop at this stage and was happily using one particular one for ages when it suddenly dropped support for Facebook so off I went to look for another one. My requirements were simple enough. I needed to be able to update multiple social networks and profiles at once, mainly the different Twitter and Facebook profiles I manage. I needed a desktop or browser plugin version and I needed it to run without bugs, be intuitive and easy to use and be free. After a long enough search I settled on Hootsuite. Here’s my review.

Hootsuite Features:

  • Multiple Social Network Management,
  • Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Google+, Foursquare, WordPress,
  • Social Profile Analytics,
  • Scheduled Posts,
  • Update multiple social networks at once,
  • Teams and In-Company Communication (Pro only),
  • Pull in and re-post RSS feeds,
  • URL shortening,
  • iOS & Android apps,
  • Browser apps/plugins (Chrome & Firefox).

You can add 5 different *social profiles in the Free version which will probably be enough for most people but I’ve upgraded to the PRO version at about €7.70 per month to get 50 social profiles and extra reporting/analytics features.

* A social profile includes for example 1 Twitter account or 1 Facebook page OR personal profile etc.. A single Facebook account with personal profile and multiple pages does not count as just 1 profile.

Standout Features for me:

  • Nice layout,
  • Easy addition of new Tabs and Streams,
  • Posting to multiple networks simultaneously,
  • Android app syncing,
  • Analytics,
  • Track brand/keyword mentions,
  • Hootlet (Chrome plugin that lets you share a url you’re on via Hootsuite).

Here’s how my Hootsuite desktop app looks:

Hootsuite

Sign up for a free trial of Hootsuite Pro and check it out..

Bartering and Service Swapping: Swap Your Service/Product for Web & Graphic Design!?

Quite regularly over the last few years I’ve done work for people in exchange for services or goods and was happy to do so. While good hard cash is always nice and a bit necessary to pay bills etc, swapping services can sometimes get me and my clients out of a hole. To date I’ve done Web and Graphic design work in exchange for Teeth Whitening, Legal Services, Tax & Accounting, Surveying, Cakes, Gadgets, a few Pints, Vet visits  and sometimes just for a shout out or recommendation on the likes of Facebook or Twitter!

At the min I’m open to swapping for the following services/products, mostly house related as there’s a lot of stuff needs doing in our new house:

  • Wooden Decking,
  • Paving,
  • Gravel,
  • Building,
  • Woodworking,
  • Outdoor Roofing,
  • Cleaning,
  • Stoves,

Feel free to suggest your service or product and I’ll see if I need it!

Leon

My Week as @Ireland Curator: Tips on Tweeting for Ireland

I’d been following the @Ireland account on Twitter for some time and in the back of my egotistical mind had the idea that I’d like to try curate it for a week and be the “voice of Ireland”. I’d seen a lot of curators talk about the same kinda ‘high-brow’ stuff and I fancied the idea of stirring things up a little and making it a bit cooler and a bit more ‘down to earth’. I had always assumed they just randomly asked/picked people for the job so when I found out there was an actual application process, I thought what the heck, I’ll give it a bash.

My pitch to them was that I wanted to talk about “Ireland’s secret county” Leitrim among other things. A good idea I thought and one which might give me a good chance of getting the gig. Still, I was a little surprised but delighted to be given the account in the end considering their curator picking criteria requires people they think have an interesting set of tweets and a good presence online. Always nice to be thought of as interesting!? I set about doing some research, asking the bosses what was allowed & what wasn’t and planning my topics for the week.

@ireland

It ended up going pretty much as I expected…a great shop window for Leitrim, lots of replies to deal with, some great discussions, friendly chats, new friends, lots of trolls and attackers (none of which you’r allowed block!?) and a nice big scrap about Feminism half way through!? I knew there was a good chance I’d get into a fight during the week as I can be fairly opinionated but of all the things I could get into a fight about why and how the hell did it have to be Feminism!? That was left of field even for me.. After noticing a lot of the women replying to my general tweets seemed to have the word “Feminist” in their profile bios, I thought I’d mention that fact in a tweet and chaos ensued. It started off with me getting some polite warnings from feminists about being “dismissive” and flippant (I would say more clueless and naive!?) about feminism and after trying to back down and defend myself a bit, some bra burning, men hating, feminist troll types started attacking me personally and calling me names. It seemed that anything I said in reply was taken and used against me so I just ignored it all in the end and went to sleep.

The following morning I got a DM from the Ireland account bosses to be “Mindful of what I tweet and the language I use” which annoyed me a bit considering I hadn’t really broken any of their rules or said anything directly attacking anyone or anything? There was no help or advice from them mid argument when it would have been needed most perhaps? And no mention from them of any protection for the Ireland curator from the trolls and crazies on twitter which is something they need to address I think. Like most highly followed/trafficked twitter accounts, people will attack it for a bit of fun but it’s no fun if you’re a real person on the receiving end. There were times on there that I felt bullied.

People have asked me if your own personal twitter account gets more followers after you’ve curated Ireland and mine did a bit. Here’s some stats:

@Ireland Before: 15,257
@Ireland After: 15,361 (would have been more but I lost a few feminists!)

GAIN: 104

@ReverbStudios Before: 1,315
@ReverbStudios After: 1,340

GAIN: 25

@AboutLeitrim Before: 600
@AboutLeitrim After: 616

GAIN: 16

So some good gains in followers. All in all it was the perfect week, a bit of everything in the mix and a good experience. One which I’d recommend but read my tips below before you commit!

Tips for Ireland Curation

  • Prepare some topics beforehand,
  • Tweet as you normally would/be yourself,
  • Keep an eye on the news for topical stuff to discuss,
  • Reply to people (you’ll get lots of replies!),
  • Be personable,
  • Don’t try to change the world,
  • Don’t let it go to your head,
  • Don’t take it too seriously,
  • Engage other country accounts,
  • NB: Don’t engage with trolls/attackers,
  • Have fun,
  • Don’t talk about Feminism unless you’re a Feminist!

Here’s an archive of all my tweets during the week if you’re bored! Thursday night 13th June is where the feminism stuff happens!

@Ireland Curator – Leon Quinn

Leon

How to Target Multiple Countries Efficiently with Web Site SEO

When it comes time to think about expanding your market outside your own country you’ll need to be doing a bit of “International SEO” but it can be pretty tricky to target multiple countries at once. Probably the best way to do it would be to have a different website, web address and hosting for each country to be targeted and possibly different language translations too (auto translation wont cut it with Google!) but that’s a huge amount of work. Here’s a few quick tips on how to do it more efficiently.

Your Web Address:

Buying a few international versions of your main domain name is a must if for no other reason than to protect your ‘trademark’ so to speak. Concentrate on the large English speaking markets (if you are an English speaking business of course!) like the UK (.co.uk),  US (.com) and Australia (.au).

Your Hosting:

You should purchase hosting that has an IP address located in the country whose market you want to target foremost or the country in which your business is located. The domain TLD take precedence over the hosting IP location here so for example you can target the UK effectively with a .co.uk address while hosting in the US. Hosting IP location can be checked at Whois.sc.

Google Webmaster Tools:

Sign up for webmaster tools and add each domain name remembering to set the Geographic Target in Configuration – Settings. Google will attempt to do this for you based on the domain TLD/Extension.

301 Redirects:

So as to have only one website to maintain and market, pick a web address/country as the main site/market and redirect all other domains to this via a 301 redirect. You can then market each individual address in the respective country, ie market the .co.uk on UK located websites etc..