WordPress Upgrade Service Contract

WordPress is an ever evolving system with new and updated functionality being added on a  regular basis. While it’s not strictly necessary to constantly keep your core WordPress installation and additional plugins up to date, it’s advisable to do so. Here are the benefits:

  • Keep your version of WordPress Secure,
  • Overwrite potentially corrupt or attacked files in old installs,
  • Benefit from newly added Functionality,
  • Speed up your site,
  • Benefit from plugin improvments.

The latest versions of WordPress include the ability to quickly update itself and related plugins from the admin but in my experience, this doesn’t always work smoothly. Some Hosting servers can’t handle the auto upgrade functionality at all and if upgrading breaks half way through and the process doesn’t complete, you can be left with a badly broken site.

Also, plugin versions and WordPress versions sometimes need to match and you might find that if you upgrade one, it breaks the other. The cost of having your site fixed by a web developer might be much more expensive than just preventing the problem in the first place.

My Yearly *Wordpress Service contract at just €50 per year includes the following:

  • Twice yearly upgrade of the core WordPress system,
  • Regular upgrading of installed Plugins,
  • Compatability Testing on all upgrades.

Order a service contract now.

* I say ‘contract’ but there’s no actual contract or signing of anything so you’re not tied in!

Leon

Aviva Gladiator

No idea why but I just wanted to do a photo composition where one element is totally out of place in another. A Gladiator in the Aviva stadium seemed appropriate!

Assets:

A hi-res, pitch level shot of the Aviva stadium Dublin, bathed in sunshine. Sourced from Google Images.

Aviva Stadium

A decent, full length pic of a Gladiator looking a little confused! Sourced from sxc.hu.

Confused Gladiator

The Process:

After cutting the Gladiator out of his background with the Pen tool, I spent quite a bit of time finding the best position and size for him in the Aviva photo so it looked like he was really there on the pitch. After finding his spot and tidying up his edges and hair with a brush & mask, I created his shadow by duplicating his layer, warping with the Transform tool and adding a Gaussian Blur then making the shadow layer slightly transparent to match the stadium roof shadow.

Next, I planted Mr Gladiator firmly on the ground by hand drawing in shadows under his feet with a soft black brush. Some more shadows next. Since I put him standing under the shadow of the stadium roof, I needed to add some roof shadows onto him directly so again, using the brush, I painted on shadows, matching the lines of the stadium shadow, then made them a bit transparent to look more natural.

Finally, I added a Photo Filter Adjustment layer, just on the Gladiator and used a sampled green color from the pitch just to match him into the color scheme a bit better.

The final result with caption:

Wrong Time, Wrong Place

Leon

Show Product Dimensions in WooCommerce

For some strange reason the WooCommerce WordPress e-commerce plugin has options in the product admin to add a product’s Weight and Dimensions but then doesn’t show these values on the front end like some might expect. Not 100% sure if it’s a theme clash or WooCommerce bug/oversight but WooCommerce told me there’s a workaround involving product attributes. I couldn’t get this working however.

Here’s what does work though. To show product dimensions on archive pages, add the following code to your theme’s functions.php file or in a new wordpress plugin:

[php]add_action( ‘woocommerce_after_shop_loop_item_title’, ‘cj_show_dimensions’, 9 );

function cj_show_dimensions() {
global $product;
$dimensions = $product->get_dimensions();

if ( ! empty( $dimensions ) ) {
echo ‘<span class="dimensions">’ . $dimensions . ‘</span>’;
}
}[/php]

You can change the “get_dimensions” to “get_weight” if you want to show a products weight instead or additionally in a new function.

NOTE: The above code will show dimensions on archive pages like Categories, Recently Added Products, etc. If you want to show it on single product details pages, there are other WooCommerce hooks but the ones I tried wouldn’t work with my theme. If you don’t mind editing your theme files directly, adding something like this to the template file that shows the individual products, something like ‘single-product.php’, should work too:

[php]
<div class="dimensions">
<strong>Dimensions</strong>: <!–?php echo $_product—>get_dimensions(); ?>
</div>
[/php]

Don’t forget to add a .dimensions class to your theme’s css file to style the results if required.

Take Advantage of Content Scraping

Firstly, a definition of “Content Scraping”. My own:

Content Scraping is the process whereby your website content is copied, usually via RSS feed pulling, and re-published at another URL, usually for financial gain.

Secondly, an admission. I currently engage in some content scraping myself but completely for the right reasons, ie – local resource creation and with no ads plastered all over the place. I also provide credit and back links to the original sites.

So what’s the best way to deal with scrapers who steal your content for all the wrong reasons? Most would say, search for exact copies of your content or post titles in Google to find scraped articles then contact the site owner to have it removed. There are technical ways you can block scrapers too but my favourite idea is to use the scrapers for your own benefit. Here’s how.

Internal Linking

While writing posts, simply include a few ‘key worded’ links to other pages on your own site. When your content is scraped, so too will be the internal links so the scraping site will automatically give you some great key word back links and real readers will be pushed back to your site too. SEO benefits all around!

Affiliate  Links

If you are an affiliate marketer, add some affiliate links in your post content and if those links are clicked on the scraping site, you’ll earn dosh!

RSS Manipulation

Since your RSS feed is probably the means by which your content is scraped, why not edit your feed layout to include links back to your site or include affiliate or ad banners? This is easy to do if you use the WordPress SEO plugin.

Leon

TP For Your Bunghole?

My Beavis/Cornholio, T-shirt over the head, “TP for my bunghole” impersonation is legendary at this stage so I thought I’d create a jar of virtual “TP Cream” in Photoshop for the crack (pardon the pun). I started out with the following assets:

  1. A nice Hi-res jar of cream image from sxc.hu,
  2. A decent head shot of the man himself “Beavis” from Google images,
  3. Photoshop CS6.

I cut the original jar image below out of it’s background just so I could create my own jar reflections, shadows and background colour:

tp-before

Next I used the Pen tool to draw the shape of a jar label and the star shape around Beavis’s head both of which I added an orange stroke effect to. I cut Beavis out of his background image and pasted him onto the label then used the Transform tool to get his size and perspective right’ish. I dragged in Beavis again and manoeuvred him on to the jar lid with the Transform tool again then set his layer to Overlay to make him fit in better.

Next I drew a path with the Pen tool that followed the shape of the label and added “TP For Your Bunghole” along it. I used the dreaded Comic Sans font but it seemed appropriate for this job!?

Finally, I added a bit of manual darkening over the right side of the added graphics using a very opaque and soft black brush, just to mirror the jar darkness on that side. I also used the colour replacement tool to make the cream inside the jar a little less pinky and more browny/orangey to match the colour scheme and topic!

Here’s the final effort:

TP for your Bunghole

 

Leon.

PS – this cream is fictitious, I’m not selling any before you ask!

 

Warped GPO

I spotted a photo of a crooked building on Facebook that looked like it had been through the Photoshop wringer but incredibly, it hadn’t. The shopping center below actually exists in Sopot, Poland!

Crooked House

So having been positive, the house was ‘liquified’ in Photoshop, then finding out it hadn’t been, I thought I’d try liquify a building or 2 of my own. The GPO sounded like a good idea! It was just a quickie using the Photoshop – Liquify filter then messing around with different sizes of the Smudge, Bloat & Pucker tools. Not nearly as impressive as the real thing though right!?

GPO Before
GPO Before
GPO After
GPO After

Leon

How To Add an SPF Record in Cpanel

Spent quite a bit of time Googling around for an answer to this but couldn’t find an article that described it properly anywhere. I was having a bit of trouble with “undelivered mail” email spam, ie – people were using my domain to send spam emails to other people but the emails were bouncing back to me when no inbox was found. Adding an SPF record to your domain tells other email clients that your domain is a little bit more trustworthy and can also help avoid your legitimate emails going into other people’s spam.

I Googled how to setup an SPF record manually in WHM but found conflicting results on the correct syntax to use but then I realised that there’s an actual automated tool inside Cpanel! If you go to “Email Authentication” under “Mail” in your site’s Cpanel (see below) and “Enable” SPF, you can then customise it slightly for your situation and the resulting SPF record will be added automatically to your DNS zone:

Email Authentication

Once SPF is enabled, it will add automatic rules to your record based on your sending server IP address but you can add server/domain details for other servers which might send email from your domain. For example I use Google Apps email and have switched all my email to them from my own domain via DNS. The screenshot below shows the “Incude” setup for me:

Include

Finally, here’s my full SPF record, added automatically to my DNS zone via the above process:

[php]reverbstudios.ie. 14400 IN TXT "v=spf1 +a +mx +ip4:212.126.36.48 +include:_spf.google.com +include:reverbstudios.ie ~all"[/php]

You can test your new SPF record HERE once the DNS change has propogated.

Leon

3 Broadband Data Usage Stats

Despite living and working in Leitrim, I’ve had proper broadband now for about 4 years, either via landline/Eircom or (currently) 3 Mobile Broadband under the National Broadband  Scheme but this week is the first time I’ve ever gone over my monthly data allowance. I only found out when I was unceremoniously and without any warning kicked offline by 3 in the middle of a working day. But only after they let me go over the 25GB limit to the tune of €40!

It’s all prompted me to check out my data usage in more detail and try get some feedback from other users similar to me to see what the average monthly usage might be so I can sign up to the right package.

I guess it’s kinda surprising that I didn’t go over it before now because I’m a Web Designer and I’m online all day. Here’s some of the typical things I do online on a day to day basis:

  • Download/Upload smallish files related to web design,
  • Browse the Internet heavily,
  • Use Email heavily,
  • Use social media apps on the PC & Phone,
  • Watch the odd youTube video,
  • Download the odd video or piece of software,
  • Make a few Skype calls a week,
  • Stream music while having food.

That’s about it. Wouldn’t have thought it was too heavy even for an IT person?

Anyway, I’ve knocked together a spreadsheet below with data taken from the itemised bill for the month in which I went over the limit. It shows the average daily usage, the highest day, lowest day and highlights weekend usage when I’m not at the pc but still on the smart phone a bit.

Feel free to download it and put your own figures in to find your own usage pattern.

Broadband Stats

PS – I’ve asked 3 if I can be switched from the National Broadband Scheme to one with a higher monthly data limit as the NBS can’t be raised from 25GB and I’m waiting to be switched to the ‘3 Broadband Pro’ offering which has a 60GB pm limit and is about €30 pm. Not sure why I wasn’t told about this initially. Seems country folk only get the piss poor service?

Leon

Eventbrite Review – Online Event Registration & Ticket Sales

If you are a business or organisation that organises Events and would like to take registrations or sell tickets for events, then you could do worse than use Eventbrite.ie. It has pretty much been the worldwide market leader for online event registration and ticket sales now for a number of years and they now have an Irish site!

Stand out Features:

I’ve used Eventbrite one or twice as a booking engine for client sites thanks to it’s widgetised code which can be pasted on any site. Here’s some features which stood out for me though.

  • FREE to use (unless you take payments),
  • Take ticket payments via Credit Card, Paypal or ‘at the door’,
  • Show the Eventbrite booking system on your own site or a customised page,
  • Send attendees pro, bar coded tickets they can print off and bring,
  • Easy event promotion,
  • Social Media Integration,
  • Save attendees email addresses for mailshots,
  • Auto Name badges and attendee lists,
  • Multiple ticket types,
  • Personalised event links/URL’s,
  • iPhone and Android apps,
  • Add Google Analytics to Event Pages.

Here is a full feature list:

  • FREE Event creation,
  • Professional Ticketing,
  • Event Pages,
  • Event Reports,
  • Sell from your own site,
  • Events Widgets,
  • FREE event promotion,
  • Save email lists,
  • Send customised email marketing,
  • MailChimp Integration,
  • Event tracking links,
  • Accept Donations,
  • Absorb paid ticket processing fees or pass on to customer,
  • Manage reoccurring events,
  • Wait lists.

Here’s a screenshot of the Create Event process so you can get a feel for how simply it all works.

Signup for FREE at Eventbrite.ie today!

Create Event