Useful tips for web developers, bloggers, and WordPress users

My Most Useful WordPress Plugins (My “Cheat Sheet”)

May 2, 2019July 23, 2020 WordPress 8

These are life-saving WordPress plugins that I use on many of my clients’ and my own sites. Alright, maybe “life-saving” is a slight exaggeration,

Remove WordPress meta fields from the editor

How to Remove Taxonomy Meta Boxes from the WordPress Gutenberg Editor Sidebar

July 30, 2020July 30, 2020 WordPress 0

Here’s the situation: You’ve created some custom Taxonomies and custom Post Types using the Custom Post Type UI Plugin (or using PHP code). You’re

Oxygen vs. Divi: Which WordPress Builder Is Best?

July 23, 2020July 25, 2020 WordPress 0

Divi is one of the most popular drag-and-drop WordPress builder themes out there today. As a long time Divi user myself, I was super

Search icon in header of Oxygen Builder site

How to Add a Dynamic Search Icon to Oxygen Builder

July 3, 2020July 6, 2020 WordPress 0

I recently switched one of my blogs from Divi to the Oxygen Builder, mainly because I’d heard about how lean and fast the code

How to Block DDoS Attacks on Your XMLRPC and WP-LOGIN WordPress Files

June 20, 2020July 23, 2020 Sys Admin 0

I have a client who was having chronic server downtime on GoDaddy. A customer support rep pointed me to the Resource Usage page on

How to Set Up a WordPress Multisite on Your Local Machine with MAMP

April 26, 2020April 27, 2020 WordPress 0

My local web development tool of choice for Mac is MAMP. I’ve used it to create local WordPress sites for years. But, I had

How to Have Clean URLs with MAMP on Mac

April 26, 2020May 28, 2020 Developer 1

MAMP is my tool of choice for developing websites locally on my Mac. But, when I started using it out of the box, my

How to Make a WordPress Popup Maker Content Appear in Search Results

February 28, 2020April 4, 2020 WordPress 0

My web development clients seem to love popups. They’re always asking me to add popups to websites. But, as explained in this article, WordPress

Why I Avoid WordPress Multisite in Most Situations

November 26, 2019May 17, 2020 WordPress 1

WordPress Multisite lets you create multiple WordPress websites that all use the same set of themes and plugins. It might appear to be a

How to Speed Up Your WordPress Advanced Custom Fields Queries

November 1, 2019June 5, 2020 WordPress 0

Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) is an indispensable time-saving tool for many WordPress developers. But, when data sets become large, ACF queries can take a

The Best Spelling and Grammar Checker for WordPress Gutenberg

August 2, 2019August 2, 2019 Blogging 2

As a frequent blogger, I depend on spelling and grammar checking, especially because I’m not a very good proofreader of my own content. So,

How to Transfer Your Domain Name from Squarespace Without Downtime

July 30, 2019July 30, 2019 Developer 0

Moving a domain name from one registrar to another can be tricky, especially if it’s something you don’t do often. If the domain is

How to Refresh the Thumbnail of a Website That You Shared on Facebook

June 17, 2019September 9, 2019 Blogging 5

When you post a web page in a Facebook feed, Facebook will attempt to find the thumbnail image from your site’s metadata. If found,

Import Members into WordPress Ultimate Member from CSV File

June 11, 2019September 6, 2019 WordPress 33

The Ultimate Member plugin is a formidable package for managing membership on a WordPress site. Surprisingly, however, it does not have a built-in way

How to Have More Columns in Divi, Vertically Aligned

March 4, 2019April 4, 2019 WordPress 0

Elegant Themes already has a blog post entitled “How to Add More Columns to Your Divi Builder Posts or Pages” which shows how to

Where to Get Free Stock Photos for Your Website Legally

December 21, 2018May 20, 2020 Blogging 0

Stock photography can be expensive. And randomly grabbing licensed images from the Internet can cost you thousands of dollars if you’re found violating a

Footer not extending to bottom of browser window

How to Make Your Website Footer Extend to the Bottom of the Page

August 10, 2018January 29, 2019 Front End 6

I had a very common problem for which I could not find a good CSS solution. Namely, I wanted my website footer to extend

Problems with Creating a Fade Effect When Going Between Pages of Your Website

February 15, 2018February 3, 2020 Front End 1

I have a client who wanted pages to fade in on load and fade out when leaving. This effect also hides some of the

Fix the WordPress Divi Contact Form Error “Please refresh the page and try again”

November 21, 2017August 3, 2020 WordPress 12

On my personal site, I use the Divi Contact Form module at the bottom of the home page. It worked great on desktop but

Use WordPress as a Static Site Generator for Insane Speed, Reliability, and Security

October 27, 2017February 16, 2019 WordPress 17

WordPress is a great website platform which I use and develop on every day, but, it has its weaknesses. It requires a database that

The Best Replacement for Windows Live Mail and Thunderbird

January 7, 2017July 23, 2020 Productivity 11

In mid 2016, Microsoft announced that they were no longer going to support Windows Live Mail. This was bad news for me, because I

The Easiest Way to Make Your WordPress Divi Accordion Module Start Out Closed

August 12, 2016December 6, 2018 WordPress 21

Many people who use the WordPress Divi Accordion Module want it to start out closed by default. Every WordPress client I have who uses

Query a WordPress Custom Field Stored As an Array

July 21, 2016January 3, 2017 WordPress 0

Querying a WordPress database is pretty straightforward using WP_Query or get_posts(). However, I ran into a problem when I was trying to search for

Change Your PHP Max File Upload Size in GoDaddy Shared Linux Hosting

July 19, 2016December 7, 2018 Sys Admin 24

If you look up how to increase your PHP max file size, most sources will tell you to change the upload_max_filesize setting in your php.ini

Set Up a Background Task (“Cron Job”) in WordPress

May 12, 2016January 3, 2017 WordPress 4

Let’s say you have a page or piece of code that needs to be run regularly, say once a day, or once an hour.

Fix WordPress Ultimate Member Cover Photo Not Uploading

November 13, 2015October 24, 2017 WordPress 19

Ultimate Member is a very widely-used membership WordPress plugin. It works well, but I’ve come across a number of problems with the uploading of

See Which Pages Are Generating Your Adsense Income

September 21, 2015February 10, 2018 Blogging 0

When I first started monetizing my websites using Google Adsense I was surprised that there wasn’t an obvious way to see which pages were

Do Cross-Domain Google Analytics without the Query String in Your URL

February 26, 2015October 16, 2018 Developer 7

Let’s say you have two completely different primary domains, say, example.com, and purchase.com, and you want to track them as a single site on

Create a WordPress Multisite Network with Different Domain Names

February 23, 2015September 25, 2018 WordPress 38

I had a situation where I needed to create a WordPress Multisite network of sites with each site having completely unique domain names. I found

Map a Separate Domain Name to a WordPress Page or Post

February 8, 2015January 29, 2019 WordPress 46

I had a client who wanted to map a domain name directly to a WordPress Page, and not show the WordPress URL. For example, let’s

11 Tips to Encourage Commenting on Your Blog

January 8, 2015February 10, 2018 Blogging 5

Comments are a really important part of any blog. They give you important feedback about your work, and give you invaluable information about what

The Best Commenting System for Your Website

December 23, 2014February 20, 2019 Blogging 146

I recently decided to do a fresh survey of the most popular commenting services out there so I could use it on my highest-volume

Update Your PHP Version on Your Amazon AMI

November 28, 2014December 7, 2018 Sys Admin 19

It’s important to keep your version of PHP updated on your web server in order to get the best performance, minimize memory use, and

How to Fix WordPress Out of Memory Error or HTTP 500 ERROR

November 28, 2014August 7, 2020 WordPress 58

Have you ever gotten this Linux “out of memory” error when working with your WordPress site? Fatal error: Out of memory (allocated 63963136) (tried

Implement Responsive Drop Down Menus that Work on iOS and Android

August 16, 2014August 11, 2018 Front End 24

Drop down menus on iOS and Android (or any devices with touch screens) can be really problematic if the top-level menu item is also

Disable the “Go” Button on the Android and iOS Virtual Keyboard

July 3, 2014December 7, 2018 Front End 13

I recently had a project where I wanted to stop the “Go” button on the Android and iOS popup keyboard from submitting a form

How to Stay Motivated and Productive When Working From Home

February 16, 2014August 7, 2020 Productivity 2

When I transitioned from being a career corporate cubicle-dweller to being a freelancer working from home, I wasn’t sure if I could pull it

Create a Working Copy of Your Amazon EC2 Instance for Development or Upgrade

February 6, 2014December 7, 2018 Sys Admin 2

After living with a free Amazon EC2 t1.micro instance for a while, I wanted to upgrade. The micro instance was great for playing with

The Best Cloud Invoicing Software for Freelancers: FreshBooks vs. Harvest

January 30, 2014June 12, 2020 Productivity 8

I finally decided that it was time to move from my primitive accounting “system” based on Word and Excel to a modern cloud-based solution

Create a “Slot Machine” Hover Effect with CSS

January 6, 2014April 12, 2020 Front End 2

A client requested a “slot machine” hover effect for their social network buttons. When you hover on the icon, it moves up, sort of