Brian’s Tips and Tricks for Web Developers | Useful tips for web developers, bloggers, and WordPress users

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

May 2, 2019June 20, 2019 WordPress 4

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,

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

June 17, 2019June 18, 2019 Blogging 3

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

Import Members into WordPress Ultimate Member from CSV File

June 11, 2019June 11, 2019 WordPress 21

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 Great Free Stock Photos for Your Website

December 21, 2018June 21, 2019 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

Create a Fade Effect When Going Between Pages of Your Website

February 15, 2018January 30, 2019 Front End 0

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, 2017April 21, 2018 WordPress 7

I use the Divi WordPress theme in many of my sites. On my personal site, I was using the Divi Contact Form module at

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

October 27, 2017February 16, 2019 WordPress 15

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, 2017April 21, 2018 Productivity 9

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 17

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 17

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

How I Designed the New Logo for DisableMyCable.com

March 5, 2015August 3, 2018 Front End 2

This is a bit of a departure from the other articles on this site. I don’t claim to be a real “designer” – I’m

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 42

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 3

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 120

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

My #1 Trick to Fix WordPress Out of Memory Error or HTTP 500 ERROR

November 28, 2014May 11, 2019 WordPress 58

I was working on a client’s new WordPress site when I got the dreaded Linux “out of memory” error in my browser unexpectedly: Fatal

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 12

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 I Stay Motivated and Productive When Working From Home

February 16, 2014February 2, 2019 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, 2014February 10, 2018 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, 2014February 10, 2018 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

Make Your Chrome Browser Window Narrow for Mobile Web Development

December 11, 2013May 7, 2019 Developer 11

My “go to” desktop browser for doing web development is the Chrome browser. It’s got lots of cool plugins, and doesn’t crash as often

Crucial Items That Should Be In Your Website Launch Checklist

November 4, 2013March 15, 2019 Developer 4

This is a list of items to check before launching your site. I emphasize, this is not a complete list of things to check.

Proof that Your WordPress Site is Under Attack Right Now

October 30, 2013December 7, 2018 Sys Admin 0

If your WordPress site gets more than a few hundred visitors per day, odds are that it is probably under attack right now, or

Host Multiple Sites on a Single Amazon EC2 Instance

September 27, 2013December 7, 2018 Sys Admin 87

Here’s how to host multiple sites on your EC2 instance running the Amazon Linux AMI. You might want to host different websites on a

Backup and Restore Your EBS-Based Amazon EC2 Instance

September 16, 2013December 7, 2018 Sys Admin 2

Once I got my Amazon EC2 instance up and running, I was stoked. However, then next worry I had was how to back up

Modify Your .htaccess File to Eliminate Query Strings and Make Pretty URLs

September 7, 2013December 7, 2018 Developer 1

I developed a website for a client that would display different photos based on a query string in the URL. An example of this

Style the WordPress Media Player!

August 9, 2013October 10, 2018 WordPress 185

The WordPress 3.6 Media Player came at just the right time for me. Just a month before, Yahoo discontinued their Yahoo Player, and I

Reboot Your Amazon EC2 Instance from the Management Console

July 1, 2013December 6, 2018 Sys Admin 0

Here are some beginner-level instructions on how to reboot your Amazon EC2 Instance through the AWS Management Console (you can also do it through

Assign Separate Domain Names to Multiple Sites on Amazon EC2 Running Bitnami

June 4, 2013February 10, 2018 Sys Admin 0

Here is the scenario: I used Bitnami to create a WordPress install on a free Amazon EC2 (Elastic Cloud Compute) micro instance (see this

How to Avoid and Deal with Mean Comments on Your Blog

May 23, 2013February 10, 2018 Blogging 8

Blogging can be a very personal experience. You’re baring your soul before the world. You are vulnerable. One of the worst things is to