How to fix Slow WordPress Dashboards

On July 24, 2011 in #60SecondShout, Website Design.
0

I’ve been pulling out hair recently over slow wordpress dashboards; Initially I thought it was something at the host’s end… But after a couple of emails we confirmed it wasn’t that. Next, I presumed it was MY internet connection, but on further investigation that was ruled out, too.

Now, after a little digging, it became apparent that WordPress Dashboards are notorious for having slow loading times. The hunt began to resolve this issue, if possible with a WP-Plugin (after all, it was WordPress’ fault to begin with!).

Along came a cheeky little plugin called WP-Cache is;

an extremely efficient WordPress page caching system to make you site much faster and responsive. It works by caching Worpress pages and storing them in a static file for serving future requests directly from the file rather than loading and compiling the whole PHP code and the building the page from the database.

It works quite well. It’s made the dashboard a lot more responsive, and I’m starting to cut down on the amount of hair-pulling!

Tagged with: • • • • • • •
 

404 on all links from homepage

On June 1, 2011 in #60SecondShout, Development, Website Design.
0

Getting 404 pages on all the links from your homepage? I was too… After about a decade of trying to convey the issue to a USELESS ‘live chat’ support person with my hosts, I found the answer for myself.

WordPress changes the .htaccess file depending on the permalink style you choose. There are two ways to solve the 404 error problem;

Option A – Change your permalink style to the default, and then back again.

Option B - For the more webDev savy, go to your .htacess and add the following code;

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress

That should fix it!

Tagged with: • • • • • • •
 

Home Screen Worthy Apps for the iPad 2

On May 14, 2011 in Apple, New Technology.
1

I’ll admit, the previous article regarding the iPad 2 was a little rushed. Why? Because I was busy playing! Now I’ve had 24 hours to fully intergrate the iPad into my life, I think it’s about time to talk a little about the apps that have made it onto the first page on the home screen of my shiny white new tablet!

iPad home screen - With ApplicationsFirst up, Spotify! Iv’e gone for the 16Gb WiFi model, largely due to already owning an iPhone (with constant internet connection). The Spotify app is actually the iPhone version, but why re-make the wheel? Creating a playlist (‘for the iPad‘) allows me to control and constantly update which songs are synced to the device from my phone, computer or directly. Jump onto a wireless connection and hay presto, instant music library updates! In my opinion Spotify is one of the best (if not THE best) application on the iPhone, and it works well on the iPad. I just wish they’d make an iPad specific application.

Next is DropBox. There are a load of reviews about the magic of DropBox, so I’ll keep it brief; If you haven’t got DropBox yet, go and sign up. Then download the DropBox app for your iPhone and iPad and never be without your much needed documents again! It’s also a great way of wirelessly transferring content from/to your devices.

CoolPapers: It’s basically what it says on the tin: An archive of beautiful wallpapers to really customise your iPad experience!

BBC iPlayer: Wonderful! Watch all the BBC iPlayer content on your beautiful device. Perfect for bed-time catch-up! Really nice interface too, very 2.0, and looks amazing on the iPad’s shiny screen! My only gripe here is that some of the programs don’t quite fill the screen (due to aspect differences) and an over-scanning option would be nice.

Friendly. Until Facebook get’s on-board the iPad specific Application revolution, Friendly will be your best bet. It works and interacts well (after a little getting used to). That said, it did have some time-out issues this morning. However, it’s generally been quite reliable (according to a couple of friends).

mBox Mail. This is only really going to be of much use if you have a Hotmail E-mail account. Unfortunately the native ‘Mail’ app doesn’t sync all the folders (due to POP3 / Push / etc) of a Hotmail account. Something Mbox Mail overcomes seamlessly. Dear Apple, please add this functionality to iOS5. Regards.

Skype. I’ll be honest, I haven’t used this yet. But I have used the application on the iPhone. Seeing as how it’s ported directly from the iPhone to the iPad, I can recommend it. Although FaceTime put’s up a good fight against this. I guess it depends on personal preference, and weather your contacts are Apple-esk or not?

Twitter. Facebook should definately take a leaf (preferably one without bird poo!) out of Twitter’s book! A beautiful app, full of features and perfectly laid out! This is how the iPad expereince should be! Even if you don’t have a Twitter account, download this app! 10/10!

Flipboard. A very good, intuitive and modern approach to news reading. With the ability to customise the ‘contents’ page, you read the iPad like a book, with articles appearing in a digital 2.0 magazine style. (Page flipping transitions included!).

iPad running WordPress with Wireless KeyboardWordPress. Much like Twitter, this is a beautiful application. Purpose built for the iPad, in addition to the easy-to-use keyboard, this will soon become my preferred way of blogging. Look, I’m even using it to write this blog (with addition of my wireless keyboard, just to test out the bluetooth connectivity!).

Bonus Application: Google. I decided to add Google as a bonus application for two reasons. 1: I miscounted the number of non-native apps on the homescreen! and more importantly 2: It can often be overlooked, by default going to Safari and using the search bar. However, the Google App does much more than searching the net (as if that wasn’t enough). Google Goggles (search via images) and really good voice recognition make for a truly rich-media searching experience!

So there we go! The top 10, ahem, 11, applications to download for your iPad!

Tagged with: • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
 

Google XML-Sitemap ‘www.’ Prefix error!

On December 3, 2009 in Internet, Tutorials, Website Design.
1

I have had the ‘Google XML-Sitemap’ plug-in for WordPress installed for a time now, and everything was working perfectly.

However, after the plug-in was updated some time last week it started showing errors in Google’s Webmaster Tools. The error was the following.

“Paths don’t match we’ve detected that you submitted your Sitemap using a URL path that includes the www prefix (for instance, http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml). However, the URLs listed inside your Sitemap don’t use the www prefix (for instance, http://example.com/myfile.htm).”

To fix this is simple, but I had to search around quite a lot to get the fix. All you have to do is go to the General tab under Settings in WordPress and add the ‘www.’ prefix to both the WordPress address AND the Blog address, then rebuild and submit the sitemap.

If you are still getting errors (which I did) check that any additional URL’s mentioned in the XML-Sitemap tab of Settings have the ‘www.’ prefix, as mine reset automatically.

As I said; Simple! But it took quite a lot of re-building and re-submitting to find the answer!

Tagged with: • • • • • • • • • •
 

WordPress App for the iPhone

On October 24, 2009 in Internet, iPhone, Tutorials.
0

WordPress 2 has recently been released for the iPhone via the App store. Not only is it free but also very easy to set up.

All I did to set it up was go to /wp-admin/options-writing.php and tick the XML-RPC checkbox under the remote Publishing section. From there I simply put in my login details and blog URL and it quickly connected and showed me my posts :) From there its blogging as usual; create a post, approve comments or edit pages.

The improvements from ‘Wordpress’ to ‘Wordpress 2’ is apparently improved functionality, compatibility and a much smoother user interface. I must say, its working wonders for me! I’m currently sitting in my car waiting for Ice Hockey to begin, whoop!

The only downside (and I am being particularly fussy here) is that the app developers didn’t upgrade the original WordPress app but instead just made another. Now I realise that this could be to do with the way things were put together in the first instance, but there are rumours of a third version coming out which will be a separate app again.

Don’t get me wrong though, this is a brilliant little app, and best of all its FREE! The idea of being able to blog while I have 10 minutes before a lecture or on a train or in the park makes the idea of blogging much more appealing. Bring on version 3.0 (template / style editing, perhaps?)

Tagged with: • •
 

Get some style

On October 16, 2009 in General, Internet, Website Design.
0

My WordPress is all styled up!

It began last night, messing around with different templates and eventually fell upon ‘Simplicity’ which is a nice and neat two column template with a similar layout to the rest of my site.

After ‘installing’ (I’m not convinced that’s the correct terminology) WordPress on my host Justhost I downloaded the header.php and style’s css files as well as the index.php page and started to play around.

My background knowledge of CSS and PHP helped a lot, but my main tool was the Web Development Toolbar (WDT) for Firefox. Using this I edited the CSS and could see the real-time changes to the various pages. I did find that some attributes of the CSS a little obscure but this was overcome by trial and error (a process that can be tedious and repetitive if constantly requiring uploads, but seamless and efficient when using WDT.

The header again was a simple procedure, simply deleting the entire current header and replacing it with my own. (NOTE: I also included the content wrapper code from my page to hold the blog and sidebar central).

The entire process took a few hours (about 7-8) to complete, but I’m positive that my next revamp will knock the blog style up in a quarter of this!

Well done WordPress, you continue to amaze me! Now all I need is some content worthy of the cyber-space!

WordPress is all styled up!
Tagged with: • • •
 

No longer a blogger virgin!

On October 15, 2009 in General, Internet.
1

SO, this is my first blog. I guess I should say something important or wisely at this point (fist impressions and all); I feel embraced! I have done a complete U-Turn and am starting to understand why bloggers blog! I’m still less than 100% convinced, but I’m hoping the next 6 months or so will continue to open my eyes to the wonderful bloggersphere!

I decided to (finally) make my account after a while getting to grips with some 2.0 features of the web – I’ve recently opened my eyes to the world of Blogging after years of being strongly anti-blogist! More on why to come soon (via blog, coincidently!) Yes I know I’m a computer scientist, Web Developer and IT Professional, but it’s never really appealed before tonight.

First ‘real’ blog to come soon! Keep your eyes pealed (Although I suspect no-one will be reading this until I have a somewhat more substantial archive and more importantly improved my Google page rank!!).

Tagged with: •