…restart reset LS console password – cd /usr/local/lsws/admin/misc navigates to LS directory, then run ./admpass.sh adding new PHP handlers via LS console – first add External App then Script Handlers. copying config from existing ones. Un-common issues (and fixes) Can’t create/transfer new user account because of existing user data, check for cruft left behind by old users/domains /usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/bin/perl <(curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/CpanelInc/tech-acctinfo/master/acctinfo) domain.com –cruft (replace “domain.com” with your domain)…many places will be listed, check all carefully…you many have many entries under many hostnames, etc. Account transfers stuck on “receiving incremental file list”? Check out this guide….
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To WWW or not to WWW
…by its own sub-domain. mail server was “mail.domain.com” FTP server was “ftp.domain.com” print server was “print.domain.com” Johnny’s computer was “johnny.domain.com” main server was “server.domain.com” nameserver was “ns1.domain.com” and “ns2.domain.com” Guess what the web server was called? …yes…”www.domain.com” (the “www” stood for WORLD WIDE WEB) Of course, we could have called it web.domain.com or site.domain.com or whatever else. But like with many things everybody used what was standard. And therefore everybody called their web server “www” because that’s what everybody else did. What the bare domain (domain.com) was reserved for. The naked domain “domain.com”, if I…
Protect your EBOOKS with a PDF Stamper plugin (WaterWoo)
…PDF stamper plugins on the market? What are the differences between her PDF stamper plugins and others on the market? (WP PDF Stamper Plugin & WooCommerce PDF Watermark Stamper) Before I even bought Caroline’s plugin, I already knew it was going to be the best option for my use. I was heavily researching into PDF stamper plugins because I was seriously going to develop my own. I’ve been doing membership websites for a long time (selling ebooks and videos) and frustrated that a solid one didn’t already exist. Of course…Caroline’s plugins existed for a while…
The Ultimate WordPress Speed Optimization Guide
…guarantee). But good luck getting those guaranteed! Uptime calculator (99.9% uptime means 43min downtime per month) Nearest.host – cool site showing nearby server companies. 2. Choose the right website hosting service (BEG, HIGH) Shared hosting ($5-30/month) – fine for small sites and low traffic up to 100k hits/month. No access to server configurations. Safe choice is SiteGround, Kinsta, or WP Engine. VPS/cloud hosting ($30-300/month) – great for medium sites and traffic up to 30 million hits/month. Safe choice is Cloudways or Gridpane, or try a fully managed VPS service. Dedicated (bare metal) server ($200/month &…
LiteSpeed Cache WordPress Plugin – UNOFFICIAL GUIDE
…up for QUIC.cloud. Cache > Cache Logged-in Users – OFF. Cache > Purge > Serve Stale – OFF. Cache > Drop Query String – type the following 3 entries on a separate line (fbclid, gclid, utm*). Cache > Browser > Browser Cache – ON. Cache > WooCommerce > Privately Cache Cart – OFF CDN > CDN Settings > QUIC.cloud CDN – turn on if you want to use QC CDN. CDN > CDN Settings > Cloudflare API (Cloudflare-users only) – enter email, global API key, and domain. Page optimization > CSS Settings > Generate Critical…
How to optimize for Google Pagespeed, Pingdom, and GTmetrix
…you’re using or even explain why your site might be using cookies. In case you don’t know, there are many reasons for using cookies. They’re used for managing user sessions (logged-in users), remembering previous user choices (GDPR, newsletter pop-ups), or tracking purposes. Are you absolutely sure you don’t need or shouldn’t have cookies? Try following this guide or this one. Add Expires headers: Useful suggestion of telling users’ browsers to cache static assets that don’t change often. The only problem is that this suggestion/score is often complaining about 3rd-party assets loading off external servers that you…
Why Google Pagespeed, Pingdom, and GTmetrix scores don't matter
…when it doesn’t have any perspective on what your site is doing and how it’s different from other sites. It judges all sites to some (arbitrary) standard without accounting for each one’s specific needs. The idea is this…what may be “bad” for one site may actually be “good” or “intended” for another. Examples of common speed test suggestions (and why they’re flawed): Combine CSS/JS to reduce requests – might actually slow down your page load and/or break your website design/function! Compress images more to save space – reduces your image quality and not recommended for…
Swift Performance WordPress Cache Plugin - UNOFFICIAL GUIDE
…writeable. Try removing some items from “Exclude Post Types”. Items not pre-caching – make sure “Prebuild Cache Automatically” is enabled. Can also try “Enable Remote Prebuild Cache”, or other caching modes (less ideal). Make sure your robots.txt file isn’t blocking everything “Disallow: /” (common on staging sites). White screen of death (WSOD) or error 500 – it’s unfortunate but not every plugin is compatible with others. You can restore your site by deleting the Swift section in htaccess, delete “wp-content/cache” directory, delete “wp-content/plugins/swift-performance” directory, also delete “swift-performance-loader.php” in wp-content/mu-plugins directory. Another trick I’ve found is to…
WPCloudDeploy - WordPress hosting plugin review
…just won it handily. Why would anyone ever want a webhosting plugin? Here are the comments I’ve heard… “Never in my life did I expect to see servers as CPT.” “I think it’s interesting!” “Stupid idea! Massive security issue!” And lots of ….“Looks cool. Is it any good?” “Oh god, not another cloud hosting service!” (This one was mine.) Lol. I had only briefly seen it at that moment. It wasn’t until I delved further that I started to see the many things it could do. Let’s just say I went from critic to fanboy…
WordPress Performance Guides and Reviews
…(WordPress marketing tips. SEO, content marketing, social media, PPC.): How to CRUSH Your SEO Competition Difference between Marketing, Advertising, and Branding Never Promote Discounts! (pricing strategy) Pricing Psychology – $95 vs $97 vs $99 vs $100 Good CONVERSION RATE for online sales? Expected conversion rate for membership sign-ups? Do you REALLY need an email list? Is EMAILING still the best marketing? AUTOMATE your Social Media Posting Plugins See all WPJ Plugins. Most are free and listed on WP repo. Comment Reply Email Commenters receive an email when someone replies to their comment. Download WP Featherlight Disabled…
Wordpress Multilingual Guide 2016 - Plugin Review, Language Translation Strategy, and WPML Tips
…isn’t exactly a component of translating but it is often done when you want to share your videos with another audience. You’ll use a translator to make subtitles for your videos so that other people can understand them. What are the technical implications? What is your website structure? Domain vs sub-domain vs directory How do you plan to manage your translated site? Will you have each language on a separate domain (.com, .es, .fr)? or will you have it in a separate sub-domain (es.domain.com, fr.domain.com) or even in a separate directory (domain.com/es, domain.com/fr)? To…
Jelastic multi-cloud hosting platform review
My honest thoughts on the Jelastic multi-cloud hosting platform. What is Jelastic. How it’s different from other “elastic hosting” platforms. What I like about Jelastic. The best clients and use cases for it. …and I’ll try to do it all in layman’s English terms! 😉 Deep into the rabbit hole of cloud technology we go! https://youtu.be/H38Kr9in-ns What is Jelastic? What the hell is it? As with many high-tech solutions popping up lately. You never quite fully grasp what things are. And how they work. Is it a service? Is it a software? Is it a…
Best WordPress Cache Plugins Review - GIANT ROUNDUP
…review notes on each. APACHE (no cache – busy 3.00s/2.10s, simple 1.00s/597ms): Swift Performance Lite (free) – busy 1.04s/890ms, simple 768ms/570ms. Swift Performance (paid) – busy 911ms/900ms, simple 644ms/453ms. WP Rocket (paid) – busy 1.05s/1.02s, simple 659s/426ms. Simple Cache (free) – busy 1.07s/993ms, simple 498ms/458ms. LiteSpeed Cache (free) – busy 982ms/1.02s, simple 569ms/532ms. Breeze (free) – busy 1.35s/1.04s, simple 528ms/496ms. Comet Cache (free)- busy 1.21s/955ms, simple 557ms/460ms. Powered Cache (free) – busy 1.28s/938ms, simple 748ms/680ms. WP Fastest Cache (free) – busy 1.30s/963ms, simple 573ms/527ms. Borlabs Cache (paid) – busy 1.19s/1.04s, simple 919ms/723ms. Yasakani Cache (free) – busy 1.30s/1.07s, simple 851ms/568ms. Swift leads the way easily; incredible free & paid…
Nerd Guide to WordPress Firewall Security
…(stateless) network firewalls that already come with your Linux operating system. Unless you’re a command-line junkie (and I assume you’re not if you’re reading this), you should never have to think about or deal with any of these. Iptables was traditionally built into every Linux server already. Settings were configurable through config file or iptables commands from CLI. But the commands were so complex…for example iptables -A INPUT -p tcp –dport 22 -m conntrack –ctstate NEW,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT. Thankfully, there are much friendlier firewall management tools from the command line. CentOS uses firewalld (example command:…
301 Redirects to HTTPS (with and without WWW)
…# 301 redirect to www RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301] # 301 redirect to https RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301] # END Redirects Other ways to redirect? Some people complained my examples used too many redirects. In that case, you’re welcome to research on your own and try other methods of redirection. Read below and see which one you like best (beware, they all have their implications): https://simonecarletti.com/blog/2016/08/redirect-domain-http-https-www-apache/ https://www.codexworld.com/redirect-non-www-to-www-http-to-https-using-htaccess-file/ https://www.digitalocean.com/community/questions/redirect-http-https-www-to-https-non-www https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13977851/htaccess-redirect-to-https-www https://serverfault.com/questions/523199/redirect-all-http-and-https-non-www-urls-to-https-www-example-com-via-htaccess NGINX? – try this. And in case you need to do regular 301 redirects for new page or address…
WPJ Reports for MemberPress (WPJ plugin)
…Active (chart) – number of students (with access) during period. Inactive (chart) – number of students (with expiring access) during period. Active – number of courses with access. Inactive – number of courses with expired access. Started – number of courses started. Complete – number of courses completed. Lessons – number of lessons completed. Details – shows access, lesson activity and progress per course. Growth (in development): Growth rate – % growth for subscribers. Growth revenue – % growth for revenue. Churn rate – % churn for subscribers. Churn revenue – % churn for revenue….
Changing your WordPress site domain name
…Make sure it’s a 301 permanent redirect for anything from old domain to new domain. For redirecting from your webhost (with htaccess): Redirect 301 / https://newurl.com/ <IfModule mod_rewrite.c> RewriteEngine On </IfModule> RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^oldurl\.com$ [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.oldurl\.com$ RewriteRule ^(.*)$ “https\:\/\/newurl\.com\/$1″ [R=301,L] For redirecting from Cloudflare page rule: Create page rule, putting *oldurl.com/* for url match field Pick “Forwarding URL” for setting. Choose “301 – Permanent Redirect” and https://newurl.com/$2 for destination URL. (My example assumes you want the new url without “www”.) STEP 9 – check for errors Check for broken links – there are…
WP Fluent Forms - WordPress plugin review
…Allow me to deploy my own global styling, please! Clearer way of exiting form designer – after I finish building my form, it’s not clear how to get back to the dashboard. Sure, there’s the icon at the top-right to show the minimized side panel but a “Back to Dashboard” or “Exit” text link would have been clearer. Or at least turn that icon into an “X”. I do like the distraction-free layout, though. Maybe it can have two icons side-by-side? Or one inside the other like a toggle? (Put the “X” inside the crosshairs.)…
DNS Basic Info & Troubleshooting
Basic knowledge about DNS and how to fix DNS problems. I wrote this for 5-year olds, complete with cute replacement terminology (and cartoon illustration…ha, jk). If you don’t understand it, I can’t possibly think of any easier explanation for you. Let’s get to it! 1. How DNS works DNS stands for “domain name system”. DNS is used to connect domain names to computer IP’s. Because nobody likes to type 74.6.231.21 into their web-browser. It’s much easier to type yahoo.com. And that’s how it (magically works). You type a domain into your browser. The browser passes…
Linux Server Commands CHEATSHEET (for newb admins)
…TO ‘database_user’@’localhost’; – revoke privileges SHOW GRANTS FOR ‘database_user’@’localhost’; – see all user privileges show global variables like ‘log_error’ – show location of error log file. LiteSpeed web server: installing LS reset LS console pass – cd /usr/local/lsws/admin/misc and then ./admpass.sh version check – /usr/local/lsws/bin/lshttpd -v start LS – /usr/local/lsws/bin/lswsctrl start restart LS – /usr/local/lsws/bin/lswsctrl reload upgrade OLS – yum update’, then ‘yum upgrade openlitespeed enable crawler (cPanel) – vi /etc/apache2/conf.d/includes/pre_main_global.conf and add view logs /tmp/lshttpd/.status More LS license commands WHM/cPanel: refresh disk quota license check force run backups – /usr/local/cpanel/bin/backup –force (more info) update WHM…
Recovering from a HACKED web server (Linux)
…see many single connections but coming from the same subnet, check 2nd half of this guide. Alternate commands to check connections per IP tail -n 10000 yourweblog.log|cut -f 1 -d ‘ ‘|sort|uniq -c|sort -nr|more and netstat -n|grep :80|cut -c 45-|cut -f 1 -d ‘:’|sort|uniq -c|sort -nr|more. Use these if the previous ones didn’t help. Check for syn connections netstat -n | grep :80 | grep SYN Check logs for failed login attempts cat /var/log/secure (RHEL, Centos, Fedora) or cat /var/log/auth.log (Ubuntu, Debian). Check for WordPress wp-login brute-force attack (current day) grep -s $(date +”%d/%b/%Y:”) /usr/local/apache/domlogs/*…
WPJohnny WordPress theme roundup 2023
A brief look at my top theme picks this year, and why. You’ve heard many of these names before (Astra, GeneratePress, Kadence, Blocksy, etc). And you’ve watched them battle it out…going head to head on features, nitpicking between nuances, perhaps even dipping into the pool of controversy and acquisition drama. You wouldn’t think it, but actually a lot has changed in the WordPress theme industry. Perhaps not in features and re-establish Once the dust settled in 2023, this was what I saw… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuHcN6IdNAU Recent changes in the WordPress theme industry Copycat features As annoying as…
Clean up wp_options table (autoloaded data)
…autoloaded data. Cleared it all and the whole site felt so much lighter, both on frontend and backend. Keep in mind y’all, the backend can’t be cached. Cleaning autoloads definitely has a measureable impact on massively bloated sites and one of the advanced tasks that separates pros from non-pros. NOTES: Backup your database before trying any of these optimizations. If your database has a prefix (e.g. “wp_123abc_” instead of only “wp_”), then retype SQL commands below using the prefix “wp_123abc_options” instead of “wp_option”. 1. Check autoloaded data size SELECT SUM(LENGTH(option_value)) as autoload_size FROM wp_options WHERE…
SEO vs PPC - which is better for getting web traffic
…actually HELP my website, because I’m doing SEO correctly. I hope you understand there’s a difference between the way I do SEO and the way you do SEO. And that your SEO results, while truthful and logical….do not represent the entire actuality of SEO field. P.S.: I’m not trying to convert you to SEO or dis on PPC. I’m just saying you shouldn’t downtalk SEO when you haven’t fully reaped its benefits and haven’t yet figured out how to do it EASILY and EFFECTIVELY/EFFICIENTLY/PREDICTABLY. You can read the discussion in its entirety here: https://www.warriorforum.com/adsense-ppc-seo-discussion-forum/894996-search-engine-optimization-pay-per-click.html…
Best WordPress Plugins - UPDATED 2024
…ShortPixel is definitely better! WP Smush/EWWW – horrible compression quality/file-size ratio. Image, gallery, slideshow: Quick Featured Images – best plugin for managing/automating your featured images. Pro version is so worth the price! Enable Media Replace – replace media files without having to dig through FTP folders. reGenerate Thumbnails advanced – best IMO, easy-to-use with great filtering options. Metaslider (free/paid) or Smart Slider 3 (free/paid) – are the best. Metaslider is good for super simply minimal sliders. SS can do fancier things like dynamic height or showing different sliders on mobile, also more features (embedding video, changing…
External Tracker for AffiliateWP
…Gravity Forms submissions or other types of “conversions”. Do you plan to add more features? Not at the moment. Changelog 1.0 – August 12, 2020 Initial release 1.1 – November 28, 2020 Default Referral Format option was added in Settings page. 1.2 – December 20, 2020 License check, activate, deactivate Version Update detect and installation while the license period 1.3 – January 11, 2024 A PHP Warning was fixed. 1.4 – February 09, 2024 License deactivation module issue was fixed. 1.5 – February 10, 2024 License activation module had an issue and it was fixed….
How to MANUALLY Clone or Create a Staging Site
…pick the database plugin you installed from previous step. If using BSR: put “//oldsite.com” in Search for and “//newsite.com” in Replace with. Select all tables, and uncheck “Run as dry run”. Then click Run Search/Replace. If you have page errors, try selecting fewer tables at a time. If using Migrate DB: select Find and Replace. Put “//oldsite.com” in Find and “//newsite.com” in Replace. Delete any other Find/Replace rows and click Export. Congratulations, you are done! You can use these same steps to migrate sites. If migrating, you don’t need to do the last step (#8)….
Best WordPress Hosting Reviews (UPDATED 2024)
…company (cheaper pricing), I like their DDOS-filtered IP protection. It’s a great idea if you’re running a webhosting business. Scaleways – not the best VPS provider (slower speeds, disks, CPU, etc), but still serviceable and offers $2.50/month micro-plan. Scaleways is considered really bad. Webdock.io – semi-managed solution. I haven’t tried yet but they’re now on my radar for some interesting value points. Vultr – similar to Scaleways (slower speeds, disks, CPU) but offers small $2.50 micro-plans and also bare metal servers. Vultr is however better in some parts of the world and considered even faster/more-reliable than…
How to become a WordPress coder
…code (you need edit) is, even based on the directory and filenames alone. What do all the different programming languages do? HTML is for structuring page layout and content hierarchy. Page content sections are wrapped <header>, <body>, <footer> tags. Page content itself is wrapped in tags like <h1>, <p>, and <b>. These tags tell browsers how to display the content and search engines how to rank the importance of the content. CSS is for styling the HTML output. Allows you to put colors, images, and shifting content around in different layouts. Also allows you to…
WPJ Plugins
These are my in-house WordPress plugins for you to use at your own discretion. I’m not responsible for what you do with them. I do not (officially) provide support. You see all of them listed on WP repo. Enjoy! Buy me a beer. FREE PLUGINS Comment Reply Email Commenters receive an email when someone replies to their comment. Download WP Featherlight Disabled Ultra-lightweight jQuery lightbox for images, galleries, and videos. Download Code Click-to-Copy Copies <pre> and <code> tags automatically to clipboard. Download Dashboard Search for MemberPress Search for members right from the WP Dashboard. Saves…
BEST Gutenberg Pagebuilders for WordPress - UPDATED 2024
…customization, etc. So simple to use. A freaken quality product by an A-level dev team. It’s too bad they didn’t build a custom template library to become a full Gutenberg pagebuilder. (RECOMMENDED – comprehensive set of blocks, simple settings, powerful features) CoBlocks (FREE) – made by GoDaddy, a company I truly hate but this is actually a good plugin. Clean no-frills plugin with great UI. No template library, just like all plugins in this category. (RECOMMENDED – clean and simple, right amount of blocks) Ultimate Blocks (FREE) – nice block library with clean settings UI….
Guide to Security Headers
…your content and steal your clicks (“clickjacking”). You can lose functionality with these headers, or certain pages may not work. Test it! You cannot (should not) use both SAMEORIGIN & DENY. Pick just one. Cross-Site-Scripting (XSS) X-XSS-Protection “1; mode=block” always; XSS (or X-XSS) security header tells your the browser to block any requests containing malicious scripts. Any lost functionality? This one is pretty safe to use and doesn’t (shouldn’t) break any functionality. Default Permissions Policy Permissions-Policy “accelerometer=(), camera=(), geolocation=(), gyroscope=(), magnetometer=(), microphone=(), payment=(), usb=()”; Above snippet is only an example! The Permissions Policy header decides…
IGNORE Query Strings when Caching
…site…just click the link above. Or ok fine, read my very own explanation below. What are query strings? Query strings are usually little strings of text or numbers that come after URL’s. Some examples below (shortened for brevity): https://google.com/search?=wordpress+tips https://yoursite.com/wp-content/theme/style.css?vers=5.3.2 https://yoursite.com/?fbclid=IwAR1R-T-n https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07D9GMYG8/ref=?tag=yourname https://shoestore.com/shoes/?filter_size=5&query_type_size=or Basically, anytime you see a question mark “?” followed by letters or numbers…THAT’S a query string! And what are query strings used for? They’re used to pass information to the web-server for some specific purpose. Example #1 above was to link directly to the Google search results for a set of keywords….
Oxygen Builder ISN'T a pagebuilder (and that's why it's great)
…this writing, you can get the unlimited sites and updates/support forever package for only $169 (one-time purchase). The competition pricing: Beaver Builder – $99, $199, and $399 per year for varying packages. DIVI – $89/year or $250/lifetime for unlimited access. Elementor – has FREE version, PRO costs $49/year (1 site), $99/year (3 sites), and $199/year (1000 sites). Go try the Oxygen Builder! Try Oxygen Builder today. I’d also like to give a special shout out to Sridhar Katakam who’s unloaded a wealth of tutorials for Genesis (my favorite theme for developers) and also runs WPDevDesign.com…
NitroPack - cloud caching and CDN service review
…Even after I’ve already visited the pages and pre-warmed its cache, they’re still sticky! The good news is that my client sites do load fast with NitroPack. You can see fast sites like this: https://thriveagency.com/ And then slow sites like this: https://www.ishine-trade.com/ Yes…both are on NitroPack. So whatever the case may be…you know it’s not always a guaranteed miracle. I hate that even the fast one still has sporadic FOUC issues. Just remember that the best way to test speed is right in your own browser and see what’s actually loading. Don’t be surprised when…
WPJ Reports for MemberPress (PRO)
…you, do not buy. Please contact support first with your inquiries before purchasing! FREE version – yes, we already have a free version of this plugin publicly available on the WordPress repository. (download link) SOLO (1-sites) – $195.00 DEV (2-sites) – $295.00 AGENCY (5-sites) – $495.00 LIFETIME (unlimited sites) – $595.00 Purchase Checkout Added to cart Pro features More Data tabs: Sales (free) – product sales info, payments, coupons, revenue, refunds. Churns – churn rate, churn revenue, churn revenue rate. Monthly and annual churn rates, show members and dollars lost. Subscriptions – subscriber sign-ups, active status, payments, sales. Members – member status, payments…
Digital Access Pass (DAP) vs DLGuard Review
…download limits like DLGuard. WordPress Integration – this was probably the reason I chose to buy Digital Access Pass. It installs and integrates easily with WordPress. It plays nicely with WordPress allowing you to use your WordPress installation for managing the members-only “protected pages” and using your WordPress user-logins to manage your free & paid members. Sell Products, Memberships, OR Drip Content – this is where Digital Access Pass blows everybody else away. Think of “Drip content” as a paid newsletter, where you can leak out your content in pieces. DAP’s organization and management of…
Ultra-fast server file transfers with WGET
…takes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObsTmuUM5yk Steps to using WGET: 1. Make file publicly available on source server Which means placing somewhere within public_html (RHEL/Centos) or www (Debian/Ubuntu). Placing it in a public directory makes it available from frontend url (e.g. https://domain.com/backup.tar.gz). 2. Download file from destination server. From receiving server, navigate to the directory you’d like to download it to. Type wget https://domain.com/backup.tar.gz – to download external file to your current directory. (Of course, your file path and filename may vary.) Wait for it to finish transferring. Should be super quick. 3. Change file ownership to match correct…
Telltale signs of a GOOD DEVELOPER
…For caching */ function clearPa($post_ID) { if (function_exists(‘w3tc_pgcache_flush’)) { w3tc_pgcache_flush(); } return $post_ID; } add_action(‘wp_insert_post_data’, ‘clearPa’); add_filter(‘relevanssi_get_words_query’, ‘fix_query’); function fix_query($query) { $query = $query . ” HAVING c > 1″; return $query; } In all honesty, this one isn’t that bad. I chose it as an example because it still somewhat made sense. There’s been many times when I saw so many functions that were either completely ambiguous OR they had so many functions with overly similar names. Clean code 101 — Meaningful names and functions – Miguel Loureio 9. GitHub activity community contributions Not…
Core Web Vitals - score optimization tips
…lots of unused parts. Sometimes they load first – slowing down (and blocking) your entire page load. What a pain in the butt, right? It’d be easier if you got rid of them. No need to waste time optimizing things that shouldn’t be there in the first place. But many of you don’t have that luxury (or *cough* self-control *cough*). You really need those ads, chatbots, tracker scripts, API, etc….or so you say. If you can’t live with it, then I guess you could try delaying their execution. Which is even weirder IMO when you…
WPCloudDeploy custom hacks and fixes
…So we hacked the WPCD core plugin code to generate SSL’s for both the non-www and with-www versions of the domain simultaneously. Which IMO should have been standard behavior. Go to includes/core/apps/wordpress-app/scripts/v1/raw/04-manage_https.txt (line 168 of WPCD version 10.8) and… REPLACE: if [ ${WWW} = ‘TRUE’ ]; then certbot certonly –non-interactive –agree-tos -m ${email} –webroot -w ${DOCHM} -d ${domain} -d ${MY_DOMAIN2} else certbot certonly –non-interactive –agree-tos -m ${email} –webroot -w ${DOCHM} -d ${domain} fi WITH: # if [ ${WWW} = ‘TRUE’ ]; then # certbot certonly –non-interactive –agree-tos -m ${email} –webroot -w ${DOCHM} -d ${domain} -d…
Best WordPress Themes - UPDATED 2024
…it look like an entirely site altogether). Obviously: the more options, the more complicated. WordPress (PREMIUM) Themes & Frameworks: GeneratePress – great performance theme and well supported with many dev features. Cult favorite among coders and DIY’ers. I love their “elements” feature for replacing pagebuilders (but without the bloat of one). Artisan Themes – love the unique designs and ease-of-use of this little known company. Incredible “modules” feature without the bloat of pagebuilders. ElmaStudio.de – from Germany. If you love that European minimalist Bauhaus design, Ellen and Manuel’s work are incredible. Marketer’s Delight – beautifully-coded theme…
Swift Performance vs WP Rocket - WordPress Cache Plugin Comparison
…care about more and score this yourself. I, however, will score it according to my own tastes (Swift has more): CSS/JSS optimization (merge, minify, defer, remove query strings) – BOTH Minification (html/CSS/JS) – BOTH Pre-caching – BOTH (Swift more robust) Browser caching – BOTH Remove query strings – BOTH E-commerce compatible – BOTH Google font/DNS prefetch – BOTH Image optimization (lazy load, compression) – BOTH CDN support – BOTH Cached items table/log – SWIFT (big one for me) Multiple cache logic – SWIFT Database optimization – BOTH Object caching – ROCKET (but I don’t think…
How to get BEST PRICING on a Apple MacBook Pro
…about 10-15% cheaper than retail AND comes with some freebie (like Beats by Dre headphones). In my case, the configuration I wanted (2019 15″ Macbook pro with 512gb SSD storage upgrade & 32GB ram upgrade) was about $3200 + tax for full retail. The discount price brought it down to about $2950 + tax and includes free Beats by Dre headphones. STEP #2 – figure out the “common configuration” This is my own made up term. Basically, you have to figure out the most common spec configuration that people buy the most. Usually it is…
LittleBizzy REVIEW by WPJohnny - Jesse Nickles (fraud / slander alert)
…first. (I assumed you like this anyway, since that’s the energy you engaged others with in the Facebook groups.) October 2020 update: Jesse notices my truthful review, and retaliates with a new slander post creating even more lies … (https://www.littlebizzy.com/blog/johnnyvps-wpjohnny-review) … Nope, I never harassed him on social media. (I only commented on his hateful post like twice and then he was kicked out. I never had any interaction after that.) I’m also not in anyway connected or ever shill-reviewed for RankMath. Why Jesse continues to double down on this made-up lie, I have no…
Hosting Services Breakdown - domain registrar, web hosting, email hosting, DNS
…better performance, better support, more resources, or configuration freedom. Email hosting – from a specialized email host that offers more features or resources, higher deliverability rates (to reach customer inboxes instead of spamboxes), better spam protection. Most people don’t get any more separated than this. But in reality…you really go to the next level…like what the “experts” do. How do the “pros” separate their hosting needs? Pros practically build their own hosting infrastructure from scratch. They do this for various reasons: Save money – only noticeable when you’re doing it at scale. Otherwise, the complexity…
What are Custom Post Types (and why do they matter?)
…types”: POSTS – used for blogging, organized categorically and chronologically. PAGES – used for static content, sometimes organized with parent-child hierarchy. PRODUCTS – used for store products, organized categorically or name/price/etc. I’m sure you’ve also seen the custom post types that come with different plugins: PORTFOLIO – shows videos/images or text. SLIDER – slideshows of images. Some allow text and flashy effects. REVIEWS – used for written testimonials or numerical rankings. RECIPES – listing descriptions, ingredients and instructions. REAL ESTATE – images, descriptions, pricing, and other important stats. So basically, a CUSTOM POST TYPE is…
How to Crush Your SEO Competition (like a pro)
…I don’t play around when I make content. None of that “1-2k words minimum” bullshit. I write as thoroughly and comprehensively as I can. 10,000-word articles. 40,000-word articles. You want to be king? Then you need to put out like one. SEO ain’t for lazy people. (Go back to PPC if you hate long-writing.) So build your content castle. Trust me. If my competitor has 1k pages, I try to make 2k. I know it sounds crazy. But beating a big competitor online by having an even bigger presence works. Being smaller, making less effort,…
Difference between STATIC vs DYNAMIC website - also what is HTML, CSS, PHP, MYSQL
…convenient). And the top of every HTML would of course reference this main CSS file. In came CMS. With a CMS, data was no longer stored in the HTML file but in a database (a MySQL database to be exact). Well, HTML doesn’t work with databases so we needed PHP for that. So now you have HTML & CSS, then PHP & MYSQL. Combined, you have today’s very powerful website SOFTWARE platform. Today’s websites are now mostly with PHP & CSS files. Data is stored on a MYSQL database. When people go to your site,…
WordPress SPEED OPTIMIZATION Service
…– WooCommerce, dynamic cart fragments, heavy CSS/JS Membership sites – MemberPress, RCP, EDD, affiliate tracking Learning sites – LifterLMS, LearnDash Forums – database-intensive, logged-in users, private caching Familiar with all popular themes – AVADA, X, Newspaper, Flatsome, Electro, Astra, GeneratePress, OceanWP, Genesis, etc. Familiar with all pagebuilders – DIVI, Elementor, WPBakery, Oxygen, BeaverBuilder, Site Origin, etc. Familiar with many hosting environments: Server stacks – Apache, NGINX, LiteSpeed. Shared hosting – GoDaddy, BlueHost, SiteGround, 1and1, Hostgator, Inmotion, WiredTree, BellHosting, etc. VPS providers – Digital Ocean, Linode, Cloudways, Vultr, Scaleways, etc. Managed WordPress hosting – WPengine, Flywheel,…
Stock & Crypto Investing Advice from a NOOB
…that’s literally nothing. Whatever you put in will take 7-8 years to double. (Barely beating the rate of inflation.) And for me…f**k that. I don’t want to die rich. I want to live rich. Most of us aren’t wealthy. We’re average folks with anywhere from $5-50k of free cash. And trust me, that’s plenty to get started. The idea is to bet risky. Some will lose, some will win so big and cover all losses. You can easily multiply your starting investment by 3-5x. Then take that and gamble again…except now since you have more…
Design logic behind the WPJohnny custom theme
…watch. I feel the same way about content. When you have naturally sexy content, you just want to get right to it. You don’t want “design” in the way. You don’t want colors and boxes and effects. Believe it or not…I try to design my sites to be as “un-designed” as possible! I want people to hear my voice, not the colors of my website! 2. Text-based (not image-based) Now that we’ve established how I want my design to be content-based…the next part was to understand what my content really is. It’s 99% text…no images….
10 Best WordPress SECURITY plugins review
…masquerade as “security scanners” when they actually aren’t scanning for malware. Additional notes: Many plugins claim to have a “scanner” but they don’t actually scan your files for malware. They simply scan for basic security stuff…like a “checklist scanner”. Many scanners will false detect other security plugins as potential security issues. Hahaha. Many security plugins are not worth the price. You can STILL get hacked even if you do have a security plugin installed. Best WordPress security plugins https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjzlTcX5i7U 1. Wordfence Security – Firewall & Malware Scan (FREE & PAID) https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordfence/ If you’ve been hacked…
BEST PLUGINS for WordPress developers & reviewers
…back-up your shit! Create helpful backup points to restore from. All-In-One Migration is another great tool to create 1-file backups. MainWP – manage multiple sites all under one central dashboard. See server info, site info, handle management tasks like updates and backups, and more. Great pricing and open-source mentality. ManageWP is the main player in the space…slightly easier to set-up, arguably prettier UI, and faster dashboard…but super high pricing. EWWWW. Design UI/UX: Temporary Login Without Password – creates an auto-login link so you can get into the backend without logging. Great for passing around quick…
Why Shared Hosting Sucks
…server more vulnerable to hackers. Guess what happens when these neighbors run amuck….the webhosts mitigate this by putting cages on everyone’s account, throttling back their performance. OUTDATED hardware & software For the pennies you pay, you really think that server is gonna have the latest and greatest CPU/memory/hard-drive, software, latest php, latest Apache modules, and convenient 1-click solutions for all your needs? Of course, not! Most shared hosting servers are like 2 iPhone models behind the top guys. Sure, if you’re lucky and just found a company starting out, they’ll be more updated than the…
WishList Member - membership plugin review 2020
…pages – fill in title, description, custom fields if needed. One panel with no sub-panels, clear labelling. Main AND sub-panels with unintuitive terminology. With MemberPress, you only have one “Settings” area to access all your settings. And only one panel to deal with. With Wishlist, every parent link in the main panel opens up a sub-panel with like 5-15 more links. Also with Wishlist, there’s no such thing as a “Settings” page. It’s flippin infuriating. You either dig through “Setup” (which should be called “Memberships”), or “Advanced Options” (which should have just been called “Settings”)….
Mobile menu design RANT
…returning customers who remember the physical menu). Make text small and with minimal line-height to fit as many things possible on the screen. This reduces unnecessary scroll and helps people remember more choices (to compare mentally). Don’t bother having pictures of every item, unless your food really looks that unique. Don’t do sticky header. C’mon! Don’t make the QR code load images off your Google Drive. COME ON!!! In all honesty, all designers have to do is actually look at their work in mobile and see how it repaints. One look alone would be able…
Difference between CLOUD vs VPS vs MANAGED Hosting
…one area that does stand out to me about premium hosting is the pricing. It’s really REALLY expensive. If your site only gets a few thousand hits a month, going from SHARED hosting $10/month, to CLOUD/VPS hosting $20/month, to PREMIUM MANAGED hosting is $35/month. But what if your site gets 1,000,000 hits a month? For shared, it’s impossible. For VPS, it anywhere from $10-40/month. For cloud, it’s $80-120/month. But for premium managed hosting, it can be $500/month and up! At those rates, might as well just get a semi-dedicated server. Or maybe get a $300…
WordPress vs WP Engine - community drama 2024
My take on the current feud (and now legal battle) between WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg and WP Engine (3rd-party WordPress hosting provider). Who are these 2 companies? Why are they arguing? What’s the background context? Who fired the first shot, and how they responded afterwards in this WordPress World War (WWW1). Read more for some of my own side commentary and how that affects or doesn’t affect you in the greater scheme of things. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnI-QcVSwMU The video that started the war. PREQUEL 1 – what happened right before that presentation. SEQUEL 1 – reddit of…
Should you use Critical CSS?
…that initial visit. Your total CSS is so small that splitting it into more parts slows down your site (adding extra HTTP requests) without actually producing perceived faster render times. You have so much critical CSS that the added complexity doesn’t give you any noticeable speed increases. CSS should be render-blocking! I’m sick of newbies trying to deploy CSS optimization tactics (like CSS combination/merge or critical CSS)! Let’s get this straight -> CSS by nature is supposed to be “render-blocking”. It has to be so that you don’t get FOUT/FOUC issues. (Flash-of-unstyled-text or flash-of-unstyled-content is…
WordPress Membership Plugins Review 2022
…developers) and I don’t respect that. MemberMouse – bloated, expensive, cluttered UI, frontend JS/CSS conflicts. PaidMemberships Pro – hell no. Just a mess. I remember poor UI and annoying modular business model. I’m sure the new version is better but I’m scared to even look at it. s2Member, ThriveCart, Ultimate Member – no, no, and no. (I’m sure they’ve improved since then….but no.) Wishlist – this one’s another “no” from me but readers kept asking me to test a recent version. I reviewed it again MAR 2020…and it’s improved a whole lot but still bad…
Cache warming with Optimus Cache Prime (OCP)
…Test it with /path/to/ocp -v https://yoursite.com/sitemap.xml and see if verbose output is correct. If working, you can set a cron job for it to /path/to/ocp https://yoursite.com/sitemap.xml If you’re curious, try tail -f /var/log/cron to see if it’s runs. I was using CentOS 7, WHM/cPanel. Fabio was on Ubuntu and using something like cd /var/www/ocp/; ./ocp -v=true https://yoursite.com/sitemap.xml but I found it unnecessary that way. FYI: the commands above are only possible for those with SSH access to the server. If you don’t have SSH access, you can still use this script as a cron job. Running…
Disable WP-Cron and use real CRON JOB
…* * (/usr/local/cpanel/scripts/fix-cpanel-perl; /usr/local/cpanel/scripts/upcp –cron > /dev/null) 2 * * * /usr/local/cpanel/bin/backup 35 * * * * /usr/bin/test -x /usr/local/cpanel/bin/tail-check && /usr/local/cpanel/bin/tail-check 5,20,35,50 * * * * /usr/local/cpanel/scripts/eximstats_spam_check 2>&1 /usr/local/cpanel/scripts/update_mailman_cache && /usr/local/cpanel/scripts/update_db_cache 25 */2 * * * /usr/local/cpanel/bin/mysqluserstore >/dev/null 2>&1 15 */2 * * * /usr/local/cpanel/bin/dbindex >/dev/null 2>&1 15 */6 * * * /usr/local/cpanel/scripts/autorepair recoverymgmt >/dev/null 2>&1 */5 * * * * /usr/local/cpanel/scripts/dcpumon-wrapper >/dev/null 2>&1 12,27,42,57 * * * * /usr/local/cpanel/whostmgr/bin/dnsqueue > /dev/null 2>&1 22 22 * * 7 /usr/local/cpanel/scripts/send_api_notifications > /dev/null 2>&1 I know all that looks scary right now but don’t worry! They’re…
10 Important METRICS to track with Google Analytics
…to check things if traffic suddenly falls. Maybe your redirects or permalinks broke. Maybe your site was hacked or your server was down. #2 – GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION (local and global) See where your visitors are geographically located. Useful on both a global level (comparing visits from different countries) vs local (comparing visits from different cities). Lets you know if you’re targeting your users well. Lets you know if your content might be appealing to other visitors around the world that you didn’t think of. #3 – TRAFFIC SOURCE (direct, search engine, referred from…
Best Video-Hosting Service for Membership Site (Vimeo, Youtube, Wistia, Amazon S3, etc)
…on user device/bandwidth Automatic CDN 2. Amazon S3 (with plugin) Cheapest price. Can be slow for far-away users if you don’t use Cloudfront. Can be cumbersome to use without a plugin if you add videos regularly. Can be very cheap/convenient when integrated with a plugin. Good download protection. 3. Wistia Most expensive – only recommended if you have very few videos and/or high dollar conversions. Tons of marketing and conversion-tracking features. Good download protection. 4. Youtube Cheapest (FREE) – no limits at all, upload as much as you want as often as…
WP Rocket WordPress Cache Plugin - UNOFFICIAL GUIDE
…that WP Rocket didn’t have. There’s a massive battle over market share now and while WP Rocket still has a strong following, they are doing some catch-up in terms of copying features from other plugins. While WP Rocket is still very easy to use, it’s no longer the ultra-simple 1-click solution that it used to be. Never to fear, I’ll walk you through every setting (there’s only like 20) and tell you what I would personally recommend. Let’s get to it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GN2vyzcn0c QUICK Setup Guide Cache > Mobile Cache – enable caching for…
Cloudflare settings guide (best performance)
Configure your Cloudflare account for the best website performance (full explanations provided). If you’ve ever wondered what settings to choose or why someone would chance from the default options, this guide will explain it all for you. (QUICK NOTE: all you need is the FREE plan.) Cloudflare settings (video guide) Can watch either the short (quick settings only) or long video (detailed explanation). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1VaIFRUexg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caqf3K13l1c QUICK Cloudflare settings guide Leave everything on default and check/change the following settings: DNS – if enabling proxy, do it only for your domain name and WWW record. Can also…
MemberPress vs MemberMouse vs DAP - Wordpress Membership Plugins Review (2018)
I’ve studied, read up and compared many different membership plugins. I have personally tried MemberPress, MemberMouse, and DAP (still using MemberPress and DAP currently). Here is a basic summary of why I think MemberPress is best. For those wondering about my membership site. I basically sell access to 3rd-party hosted videos, downloadable videos & ebooks, and a members-only forum. Time to read the reviews! ***EDIT: I’ve updated this review to reflect their current progress. MemberPress Review MemberPress is coded the best, makes the most sense, very clean and easy to use. You can figure…
Pricing strategy for the LONGTERM
…*screaming NOOOOO!!* Basically, you shot your own f**ken foot in the beginning by giving everything away for one low price. This is why I sincerely believe the best way to be competitive as a new market player…is to offer LESS FEATURES (choose only essential ones). Then add more over time (evolving in the direction of your brand positioning and strengths, unique viewpoints). The worst way to be competitive…would be to have all features in your product, and then at a lower price than your competitors. This sets the bar too high and now puts this…
How to Move Your WordPress Site from HTTP to HTTPS
…and you are done!!! WOOHOO! (Don’t have htaccess or you’re not on Apache/LiteSpeed? You probably don’t have to worry about this, but do ask your webhost.) WITHOUT www (all visits go to “https://domain.com”): RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301] WITH www (all visits go to “https://www.domain.com”): RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off RewriteRule ^ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L] STEP 6 – Resolve any problems (if needed) Everything should be working. But just in case, here are a few diagnostic steps you can do if the HTTPS doesn’t show green of you don’t get that padlock….
Webhosting Control Panel Review - UPDATED 2021
…for website owners wanting the high-performance/low-price of VPS. They cater perfectly to tech-savvy webhosting users. They offer many features for managing websites (settings, backup, staging, etc) and all can be done with one simple click. Also, their cloudlike nature and pricing allows you to quickly manage multiple servers if you need. Some of them are more for website owners (who run their own website); others are more for web developers (who build websites for clients). Website owners prefer performance/stability, ease-of-use, support. Developers prefer features, low-cost. The only “drawbacks” of cloud control panels (if you want to…
Neve review - fun cloud theme for WordPress
…loved everything about Neve but didn’t have a reason to cheat on my theme wives… …until now. https://youtu.be/qaZc6webpLQ Our first date with Neve We’ve all been with Neve. (You just only didn’t know it.) Neve is built by the same company (ThemeIsle) behind Hestia theme. Remember Hestia? That super popular free lightweight WordPress theme that was at the top of nearly every “fastest WordPress theme review” article from years ago? (Ok…maybe some of you are too young to remember.) Yes, that one! Well, your high school crush just got even hotter. Hestia has blossomed and…
Builderius - initial thoughts and respect
…around…trust me, this ain’t it! You’ll have to get used to lots of terminology and text-based labels, rather than cute kid-friendly images. (Oh and please don’t use this thinking it’s easier than Gutenberg. It’s not.) And really, the GUI is meant to help you speed through developer-tasks….picking modules, datasets, media queries, etc. Builderius is not a “design-by-drawing” tool. At least Oxygen is still quite understandable even if you don’t know how to code. Its user interface is way more polished and user-friendly and arguably still easy enough for non-coders. Builderius really is a coders-only clubhouse….
Use a REAL Email Hosting Service (not your web server!)
…through their own email servers and also really tough spam blocking (Microsoft has the toughest spam-blockers! I actually hate them for it.). Also integrates nicely with everything else Microsoft Office (as expected). Rackspace/Zoho – reasonably cheap but full functional email hosting providers with great delieverability, spam protection, and cloud space. Think of them as “cheaper G-Suite” but without Google integration, of course. Migadu – great service. Pricing model is different from others. You get unlimited storage but you’re charge by how much you send each month. (Most other services give limited storage but unlimited send/receive.)…
Cloudflare DNS/CDN service review - Do you need it? (pros and cons)
…UI and ability to invite others to manage your DNS records. Performance (their “CDN” component) – can cache static site assets (such as images, CSS, JS, fonts, etc) and serve them from proxy servers closer to visitors, apply intelligent page rules at the DNS level (imagine a faster/more-powerful but also less-techy version of htaccess redirects), optimize site assets (compress, minify, etc), and even do full page caching. Security – intelligent firewall to block bots and hackers from attacking your sites. Also SSL management and other security configuration options. As a quick note, their core service…
Genesis Theme Framework Review 2021
… Genesis is the BEST-CODED The code is clean, configurable, and complete! Pick up any other WordPress theme out there and most likely, it’s either: Super clean and lightweight but it isn’t “complete” and requires extra plugins to do basic things. Sometimes needs extra plugins to work with other plugins, hahaha! OR maybe it’s “complete” and has tons of features but it’s bloated as hell. OR maybe it’s clean and complete but it isn’t easily customizable into different layouts and different functions. The list goes on and on. Genesis strikes a nice balance for me….
Replace BLOATED PAGEBUILDERS with Gutenberg blocks
…Other pagebuilder removal examples below: CASE #2 (blocks in blocks, full and narrow width) CASE #3 (posts in multi-column, buttons and headline) 1. List all pages using pagebuilder. Yes, it’s easier said than done. It’s easy if you have only a few pages. But a total pain if you have many. Don’t get overwhelmed. Many are probably not using the pagebuilder extensively (only slight issue with a few shortcodes left behind). Also, you can selectively switch out only the most bloated pages. If you have a smaller site (10-50 pages, few post types) – Make…
Why You SHOULDN'T Combine CSS & JS (performance reasons)
…often you update content. PS: those test sites are a little bit dated. Giving suggestions that would have worked better for older webhosting technology. But (rebuttals)… “Doesn’t combining CSS/JS reduce the code?” Yes, it’s true! Merging your CSS/JS often reduces code, stripping out empty spaces and unnecessary code. So it would seem like your site would load faster since there’s less code overall to load. Only problem is, that’s not how pages render. You see, pages render as soon as an entire asset loads. Let’s compare uncombined CSS (split1.css + split2.css + split3.css = 60kb…
Minify strategies for HTML, CSS, JS
…cache plugin. I only do it from CDN. Most CDN’s all have CSS and JS minification. For the CDN’s that proxy the HTML content (like Cloudflare and QUIC.cloud), you can minify the HTML as well through their servers. This is great since it saves your servers the trouble. But CDN does come with some proxy delay…so if you don’t need a CDN (you have local traffic), you might be better off not using one. What about CSS/JS merging? I hate merging CSS/JS. Having one combined 300kb CSS/JS (instead of 400kb of uncombined and un-minified CSS/JS)…
What's a CDN? (Content Delivery Network) And do you need it?
…(usually “cdn.yourdomain.]}**com” or “yourdomain.cdndomain.]}**com”). With Cloudflare: You change your nameservers settings from you registrar to point to Cloudflare (instead of your webhost). Cloudflare then copies all your DNS records (from your webhost) so everything works seemlessly. Cloudflare then silently loads your static assets (images, JS, CSS, fonts, etc) from nearby servers. All your asset URLs stay the same instead of changing to CDN hostname. (For example: if your images were loading from “https://yoursite.com/image.jpg” before, they will still load from the same URL. Some extra bonuses, since Cloudflare operates at the DNS level, they can protect…
WordPress Backup Plugins Review (UPDATED 2022)
…and site! Scheduled back-ups – daily, weekly, monthly, whatever you want. Easy Excludes – choose what you DON’T want to back-up, such as huge directories, etc. Premium extension – I love that it works well with the free version and if you want extra features like backing up off-site, etc…you can buy the premium version. (UPDATE: so sad, they are no longer selling it!) Check out BackupWordPress 5. BackupBuddy I absolutely hate it. Annoying screens and advertisements all over your dashboard. Lots of colors and unorganized design. Somewhat functional – yes, it works and it’s…
What are HTTP headers? (and why they're useful)
…response headers with info like: Status of the URL – 200 (working), 301 (redirected), 404 (not found), 500 (server not working), etc. See all HTTP status codes. What web server – Apache, NGINX, LiteSpeed. Caching info – if the page is cached, if it’s using CDN, etc. Content-encoding – GZIP, Brotli. Content type – HTML, text, etc. Age of the cached content – so your browser knows whether to download new info or not. What type of content can be executed in the browser – videos, PDF, etc. What browser features can be used –…
MainWP vs ManageWP - best WordPress management plugin
…their free plan). So it ultimately comes down to deciding if you’re a FREE or PAID user, and then to compare the features you want. Extensions ManageWP – is a closed-source commercial SaaS…so only they can make extensions. MainWP – is open source software. So tons of extensions available (both official & 3rd party). ManageWP is like Shopify, and MainWP is like WordPress. So basically…you’ll have way more options and flexibility with MainWP. User experience (UX) The more I watch people manage their websites, the more I realize how different I am from everybody else….
Why LiteSpeed Cache is the #1 cache plugin for me
…CDN security – protects your site against brute-force attacks, also recaptcha security for repeat offenders. Critical CSS optimization – generates critical CSS. Static content – also has the traditional CDN function which is caching and serving static content like images, CSS, JS, fonts, and other static files. What’s crazy is QUIC.cloud is totally free! Their CDN functionality is free. The LiteSpeed Cache plugin is totally free. Their image compression is totally free. Their CDN-level security protection is free. Generate critical CSS. Use the fastest HTTP/3. Play with LQIP…which nobody else offers! ALL FREE! It’s really…
Managed VPS vs Unmanaged VPS
What managed VPS does is give you a pre-tuned hosting environment that fits most sites out there (with varying levels of aggressive caching enabled). If you’re coming from shared hosting, any VPS will be a noticeable performance gain to you. But where managed VPS can be a turn-off is the price. You might pay upwards of $30-500/month for a server that you could have leased yourself for a quarter of that. Think of it this way, $80/managed gets you either: 6-core server unmanaged VPS and you have to set everything up yourself, or… 2-core VPS…
PREMIUM PRICING sells to all customers
…really believe that. It’s been done forever and ever by many companies. Look at Apple (and their college discounts). Look at Dell (and their decades of slickdeals coupons). Look at Nordstrom (and Nordstrom Rack). What about all those companies “remarketing” you with emailed coupons to finalize your shopping cart? The list goes on forever. Let’s look at Apple one more time. I will have to say they are one of the most affordable brands out there. Hahaha, crazy statement, I know. It seems almost everyone has their stuff. Is it cheap? No! But are they…
Enable GZIP for faster page loads!
…there’s a trade-off in processing time vs downloading time. GZIP can compress 100KB of data down to 20KB. So you have to consider what’s faster….the time it takes to compress or the time it takes to download 80KB? On super fast connection, you might just say fine, skip compression and download full size. But on mobile connection, you will always always prefer compressing first and send less data. Anyway, just my 2 cents. Check if your site is GZIP compressed – https://checkgzipcompression.com/ Want better compression than GZIP? (Go with Brotli; I like compression level 4.)…
Do you need a dedicated IP for webhosting? (debunking myths)
…IP. Imagine if you were to remember your friend’s home address by its longtitude and latitude coordinates, it would be very hard to remember. So instead, you remember easier labels like “155th Maple St, Smallville, Georgia, USA”. Domains work in a similar manner in the networking world. Instead of having to remember a computer IP like 202.172.14.241, we can just instead remember a domain “burgershop.com”. Much easier, you see? What’s the difference between a dedicated IP and shared IP? If you have 2 websites (that’s 2 domains), and each one sits on its own web-server….
Thoughts on Google Web Vitals (web.dev)
…it. But for my personal workflow, it’s a useless tool. Here’s why… 1. Misleading or inaccurate metrics. Look at the report for my site. Time to interactive is 4 seconds? And largest contentful paint is nearly 5 seconds? That’s just wrong. And I get why. It’s because Web Vitals, as with any other speed testing tool, can’t accurately measure for every possible type of web application. WordPress loads differently, Joomla loads differently, Shopify loads differently, every CMS is different. Imagine testing different kinds of cars. Maybe in one model, a certain type of sound is…
Migration tactics for LARGE WordPress sites
…as needed. 4. Copy over the database Exporting the database is usually pretty easy, even for large databases. It’s the importing part that can be a pain. Export the database via phpmyadmin or a backup plugin. (For large database, use mysql database dump or wp-cli.) Then import the database into the new web server using phpmyadmin. If you can’t import because it’s too large, try compressing into ZIP format and try again. If that also doesn’t work, you can upload the database into the website directory and then import through the command line. Another way…
DNS hosts website preview
…link Download link above doesn’t work so you’ll have to find another one elsewhere. When using this, don’t forget to edit preferences and shorten the update interval time. 3. Edit your local computer hosts file Simply add a line to it, with the IP and then the domain. (Basically tells your computer to look for the domain at exactly that IP instead of doing a DNS-lookup over the web.) I highly don’t recommend this method as it’s annoying. But it’s the old school way people used to do manually. MAC – /etc/hosts WINDOWS – c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts…
Choosing a (good) domain registrar
What makes a good domain registrar? I like Whois.com, Cloudflare, and maybe GoDaddy for difficult foreign TLDs (that require proxy service). All I care about it: Good UI – easy-to-use interface that isn’t bombarding me with web and email hosting ads! (Hahaha) Domain selection – provides many TLDs. This way you don’t have to register at multiple registrars. Can get them all conveniently in the same place. Free privacy – this is especially important if you have busy sites/domains. Without the privacy options, your emails and home mailbox will be bombarded with spam. Provides proxy…
Repairing a HACKED WordPress site
…older…usually uncommon.) Change that -7 to however long ago you were hacked. Ideally, you noticed it within 24 hours or less. If the hack occurred like 30 days ago…well…God help you (try and you’ll see what I mean). You should also use grep -r “string” /home/user – searches /home/user directory for all files named “something”…but instead of “something”, replace it with the following base64 code below. base64_decode gzinflate(base64_decode eval(gzinflate(base64_decode eval(base64_decode I like this command too: grep -E ‘[A-Za-z0-9+/]{4}*([A-Za-z0-9+/]{4}|[A-Za-z0-9+/]{3}=|[A-Za-z0-9+/]{2}==)’ The toughest part about closing vulnerabilities… Is that you have to close the original one (the one the hacker got…
WordPress security plugins SUCK!
Do you really need a WordPress security plugin? My personal opinion? Yes and no. Most of them suck. Most of their features suck. They slow down your site. They can’t secure/detect everything. They cost money. They give a false sense of security (BIGGEST OFFENSE). (I’ll also cover which features DON’T suck.) Don’t worry, I’ll explain. Introduction to WordPress security To talk about WordPress security, you have to understand what you’re actually securing your site from! Attacks come in various forms and with different motives behind them. And the attacks target different aspects of your…
Greenshift - Gutenberg pagebuilder blocks (with animation)
…of Gutenberg blocks with endless animation capabilities. Text blocks (titles, paragraphs) – where you could make words (all or just selected ones) animate. Media (images, videos, galleries) – that flip or slide, or carousel around. Objects (counters, icons, buttons) – that change design state upon engagement. Containers (sections, tabs, tables, panels) – that flip and reveal content in dozens of creating ways. And more – mouse effects, 3d modeling, and more! I saw the list and it was crazy. They have a ton of blocks! All the gimmicky “bloated” features that your neighborhood speed-expert said…
10 BEST Gutenberg block libraries for WordPress
…Gutenberg block library. While I don’t like having more Gutenberg block tabs, I do appreciate that they organized their blocks into Elements, Module, Posts, and Widget. (Hmmm…why didn’t they make all those words plural?) In any case, I think some people will feel it’s overkill. Others will love all the options it has. (I also hope they go away from the generic plugin name.) 4. CoBlocks (GoDaddy) Absolutely fantastic for replacing complicated pagebuilder layouts. Has dividers, menus, pricing tables, carousels, collages, media layouts. This one is super fun with the shape dividers (put in a…
Dashboard Search for MemberPress (WPJ plugin)
…> Members, then click. Move your mouse over to search to type in information. Then move your mouse to the “Field” dropdown, and choose a field. Then click “Go”. As you can see, the process was inefficient/cumbersome. So I tried to speed it up with my simple plugin. There’s a blank field right on your dashboard. You enter whatever info you want, and hit the [ENTER] key. DONE! PS: the plugin also allows you to use the [ENTER] key from the MemberPress Members page. (No clicking required!) Download Comment Reply Email: WordPress.org repo GitHub repo…
What is WordPress (and why you should use it)
…Large CMS (Joomla, Drupal, Magento) – can feel like overkill. Too technical and overwhelming, especially for smaller/simpler sites. Can also be too resource heavy for cheap hosting. Other smaller CMS (Typo3, Concrete5, etc) – either too simple or too technical. Not free. Limited in features if you’re trying to do anything too custom. Less 3rd party options (themes/plugins) to choose from. Smaller community base. Fewer developers/contractors available to help you with it. Hosted free-model (Wix, Weebly) – very attractive for non-technical users who don’t know anything about making websites or webhosting. Their platforms will host…
nSphere.net is a Scam
…After emailing the AM again, she promises to have a check sent out asap. Well I DID receive a check but weeks after I deposit the check I find out it BOUNCED. What a freaken scam. On a side note, I should add that the sub-domain directory thing they put on your site isn’t effective. The latest Google update doesn’t send much traffic to those kinds of sites and I would advise against having that on your domain. If this company contacts you, well at least you know what happened to me. Avoid these guys….
Linux Basics - Intro to CLI
Welcome to the Linux command line interface (CLI). Course not finished recording. Once finished, price will be $300. – SEP 21, 2023 updates…course updates coming very VERY soon. Managing websites basic server tasks from Linux CLI. This course is a (fun) shortcut course to the most common Linux commands and tasks. I teach you only the commands you’ll actually be using on a daily basis. No boring explanations of Linux philosophy and GUI-shaming. Just a straight-to-the-point tutorial to make you comfortable in CLI and learn how to look up Linux commands (if needed). It’s not…
LiteSpeed vs NGINX - performance comparison and history
…figured it out but with the time I spent I can assure you most newbies won’t have been able to. So too bad! Stack configurations – all running the latest version of PHP 7.3, mariaDB, blah blah blah. RunCloud had a months-older PHP 7.3.4 (instead of latest PHP 7.3.8). I used out of the box configurations without trying to tweak or tune anything to their best settings. Whatever they came out of the box with is what they get. Caching configurations compared – OLS, I tested with LS cache on and off. NGINX, I compared…
WP Interview - Daan van den Bergh (of WoOSH.DEV)
…placement and pick an Ad Publishing Platform that keeps performance in mind. With my Speed Optimization clients, I’ve seen platforms that made ~500 requests, only to display 3 advertisements. And well, rule no. 1 in Internet Marketing is: a slow website kills conversion. No, I will not be releasing a Stealth Mode for Adsense, as it’s impossible, irresponsible and nowhere near that precious thin line. 😉 That’s all I got! Kind regards, Daan van den Bergh Follow Daan’s work: Pro WordPress Speed Optimization services (starting at € 99,-): https://woosh.dev Free WordPress Optimization Tips & Tricks: https://daan.dev Follow me on Twitter: @Dan0sz…
FlyingPress cache plugin - UNOFFICIAL GUIDE - UPDATED 2022
…intervals. For example if you update your site every day, then use the 24-hour option. Exclude Pages from Caching – list any pages that have dynamic info based on different user or user session. For example…cart, account, checkout, or any page that you don’t want cached. Ignore Query Strings – useful to avoid unnecessary page-caching for query strings. Some query strings cause content changes (e.g. language, currency, etc) and should be treated or cached as separate pages. Other query strings don’t cause content changes (e.g. FB/Google trackers, affiliate cookies) and are only used for tracking, so…
cPanel vs Plesk - Webhosting Control Panel Review 2020
…to say that WHM/cPanel is “less secure” by any means. It’s that Plesk encourages better security. There’s more notifications, alerts, and visual cues to help you secure your sites/server. WHM/cPanel on the other hand, assumes you know what you’re doing. It’s a matter of a taste and who your userbase is. Plesk could be considered “naggy” but it’s alright for me. Simple extension manager – I love the extension manager! Very clean and easy-to-use. WHM/cPanel feels a bit confusing between installing “modules”, “plugins”, and “software”. You’re never sure which is needed for what you want….
Custom Post Types (CPT) vs custom Gutenberg blocks
…blocks. (For example, a being used for some random visual effect vs “review” blocks that have their scores calculated out elsewhere). Nothing else is needed from this custom Gutenberg block except for a specialized display on frontend and easy-editing on the backend. Choose Custom Post Type (CPT) if… You need entirely different page layouts. You need the content to be organized in a custom way. You need to calculate data from this content and/or want to show it in multiple places on frontend. (E.g. having reviews on different pages but also a list of popular/recent…
Spark Mail vs Mailspring (OS X email client review)
My personal review of the 2 best free email clients for OS X. I’ve used Mailspring for nearly 2 years. And Spark for a few months. Spark is the easy winner for me. You can stop reading this guide, stop wasting your life, and just get Spark right now. What? Still don’t believe me?! Fine, then continue wasting your life and read more… NOTE: I’m only comparing their free versions! Similarities between Spark Mail & Mailspring Both are free, full-featured email clients. Both are easy to use, have clean minimal interface. Both feel lightweight and…
Speeding up WordPress (wp-admin) backend
…memory your entire site uses. (Try WP Server Health Stats) How much memory your theme and plugins use. (From Query Monitor) How much memory your autoloads use. From here, we have a couple tactics. Of course, you can try increasing your site memory limits. Add the following lines below to your wp-config.php file above the line that says “That’s all, stop editing! Happy blogging.”: define( ‘WP_MEMORY_LIMIT’, ‘256M’ ); define( ‘WP_MAX_MEMORY_LIMIT’, ‘256M’ ); The first one increases memory use for the frontend, the second one increases for the backend. For most well-built sites, you don’t need…
SOLUTION - Is your server IP blocked in any countries?
Are visitors from a certain country prevented from visiting your website or server? (You should check!) We had an interesting problem the other day with a client’s server IP being blocked from Russia. Let’s go over how we diagnosed the issue and then how we got around it. 1. Check if the server IP is blocked from any countries. Visit https://ping.pe/ Enter in your server IP and see which countries are blocking it. Ideally, the “Loss %” column is showing 0% for each location and mostly solid green bars in the “Chart” column. China…
BEST WordPress SEO plugins 2021
…2. All-in-One SEO I loved what this plugin used to be…before Syed Balkhi touched it. AIO SEO is now acquired under his umbrella companies and everything he touches loses its soul. I’m sure it’s worth it but no thanks. https://wordpress.org/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/ 3. All the others Here goes more stuff I don’t use personally, and only deal with occasionally on client sites. SEOPress – seems like a nice brand. I haven’t tried it much. I did hear some people complaining about it making a mess out of the database and lots of unnecessary entries in there (even…
Cwicly - WordPress Gutenberg pagebuilder review
…repeater, page-specific styler, etc. Roadmap – keep an eye on it. I see many interesting things on here…free version, WooCommerce templating, megamenu builder, raw HTML conversions, and more. I really like Cwicly’s feature list. Maybe I disagree with Cwicly on UI and UX but their development mentality (on what features are necessary) aligns exactly with mine. Support Cwicly has an active community and lots of engagement between both devs and users. It’s exactly what I want to see. Comprehensive support documentation. Active (Discourse) forums. Roadmaps They offer 24/7 support, which I haven’t used. Facebook Group…
MaxMind fraud prevention review (WHMCS + minFraud)
…order is blocked…no transaction made, and new account is not activated. (The order information might still be registered for archival purpose, but the user profile is not activated.) The pricing for these services are per order look-up. Something like $0.004 per order verification. So pretty cheap, but not dirt cheap. Still very worth it for the time-savings and peace of mind. In WHMCS security options, I saw options for 3 different verification providers: Validation.com – they’re out of business. Fraudlabs – aka “IPQS” or “IPQualityScore”. I didn’t choose them because their website looked old school…
The BEST WordPress theme (for coders) – Genesis
…for non-coder try to spell out every option for you (sizes, colors, fonts, measurements, etc). This adds mean much more code to wade through to do simple tasks. Next, a good framework should integrate well with the rest of the internet. SEO-friendly (for search engines), social-network friendly (shows accurate snippets when shared), accessibility (can be “read” by different reader-apps, vision-challenged folks), ready for multi-lingual translation, compatible with other popular plugins (WooCommerce, media, etc). Simply put, Genesis holds the perfect balance in giving you all the customization options you need…but not requiring you to add in…
The BEST WordPress theme (for non-coders) - GeneratePress
…a really simple (graphical) interface for hooks and filters. For those who don’t know…”hooks” refers to page location (above header, below title, footer, etc) and “filters” refers to pages (posts, pages, contact page, home page, etc). So let’s say you wanted to stick a countdown timer BELOW PRODUCT TITLE but only on SALE PRODUCT PAGES, or how about RANDOM X WIDGET placed ABOVE TOP MENU…how easy would that be? I’d bet you most themes wouldn’t be able to entertain all your random content-placement combinations. And you’d end up having to ask your programmer to do…
Why You Should (almost) NEVER Use Lazy Load
…experience? Let me go deeper into the subject of when you should (and shouldn’t) use lazy load. When you SHOULDN’T use lazy load: You have images above the fold. (it delays your header/banner load) You have a store. (shoppers can’t fast-scroll as quickly through your site) Doing it only to fool pagespeed scores. (while hurting UX for actual human users) You’ve got a CDN. (their servers do the work, and not yours) Have only a few images on each page. (static assets are easily cached and load quickly anyways) You have a fast-loading website and…
Skills you need to manage a (Linux) web server
…copy, export, import). Changing PHP configurations. Starting, stopping, restarting key web services (web server, mysql, ftp, ssh, mail, dns). Firewall management – open and close ports. Whitelist or blacklist IP’s. SSL – generate, delete, copy, import SSL certifications. 4. Server configuration No such thing as “best server configurations”. People try to ask me all the time…“Johnny, what are your recommended server configurations”. And it makes me laugh because that’s not how you should do it. How many hot dogs and bottles of wine should you buy for your next picnic? It depends! If you don’t…
Noob Guide to Gutenberg
…the WooBuilder by PootlePress You can add my snippet below to your theme functions.php file. Make sure to change product to whatever your CPT is called (e.g. portfolio, recipe, reviews, etc). /** * Enables Gutenberg editor for “product” CPT. */ function wpjohnny_gutenberg_cpt($can_edit, $post_type){ if($post_type == ‘product’){ $can_edit = true; } return $can_edit; } add_filter(‘use_block_editor_for_post_type’, ‘wpjohnny_gutenberg_cpt’, 10, 2); If the snippet above doesn’t work, it means you have to enable the editor for your custom post type. Which is done by adding ‘show_in_rest’ => true, ‘supports’ => array(‘editor’) inside the function that registers your CPT. Read…
WP Engine SUCKS! (bad webhosting review)
…almost every blogger out there…their massive affiliate commission ($200 per sale). It does bother me when a company’s frequent referral via word-of-mouth is tainted by high commissions. 8. Slow file download Yeah, I’m serious. I don’t get it. It’s like their drives are slow or maybe some annoying security scanning on each uploaded/downloaded file? Either way, it’s annoying! 9. Flakey backup generation/download I don’t know what the heck is going on and I’m actually baffled a company of this magnitude can’t get backups working right. Sure, they might work if your site is only 100mb….
ScalaHosting review - traditional shared hosting (custom panel)
…change I wholehandedly support and also stand behind as a middle finger to cPanel. SPanel works well and offers tremendous cost savings that are passed down to the end users and resellers. How cool is that? 🙂 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzPYg0n1cqU Who the heck is ScalaHosting? ScalaHosting is the real deal. Kind of like the next SiteGround. If you haven’t been paying attention to them, I don’t blame you. For whatever reason…despite the big plays they’ve been making, they’re still far under the radar. The name “ScalaHosting” isn’t memorable enough…if anything, it reminds me of the “White Mamba”…
External Tracker for AffiliateWP (WPJ plugin)
…quick settings and that’s it. That’s it! You can now enjoy the extra affiliate stats. 🙂 Technical Details: You don’t have to read this but it’s useful if you’re curious of what to expect. MAIN site – with AffiliateWP and External Tracker for AffiliateWP installed. EXTERNAL site – with only External Tracker for Affiliate installed. Now go to the AffiliateWP Visits page (https://yourmainsite.com/wp-admin/admin.php?page=affiliate-wp-affiliates)…and there you will see visits to your external site showing up in the “Landing Page” column, and on the right side which ones converted or not. Buy External Tracker for AffiliateWP: BUY…
How to Make Subtitles for Your Videos
…text and duration out. Like I said, it’s too much work. So I found another option that’s much faster. Load your video onto youtube (put it in private if you don’t want people to see it) go here and enter in your youtube video address: https://www.serpsite.com/youtube-subtitles-download-tool/ Download the transcription as SRT file Now open up the SRT file in a text editor and fix the words to match what’s being said in the video. Get a translator to edit and save the SRT file into other languages. That’s it! How easy was that?!…
SEO TIP - Create the Keyword
…to stay several steps ahead of my competition. By the time they catch on to it, my site outranks them easily because I’ve had the keyword on my site for a long time before theirs. But it’s more than just SEO. It’s about really knowing your shit and like I said…REALLY KNOWING YOUR INDUSTRY. It’s just about knowing the latest keywords. It’s about knowing the latest concerns, things that TODAY’S customer cares about, what people are talking about. And if you don’t even know these things…then is your business truly qualified to even succeed? https://www.warriorforum.com/search-engine-optimization/1082472-seo-tip-create-keyword.html…
How to get FREE STUFF on Amazon
…products security cameras portable batteries and solar panels (for USB devices) portable house heaters desk lamps, portable lights/lanterns car accessories (mats, organizers, sunshade, etc) fitness and health products there’s pills, too (but I don’t trust those! haha) lost track of everything I got (I think I’ll never buy from the “impulse aisle” in stores anymore) Here’s how it works… You need to find one of those Facebook ads for “free test review products”. Typical ad showing photo of product, and promises of it being totally free. ^— This is what it looks like. Just click…
AUTOMATE your Social Media Posting (how to)
…create: RSS (blog) to Buffer (Facebook page) RSS (blog) to Buffer (Facebook group) RSS (Youtube) to Buffer (Facebook page) RSS (Youtube) to Buffer (Facebook group) RSS (blog) to Buffer (Instagram) RSS (whatever) to Buffer (whatever) etc.. and etc.. Basically…every time new posts show on your RSS, they are immediately posted to your Buffer social accounts. Other Zaps you can make: Every time someone signs up on your site – they are added to your email mailing list. Every time someone purchases your membership – they are forwarded to schedule a video call with you. Every…
WPML Speed Optimization Tips
…it’s like you’re doing multi-site if you only have 2 languages. What about WPML’s overhead? Yes, it’s true…WPML does do a lot of php-intensive and database-intensive operations. But even without a cache plugin, I’ve been able to get a busy 1mb site to load in 1 second. (I’m on a 4-core VPS, btw.) If your theme is coded cleanly enough, you will be fine. In fact, if you’re like me…you’ll be surprised at how fast WPML can run! At this point, it’s only 200-300ms cost AT MOST compared to the exact same site without WPML….
Digital Access Pass (DAP) WordPress Membership Plugin Review - UPDATED 2019
…feels like an old car with a new paint job and lots of “repairs”. IMO, it needs to be rebuilt from scratch but they’ve got too many users to support and too much money being made, so I understand. If you want my professional opinion, do not use it. You and your developers will hate it. If you don’t believe me…just see for yourself. Install DAP alongside any other modern membership plugin and the decision is a no-brainer. 2018 update – they are STILL having security problems. https://www.digitalaccesspass.com/blog/2018/06/important-dap-security-password-update/ Want a real membership plugin? Try MemberPress….
AVOID - Astra theme and Brainstorm Force plugins (are bloated)
…2020: I find another client site using Convert Pro that had 125K autoloads. Anyways…I’m getting too lazy to report each and every instance of high autoloads. 3. Astra theme has too much autoloads Yeah, this is my replacement #3. I see 800kb worth of autoloads in the wp_option table, many rows called “astra-sites-and-pages-page”. It’s just a common theme with anything made by BSF. 4. Some of their plugins (I can’t remember which one) have a lot of inline styles. Blah blah blah, more ranting here. Too lazy to even write it out. 5. They deleted…
WPJ Plugins Download
You can download your purchased WPJ plugins here. Click “View Licenses” to get your license key….
RunCloud hosting panel 2020 review
RunCloud is still the #1 cloud panel for developers, and now even faster! A quick breakdown of what I like about the latest RunCloud (with RunCloud Hub caching) and how it stacks up against other cloud panels like GridPane and Cloudways. RunCloud has always been one of my favorite panels. It’s one of the best designed, very intuitive, performance is good, and the pricing is very reasonable (CHEAP). But I don’t recommend it for everyone. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpAN4q1Z3SM RunCloud PROS Great UI As I’ve said it has a great UI. But for doing what, exactly? It’s got…
Why Websites Should Be Designed like VIDEO GAMES
…into another world. You feel what the characters feel. You aren’t playing the character, you BECOME the character. That’s powerful stuff. What’s even more powerful? The game isn’t just UI. It’s a drug that hypnotizes you into doing what it wants. What does the game want? (What does the character need?) More coins? More sword-slashing? More jumps? More ammo? What??? They’re games out there that aren’t even that pretty and yet they draw you in again and again and again. You just want to play one more time. Even if it does nothing for you….
Best Linux distribution for web servers - CentOS vs Ubuntu
…the webhosting market uses it. You only use something else for very specific reasons. Ubuntu is a popular choice for single users. Are you the only one managing this server? Then Ubuntu (based off of Debian) may also be a good pick. Can be considered higher performance and more updated since it uses the latest software but at the same time can be seen as slightly less stable and also more buggy. Personally, I’ve 0nly used Ubuntu for desktop use (it’s very popular there) and never for web-servers although many have and prefer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hyLt_nWItQ…
Cloudways Managed Hosting Review (2019)
…and ease-of-use. It’s a nice mid-step between regular vanilla-flavored Apache that you get with most shared hosts, and the ultra-fast but trickier NGINX. If you’re using SiteGround at the cost of $12/month (which becomes $30/month after the first year), you’re a great candidate for Cloudways. Their lowest plan starts at only $10/month (using Digital Ocean) and you’d be getting a high-performance VPS, which is faster than SG shared hosting! It’s a much better server/performance. Use the free trial: www.cloudways.com *** TIPS: change your php version to 7.2 or higher pick mariaDB instead of mysql 5.x…
Why use cPanel in 2021
…nodes. Notifications: WHM/cPanel has so many damn notifications. You might even complain that there’s too many but I do appreciate that it can be so thorough. Notifications for every possible little thing. High resource use, space running, bandwidth use, SSL’s didn’t renew, CRON jobs didn’t run, backup status, new accounts/domains added or deleted, and hundreds. I’m not even kidding, there’s hundreds of possible notifications. And you can check which ones you want or not. The other great benefit of this granular resource tracking, is that it allows you to bill by these resources (depending on…
Fastest ways to load Google Analytics JS on WordPress
…settings are available. Not all cache plugins handle GA caching. I use Swift Performance Lite. (Here’s the premium version with more features). Just make sure you don’t forget to re-enable GA if you decide to disable caching. METHOD #2 – Using a GA plugin (2nd fastest) Complete Analytics Optimization Suite (CAOS) – nice plugin that saves the latest GA.js file on your server and loads it locally. The file is synchronized with the latest GA from Google servers and updated periodically. You save one request and speed up page load times. Works well, very…
The most elegant WordPress theme - Artisan Themes review
…best stock theme designs. When comparing stock designs, their stuff looks better than anybody else’s out of the box. They look like the work of a true design agency. See their themes for yourself. Spatial balance and cleanliness. Interesting layouts. (Not just shoving sidebar left and right.) Sensible use of color. (Even their plain B&W looks fresh.) Unique (AND SEAMLESS) transitions between different sections. “Out-of-the-box” – you don’t feel the “boxiness” of their grid layouts. Fun staggering – not just boring left-to-right, top-to-bottom. Artisan Themes feel so free and yet so organized. Contained but not…
How to Write Your Web Design Proposal
…developer]. We’re a high-end design shop specializing in web designs for small businesses. We love creating exciting brands that stand out in today’s cluttered internet. We see that you’re in [this] niche and want you to know we’re very familiar with it. We’ve done something similar and familiar with what it takes to stand out, attract customers, and convert visitors to buyers. Please see a list of our past work below: website1.com website2.com website3.com website4.com website5.com Thanks for reading my proposal and let me know if you have any questions. Regards, Billy the web-designer expert…
NGINX vs OpenLiteSpeed (OLS) honest speed comparison 2022
…to release a free open-source version called OpenLiteSpeed (2013). Which takes us to today’s webhosting landscape: Many traditional hosts still offering Apache. Newer modern hosts offering NGINX. Boutique hosts (both traditional & modern) offering LiteSpeed. Ultra-modern trendy hosts offering NGINX & OpenLiteSpeed (OLS). NGINX vs OpenLiteSpeed (OLS) So now we realize where the battle is really at. It’s free open-source OpenLiteSpeed taking on the powerhouse free open-source NGINX. Questions the noobs asks: Is OLS really faster than NGINX? – that’s what my post will answer. Is OLS newer/cooler than NGINX? – yes, it is. Is…
Apache vs NGINX Comparison - use either but NOT BOTH!
…getting into the range of 1 million visits/month, you really \shouldn’t even be worried about which one to use. Both will be fine (and fast). Worst case scenario, Apache might require a $40 server to handle what NGINX can do with only a $10 server. But either way, you pick the one that fits your application best and then simply apply some caching or scale up from there. If you’ve really got that much traffic, just go with NGINX or fork out a few bucks and get LiteSpeed. Other reading on Apache vs NGINX: https://www.nginx.com/blog/nginx-vs-apache-our-view/…
Predicting the death of ALL pagebuilders (except ONE)
…was a mix between fiddling around in the theme options, customizer options, and reading the theme support forums for snippet hacks. Not only was this a pain for the newer (and less tech-savvy) crop of mainstream WordPress users, it was also a time-consuming nuisance for developers to support. Here’s what I think happened next… Somebody (probably a theme-developer) said: “Hey, why don’t we build a fancier WYSIWYG editor for WordPress with more options?” “Hell yes! Let’s put layouts, effects, colors, font, even preset designs!” “I have an even better idea! We’ll market this as a…
Clone database in phpMyAdmin (easy way)
…username prefix in front of it. I also like to put “dev” at the end of it to know what it’s a clone of. So I might put in “wpdev” to end up with username_wpdev.) Click the Go button and that’s it! (Refresh the page to see the new database on left side.) If you’re curious, these 4 options should be checked/selected…although the correct ones should already be preselected. Structure and data – copies all tables and data. CREATE DATABASE before copying – assuming you didn’t already create it. Add AUTO_INCREMENT value Add constraints https://youtu.be/z-p2s5UktOc…
Affiliate Royale to AffiliateWP (migration script)
This (free) simple php script migrates your affiliate data from Affiliate Royale to AffiliateWP. I developed it since I was unhappy with the neglected Affiliate Royale plugin that came with MemberPress and wanted to migrate to something with more features like AffiliateWP. Credits to Yin for pulling out his hair over this. If you want to see what is migrated, you can read through the plugin. It’s not too long. 😉 Download it here: Affiliate Royale to AffiliateWP migration script (GitHub) Instructions: It’s very easy to use…check the readme.txt…
WP Featherlight Disabled (WPJ plugin)
…Featherlight since the lightbox CSS/JS is not loaded automatically. Manual activation – to enable lightbox functionality, simply click the checkbox in your post settings. Retains WP Featherlight features – has all the same features and filters as the original WP Featherlight plugin (up to version 1.3.3) Support: The plugin is free for your personal/commercial use, but do buy me a beer if you like it. Enjoy! 🙂 I’m not responsible for what you do with it. If you have issues, you can ask for support on the WP.org repo. Download WP Featherlight Disabled: WordPress.org repo GitHub repo…
CyberPanel cheatsheet (configs, commands, fixes)
A handy reference page for common CyberPanel commands and configurations. I made a list of the most common configurations and issues that I deal with on CyberPanel servers. If you don’t find what you need here, check on CyberPanel documentation or forums. Install (CentOS): yum update, press “y” when asked sh <(curl https://cyberpanel.net/install.sh || wget -O – https://cyberpanel.net/install.sh) (official link) To update (when new versions are available), sh <(curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/usmannasir/cyberpanel/stable/preUpgrade.sh || wget -O – https://raw.githubusercontent.com/usmannasir/cyberpanel/stable/preUpgrade.sh) (official link, for most recent update instructions and quick fixes if you see errors) Usual configs after installation: after finished,…
Comment Reply Email (WPJ Plugin)
…the latest PHP and WordPress. I also improved some wording, removed unnecessary author links in the email notifications, and also keep it more updated. Credits to Denis who first hacked it 5 years ago, and later Walter for sanitizing, fixing string escapes and other PHP deprecation issues. The plugin is free for your personal/commercial use, but do buy me a beer if you like it. Enjoy! 🙂 I’m not responsible for what you do with it. If you have issues, you can ask for support on the WP.org repo. Download Comment Reply Email: WordPress.org repo GitHub repo…
Totally biased review of FlyingPress cache plugin
……also Swap Google Fonts Display (don’t worry, it still flies!) And now, we have his latest release—FlyingPress (cache plugin). Haha. He’s referred speed optimization clients to me on numerous occasions (some that I’ve even tried to refer back to him). But now, we can refer them all to FlyingPress! My totally honest (but still biased) thoughts about FlyingPress 1. It’s made by Gijo Varghese. Because this freaken matters! Gijo is a WordPress speed optimization icon. There are few people more qualified than him to lead us into the frontlines of the speed optimization battlefield. He’s…
CyberPanel OpenLiteSpeed high performance web server for WordPress
Create your own HIGH PERFORMANCE CyberPanel-OpenLiteSpeed web-server in just 10 minutes (with $10). Want your own super fast web server? Don’t want to pay for a control-panel or managed sys-admin support? Want a full-functioning control panel? Want enterprise-grade caching? Want to manage all this (almost) without messing with the command line? You’ve come to the right place! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WT1u83jP51U 1. Get a VPS account If you want to copy me exactly in this video, go open a Linode account. Here’s my Linode referral link (if you’d like to support). You can totally choose any other VPS…
Apache performance tip - switch to MPM Event!
…MPM Event first. You can switch over to it easy. A few command line entries or also a simple switch in EasyApache if you have WHM/cPanel (show in the image above). If you have problems, then try Worker and that last is Prefork. Some people noticed faster performance with Prefork or Worker. It can depend on the type of website you have, CPU, ram use, etc. But generally with a high performance server looking to serve many visitors fast, I always recommend MPM Event. Other reading for you: https://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/mpm.html https://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/mod/ https://www.liquidweb.com/kb/apache-mpms-explained/ https://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1674888 https://serverfault.com/questions/310937/setting-up-apache-to-use-multiple-cores https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/misc/perf-tuning.html https://forums.cpanel.net/threads/why-does-mpm-prefork-faster-than-any-other-mpm.596455/…
EASY Gutenberg Development Resources
…developer from the Genesis community who always makes helpful blogs. Great stuff for developers and non-coders alike. If you want to learn about development for WordPress, Genesis theme, Gutenberg blocks development, or useful code snippets…check out his site. https://www.billerickson.net/gutenberg-tips-for-success/ Gutenberg Theme Development – Tips for Success A really nice guide on developing Gutenberg-friendly themes. Editor styling Block styles Remove (unecessary) core blocks Creating custom core blocks Gutenberg Block Editor (development blog posts) Really nice guides to customize your Gutenberg editor or Gutenberg blocks. Other useful links How to register your own custom Gutenberg layouts https://melchoyce.design/2020/03/30/creating-a-simple-block-pattern-plugin-for-the-gutenberg-editor/…
Exporting databases using WP-CLI
…A directory path for a site on Ubuntu server might be more like /var/www/domain.com/html. 3. Export DB using WP-CLI command (to user home directory) wp db export dbname.sql –allow-root The command above is if you’re using “root” user. For non-root users, you can leave out the –allow-root at the end. You can choose whatever exported filename you want. It doesn’t have to match the database name. You can also specify an exact directory if you prefer. Put an absolute directory path like /somewhere/somewhere/dbname.sql. Can also specify a different exported DB name. 4. Navigate to home…
Redefining WordPress content with Gutenberg
…systems, really. It’s even more confusing when they design their interface differently and use different lingo for thinks. I remember Joomla using “extensions”, “modules” and “sections”, whereas WordPress had “plugins” and “widgets”. And to be honest, I’m not sure I could have designed it any better. The world keeps evolving in how we interact with one another, requiring new confusing terms to be made up or re-using an familiar existing term but in a new manner. (Like the word “widget” to describe a WordPress content block position.) But I digress. Gutenberg helps you manage content…
The WordPress Open-Source Conundrum
…the plugin updated? What if it doesn’t work with some random user’s theme or plugin? What if I don’t answer people’s support request? I even had someone the other day, leave a support request on one of my free plugins….asking for help ON ANOTHER DEVELOPER’S PLUGIN!!!!! I’m afraid of getting punished if I don’t actively support my free community extensions. And that people will leave unfair reviews, and affect my reputation and business. Users just want what works There’s a sentiment among developers that many open-source users are just freeloaders and want all the best…
Best WordPress Cache Plugins 2020
…Cache Plugin – UNOFFICIAL GUIDE Try WP Rocket: Website (pro) Runner ups WP Fastest Cache (free and pro) – works well. Been around a long time. FlyingPress (pro) – new premium one that’s designed and built well. Just needs time to mature. WP Performance (free) – a nice free one that works. Yes, I’m aware of many others that work well enough too. I don’t list them because they’re either too simple (not much features) or don’t work well on a wide enough range of servers (e.g. some don’t work on Apache or NGINX, etc)….
BEST WordPress Cache Plugins 2022
…it! (now stop asking me this question over and over) WP Performance – cache plugin review Recommended settings (coming soon when I’m not lazy) 2. Swift Performance (FREE & PAID) https://wordpress.org/plugins/swift-performance-lite/ Tons of caching features and low cost! Swift FREE is the most full-featured free cache plugin out there (along with LiteSpeed Cache). Tons of features, a bit complicated for newbies and risky since they enable stuff that break or slow down their site. I feel Swift has somewhat become 2022’s W3TC (of course, not literally). Their UI could use another overhaul to make it appear…
How to Run a Successful Membership Site
…Let’s pretend you sell membership plans for online tennis lessons. A user-centric plan could look like BEGINNERS, ATHLETES, PROS. A solution-centric plan would be TECHNIQUES, TRAINING, STRATEGY. And I’m torn between telling you which one to follow. Like 80% of the memberships (or any businesses out there) will go the USER-CENTRIC route. But…if you’re selling to people who know what they want/need, then you should go the SOLUTION-CENTRIC route. For example…let’s look at the market for “drones”. If you go online and look for lessons on flying drones, they usually separate them by user-centric (CASUAL,…
Astra vs OceanWP vs Generatepress - Best FREE WordPress Theme Review
…is so much more popular. I also felt the UI was maybe cluttery and not as native to WordPress and that their theme relied heavily on pagebuilders (which I hate). With that said, OceanWP is still a good functioning theme and can still be a good choice if you like their stock design templates. OceanWP WordPress theme THE BEST WORDPRESS THEME/FRAMEWORK? Genesis Framework (costs $$$ – just $60) The absolute best WordPress framework (used by respected developers). Best-coded, fast and easy-to-use with many great themes. When I need to do professional work, I use Genesis….
The Most Difficult WordPress Speed Optimization Clients
These clients will NEVER reach their dream website speeds for these reasons: 1. LOW BUDGET They have a $200 budget, using tons of crappy bloated plugins running off a crappy $5 shared hosting plan. But they want their site to be as fast as their competitor’s site…which was professionally built for $5-10k, has a custom theme, and much faster webhosting plan. 2. NO COMPROMISE They tell me they “absolutely need results!” but when I tell them exactly what’s causing the biggest slowdowns. They come back with “but I can’t get rid of that…can’t we do…
Cache plugins suck!
…Believe it or not, pagespeed scores are one of the most commonly misinterpreted things on the internet. They’re actually only a guideline for ideal web performance, not the rule. (Basically, you can have an incredibly fast website and still horrible scores. The biggest mistake would be optimizing for scores, and not for real users.) Are the complaint metrics related to 3rd party requests? (Loading from other domains like Google, or some plugin servers or chat service.) If so you, cache plugins cannot improve that since they’re aren’t loading from your website or web-servers. …
Should you pick MEMBERSHIP plugin or LMS plugin?
…user. 4. How your business is marketed (CONTENT LIBRARY vs PREMIUM COURSES) The first question to ask is how many different types of content do you plan to have? Text and video are the most common. But what about live engagements like personal phone/video consultations, or livestream? What about forums, directories, or other community areas? Any other type of specialized content? (Charts, calculators, lists, discounts, etc.) The second question to ask is how specialized is your content? Does it cover your industry/niche comprehensively? Or is it very specific for a smaller more-targeted demographic? The third…
WHY to always use a Transactional Email Service
…email/SMTP plugin and connect their regular email account to it. And it works! BUT…not all the time. Or maybe it works perfectly for 2-3 years and then stops getting through. And the worst part of all is not when it fails. It’s that it fails silently…it doesn’t tell you that it failed. Your emails just don’t arrive. No error messages or nothing. Just you, your coworkers, and clients all playing “where’s the email?”. Where did it go? Did it send? Did it get rejected? Nobody knows! But it worked for years! But it sends to…
History of web servers (and transition from Apache to NGINX/LiteSpeed)
…impossible. “Stock NGINX beats stock Apache in [this] scenario.” “Stock Apache beats stock NGINX in [this] scenario.” “But Apache+NGINX beats pure-Apache or pure-NGINX in [this] scenario.” “But Apache+NGINX is only helpful if you have Varnish. “But you don’t need NGINX to have Varnish with Apache.” Blah blah blah, it goes back and forth. And as time passed. It didn’t matter much, anyway. NGINX’s native FastCGI cache which was quickly superseding the archaic and needlessly-complex Varnish. And despite Apache’s improvements, it simply couldn’t shed the weight to compete against NGINX. Apache was simply a server that…
How to Choose a Good WordPress Theme
…clean-coding, bloat-free easily extensible used by many developers, active community accessibility & smart archichecture easy to update over time WordPress theme features NOOBS like: “no coding necessary!” tons of features, color & typography options every flashy effect you could ever want great for making money mobile-responsive, speed, SEO great customer support What WordPress theme features are most important? 1. Nice Design Clean, professional design, with a little personality (or at least allows you to add some personality). As long as it looks great or can look great with a little bit of effort, that’s all…
Why MARKET RESEARCH for new products is stupid
Why I think doing market research for new products is…the dumbest thing ever. All those surveys, polls, asking around to friends/colleagues. All silly. If I ever see a company doing it, they have officially decreased the chances me of ever taking them seriously. Here’s why… 1. The best “research” comes from experience. Comes from working in the industry. Dealing with operations, vendors, clients, and coworkers day in and day out. Doing things (and having done them in many ways) for many years is what gives you the most valuable experience. Could it be that an…
WP Compress vs ShortPixel - WordPress Image Compression Comparison
…another great plugin and adds so much dimension to image compression. If there were any areas to improve upon, I’d say: The plugin lags the admin somewhat. (And I’m sure they’re fixing it soon.) Also wasn’t able to do much “lossless” compression, as SP clearly beats it here (squeezing out 5-7% when WPC couldn’t do anything). Overall…I highly recommend it as another “favorite” option. See my image compression tests and review notes below. WP Compress vs ShortPixel – image comparisons TEST 1 – bridge, pre-optimized Original image – 413KB Click to see details in wood…
Are static CMS sites a good alternative to WordPress?
What are static site CMS and what advantages/disadvantages do they have to WordPress? More people have started playing around with static site CMS’s lately (like Jekyll, Hugo) and for good reason. They’re fun to use, super fast, and now have more options than ever. But does that mean I recommend them for YOU??? …it depends… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gH6dIp8fIuY Advantages of static site CMS (over WordPress) Speed – they’re very fast because they’re very simple. As the name implies, the sites are static. No database or php-processing. Secure – they can’t be hacked because they don’t store…
WPJ Webhosting Listing
…100% brutally honest. If there’s any chance that your service might let me down, this is your last chance to turn around. I mean it! Webhosting Review Form Webhosting Listing Δ Name Email Company Name (optional) Years in business – Select –1 or less2-34-5More than 5 Test Account info: Which service is being reviewed? (can only pick one) Shared hosting Managed hosting VPS/Dedicated Review service: Listing only – $250 Listing & blog post – $500 Listing, blog & YT video – $1000 Payment method: Credit/Debit Card PayPal Credit/Debit Card Please select a service. Submit Form…
Dealing with Pushback against PAID Memberships
…help and the ones that you can’t help much…ideally, you’re showing them how you wouldn’t be able to help them much at all, whether free or paid. And if they open their mouth telling you how valuable you are to them….well… 🙂 4. Let the haters go There will always be people who want something for free and don’t see the fairness in a mutually beneficial relationship. It’s fine. Everyone loves free stuff. And nobody likes a free service suddenly costing them money. We all try to avoid spending money. It’s natural. Many people live…
Why WordPress SUCKS (and how it could be better)
…UI tweaks Minor UI tweaks that I think would add a ton of utility. Add a “make inactive” link to the bottom of widgets (next to “Delete” & “Done”. Any other improvements? Leave your comments below. I really tried to think of others but couldn’t at the moment. Ultimately, I don’t want to change WordPress from its ways of the wild-wild-west. I love the crazy freedom you have with it. Nobody wants a sterile CMS platform. Even with its drawbacks, I’d still easily choose it over Shopify, Wix, Weebly, etc. And so would many others….
BEST WordPress Cache Plugins 2021
…(FREE) https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-performance/ If you don’t know what you’re doing, start here. Very easy to use. Safe to play with caching and won’t break your site. Please don’t try to enable every feature. Works well for all types of sites. Recommended settings (coming soon) 2. Swift Performance (FREE & PAID) https://wordpress.org/plugins/swift-performance-lite/ FREE free is the best free cache plugin out there (along with LiteSpeed Cache). Tons of features, a bit complicated for newbies and risky since they enable stuff that break or slow down their site. PAID version has even more incredible features. Works great. I…
WPJ-Certified Speed Specialists
…of people who completed my WP speed optimization courses (I assume) with great enthusiasm. But does this cartoon seal guarantee any level of quality? No, because I didn’t check their work personally. But it does guarantee they cared enough about speed to seek me out, join WP speed communities on Facebook and at least attempt self-growth. This curiosity in and of itself is worth something. Marc Hindley https://canarydwarf.co.uk https://fastestwp.uk Adrien de Montalembert https://ecomturbo.net Mehmet Koçali https://www.focalhaus.com Paka Monette https://shakapaka.com/ Ryan McCain https://norzer.me Jimmy Lam https://acres-media.com https://digitiv.co.uk/ Christian Coulson https://blogstalgia.com/ Steven Orechow https://stevenorechow.me/ Desmond Ng https://optimization.my…
MANAGED WordPress Hosting - PROS and CONS
…so users don’t have to mess with cache plugins. Updated servers – latest versions of PHP, MySQL. Security features – usually a more secure environment, and some even have free repair services if you ever get hacked. Staging/backup features – most managed hosts have really convenient 1-click staging and backup features. This is great for non-techy users who wouldn’t know how to set up staging otherwise, and also for developers who regularly make changes. Good support – typically have better support than the usual cheap shared hosting. Allow access to other users – really convenient…
EASY WordPress Security Tips WITHOUT Slowing Performance
…Protect wp-admin from brute force METHOD A) Use a security plugin to protect against brute force Something like WordFence. METHOD B) Set-up HTTP AUTHENTICATION for your wp-admin login Very simple tactic that locks down your admin page. They can’t brute force it if they can’t get in! This is simple tactic that keeps your server from being slowed down. https://www.wpwhitesecurity.com/wordpress-security-hacks/securing-wordpress-wp-admin-htaccess/ 3. Block XML-RPC protocol (if you’re not using it) This protocol allows you to log into your WordPress from other apps like on your phone, desktop, etc. If you’ve always logged into your WordPress site…
HappyFiles media management plugin review
…etc. To do this, go to your HappyFiles settings page and check all the post types you want to enable it for. It’s super cool! How well is HappyFiles built? It’s coded really nicely. Super fast, doesn’t slow your site at all. Yes, YOU should buy HappyFiles It’s only $19 until September 15, 2020 for unlimited sites, unlimited use, free updates forever. After that it’s $59. If you have a big site with tons of media or posts (of any post type), you WILL appreciate HappyFiles. The price is so damn cheap anyway. Get HappyFiles…
How to Use Public DNS Service (Google, Cloudflare, etc)
…certain sites or IP ranges. They’re also useful for “privacy” reasons when you don’t want your local ISP to track you. But then again, your traffic would be routed through Google or Cloudflare DNS proxies and certainly they could theoretically sell your info as well. In case you care…I trust Cloudflare over Google. Anyway, making the change is really easy on your computer. Let’s get to it! How to do it on Mac OS X https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McTn2SA0H7U If using Cloudflare, put “1.1.1.1” instead. How to do it on Windows/PC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0VJCRyvPBs If using Cloudflare, put “1.1.1.1” instead….
WordPress vs STATIC CMS
Should you still use WordPress when there’s all those other cool “static CMS” or “headless CMS” sites? Are static CMS better than WordPress? Should you be jumping on the next trend? Is WordPress forever doomed to its pending issues? I’ll be frank. WordPress is STILL the #1 CMS for you and here’s why… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gH6dIp8fIuY What is STATIC CMS? As you know, CMS is typically “dynamic” by nature. So a static CMS (aka “headless CMS)) is a really interesting concept because it’s an oxymoron. The logic of how they work in reality is very simple. They…
Custom LOG OUT link without WP-nonce confirmation
…child theme). The fix Paste this snippet into your functions.php but replace yourdomain.]}**com. And now you can create your own users logout link anywhere you like! add_action(‘check_admin_referer’, ‘logout_without_confirm’, 10, 2); function logout_without_confirm($action, $result) { /** * Allow logout without confirmation */ if ($action == “log-out” && !isset($_GET[‘_wpnonce’])) { $redirect_to = isset($_REQUEST[‘redirect_to’]) ? $_REQUEST[‘redirect_to’] : ‘https://yourdomain.]}**com‘; $location = str_replace(‘&’, ‘&’, wp_logout_url($redirect_to)); header(“Location: $location”); die; } } What about other fixes? Long story short, I wrote this guide because the other fixes didn’t work. If you have other solutions to share, let me know in the comments.…
CloudPanel - server control panel review
…Will add more to this as I get more familiar with CloudPanel. Who should use CloudPanel CloudPanel is best for admins wanting a clean solo-user control panel, and don’t need email or file manager. It’s beautiful, fast, it’s free! What else do you want?! You can’t have end users on here so kiss your low-cost reseller dreams goodbye but it’s fantastic for running a lean clean BS-free NGINX server. Extremely admin-centric. Auto-login for phpMyAdmin (root pass not required). No file manager, email or end-user login. Try CloudPanel (it’s free and installs in only 5 minutes)…
Prioritize your website NEUTRAL color, not primary color
…or brand color. Neutral color – used as a (subtle) secondary background color or secondary accent color. My primary color is either white, black, creamy grey, or light beige/yellow/brown. Accent color is whatever their logo color is. Neutral color is usually grey, black, or white…to subtly contrast against the primary color. Why does my method make all the difference? …because the content sits on the background! Let’s say it all together now. A thousand times over and over: Because the content sits on the background!!!!! *and again* *and again* *and again* At the end of…
FREE Web Hosting Control Panel Review
…only do you not want to bother your server admin, you also don’t want your clients to bother you! Cpanel is as easy-to-use as an iPhone app and truly gets it right! So why go with a FREE web hosting control panel? REASON #1 – Cost Many people want to run a cheap server. Maybe for non-critical tasks (staging, back-up, etc), or for personal use (non-commercial). Now if you’re trying to save money on a COMMERCIAL SITE, that makes no sense to me since that tells me your site isn’t profitable anyway. There…
About Johnny
…maybe go to the gym or out dancing. Come home, answer some comments, go to sleep. …typical day when traveling: Go out to town. See some stuff, take pictures, eat stuff, come home exhausted. Check my email and answer comments on my sites. Other sites I like that may or may not fit my ultra-biased opinions on tech matters: https://haydenjames.io/ https://pagepipe.com/ https://wpspeedmatters.com/ Butterick’s Practical Typography http://webtypography.net https://ma.ttias.be/ Other hobbies (boxing & tango): I’m also a boxer and boxing trainer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R00HWKt3icY I’m also a semi-professional tango dancer; also teach and compete. Got 3rd in USA 2015….
Rocket Laywer SCAM / FRAUD - unauthorized credit card charges
…refunded my money. They’ve been doing this for a while, too. See all their complaints from other sites: PissedConsumer.com Their official Facebook page Complaints at Consumer Affairs BiggerPockets BBB BestCompany.com – HA! TrustPilot – don’t be fooled by the good ones, pay attention to the bad ones! Here are the charges showing from my bank account. Money taken out for 4 months. Can you imagine if I I never noticed? Look here on their website. Doesn’t show anything in the billing history so you have absolutely no idea you’re being charged. Freaken crooks!!!…
Plesk (Obsidian) Control Panel Review 2020
Are you curious how the new Plesk Obsidian version works? I’ll tell you! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAe6fZrjnEM Watch this video to see the new UI. You can compare to the older Plesk Onyx. I’m a WHM/cPanel guy but still use Plesk for some clients. It works great. User-friendly for non-admins. Mature, stable, has many helpful extensions. Easy enough to figure out how to do most webhosting functions without having to read documentation. In the few moments that I had issues, Plesk documentation was simple enough to understand and/or Plesk support was extremely helpful to resolve the issue immediately….
GeneratePress vs Genesis - WordPress Theme Review
…any look you want…of course, the limit is your skill level! (Read my full GeneratePress review.) + FREE & PREMIUM + Fast + Incredible support and community of newbies + Well-updated with the latest trends GeneratePress vs Genesis – which is better for you? Genesis is still the #1 pick for me but GeneratePress is awesome as well. Both are my favorites but they have a different vibe. Super solid professional (Genesis) vs really well-crafted community theme (GeneratePress). I think you should pick the one with the community you like better. Genesis community is full…
How Important Is Your Website Design?
…your website is a simple blog intended to look like an honest one-man-show posting affiliate links for marijuana periphernalia, that’s going to have a very different design requirement than one intended to sell wedding photography. Design = communication, not flash. Therefore…Amazon, Reddit, Facebook, and whatever other sites the commenters mentioned are actually VERY WELL DESIGNED. It’s too bad most clients and low-level freelance designers are wasting their time copying the latest design trends instead of actually understanding what design really is. True quality design more closely follows timeless UI/UX principles, not latest graphic design trends….
Why I don't recommend FREE membership plugins
…so painful for you but also annoying as heck for customers. Maybe links change and things look different; integrations have to be reconnected. It’s all such a hassle. Not to mention, expensive as heck (if you’re tech-savvy enough to manage at all). Free plugins usually aren’t as good. Features and functions are a mess. The UI is all over the place making it take so much longer to setup. They’re so damn clumsy and keep running into “premium feature only” areas. Next thing you know, you’re installing 6 other free plugins and hacking together a…
BEST Wordpress SEO Plugins 2018
…free plugin trying to gain market share. Even today, many people claim All in One SEO is better and faster, and that’s good enough for me. https://wordpress.org/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/ Pro version: https://semperplugins.com?ap_id=treeflips 3. YOAST SEO The de facto standard! YOAST has grown through the years and now matured into this giant commercial behemoth of an SEO plugin. It’s prettiness and millions of features won over it’s public support and current mainstream position of being the #1 WordPress SEO plugin. Just about all levels of users, amateur and pros alike, will look to install YOAST as their preferred SEO plugin…
How to Buy a Leather Jacket in Italy
…have great referrals and they may be a little put-off if you can’t see the difference between their work and everyone else’s. With that said, they are professional, not dicks. This is THEIR leather and their personal work and they’ll be happy to tell you how they made it. I bought my jacket from “Star Leather” in Florence, Italy (https://www.yelp.com/biz/star-leather-factory-di-bolourian-alireza-firenze) Sorry, he doesn’t do online orders anymore because of difficulties. Hard to show colors (other than black) accurately and people complaining about fit and what not. Shipping and re-customizations were too much hassle for him….
Should You Trust a Small Webhosting Company?
…person. Try a small webhosting company! Knowing what I know now, after having *officially* started my own small web-hosting company earlier this year…I’m not sure I would ever go back to a huge webhost (besides super cheap low-quality hosting). Knowing a level-3 tech is regularly touching your server is the best feeling in the world. It’s kind of like getting an oil change regularly from a master mechanic. They’ll catch many things before they go wrong. You’ll not only get the best performance but also preventative maintenance! “Are there ever bad *small* webhosting companies?”…
CyberPanel server commands and important directories
…from CP > Security > Secure SSH. CyberPanel file/config locations: Changing server IP – /etc/cyberpanel/machineIP Changing MySQL root password – /etc/cyberpanel/machineIP SSL certifications – /etc/letsencrypt/live, then go into domain you want Restore location (when importing backups) – /home/backup CyberPanel commands: Restart MariaDB – Logs: Error logs – cat /home/cyberpanel/error-logs.txt (log files on CyberPanel) Backup logs – cd /usr/local/lscp/logs Cron schedules – /etc/crontab clear out unnecessary cronjobs eating up server resources (backups) https://<IP Address>:8090/serverstatus/cyberCPMainLogFile Backups: Manually running scheduled backups – python /usr/local/CyberCP/plogical/backupScheduleLocal.py, read this for more info Cool script to upload CP backups to Google Drive…
Elastic Hosting for WordPress - PROS & CONS
…server. One server does it all: PHP, MySQL, FTP, emails, firewall, DNS, etc. Even when they say “cloud hosting”, it’s still traditional hosting as your account is still only on one physical host (server). They only call it cloud because it’s integrated with an online interface and connected to other online services. Also, “cloud” still sounds like a cool buzzword now even though it’s been around for over 10 years, lol. (Actually elastic hosting has already been around for 10 years as well…but I digress.) Elastic hosting is a type of hosting environment where accounts…
Best WordPress Image Compression Plugins - UPDATED 2021
…First choice – ShortPixel (PAID, but free for 100/month) Better compression rates, offers WebP format, offers GLOSSY format (high quality compression for photographers), good pricing. This is my default go-to if you need serious compression. Try their (free) compression test. Get ShortPixel Second choice – WP Compress (PAID) Excellent ratio, super small file sizes, and very sharp. If anything, sometimes even sharper than the original. Get WP Compress Third choice – LiteSpeed Cache plugin (FREE) Super awesome free service. Can do unlimited images but your available quota starts small and increases slowly with each (batch)…
Blocksy WordPress theme review
My positive first look at this new theme by 2 Romanian developers (Sergio Radu & Andrei Glingeanu). Yes, it’s built well. Yes, you can use it. Yes, I think the built-in features are cool. Here are the exact things I liked: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eM72sObCvfE 1. Quality code Because if you guys know me, you know I won’t even look at it if it’s coded like crap. Blocksy seems clean, no bloat. All template files and partial files are methodically-placed. Very respectful to WordPress coding standards and common theming logic. Thank you! 2. Just the right amount of…
MailOptin Email Lead - WordPress plugin review
…lag your site or load 3rd-party assets (which I can’t stand). MailOptin is solid and clean!!! MailOptin vs OptinMonster, Convert Pro, Thrive Leads MailOptin stacks up very nicely against the big dogs for me. It’s more affordably priced despite having most of their features, coded better, and faster than the others. OptinMonster – considered the premium WordPress lead generation plugin, most features and most expensive (I’d say even “too expensive”). Can be overkill for many people. Thrive Leads – I hate anything by Thrive. Bloated and will make your site slow. It doesn’t scale well….
What are ACTIONS, HOOKS, and FILTERS in WordPress?
…layouts and/or custom content depending on the page. You can specify which pages are different (modified) in a number of ways: by specific post ID (great for a few pages, but cumbersome if you need for many) by post types (posts, pages, products, reviews, etc) by taxonomy (certain category, tag, or other subset of a post type) by number of comments (e.g. if certain post has more or less than specific # of comments) by some word in the string (e.g. if the word “spaghetti” is in the title) by page template (most themes already…
WooCommerce (WordPress) vs Shopify - Ecommerce Store Comparison (2020)
…other information pages, both can do the same task. 2. Budget – HIGH or LOW? Both options can cater to high and low budgets, but how they do it is different. WordPress/WooCommerce (LOW) – both WordPress & WooCommerce are free and so are the many plugins they come with. But can you truly stick with only free themes and free plugins? You can but at some point, you’ll probably have to pay for certain premium features. At the very least, you’ll have to pay for webhosting which is $5-12/month for the cheapest plan. Throw in a…
Best CDN Providers for WordPress - Speed Review 2020
CDN’s are becoming all the rage nowadays ever since CloudFlare offered their free plan. But now, there are all kinds of micro-CDN’s popping up everywhere. Each with a different set of pricing and services. I won’t go over the differences…all I care about is speed, reliability (HIT frequency), coverage, and ease-of-use. Here’s a list of CDN’s I’ve experienced and my thoughts on each: Akamai – fast, but expensive. Amazon (CloudFront) – annoying name with same initials as CloudFlare. Fast and works well! I use it for loading large files (videos) from S3 buckets. BunnyCDN –…
Why I HATE Pagebuilders - WordPress Review
…the client really needs, you can allow custom fields for them to make changes. Still want to use a pagebuilder? Here are my choices… 1st place is BeaverBuilder (stable and caters more to developers, not noobs) 2nd place is Site Origin (clean, clutter-free, very open-source vibe) 3rd place is Oxygen (clean, fast, stable, developer-mentality) 4th place is Brizy (upcoming pagebuilder that looks promising) 5th place is Elementor (trendy features, trendy designs…but I don’t like the interface or how it caters to every noob desire) I loved and agreed with many of the comments here: https://wpshout.com/wordpress-page-builder-review/…
Block WordPress comment spam (easily) via blacklist
Easy way to block your most repetitive WordPress comment spam using the default spam blacklist function. Here’s how you do it… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2C9BN_3PR8 Go to your Comments page and look for all the most repetitive spam comments. The ones that comment the same phrases or string of text. Then go to Settings > Discussion and scroll to the Comment Blocklist box. Paste those phrases in here, putting different ones on its own line. Why is this the best way to block spam? REASON #1 – It’s not annoying. Doesn’t harass users with captcha, math questions, checkboxes,…
Fastest Social Sharing plugins for WordPress
…share counts. Anyway, there’s so much you can do with it (assuming you have programming abilities). 2. Scriptless Social Share https://wordpress.org/plugins/scriptless-social-sharing/ This is a clean and beautiful plugin made by a developer I respect (bonus, she’s also a Genesis developer). This plugin is super simple. Doesn’t even show the share counts. No external calls, so your site is really fast. I use it on this site and for sites where silly social count boxes aren’t essential. 3. Social Warfare (paid version) https://wordpress.org/plugins/social-warfare/ They now have a free version and I don’t know how good it…
How to Run a 99Designs Contest
…you don’t have any direction. What are you designing for? Logo? Image? Banner? Website? What medium is it for? Digital? Printed? T-shirts? How is it seen? Passed out by hand? Shown from the street? Only online? What demographic? Male/female. Young/old. What personality types. Most importantly, what other brands are this demographic heavily engaged with? What kind of personality is your brand? Describe it if it were a person. What color is your brand? Don’t go back and forth. You should know exactly what color you want. And believe it or not, it’s usually a color…
MemberPress WordPress Membership Plugin Review - UPDATED 2021
…have way too many features you don’t need, while still missing some key ones that you do need! This not only makes the setup process cumbersome, but also still does not future-proof your membership site, and they may even cost more. At the current cost of MemberPress being $129/year, unless you’re only looking to make $500 or less per year, MemberPress should be your first option. You can also see why others think so, too. Looking to try MemberPress? Please use my affiliate link – www.memberpress.com Really happy to see comments from happy MemberPress users like these:…
How to pick a good MEMBERSHIP platform
…and easier to work with since you can style them however you want without having to battle with default styles. The more established your business, the more you’ll want a developer-grade membership plugin with limitless flexibility. It’s the only way IMO to create a truly unique user experience. Want to try my favorite membership plugin? It’s MemberPress! Super easy to use, really flexible (for both non-technical users as well as developers), cheaply priced IMO, and with tons of features. Read my MemberPress review. You can check it out using my affiliate link – www.memberpress.com…
Appreciation post for WP Migrate DB
If you ain’t using this, you ain’t a pro! It’s super useful for managing databases and large site migrations. I really enjoy it so much. The more often you’re working with complicated or super large websites, the more likely WP Migrate DB was the tool you never knew you needed. https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-migrate-db/ What can WP Migrate DB do? Find and replace data. (Like Better Search Replace, but without that annoying page size limit.) Exporting the database (conveniently from WP backend instead of logging into phpMyAdmin). Import databases. Basically…a bunch of stuff, and I don’t even use…
Is Cloudflare Argo routing-service worth the cost?
Cloudflare’s Argo feature claims: Speed up average network latency by 35%. Decrease connection errors by 27%. Let’s see how much of a difference that even makes! About network latency and connection errors Network latency is just the DNS part of your pageload time. It’s only a sliver of the actual pageload process. Usually there are multiple steps, the DNS connection, the SSL handshake, the WAIT for the request, then the DOWNLOAD. I wasn’t so exact but it’s pretty much that. So this Argo stuff only speeds up one tiny aspect of your page load. Connection…
WordPress documentation plugins - fast review
…seem to have a live-search option…BOOOO! Also seems brand new, their site has some pages not built out yet. But they do have many great reviews. 4. Echo Knowledge Base (FREE & PAID) https://wordpress.org/plugins/echo-knowledge-base/ I ran away from this from the very first second because it was so ugly. Uggggg-ily!!! Ugly demos, ugly site, ugly everywhere. (I know looks aren’t everything…but c’monnnnn!) BUT…it’s got 5-star reviews, with many people praising its fantastic function and support. Also advertises tons of features, built-in layouts and styling, table-of-contents, icons, linking to different resources, and on and on. I…
How long does it take to copy another website?
…a simple…”how big is your logo?” will take you some days to figure out. In many scenarios, you won’t know, and so they’ll send you 3 mock-ups. And then it’ll take you time to show these mock-ups to your family, friends, and business partners for a second opinion. Again…imagine repeating this process a couple hundred times. There’s no way you can get this done WITH quality in 6 months. To develop a site of similar complexity to quidco.com CUSTOMIZED TO YOUR NEEDS will probably take you $20,000 and 1 year (and that’s assuming you have…
How to Backup Your WordPress Site (using BackWPup plugin and Amazon AWS S3)
…also buy the paid version if you want the extra features. It’s not necessary, though. In case you’re wondering, I like BackWPup so much more than UpDraft Premium backup plugin. STEP #3 – set up DATABASE backups: Go to WP-admin > BackWPup > Add new job. From General tab, check “Database backup”. Then scroll down to Job Destination and check “Backup to an S3 service.” From Schedule tab, choose “WordPress cron” and pick daily. From DB Backup tab, click “All” for Tables to backup. From “To: S3 Service” tab, select your bucket location (if you…
How to Optimize/Compress Your Website Images
Three ways to optimize/compress your images to improve WordPress load time: Open up Photoshop, export to Save-for-web, JPEG 50%. Save your image in the highest quality possible, go to ShortPixel’s online compress tool, and simply upload there. Download an image compression plugin that does it automatically from WordPress. I like ShortPixel but there are many others. They vary between free, paid, or freemium models. Again, I like ShortPixel. A few notes about picking the right format: Photographic images and product images should always be in JPEG format. Avoid PNG format if you can since it’s…
The MONSTER GUIDE to WordPress Image Optimization
I’ll show you how to optimize your website images, so they look good AND LOAD FAST! Most important of all, we are doing this to improve USER EXPERIENCE, not PAGE SCORES (Pingdom, GTmetrix), ok??? And we’re gonna optimize everything. Images, icons, bars and color-ey things. (Every visual element, really.) Image-sizing (dimension, storage), device-sizing (desktop, tablet, mobile, retina), focal point control. SEO and accessibility – tags, captions, social media compatibility. Formats and quality – jpeg, png, webp, svg. Browser caching and CDN. Image display – regular display vs slideshow, thumbnail management, animations and filters, code efficiency….
Genesis vs Thesis - Theme Framework Review 2017
…2.0 would be like anything we’ve never imagined. It released sometime around 2012 (give or take a year), and it wasn’t like he promised. It was indeed a completely NEW framework system but it wasn’t the game-changer he promised. Many fans were split. Some argued it was too hard to use and required too much work, and actually required knowledge of coding. Others were a bit more forgiving. They figured, “Oh, it’s just an advanced new system that will become the future, so let’s get adjusted.” Either way…the results were clear. Thesis was losing market…
Kadence WordPress theme review
…I recommend Kadence for… Kadence is best for end users (non-coders) who like the Kadence built-in look and/or Kadence blocks. If you like Kadence’s built-in designs, it’s a no-brainer for you! I actually did and I used it on my sister-in-law’s cake site (fyi, she neutered the home page design on purpose to shut down orders during lockdown). Kadence vs GeneratePress/Astra/OceanWP I like GeneratePress as the best DIY theme. It has all the similar options and also more developer-friendly with hooks and filters and can do more advanced things. But if you’re just a DIY-er,…
The BUSINESS BENEFITS of Blogging
What are the benefits of blogging? I can’t speak for everyone but here’s what I’ve realized in my 10+ years of being a [successful] blogger… …(there are many obvious tangible ones, but also many intangible ones)… BENEFIT #1 – branding expression Because some things can’t be expressed in any other way than in the format of written paragraphs. There’s a unique quality in the way that words can be read and felt by others. Sure, I can launch a coupon or special promotion for my latest product telling people why it’s the best thing ever….
10 TRUTHS about running a webhosting business
…if it’s not technical issues, it’s something else. Someone will have a billing problem. Credit card doesn’t work, or they paid with the wrong method or to the wrong account and now want a refund. Or you have people clogging your support channels with unrelated requests. 6. Marketing pressure Regardless if you’re an aggressively marketed brand or a lowkey under-the-radar brand, your company will still be subject to your competitor’s extraordinary claims regardless. Your competitors will be constantly pitching their service as offering all the latest features. And if you are LUCKY, your clients will…
HostArmada review - old school shared hosting (with a twist)
…products – you can see the site for yourself. Managed, Shared, Cloud, Reseller, Dedicated, etc. It’s really REALLY easy to get turned off by this. Seeing stuff like this feels like another coupon flyer in my mailbox. You’re just sick of it and don’t see the point of yet another low-cost low-value low-expectation hosting service. Like why?!!!! WHYYYYYYYY…build another non-innovative company? Who the heck gets up in the morning for this? BUTTTTT…their setup isn’t totally old school. (It’s shared hosting using fast VPS, not slow dedi’s.) When looking at their map of available datacenters …I…
Redis vs Memcache vs APCu - object cache comparisons
…the fastest/best option if you can get it to work. Memcache – the old (but very stable standard). Most people who haven’t played with Redis yet will go with this. I love it. APCu – very fast because it doesn’t write anything to the disk, simply stores it as is. Can cause problems or performance-loss in certain environments (clusters, server restarts, low memory, etc). FYI: some people say APCu is outdated and that you shouldn’t use it. Some old ones: APC – abandoned and now succeeded by APCu (which supports php 7.x). XCache – abandoned….
How to Find a (Good) Translator
…later. Some are very thorough and ask many questions, others do not. Some seem to only work at odd hours in the night perfectly avoiding all communication with you. For whatever reason: I’ve found over 50% of the time, friends translate better. Why are finding good translators so hard? Here’s my guess: most translation services charge by word. Good ones cost like 7-10 cents a word. Cheap ones are below that. And all they think about is price….most won’t go the extra mile. They don’t think about tone (properness/gender-tone/personality-tone), localization, transliteration, using the most…
Getting the most out of your graphic designer
…more like KIDS art class?” “This spacing feels like crowded Walmart. Can we try more like Apple store?” “These colors feel more like Superman RED. Can we try more like a wine RED?” “I want HI-TECH like Batmobile gadget car, not like HI-TECH sterile medical environment.” “I want forest, trees, nature RELAX. Not home couch, sauna, jacuzzi, RELAX.” “I want PREMIUM as in high value (many benefits). Not PREMIUM as in exclusive (nobody has it).” Again, you have to make it super clear. Paint some expressive visuals with your words. (I’m not asking you to…
LiteSpeed Cache vs Varnish Cache
…NGINX-tweaker is gonna jump on here and school me for saying this but I’ll happily stand by it. For all out-of-the-box standard Varnish applications that I’ve seen, Varnish made little difference to the site performance (compared to without). I never configured those servers, mind you. It was done by the hosting company or whatever tech provisioned the server. In the many instances that I’ve deployed LiteSpeed Cache on various LiteSpeed servers, you could feel the difference right away. Huge impact and easily accomplished with a few clicks. Varnish for whatever reason failed to impress me…
NitroPack cloud-caching service review - UPDATED 2022
…for? Anyone on a crap server, only a few bloated sites (instead of many), with zero knowledge of speed optimization, care (too much) about page scores, and don’t mind paying the premium. Obviously, none of those attributes reflect me. I prefer to build a site with clean-code from the start, placed on a well-configured server, finely tuned with customized cache settings, and value human user experience over page scores. Knowing how to tune sites makes me 100 times more effective across many sites…saving lots of money. So basically…you’re either learning how speed-optimize your WordPress site…
Google AMP Sucks for WordPress
…load, faster content digestion…all equals better rankings more traffic – better rankings equals better traffic better user experience – I’m not sure how this works, unless your site is so terribly designed and coded that using AMP is somehow considered an upgrade?! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hF4qKmrrgEs REALITY? easily broken site – one little weird design or coding mistake and your site falls apart limited compatibility – only works on mostly static blog sites. All other sites aren’t compatible because their fancy effects or features stop working on AMP. limited SEO/traffic benefit IMO – here’s the funny thing, blog…
Block XML-RPC protocol in WordPress
…Block WordPress xmlrpc.php requests <Files xmlrpc.php> order deny,allow deny from all allow from 123.123.123.123 </Files> Quick note…if you need to leave it on for certain IP, you can whitelist your IP and also Jetpack IP’s (if you use it). Nginx servers can paste the following code into the functions.php (submitted by Regev): // Disables XML-RPC add_filter( ‘xmlrpc_enabled’, ‘__return_false’ ); function disable_x_pingback( $headers ) { unset( $headers[‘X-Pingback’] ); return $headers; } add_filter( ‘wp_headers’, ‘disable_x_pingback’ ); add_filter( ‘xmlrpc_methods’, function( $methods ) { unset( $methods[‘pingback.ping’] ); return $methods; } ); Reference link to learn more about XML-RPC: https://www.wpbeginner.com/plugins/how-to-disable-xml-rpc-in-wordpress/…
RunCloud cloud-based VPS webhosting control panel 2019 review
A quick run-through of RunCloud’s cloud-panel service. See what things I liked about it, what things I didn’t. And of course, there’s a beautiful video included for you to appreciate their comprehensive UI. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpAN4q1Z3SM About RunCloud RunCloud (started by a small Malaysian company) is my current favorite cloud control panel. It’s fast, stable, and has a really mature interface. The pricing is very fair (cheap) and the product feels truly refined all around. You can have a pure-NGINX stack (better performance IMO), or a hybrid Apache+NGINX stack (for Apache/.htaccess compatibility). Their performance is above average…
WordPress Backup Plugin Review - BackupWordPress vs Updraft
I made a long explanation about it a long time ago but can’t remember everything I said. Basically, BackupWordpress has all the features I need for free and doesn’t nag me at all like UpDraft. Off the top of my head, Updraft: Doesn’t back up the entire root directory unless you pay for premium (so it misses my secret directories or files that I or clients may have placed in unconventional locations). Many unsuspecting clients use it not realizing this until it’s too late. Leaves orphan data in database when you uninstall it (probably trying…
Why I don't use SEO plugins (ever)
…checklists”. They’re like those free SEO report tools but they report to you live from your site. Maybe they help you add tags and keywords to things like images. Maybe help you create inbound links. They help other content/search engines quickly figure out your content date, author, social media share image, and other data snippets. Do they actually write your content? – NO. Do they actually optimize your content? – MOSTLY NO. (You theme already does most of it.) Do they speed up your indexing rate? – NO. Do they have secret knowledge of Google’s…
GeneratePress vs Astra vs Kadence (2020 comparison)
…cater to hardcoders.) Has the super awesome “Elements” feature which works like developer “hooks & filters” but done in GUI way. Really nice starter themes that don’t look generic. Was obviously inspired by my favorite theme (Genesis). Unfortunately, Genesis is not meant for end users. I really like the head developer (Tom Usborne) and designer (Mike Oliver). Download GeneratePress and try it out. I’m a huge fan of the non-gimmicky, BS-free website. No silly promises or hype marketing. Just an honest Canadian dude telling what it can do and how it makes your life better. Astra:…
Always use a CHILD THEME
…is if your theme has an update…it might overwrite your settings, style.css modifications, and functions.php hacks. So THIS is why everyone tells you use a child theme. How to activate a child theme Thankfully, it ain’t that hard. Go to your theme website and download their sample child theme. (For example, here’s the GeneratePress blank child theme). Go to your theme settings and “Export settings” to a file. If your theme doesn’t have an option to export settings, skip this part. Install and activate your child theme. Then re-import your theme settings into the child…
Code Click-to-Copy (WPJ Plugin)
Plugin Description: Click anywhere within <pre> code tags to automatically copy to clipboard. Click your code text and it’s copied! A simple little plugin that automatically copies content in <pre> and <code> tags to clipboard (when clicked). Other plugins out there do the same but create a little [COPY] button that you have to aim for. With mine, you don’t have to aim your mouse or finger at any button, simply click anywhere on the code block and it copies the whole thing. With all the guides out there sharing code-commands, especially on this site,…
WordPress SEO Tips for 2020
…really low. Instead, make a group for your industry/niche. Random people will join. Chat, talk, share your stuff. It’s bound to get comments, likes, and re-shares which will help your SEO down the line. Youtube, Twitter, or Instagram – pick just one and use it! Grow its follower/fanbase and stay as active as you can. LinkedIn – not my style, personally but I’ve heard great things about it. Forum – ehhhh, a ton of work! But having user-generated content is incredible if it works out. 6. Get featured in Google snippets If you don’t already…
WHY your new business isn't making money
…product value. “Decreasing prices” will never accomplish that, ok?) What to do if you already made all these mistakes. Sure, Johnny…I learned useful things from this post…but I already EFF’ed up and now what do I do? I’ll let you decide whether it’s easer to start over under a new brand, or simply re-communicate your existing one. Start raising (your brand) value. Increase your prices. Add more services. (that people want) Add more features. (that people want) Increase your brand impact. Better design that speaks to people’s needs. Explain what you’re doing and why you’re…
Marketer's Delight - WordPress conversion theme
…Share buttons (super lean and don’t slow down your site) Edit Share buttons and icons order Corner notes (coming soon) Other MD integrations: Email marketing – AWeber, MailChimp, ConvertKit, ActiveCampaign, MailerLite, Drip Custom HTML Forms Google Analytics WooCommerce …more coming soon! “Dropins” available (these are CPT’s): Stream Bookshelf Videos Glossary Testimonials Beacon Related Posts Gallery Blocks Page Blocks 4. Lightweight MD as is the case with many conversion themes is ultra-lean. It loads as fast as static HTML because there aren’t any big CSS or JS scripts. If you’re sick of conversion themes inching towards being more and more…
Get WordPress admin access through database
…which you need to create for the new user…they are marked in BOLD. Also, if your database is not using the default WordPress prefix _wp, make sure you also change the prefix of of the database tables wp_users, wp_usermeta, wp_capabilities and wp_user_level to the one your website is using. So if your website is using the table prefix wpstg0_ the new table name for wp_capablities is wpstg0_capabilities. Enter this code below… INSERT INTO `wp_users` (`user_login`, `user_pass`, `user_nicename`, `user_email`, `user_status`) VALUES (‘username’, MD5(‘password123′), ‘John Doe’, ‘something@domain.com‘, ‘0’); INSERT INTO `wp_usermeta` (`umeta_id`, `user_id`, `meta_key`, `meta_value`) VALUES (NULL, (Select max(id) FROM wp_users), ‘wp_capabilities’, ‘a:1:{s:13:”administrator”;s:1:”1″;}’); INSERT…
Why are MANAGED VPS Servers so Slow?
After moving nearly a dozen WordPress speed-up clients away from “managed VPS” hosting services this past month, I’ve decided it’s time to state loud and clear: MANAGED VPS sucks! It’s slow as hell and way over-priced! And don’t think I’ve haven’t tried them all! A2 MANAGED VPS sucks. ($80-160/month) InMotion MANAGED VPS sucks. ($80/month) LiquidWeb MANAGED VPS sucks. ($80/month) And a dozen smaller lesser known ones as well. Let me tell you all the reasons why they “suck”. Managed VPS Hosting is Usually SLOW! “But how can this be?!” you ask. Or the ever popular,…
How to Socialize (Network) in Person
…I’m just too shy.” “I’m an introvert.” “I hate small talk.” “I’m not bubbly, social butterfly like my friend _____.” “I’m more of a computer nerd, than a people person.” Trust me, I have some of the most extroverted friends in the world and even they hate dealing with people at times. Nobody is “on” all the time. Not even those famous celebrities that are always out partying in front of cameras every night. The only thing you have to do is—turn on your “friendly mode”. That’s it! You’re simply “being friendly” and nothing else….
RunCloud BEATS Cloudways & GridPane - 2022 review
These companies used to be kinda the same…but now they’re not. 3 years ago, they were all similarish stack, performance, and pricing. Some differences in UI, business model, vibe and service level…but still mostly targeting the same customer base. Now they’re vastly different companies with totally different product positioning. Here are some old reviews for comparison (if you’re curious). Cloudways vs RunCloud – Managed WordPress Hosting Comparison (UPDATED 2020) GridPane vs RunCloud – Managed Hosting Panel Review UPDATED 2020 RunCloud hosting panel 2020 review Let’s see what’s changed… 1. RunCloud (is the winner) RunCloud is the winner. There I said…
Akamai's Linode acquisition - initial thoughts
…too big and too successful. It has too much market share and stands out too much. And when you’re that big in such a rapidly-changing industry…you have no choice but to keep evolving with the times. I’d guess Linode, a [relatively] “small” privately owned company, did not have the funds, experience, or culture to evolve their old school datacenter-hosting operation into the massive cloud service shops that we see today in Amazon AWS, Google GCP, or Microsoft Azure. Sure they tried keeping up with the times…adding dedicated CPU/GPU/MEM instances, block storage and load-balancers. But by…
Swift Performance Lite - WordPress Cache Speed Plugin REVIEW
…– I’ve tested on 3 servers Apache/LiteSpeed/Nginx, and Swift wins no matter what! (compare the numbers) There were three small [neglible] issues: I saw a very rapid FOUT that was annoying but went away after disabling another plugin “WP Disable”. (Lesson to everyone, don’t combine speed/optimization plugins. Swift can handle it all!) On a WooCommerce store, the styles broke. All I did was disable the JS-related features and it was perfect again, and also so shockingly fast. For anyone else having issues, make sure you disable “Merge Scripts” and “Merge Styles” if something is breaking…
WordPress Speed Optimization Courses
…only half the battle. The other half is having technical knowledge to make code fixes, or server-tuning. But usually…you need these skills in the first place to be able to guess where problems are. Funny, right? So my courses are really meant only as a shortcut way to do things. (In time…my bootcamp courses may become more like a speed optimization university. We will see.) How much do speed optimization specialists make? Depends on your skill and client budget. Lower-level speed optimization charges around $100-200 per job. Higher-level speed optimization charges around $300-1000 per job….
Don't use CSS frameworks with your custom WordPress theme
This is mostly a matter of speed, and then to a lesser degree (utility). I’ve been asked, “Hey Johnny, do you use CSS frameworks? Which ones do you like?” My answer is NO. I hate the idea of them (and therefore don’t use them). Reason #1 – too much bloat Too much junk! Argh. You don’t need all that crap. 12-column layouts going to the right, then again to the left. Declarations for all kinds of icons and warning text and flags and other crap you’ll never use. Boxes and shadows, and spacers, and nav,…
Checking your WordPress site for BROTLI or GZIP compression
There are 2 methods: either do it from the NETWORK tab in your browser’s developer tools, or use one of the free compression check services out there. (Video explanation inside.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHmu983e-Lc…
Restrict Content Pro - WordPress membership plugin review 2020
My raving review of the Restrict Content Pro membership plugin. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlqqlBT4_Zg What I like about RCP Made by Pippin What an awesome guy. If you’ve been around the WordPress development community, you’ll know he is one of the most legit (AND KIND-HEARTED) developers out there. I’ve personally asked him for help for bbPress styling and other junk so many times, I’m just embarrassed to admit. But I’ll never forget. Oh and he’s also among the most respected WP developers, too. Back then, he was more of a one-man show. And now it’s a whole agency….
WPCloudDeploy unofficial setup guide
Because I had basic issues setting it up myself. But follow this guide and you’ll be having fun with WPCD in no time! More tips to come. 🙂 Steps to install WPCD: Install plugins – core, provider, whatever else you need (like WooCommerce subscriptions). Add encryption in wp-config.php – the line looks like this define(‘WPCD_ENCRYPTION_KEY’, ‘your very long encryption key goes here’); Paste SSH private key – choose your SSH key from dropdown in your cloud provider settings, then paste the SSH private key in the text field below it. Increase SSH timeouts to 300…
BAD IDEA - Translate website content for increased traffic
…the hardest part…especially after all these years. Content creation gets especially tiring. Now if you LOVE creating content, then perhaps it’s the marketing part that’s the most tedious part. Well, either way…it’s either you love content creation and hate marketing, or you love marketing but hate content creation. So by that logic…many people think translating content is so much easier because they’re not the ones actually doing the content creation. Just outsource it and then sit back, right? ***ANHHHH!!!*** WRONG!!! Content translation is almost damn near impossible when you understand what “content” really is. What…
Website Design Workflow Tips - Avoid Endless Revisions
Don’t get lost in 285123213 revisions before going live! STOP DOING THAT! Websites are living beings. You don’t need to get it perfect on the first try. Every revision only needs to be better than the next. Then once the revision is up, you collect more data and more ideas of what to change. The best time to get ideas is when it’s live and not when it’s in mock-up. When it’s in mock-up phase, the #1 goal is to get it live. Design-to-Development workflow: Create a great mock-up – nudge it around until you…
Is WordPress insecure? (no, it isn't!)
I think it’s a silly question and often misinterpreted by newbies/non-coders for all the wrong reasons. If you even had to ask this question, I would say WordPress is more than secure enough you! But first off, what IS “security” anyways? The word “secure” means different things to different people. To an average person – “secure” means that it’s hackproof and your sensitive data is safe from thieves/bad-guys, also very low instances of ever getting hacked. To an experience developer – “secure” means that it’s coded to best practices, commonly-used and updated often. If you…
Comments Sticky Moderate (WPJ plugin)
DOWNLOAD LINK WordPress.org (repo) FUNCTION Move moderation options above comment to speed up manual approval. DESCRIPTION By having the moderation options bar on top of each comment, you can leave your mouse in one place and keep clicking. It allows you to manually prune your comments quicker and (hopefully) save false positives. FEATURES Moderation options on top instead of below the comment. Now you can leave the mouse in one place and keep clicking “Delete”….
Local-load Google webfonts in DIVI (in just 5 minutes)
…already. (Your font call urls should be ../child-theme-name/fonts/*font-file*.) Step #3 – copy the font calls to your child theme stylesheet. The stylesheet is usually called style.css and located right in your child theme directory. Paste in the styles right into there. (It doesn’t matter where you place them, but I prefer at the top.) Step #4 – disable the Google font call from DIVI. Go to Dashboard > Divi > Theme Options. Scroll down to “Use Google Fonts” (it’s like the 11th option) and click DISABLE. Then scroll to bottom and hit [SAVE CHANGES]. That’s…
Removing WordPress user registration spam
An appreciation plugin for the User Spam Remover plugin. This isn’t a post on stopping user registration spam. It’s about what to do once you already have it. I can show you how in (about) 3 simple steps. 1. Install User Spam Remover https://wordpress.org/plugins/user-spam-remover/ 2. Run the “remove spam users” now. Go to Users > User Spam Remover, and check the box for “Enable”, then adjust the number in the “Age threshold (in days)”. Ideally, this number should be 1 day less than the most recent spam user registration. Then click the [Remove spam/unused accounts…
SIMPLE FIX - Windows 10 Creators Fall Update 1709 Failed to Install Error Code 0xC1900101 0xc1900107 0xc1900208 0x30018
…and running the Windows Update Troubleshooter tool Downloading and running the Windows Media Creation tool Updated my bios as well as motherboard chipset drivers. Anyway, you get the point. I’ve tried everything and no matter what, the update would fail in the same spot (at 45%) every time. Thankfully, it recovered successfully. Here’s the thing that worked for me: Run the update, let it download everything. Then while it’s installing, unplug ALL USB devices except for your mouse and keyboard. (My only 3rd device was the wireless USB adapter.) And just like that, it worked!!!!…
Flywheel WordPress hosting review - IT SUCKS
…coast download assets from their CDN server on the west coast. That’s so lame! What’s the point of CDN then?! I’m starting to get second thoughts about their UI as well. Yes, it’s cute and feels simple. But also gets annoying real quick. You have to click to 4 places to find out you can’t do anything. Can’t change PHP settings, no file manager, phpmyadmin is tucked off to the side in your bottom-right blindspot, let’s play a game to see how long it takes clients to set up their FTP. (tick tock tick tock)…
Couchsurfing B-Corp Is a Good Thing
Lately, there’s been a lot of divided opinions (more against it than for it) about Casey Fenton’s decision to raise money and turn Couchsurfing into a B-corp. It created legions of angry CS’ers and sparked heated debate among the themes of capitalism, altruistic communities, and [corrupted] corporations. How I feel about the anti-corporation community: Some people were demanding that Casey give up Couchsurfing and upgrade its members to shareholder status. To that I say: CS is still Casey’s project and he doesn’t owe any piece of it to any of you. You have every…
HestiaCP - server control panel review
…a free simple control panel, with options for email hosting and end-user accounts. Is it the fastest thing in the world? Not with the hybrid-setup, probably not. But it’s more than fast enough. It’s lightweight and free! C’mon! The UI is admin-centric and probably won’t be as simple to end-users as it is for admins. Has email features, since most free panels don’t allow that. Allows end-user accounts, many panels are solo-admin only. While organized more for admins, it’s still simple enough for end users. Try HestiaCP (it’s free and installs in only 10 minutes)…
Betrayed feelings about Frost theme
…don’t trust the quality of work, it means I don’t believe he’ll stick around for the long haul…especially if it doesn’t make the money he wants. DEC 24, 2021 update – Frost is acquired (I assume sold) by WPEngine (just like Genesis). WP Engine Acquires Brian Gardner’s Frost, Opens It to the Public -WPTavern. So we’ll never know what the heck Brian was really planning with it but hey, it’s now another free option…so you can’t complain. Let’s play. I always felt Frost wasn’t gonna last long but I didn’t think he’d exit this fast….
How to Make Money With a Blog
…Don’t start writing anything yet, just come up with the titles for now 4. Research all the most commonly used keywords in your niche use Google Trends, Adwords Tools, Youtube Keyword (all free) if you don’t know how to do keyword research, look it up 5. Start writing your 10 or 20 super-informative posts! put the keywords into the title and body content (don’t over-do it!) release each post as you finish share casually on other websites, community pages, etc (the links better be so damn good that it goes viral without you having to…
How to Hire Remote Employees
…get the feeling they take for a vacation trip once every month. MY BEST ADVICE Many of these remote workers will offer themselves for like $5/hr full-time via online agencies or $12/hr via UpWork.com (formerly Odesk). But the thing is when you try to hire them via agency, the agency will literally charge 100% mark-up. So you’d be paying $10/hr for an employee who was willing to do it for $5/hr. My tip is this: go on upwork.com and hire a bunch of different guys for all kinds of different projects. After you’ve…
RSS output hacks - exclude categories, add spacing
…foreach ( (array) $categories as $category ) { // $cat_names[] = sanitize_term_field( ‘name’, $category->name, $category->term_id, ‘category’, ‘rss’ ); // } // } if ( ! empty( $tags ) ) { foreach ( (array) $tags as $tag ) { $cat_names[] = sanitize_term_field( ‘name’, $tag->name, $tag->term_id, ‘post_tag’, ‘rss’ ); } } $cat_names = array_unique( $cat_names ); $cat_name = implode( ‘ ‘, $cat_names ); $the_list .= “\t\t<yoursite:categories><![CDATA[” . html_entity_decode( $cat_name, ENT_COMPAT, get_option( ‘blog_charset’ ) ) . “]]></yoursite:categories>\n”; echo $the_list; I hope you enjoyed! It was a fun little hack and did the job perfectly for what we wanted!…
Blisk - multiple screen development browser
…common devices. Pick portrait or landscape mode. Take snapshot or record video of entire screen (including multiple devices). Can enable auto-refresh so the page updates as soon as the code updates. Chrome developer tools built-in. Convenient toolbar buttons for Inspect, DevTools, Errors, and more. There’s other features as well but these are the main ones for me. Quick breakdown of features and how to use them. Anyway, I think this browser is so helpful if you’re ever doing web development or tweaking your site and need to check that nothing broke. Get Blisk for free…
Best Microphones for Online Streaming or Podcasting
…just plug and play, and it comes with 4 directional settings (cardioid, bi-directional, omni-directional, stereo). If you never had a “pro mic”, Blue Yeti will be just fine and sound super nice to you. The standard one is probably the one most people have. I think if you wanted to spend more money, go with another brand for better performance from a true audio-brand. OPTION B – Rode: Rode NT-USB Mini – $149 (compact) Rode NT-USB – $169 (standard) Rode Podcaster – $229 (dynamic, not condenser!) These are really nice. Solid option that sounds good….
How to STAY IN SHAPE as a Tech Worker
…completely focused on all my technique. Actionable fitness tips 1. Pick only exercises you like doing. “No pain, no gain” isn’t true. Cut out the stupid tough-guy motivational quotes. Fitness doesn’t have to be painful. And you don’t have to chase down more painful exercises to feel productive. That’s certainly not how you do your tech work, right? You ever notice how kids are so easily in shape? It’s because their physical activity is all PLAY, not PUNISHMENT. For god sakes, you’re not a pro athlete (with a competition date). Start off with only exercises…
Tony Hawk - first man to land the 900
Watch this warrior succeed when he’s been down 10 times and out of energy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4QGnppJ-ys…
Should You Build a Forum?
I used to do that with every website thinking I would somehow magically capitalize on site traffic but it never turned out that way. It turns out I missed one simple detail: ONLY BUILD ONE FORUM! That’s like the golden rule of starting a forum. I got it from reading this: https://www.affiliatebible.com/general-seo/building-a-profitable-forum.php awesome guide for building a forum! The key question you should ask yourself is: Can I build a profitable forum? Forums take time and money to run so if you’re not going to be profitable, it’s quite difficult to have a…
There's An Expression In All of Us
These photos really spoke to me. There’s a winner, an expression, an entrepreneur…a great personality within all of us: https://www.dancersamongus.com/photos/Towson-MD-Rachel-Bell…
The Best Copywriting is probably NATURAL
In this day and age, you definitely want natural-sounding copy on your website and other company-branded marketing materials. Sounding too professional might not be the best way to go about it. I totally agree with the original post in this link and enjoyed how he explained it. Here it is: https://www.warriorforum.com/copywriting-forum/874692-youre-trying-too-damn-hard.html…
Your Calling VS Your Ego
Great article. Learn the difference: https://www.inc.com/shelley-prevost/5-ways-to-distinguish-your-calling-from-your-ego.html…
Helpful links for new copywriters
I saw this link posted on WarriorForum and loved it. So many great resources in here. Read this if you really want to get your feet wet in copywriting. https://www.warriorforum.com/copywriting-forum/729604-1000th-post-quick-links-new-copywriters.html…
How to Write an Interesting Story
…storytelling because they don’t pick an interesting part of the story. They focus on the part of the story that’s all too familiar, all too predictable. Or they pick the part of the story that is more the most incredible and accomplishing but isn’t interesting at all. And lastly, they fail to really inject emotion into it. Learn how to connect emotionally with your readers and you will have made one of the most powerful connections possible. Here is one of my favorite explanations of all time on how to tell a captivating story: https://www.copyblogger.com/start-with-a-story/…
Self-Discipline - understanding the true rewards
A beautifully written article on the benefits and rewards of self-discipline! https://www.raptitude.com/2013/10/the-elegant-secret-to-self-discipline/…
DigitalAccessPass hacked - and changed address (PayPal IPN hack)
…comparing it with a current backup (where you’re having problems now). Look to see what new files are created and only exist now but didn’t exist before. In my case, it was a bunch of Adminer script files that he hid in many places. Inside a DAP directory, inside a plugin directory, among the wp-uploads directory, inside an unused template directory. The first time we checked, there was about 5 files. The second time we REALLY checked, there was about 15-20 files. Delete all these files. Check to see if he created new DAP admin…
SpinupWP - WordPress server panel review
…a few little things cleverly left out of their marketing but I’ll pretend not to notice. NOT!!!! Support…they conveniently left that out. If you need tech support, I suggest you turnaround right now. Pricing $12/month for the basic plan, allows one server and unlimited sites. But currently still at the $9/month introductory price. I provide the competitors pricing for contrast: SpinupWP – $12/month for 1 server, $14/month for 3 servers, $29/month for 3 servers (and have team members). Every extra server is $5/month extra. RunCloud – $6.67/month for 1 server, $12.50/month for unlimited servers, $37.50/month…
Amazon-AWS/Google-GCP vs Traditional VPS (Linode, Digital Ocean, Vultr)
Curious to know if you should go with the big name Google/Amazon or traditional providers (Linode, DO, Vultr) for your VPS? I’ll break it down for you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2iXIPxzS5s Which is better? If what you need is a high-performance/low-cost VPS… Stick with the traditional VPS providers (Linode, DO, Vultr). They offer better performance at lower cost. Presumably, it comes from their long datacenter experience. If what you need is simple integration with other cloud services (storage, remote database, etc)… Go with the big name cloud services (Google, Amazon, or even Azure/Alibaba). The tighter integrations with all…
How to customize WordPress admin CSS
…without actually installing a plugin. Instead, you’re hooking the function into your theme functions.php file. Copy the code below into your theme functions.php file. Take note of the theme directory and CSS file being called. Change/rename it to match your theme. Then go create the the admin CSS and put your desired styles in there. /* Admin CSS styles */ function adminStylesCss() { $url = get_option(‘siteurl’); $url = $url . ‘/wp-content/themes/yourtheme/css/wp-admin.css’; echo ‘<!– Admin CSS styles –> <link rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” href=”‘ . $url . ‘” /> <!– /end Admin CSS styles –>’; } add_action(‘admin_head’, ‘adminStylesCss’);…
Cloudways is cashing out (acquired by Digital Ocean)
I’d guess Cloudways is cashing out. It’s too big to evolve with the times and I assume not much market share left to conquer. Instead of spending big money to improve, they sell off their current work for big money…and start a new business elsewhere. Digital Ocean picks this one up as a lead generator. Much in the same fashion that WP Engine acquired StudioPress. https://www.cloudways.com/blog/cloudways-joins-digitalocean/ It’s a smart move IMO. Cloudways had to exit at some point as they can’t possibly grow any further and rewriting their whole product (and code base) would probably…
WP Performance - cache plugin review
…name or class. Same for excluding video embed lazy load by page url. This is useful for excluding ATF items from lazy load. DATABASE cleanup – deleting the usual trash, spam, revisions, transients, tasks, drafts. CDN – compatible with CDN and also Cloudflare proxy. SETTINGS – import/export settings, and enable logging for troubleshooting. DYNAMIC PRELOAD – if you want to preload links upon hover. VARNISH INTEGRATION – will clear varnish cache. WPP strengths: FAST – yes, your site will run beautifully fast with WPP enabled. RELIABLE – coded beautifully. Lean with zero bloat. FULL-FEATURED –…
CWICLY's demise - a lesson in specialization
…hate. I’m talking about venomous rent-free toxic spite. CWICLY’s biggest haters don’t come anywhere near the hate I’ve seen for DIVI, WP Bakery, or Elementor. And yet those god-awful plugins are still in business…making lots of money, releasing updates, forging forward despite the sea of haters and hate-posts and hate-comments. Money makes it worthwhile. If you were getting handsomely paid, you wouldn’t care who talks crap. And I’m sure the CWICLY team made money. Just not enough to justify all the criticisms, and all the work required to satisfy the critics. They were brought to…
Plugin Script/Asset Organizer Review
A quick rundown of the asset organizer plugins I’ve tried for WordPress. I’ve had a ton of sites that were loading slow because of unnecessary plugins loading on certain pages. Normally, this wouldn’t matter so much as you can always cache the page but in these instances, the pages weren’t cacheable. I wanted to prevent them from loading to speed up the site so I went around trying different plugins. Here are my quick rundowns on: WP Gonzales (paid) Plugin Organizer (free) Plugin Load Filter (free) Plugin Logic (free) WP Asset CleanUp (free) WordPress Assets…
WPMU DEV sucks - don't use their plugins
…previous developer didn’t know what they were doing or not really even a “developer” at all. Why are they crap? Who knows… Maybe outsourced or built by low-grade developers. Maybe they have so many plugins that they don’t have time to properly maintain each one throughout the many updates of WordPress, PHP, or overall compatibility with other plugins. Hummingbird (cache) – crap. Smush (image compression) – crap. (Although some people like it.) Defender (security) – crap. What makes them crap? Poor coding, doesn’t work right, conflicts with other plugins, bloated, high memory use, etc. I…
How to HARDEN a Linux web server
…of firewall?!” Yeah yeah, I know. It’s confusing. Network firewalls – are standard firewalls that control access between ports and IP’s. They open and close ports, allow and deny IP’s. Web Application Firewalls – are software-level firewalls that can limit traffic within open ports. Dammit, I suck at explaining. Let’s take port 80 (HTTP) and 443 (HTTPS). You can’t block those ports because they’re needed for web browsers to function. So on a network level, all traffic is allowed through….regardless if it’s good or bad. Now the question is…how do we stop the bad traffic…
Which WordPress "experts" should you trust?
…that aren’t as user-friendly for end clients. Can be biased when reviewing their own products (obviously). Bad developers are limited in skills, ethics, or open-mindedness. Relying too much on outdated/poor development practices or a one-size-fits-all attitude. Not all “developers” should be trusted! A good way to be safe, is by following a developer that’s respected by other developers. (Ask around and you’ll know.) MY THOUGHTS on developers: Follow developers to know the nitty gritty about different products, how they perform in real-world conditions, and pro-tips on doing things…but watch out for extreme developers’ bias that…
Why is Gutenberg being pushed now (when it's not perfect)
Why is technology being forced upon us when it’s still buggy and not yet fully supported? It’s how I’d sum up all the ranting done about the latest WordPress Gutenberg block editor. Gutenberg sucks! It’s buggy! Too hard to use! Doesn’t work! Can’t do fancy things like my pagebuilder! Yes, I’ve heard it all. And despite all the technology advancements we’ve had in the past decades, it seems people (once again) forget how technology works. The chicken-and-egg analogy What comes first? The chicken or the egg? Or in tech-speak, what comes first…the format or its…
Ignore Tai Lopez and other MAKE-MONEY Scams
…shit and seems like “the easy way” to do it, or even “the right way” to do it. Business is an art first and foremost. Takes hard work and some soul. How can you tell what “bad advice” looks like? Just look at Tai Lopez: Bragging about his success. Wants to sell his “knowledge”. Acts like he’s better than you. His target demographic is unsuspecting customers. You really think he knows anything if he’s so damn willing to share it? He’s in the business of teaching, not building real businesses. Every year, a new gimmick….
Stop Trying to Monetize off Google Ads
…Whatever money you’re making on it now, you’ll probably make 4 times as much seeking out other methods of traffic monetization. I mean it. It’s only a matter of time before you realize how much your traffic is really worth and figure out how to capitalize on it. I will say this, though: Google Ads is an easy way to monetize. It’s convenient as hell. Just put a little code and let it do all the work of putting relevant ads in front of your viewers. The only problem is that you won’t make much…
What is "Managed Hosting" and where did it come from?
…Yes, you read that right. “Managed hosting” is actually still “shared hosting”. OK OK OK! Let’s be fair. Managed hosting, is technically still “shared hosting”, but not exactly the same as typical shared hosting. The even harder part to understand is that there are varying levels of “managed hosting”. BEST “managed hosting” – placed on VPS (which themselves resides on powerful physical servers), using performance-optimized configurations, with generous dedicated resource limits, and comes with quality great tech support. (Kinsta, and then to a much lesser degree, WPengine/Flywheel.) MEDIOCRE “managed hosting” – usually placed on VPS…
The magic of custom Gutenberg blocks
…widget. Yes, the end result is the same…but how you get there is totally different. With Gutenberg block, it’s done much easier. Perhaps for something simple like image slider, the difference isn’t so apparent. But for other types of content, there’s a whole world of difference. It’s wayyyyyyy easier to add custom content to your pages. Also easier to manipulate their styling and layout, and whatever other options available. How to install Gutenberg blocks It couldn’t be any easier. Just search “block” or “blocks” on WordPress plugin repo. You’ll find tons of options and many…
Expected conversion rate for membership sign-ups?
…with. It is really REALLY hard to get above 10% conversion rate and for most people, impossible to get even 1% conversion rate. But should you really worry yourself with this? In my opinion, no. Don’t worry about it. If you love what you do…keep chugging along and creating solutions, not business ideas and you’ll get those sign-ups in no time. But if all you care about is the dollar signs, then yeah, your “business” will fall apart just like all the others out there. Oh btw, it does help to have really professional-grade web-design!…
WordPress is (slightly) losing market share because...
…and on. More functions, more features, more fancy visuals, MORE MORE MORE! What could’ve been simple plugins are now overly-bloated and overly-marketed (aka “confusing”) for the sake of profit (rather than user-experience). And who does the site serve? Oh everybody and every fucken metric. Has to look nice for visitors, load “fast” for Google, integrate with external services, yet easy to use for non tech-savvy end users, easy to maintain for business owners, and still have all cutting-edge features of a million billion-dollar SaaS? (Shopify, Squarespace, Wix, etc.) It’s no wonder that WordPress is having…
HOW and HOW NOT to write a copycat blog
…rank very high. It’s too similar to what already exists and lacks the domain presence the “original” ones have. Too many people see other big blogs like Kinsta or Cloudways having success doing copycat content, but don’t realize they’re already known for something else. If you wanna get even more philosophical, I’d say your goal could almost be….to make completely copycat content BUT from a “unique [branding] perspective”. I’d have to charge you if I say anymore. And you’re probably broke if you’re resorting to copying. So stop reading and get out there…happy content stealing!…
Should you offer FREE CONSULTATIONS on your website?
…be on my list. FRIEND omg, true…love the way you put it…and my products are not cheap so I don’t want to waste time. decision made! hell no! lmao ME seriously. lol. only cheap brands do that. when you walk around downtown LA….every street vendor is like “hey baby, what you looking for? anything you need? come in! come in and see our stuff!” and when you go to nordstrom…they just leave you the fuck alone and let you know they can bring you any specific sizes if you want. FRIEND hahahahahah very true. lmfao…
BEST and WORST reasons to learn server-admin
…it because you don’t use it enough. Linux commands are certainly that way. So you’re blowing at least 1-2 years to become proficient and comfortable. You learn the commands, learn the command options, learn the locations of key files/directories. And then what? If you’re not poking inside that server and running those commands constantly every week, you’ll forget every single one of them. And have to relearn them each time. I’m in and out of a couple dozen servers every week (for years) and I still have to look up commands from time to time….
Logos are not PICTURES, they are FEELINGS
…where might appreciate something different from the rest. Honestly, it’s the only good long run option IMO. I’ll go over some examples of good and bad logo imagery using both OPTION A & B. “BUMBLEBEE WEB DESIGN” BAD – an image of a bumble in there with your logo text. C’monnnnnnn! So obvious. And wasting pixels for nothing! What are someone supposed to think of the bee? That it’s cute? That it’s painful? That it’s annoying? A hard-worker? What????? OK – an texture of a honeycomb around the logo text. Ehhh…better. Heck, even the word…
Sendy self-hosted email software review
…guides and you only have to do it once to setup Amazon SES with Sendy. (There’s also a Sendy set-up service or you can pay a developer/admin to set up for you.) After the initial setup, you never have to mess with it again. Amazon SES rates are super cheap. Only $1 per 10,000 emails, which is 0.5% of the cost of MailChimp’s pay-as-you-go plan. And yes, Amazon SES gets through email filters perfectly. It’s definitely industry-grade deliverability and some argue it’s even better than the paid services out there. Basically…Sendy is over 100x cheaper…
DIY Mattress review and buying guide
…actually just a combination of different layers to help support you (and the layers itself) in various ways throughout your sleep. But of course the industry makes it as confusing as possible to make you overpay for it. As the saying goes, “Knowledge is power.”…which of course means that whatever you don’t know/understand, you will pay dearly for that! Mattress layers from top-to-bottom: COMFORT layer/s – usually soft foam, wool, or other padding and textures to give you nice feeling against your body surface. SUPPORT layer/s – usually medium foam, softer coils, or combination of…
WordPress Migration Plugins Review (UPDATED 2018)
…really like it! Getting around the 500mb size limit – easy, simply exclude the “wp-content” from your export (that greatly keeps the size down), and then just compress and extract yourself using cPanel’s File Manager. Tips – if your database fails to import, exclude that as well and import it manually. Check out All-in-One WP Migration 2. Migrate Guru – the fastest way to migrate a site! Duplicator used to be my favorite until this one came along. It’s so easy to use! It really is the fastest way to move a site and…
How to Make a UNIQUE Web Design
…information flow. Think of the LOGIC behind your organization. Don’t worry about being cool or unique. Just think of the most eye-pleasing spacing for your content. 3. EMOTION – decide on a vibe (or emotion). RELAXED or AGGRESSIVE? BOLD or SUBTLE? PERSONAL or CORPORATE? MASCULINE or FEMININE? OLD SCHOOL or HIGH-TECH? CLASSIC or ARTSY? Pick the colors, fonts, and overall styling that you think would give that emotion. 4. MOCK-UP – start mocking up draft designs. There are two ways to go about this: For those who don’t know what they want/need, don’t…
Social Media Marketing on LinkedIn (tips and tricks)
…faceless brands. 4. General posting formula Good title (please don’t be clickbait), personal image (not stock photo), and some emojis in the description text (for adding character). I think important posts can go out twice a week, tops. Beyond that and you run the risk of them just tuning you out as “noise” or spam. And yes, of course…you should have fun posts as well. Some might be just images or just videos, for that full viral effect. 5. Be personable I think the biggest issue with LinkedIn is that everything on there seems like…
How to COPY-PASTE Gutenberg blocks
…#3 – EditorsKit https://wordpress.org/plugins/block-options/ Once again, Jeffrey Carandang (phpbits) to the rescue with another super handy plugin to deal with day-to-day WordPress issues. He’s made dozens of handy ones before and he’s an awesome guy. https://twitter.com/editorskit/status/1177159579232129024 All you gotta do is install the EditorsKit plugin and then you can COPY/PASTE to your heart’s content! You can also “Export as JSON” and then drag-and-drop onto another site (that also has EditorsKit installed). I personally hate installing new plugins so I don’t like going this route but I’m sure many people would love not only this simple…
MXroute email hosting review
Are you looking for the best value, low-cost, NO-BS, no-frills, email hosting? …then MXroute is your friend! If you haven’t heard of MXroute, then please give me a minute to laugh at you. Now telling all my friends to point fingers at you chanting “SHAME!…SHAME!…SHAME!” Here’s why… The quirky things to know (and love) about MXroute It’s run by Jarland Donnell and Ryan Arp. Several years back (can’t remember if it was 3 or 5), Jarland caused quite the storm on webhosting admin forums chatting about his new email service. It was basically ONE man’s…
The FASTEST Lightweight WordPress Themes Review - UPDATED 2019
…run into issues without any solutions and won’t be as inspired to evolve your theme regularly. I feature my favorite 3 lightweight WordPress themes, from fastest and lightest to most “full-featured” (but still light): 1. GeneratePress Probably the best choice for most people. Super lightweight, great community, dedicated developer. Not only lightweight but full of hooks and hacks for every possible little customization you’d like. It has many built-in features, yet friendly enough for both non-coders and coders alike. RECOMMENDED for: seasoned WP experts who like tweaking everything little snippet of code, feature, and aesthetic….
WPJ 2020 review - uncharted territory
What a wild year…full of drama, thrills, and excitement. I can honestly say I didn’t see it coming. WPJ website visits grew 300% – 300k visits this year compared to 100k last year 160 posts written, about 90 published – basically one every 3-4 days Released 7 free WPJ plugins (and 1 paid) – used in over 250+ active sites. Released the WP Speed Optimization Courses (originally to help Walter) – but it’s now grown into a massive faction of its own. Raised $8k for HelpWalter.com – thank you for all that supported! Built many…
Bill Waterson - a life worth living
https://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/05/20/bill-watterson-1990-kenyon-speech/ I absolutely love these words and so proud to have aligned my life along these values. Forever working harder, and happier. 🙂…
Mailchimp vs Mailerlite - email newsletter service review
…there are some little things that MailerLite doesn’t do. Maybe you’ll miss it, maybe you won’t. I think most of you won’t. Bottom line – which would I recommend for you? (Mailchimp or Mailerlite) I think the main deciding factors are COST, USER INFO, CONVERSION TRACKING, and RSS USAGE. Mailchimp is the easy winner if email marketing,seeing more useful subscriber info, and conversion tracking is a critical aspect of your sales. Otherwise, Mailerlite is cheaper, simpler to use, and also has better RSS options. Mailchimp for features, integrations, subscriber info, and conversion tracking. Mailchimp has…
FINDING SUPPORT for any theme or plugin
…I can’t use it anymore. Please don’t make me go back to [insert competitor name].” 3. Find the Facebook group Maybe the theme/plugin has a community Facebook group. Join it and ask for help. Sometimes they may not have one for their smaller plugins…so you have to join their overall brand community. I suppose you could also join broader Facebook groups that cover or have many users of your theme/plugin. 4. Pay someone else Sometimes on support forums and Facebook groups, you still won’t get support….BUT, you can see replies of other users and it’s…
The origin of WordPress plugin bloat
…3rd-party service integration. Or some other unique value or function. But more often than not, it’s a downward spiral to see which plugin has more non-essential features. Bloat mitigation & sneaky autoloads. This pisses me off. Plugins end up with so many settings that they start building in their own internal caching, performance optimizations, and even memory-hogging index autoloads!! *(@#$&#)($&@#!!!!! If your plugin is that bloated that you feel the need to address it with performance optimizations, just go back and remove some stuff or rewrite it! Yikes! The point of mass adoption. This is…
LTD suspicions - deal or desperation?
…company abandon a recurring subscription model for a one-time sales model? It’s easy…because they know most customers will quit! This is similar to fitness gyms selling 3-year plans upfront. Because why would any *smart* company give up higher profits in the long run? Cell phone carriers don’t do LTD’s. Netflix doesn’t do LTD’s. I can’t help but feel companies don’t even value their own product when they offer LTD’s. 6. It’s a failing business. Yeah, this is a straight cash-out scheme to sell off product before it loses all its value. Like those retailers getting…
WPJohnny WordPress theme roundup 2021
…on Facebook groups, Neve is a great option for you. Also has cloud-based templating and able to share designs across different sites and with the community. Oh lord, it seems everybody’s copying this feature now. Kadence jumped in on it too recently (but sells it as a separate paid plugin). Neve has built-in AMP-compatibility. Also don’t like the huge library of generic-looking starter sites. 7. Astra This theme is so 2018. It’s last year’s “last year”. I don’t like their coding architecture. I don’t like their designs and copycat nature (ripping off ideas from other…
CloudPages managed WordPress hosting - INITIAL REVIEW
…install, delete, activate, disable plugins. Install, delete, activate, disable themes. Manage WordPress core/theme/plugin updates. Security, database, and a billion other functions. And you’re able to do all this right from your hosting control panel. So you don’t need to log into each site. You also don’t need to have ManageWP services. You can manage all hosting and websites right from your hosting panel! (It’s magical!) (Hahaha, omg…now I just realized I need to finish my raving WordPress Toolkit review. It was 85% finished and I wrote thousands of words but never released.) However…the CloudPages version…
Linux Admin Courses
…the various options available). Personally, I just think my course is wayyyy more fun and empowering than anything else out there. What if I’m poor and don’t have money? I don’t offer discounts regardless if you’re poor, wife is dying, car blew up yesterday, lost your job, whole family has cancer, you’re my #1 fan, etc. Free (and incredible) knowledge exists in Google. Please give that a try. What’s the refund policy? No refunds…unless you threaten to post negative reviews of me online. At which point I’ll give you back your money. But will think…
Is SEO worth it anymore?
…times harder than PPC but yes, it’s worth it. I mean, who wouldn’t want all those free hits? Certain keywords can cost you $1/click with PPC but with SEO, it’s totally free. Everyone complaining about Google being hard to predict or having algorithms that don’t support the little guys doesn’t know what they’re doing. Yes, it’s true in SOME cases, but not all. Many of my websites have not been altered for years and they still rank well. The bottom line is, if you’re going to game the system instead of doing truely organic SEO,…
How to Get an IM Mentor - help us help you
…along the lines of that he’s read a lot of IM blogs, bought some WSO’s, spent lots of time on WF, built one blog and kept it up for 6 months, before quitting. And if so…I’ll have to say that’s less than 1% of effort of the successful guys on here. Let me just say this: 1. It’s very hard for me or anyone to mentor you if you have nothing to show for all the “knowledge” that you’ve acquired. We don’t know where you are, what your strengths or weaknesses are. We don’t…
Best WordPress Pagebuilders Review - UPDATED 2022
A list of my favorite pagebuilders and why. I also include a list of my non-favorites for comparison reasons. I compare them on features, ease-of-use, speed, clean output code, and compatibility. For those who keep asking, I don’t like pagebuilders! This list exists only for people who insist on having one. Best pagebuilders for WordPress: Elementor – the most popular, and powerful free-version. Cutting-edge pagebuilder with all the trendiest gimmicky effects/features. Newbies and non-coders should start here. BeaverBuilder – 2nd best, most stable and reliable. Preferred by more serious tech-savvy folks who prefer stability over features….
Should You Offer Refunds (Policy) on Digital Products or Services?
…about the ones that don’t? It can make your company look more serious…like a “no refund, no bullshit” approach. I’ve learned from some amazing guys in the online marketing space making a killing out there. Their wording is along the lines of…”due to the nature of online business, we cannot offer refunds once you’ve accessed your content. We are however invested in your satisfaction and will jump through flaming hoops to solve your problems. If you’re not 100% sure about our product, please see our FAQ/Q&A/etc.” But hey, don’t take my word for it. Just…
GridPane vs RunCloud - Managed Hosting Panel Review UPDATED 2020
…$6.67/month (1 server) and $12.50/month (unlimited servers). GridPane – has an awesome fully-functioning free plan that allows 1 server and 10 sites. Their paid plans start at $30/month (unlimited servers) which is still very reasonable to me. The verdict – RunCloud is mature (developer-friendly), GridPane is very slightly faster (user-friendly) Really tough call. Depends on what you’re looking for. If you want a really mature environment that works and very developer-friendly, RunCloud is the pick. If you want something more simple and clean, and more “supportive” I think GridPane is better. GridPane was a little…
Contact
…clients. Please try other experts & speed specialists. Partnership requests – offer to pay me money upfront (like my clients are), or I have no time for you. I didn’t create this site to be an affiliate marketer. Post submissions or link add requests – donate $5k or I’ll mark your email as spam and affect your future deliverability rates. Trying to pay me? – here’s my payment page (PayPal or credit card). Contact Form Δ Name Email Regarding – Select –WordPress (general help)WordPress (speed up)HostingE-commerceMarketing, Ads, SEO, Social mediaDesign Comments / Questions Send Message…
DISRUPTING a WordPress plugin market
…or how much market share you have…the market always changes. This has always rung true time and time again. One day people want to buy pre-made themes. Then people want a theme to custom code (Genesis). Then they want custom theme that doesn’t require code (pagebuilders, GeneratePress). They they want fast themes with customizable design (Gutenberg, Blocksy). And when the market changes…you either have 2 choices. Refactor – rebuild your product completely from scratch to be lean and best fitting the current market. Almost no company does this as it’s tons of work and damn…
Breakdance - WordPress sitebuilder review
…promises….BUTTTTTT…. Louis (I assume it was Louis) didn’t actually improve Oxygen. He completely rewrote a new builder from scratch…and called it Breakdance (builder). With not only all the features Oxygen users had been requesting for months/years…but even more. And ^&@!%$#*%!@$ packaged it as a completely new product, with an annual subscription price!!! Hahahahahha….of course, users are gonna be pissed. They feel tricked, betrayed, etc. All these years of Oxygen’s website copy arrogantly proclaiming their business model was sustainable turned out to be at worst (a lie) and at best (an over-estimation of their business experience)….
Where to buy cPanel licenses
So I went around looking for places to buy cPanel licenses last night. I found different rates and different options: BuycPanel.com – popular cPanel reseller. Nice site filled with many options and allows you to pay for a monthly license (instead of paying the yearly price). They will even install cPanel on your server for you free of charge! Directly from cPanel themselves – it’s the most costly option because they make you pay upfront for a yearly license. I also didn’t see any options for add-ons (Litespeed, Softaculous, etc). cpaneldirect.net – another popular site…
Best (FREE & PAID) Remote Desktop Software
Quick review of the best remote desktop software out there. BEST ONE (Team Viewer) – I love using it for everything. Managing remote use for clients or accessing your home desktop. At some point, if you get flagged for using the free account for business use, you’ll have to use Splashtop. 🙂 CHEAPEST PAID ONE (Splashtop) – only $50/year compared to others that costs $200-300/year and don’t have any monthly options. Has virtually all the same functions as Teamviewer (remote desktop, file transfer). The graphics just don’t look as good, aren’t as clear but works…
Selling Ebooks vs Videos (the better info-product moneymaker?)
Some people haven’t decided between the two as a source of income. Here are some comparisons you can make for ebooks vs videos: VIDEOS + cheaper faster to make + can seem more valuable and personal to prospective buyers + can be edited to make a highlight reel – require costly cameras, videos, lighting equipment to look professional – harder to send to your customer whether online or offline (files are big, hosting space, transfer rates, etc) EBOOKS + doesn’t require special tools to make (just a computer) + can be distributed through many…
Be an Affiliate VS Sell Your Own Product
…is easier than your own. Making $10,000 – selling your own product is easier than an affiliates. Making $100,000 & up – I can’t see you making this much money selling an affiliate product. You’d have to sell many times as much revenue to take only a small chunk. So not worth it. And the effort you spent to be successful could as easily been spent to succeed with your own product. If you want to make serious money, sell your own stuff. It’s that simple. And then let the affiliates work for you. 🙂…
Overcoming Fears of Getting on Camera (Youtube)
I used to be so afraid of getting on camera and you know what…it turned out to be one of the best things for my business. I used to worry about not looking comfortable enough, confident enough, professional enough, etc, etc. But as it turns out, me shooting videos in my living room and having all the quirky things about my personality, really helped to connect me to my audience. They too, are constantly judging themselves by their imperfections that they easily identified with me better than my competitors (who seemed more put together). I’m…
Don't use Adsense - You're LOSING Money!
Adsense is the WORST WAY to monetize your website. I’ve used Adsense for years (and still do on my less-developed websites) and also sell my own products. Adsense is by far the WORST OPTION in terms of monetizing a website. Of all the banner ads you could place on your site, Adsense might be the highest paying one but overall, banner ads are an ineffective way to make money. The same traffic that makes $200 off adsense could have easily brought you $3,000-5,000 in product sales. I’m dead serious. Think about it….Google’s Adsense commissions are…
AVADA vs DIVI vs X Theme - Premium Wordpress Theme Framework 2016 Review
…It’s far more easily customizable than DIVI or X. Divi has a problem of always feeling like one theme. – From the way, it’s organized, I feel it’s easier to splice a PSD into AVADA theme. – Friendlier for developers. If you know how to work with code, AVADA won’t get in your way. – I hear it loads faster than others. – I hear they have great support, I never used it. – I hear their team has only AVADA. This means all their energy and support goes into one theme instead of multiple….
SiteGround WebHosting Review - UPDATED 2017
…exactly as they said. It’s fast, comes with a built-in server-layer cache (which is nice) as you don’t want to set this up yourself. Comes with a cPanel which is nice when you don’t have to pay for it. I did experience ONE DOWNTIME…the server was down maybe 2-3 hours. But other than that, it was rock solid and an absolute joy to use. So for only $11.95/month…you get a server that’s stronger than a typical VPS, comes with cPanel so you can manage everything easily, easy to set up SSL, comes with tech support…
Pricing Psychology - $95 vs $97 vs $99 vs $100
…I’ve read a lot on it but from my experience, it has more to do with how the price fits in with the rest of your product prices. I’d say the popular choices nowadays are $95, $97, $99, $100 (i’m leaving out $98, $99.99, and $100.00). If you’re intending this product to be your flagship product, $95/$100 looks great against $45, $47, $60. If you’re intending to offer discounts, $99/$100 can be easily discounted since they look like “regular prices”. If you’re intending to make this your CHEAP product, $97 looks great against $160, $164,…
BeyondHosting Review - REALLY BAD MANAGED VPS
Stay away! I had a big client migrated away from them. He had 3 servers: $250 (8vCPU/32GB) $150 (4vCPU/16GB) $150 (4vCPU/16GB) TERRIBLE HARDWARE Really slow servers. All of them were really awful. All of them were slow clock speeds and hidden CPU name in cPanel so you couldn’t see what they were running. I’ve seen even 2-4vCPU’s with Linode for only $20-40/month that easily beat their 32GB model. TERRIBLE SERVICE Oh, you can bet we contacted support! When we complained of high CPU/memory usage: first, they jacked up the server configurations to decrease the loads…
Cloudways vs RunCloud - Managed WordPress Hosting Comparison (UPDATED 2020)
I’ll give a quick rundown on these 2 managed panel hosting services and how they compare for developer-grade clients. Speed, features, pricing, ease-of-use. What I like and dislike about both. We’ll go over all that. Cloudways vs Runcloud – hosting comparison Ease-of-use for noobs (CW) – they have support and easy to set up without touching the CLI. Ease-of-use for devs (RC) – clean UI where you don’t get lost between server vs application settings. I think the one thing that kills their ease-of-use here is having to connect the server to RC. Non-techies will…
How to Stand Out Among other Web Designers
Yeah yeah, there’s tons of great web-designers out there. What can you do to stand out? No need to get overwhelmed or feel like the market’s over-saturated. There’s a million web designers out there because there’s a million jobs for them out there. There’s basically 2 ways to stand out and win web-design jobs. The “professional way” and the “personal way”. Or as I like to say…the “super-hero way” and the “real-world way”. The SUPER-HERO way Get some agency experience. Or as I like to say, “work with talented professionals”. Working in a big…
Hosting Multiple Sites in ONE Webhosting Account, is it INSECURE? (NO, it's not)
…be on its own account! Any other useful distinctions between shared-account hosting vs separate-account hosting? Shared-account hosting (like usual cPanel webhosts): Cheaper Less management Can’t give full account access to clients (since they’d be able to access other sites) Isolated shared-account hosting (like Cloudways, WPengine, etc): Still cheap like shared-account hosting But more management(since each site has separate logins) Can create different server environments for each site (but more of a developers benefit) Can give out limited access to each site Separate-account hosting (buying separate hosting account for each site): Much more expensive (of…
How to Raise Prices on Customers
How do you raise your business prices without upsetting customers/clients? This is a great question and one that I’ve figured out very easily over the years. Raising rates is really only challenging with existing clients (as new ones never knew about the previous rates), and the best method for me was to announce the new rates ahead of time. All you need is HONEST and UPFRONT communication. I’ll make a post or announcement to all existing clients that business is doing great, and we are expanding. Our costs are higher but so are our overall…
DIY USB flash drive that lasts forever
…“they don’t make them like they used to!” Geez…I feel so old already. I don’t know why new USB drives die faster. Crappy chips? I don’t know. I don’t know what the deal is with their manufacturing. That’s another mystery for another day. Anyway, I’ll tell you how I made my own (it’s so simple). Now you can be smart, and not stupid like me, having lived all these years as an IT guy without knowing basic things like this. No more wasting money on fast-dying USB flash sticks! STEP #1 – buy a high-endurance…
Which is the fastest WordPress theme?
…walls). And THEME is the interior design (paint, furniture, decor). So what’s the problem with most of these so-called “super fast, super lightweight” themes out there? There empty as sh*t! There’s nothing in them. I’m sorry, but that ain’t a theme. That’s a framework at best. And probably not even a framework (but hey, amateur WordPress “designers” wouldn’t know any better since they can’t audit code). It’s as absurd as me marketing a flipflop as “the lightest shoe in the world!”. See? It’s silly because a flipflop is hardly even a shoe; it can’t do…
How to migrate ANY type of website (to new webhost)
…time. And if it’s still too big for that…then you need to export from from the command line or use a DB backup/dump tool. Worst case scenario, you have to ask your webhost to export the database for you. STEP #3 – edit the configuration file All website CMS have a configuration file. In WordPress, it’s the wp-config.php. In other CMS like Joomla, Drupal, whatever…it might be called something else. Usually it’s called “config” or “settings” and located in the root of the website directory or maybe the “configuration” directory. When in doubt, read the…
How to Know if BLOGGING is Your Destiny
…they have an opinion and a strong urge to express themselves or a story to tell, it’s good enough. If you can’t stop talking about things or keep coming up with random ideas in your head, you should be a blogger (or vlogger, or podcaster). 2. You like to write If you feel empowered by writing and don’t notice the time flying by, you’re a great candidate for blogging. Most people don’t blog because they hate writing. If you like writing, can write, write easily, type fast…blogging would be much easier to you than to…
Attracting TALENTED Developers to Your Project
…work…that you love THEIR unique influence on your project. They want to see that their work made your project even better than you asked for. This seems impossible for the average client. Because of unclear expectations, communication issues, and just plain lack of experience. But for me…I appreciate developers before I even hire them. I see every bit of their quality before even contacting them. And when I finally do reach out…it’s just a simple question: I ask, “yes?” …and they say “yes”. No interview. No haggling. Just a collaboration of talent. Game recognizes game….
Awesome Motive isn't awesome
…have the same-y mediocre vibe. Giving you just enough to justify the price tag. No more, no less. With their pocket size, they can easily copy away any competitor’s innovation advantage. Then using every plugin under their umbrella to cross-sell and nag you to death. (Because profit beats user experience, right?!) Oh, and don’t get me started on that silly WPBeginner site either (their core lead engine for plugin sales). It’s like your average magazine off the newsstand…50% ads, and 50% advertorials. So basically…100% ads and very little content. It was the pioneer annoying affiliate-marketing…
How to Set a Sales Meeting
If it matters, I would suggest to make sure that it feels more like a free consultation rather than a sales pitch. Everyone always seems too busy unless you’re there to help them or do something for them. Instead of asking for “Just 15 minutes of your time”, it could be more like, “Let’s talk more about your business on Monday!” It’s important to let them know that you’re just there to give free tips and suggestions for their business. Things they can do on their own (small businesses love to hear this) and that…
Open-Source vs Proprietary (closed-source)
Which is better? The free-for-all community driven software or mature enterprise-grade production-ready commercial software? Those supporting open-source software claim it has the obvious advantage of being free but more importantly, is developed by more community experts with more contributing hands. It’s likely to grow and fork faster into more exciting projects. Those support proprietary software claim it’s more mature, secure, has more consistent support, and far more likely to stick around when there’s money in it to pay for top-level developers. IMO, the answer is both. Having both open-source and proprietary around forces both of…
Get Rid of Jetpack Plugin - Why and How
…sharing, image optimization, security, etc. I hate that they promote it like some kind of essential WordPress plugin when it’s not. You’ll be totally fine without it. 3. Jetpack feels like adware. It’s constantly trying to promote their commercial services. Typical business model, right? Offer a free service just to get onto a site, once inside just nag the hell out of users or fool them into thinking they MUST buy something. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not only anti-Jetpack in this sense…I hate the many other companies who do it as well. 4. I…
GeneratePress vs Astra (WordPress theme comparison)
…is it more popular? Who knows. Maybe because it’s better-marketed. Maybe because it caters better to the mainstream crowd that doesn’t know any better. Or maybe…it actually is better! Ha, just kidding. It’s not and here’s why… GeneratePress has a higher-skilled user-base/community than Astra And I don’t mean to offend anyone, but there are definitely more experienced developers and sitebuilders in GP’s community than in Astra’s community. I’ve also heard some critiques about both themes from developers. GP’s critique by one developer friend of mine was that he disagreed with how one small part of…
The ETHICS of WordPress GPL
…Here’s the classy way to “steal” (if you insist)… Give credit – that should satisfy some egos. Hire the coder you want to borrow from, and pay him/her to build that part for you. Consult with them as your mentor. Show respect. The day will come when they’ll be so happy for your growth, they would be personally honored for you to “copy” their work. Ask for permission. The wrong way to steal? Lurk in the back of groups, not making friends in the community. Hiding your name and face. And then magically appearing on…
Private consultation
You can look up answers to all technical questions free of charge on Google. You can also use my WPJohnny Facebook Group for free community help. But if you’re really that shy then fine, you can consult with me privately. $200/hr or $100/half-hour. Private Consultation Δ Name: Email: Desired day/time of consultation: Payment method: Credit/Debit Card PayPal Payment amount (USD): Confirm…
VPS.net Hosting Sucks! - Bad Review
…underpowered, etc, etc, etc.” Don’t use VPS.net. They gave me bad advice, told me to spend more money, didn’t really fix my problem, and offered no explanation. I’m not knowledgeable at managing servers so I delayed the move for this long but I can’t take it anymore. I can understand server issues due to unforeseen circumstances, but I don’t want to deal with a company that lies to its customers. Here are more bad reviews of VPS.net: Why I can’t recommend VPS.net VPS.net sucks If you look on Google, you’ll find many more. I found…
Easy Headline Formula
Learn the basics…and then break all the rules. https://blog.crazyegg.com/2015/06/05/10-fill-in-blank-headlines/…
MacSales battery replacements review (not good)
I bought a Macbook Air battery replacment here at https://eshop.macsales.com and it didn’t work very well at all. Just take it from me and don’t waste your time. Try sticking with Apple-brand replacement batteries only. Two main issues: I had longer charge for about 1-2 months. After that, the battery life was just as bad as the one I replaced. I secretly wonder if Apple products are programmed to decrease battery life at some point. I lost the ability to see how long it would take to charge. Side note: My iPhone 6s which had…
Tesla guides and reviews
I bought a new Teslas months ago and very happy with it. Thought I would share all my research and findings all on a new little site just for Tesla stuff. There will be guides, reviews, DIY hack projects, and all kinds of things related only to Teslas. https://jtesla.com…
Typography is king (in web design)
…else, only look at me!” Narrower boxes placed side-by-side might say “we’re all equally important or equally unimportant, skim through us as you like”. Do you have multiple bits of different content on the same page? If so, how far away are they from each other? Group them tightly together and it says, “we different sections of the same thing”. Space them a little farther but on the same line and it says, “we different things but equally important and loosely related”. Space them really far and it says “each piece is an entirely different…
Where to get a great logo
…override your designer’s taste. Quite often, designers are at odds with their clients. (And I’m sorry but I think most clients have bad taste and don’t really know what a professional logo should look like.) If you can promise to yourself (and to your designer), that you won’t be picky…that you’ll give them more creative control…and won’t demand so many revisions…yes, you might be able to get it done professionally for cheaper. Going the low-budget route ($500-1000) You really can get a great logo for only $500. But trying to pay less often comes at…
GADWP Plugin is now GAinWP (SCREW ExactMetrics)
…the old plugin in other alternatives today: FORK #1 – GAinWP https://wordpress.org/plugins/ga-in/#utm_medium=referral&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_content=social Clever name that reminds you of the old name and works just the same. Has a perfect 5-star rating out of many reviews. Absolutely fantastic and looks great. Clean, simple, useful. FORK #2 – Metrics Query https://wordpress.org/plugins/metrics-query/ This one is run by Yehuda Hassine. He’s also done great work reviving other abandoned plugins as well, like “Post SMTP Mailer” which was formerly “WP Postman”. I tried this one but it created an error on my site. I’m sure he’ll be fixing it soon….
Github cheatsheet
…automatically search for all file changes. git commit -m “update notes”, or you can use the full git commit -m “something” -m “something” to put both update title and description. git push to push it back up to the GitHub repo. Other notes: git pull – I almost never use this. I typically clone and then only push. I’m rarely work on a production environment locally. git status – if you’re ever randomly curious what’s matching or not. Repo permissions issues? – I’ve solved it by regenerating SSH keys and using my GitHub email address….
STUPID WEB UI - using icons instead of text labels
…images…but used in place of text. And our mind “reads” most things faster when looking at text. It’s much easier to see “Home”, “Pricing”, “Account”, etc. …than it is to see [house icon], [dollar sign], [person icon]. Icons and images are ambiguous. That saying “A picture says a thousand words.” come to mind. Whereas…a word says only one word. Look at the MailChimp nav icons above. See if you can guess exactly what each one does. I have no idea and I’ve been a MailChimp user for at least 6-7 years. Where the icon trend…
GiveWP fundraising plugin review
…to auto add them to your lists, etc. WooCommerce integration – cool add-on to allow “donation upsells”. (That little message asking buyers to chip in a few extra bucks when checking out.) Receipts – donors can gets receipts for each donation, also an annual receipt. Reports – really nice. You can see what everyone gave and for what, etc. Custom forms – build custom forms and form fields in your donation process. Overall, I just I really liked the vibe of the team behind GiveWP. Matt Cromwell (GiveWP’s head developer) is a great guy in…
How to Find an Affordable Programmer
…time after you’ve tried out many different coders. Just come back to the same one….and pay him his hourly rate…but have him give you an estimate number of hours beforehand. That way he feels free to get compensated for doing a quality job but he suffers if he ends up going over his own estimate. In my opinion…this has been the best way to do it. I’ve used the same programmer for years and so glad that he does incredible work for a reasonable rate and the business side of our relationship is always smooth….
Hire Me
…coolest designers on our team. You know those super-fancy million-dollar designs? We can do it. 😉 Web development – DISCLAIMER: we are pricey! Guaranteed, we will cost you more than other companies. You can check out my full services page (coming soon). My tech skills: web development & online marketing traditional marketing/branding, ad campaigns SEO, PPC (Google Adwords, Facebook ads) Social media marketing (Facebook, Twitter, Youtube) design UI/UX direction content marketing, SEO, copywriting web server management & speed optimization WordPress design, development, maintenance, and [speed optimization] E-commerce (WooCommerce/Shopify) Amazon Affiliates, Ebay network Newsletter management (Mailchimp,…
How Do You Stay Motivated?
…wears off once you actually start making it. For those who wonder: but who gets tired of making money? Well, some people are really in it to pile up a bunch of money. But others, like myself, just want free time or freedom to travel and work remotely, quit our jobs and that sort of stuff. And once you have enough money to stop working and travel…you’re going to start scheming how you can do even less! It’s like “yay, I don’t have to work anymore but damn…do I really have to keep writing blogs?”…
The EASIEST WAY to Find Clients as a Freelancer
Jump on forums and start helping a bunch of people for free (the harder the task, the better), and at some point someone will hire you to handle their project for them.
5 Ways to Grow Your WordPress Blog Traffic
…and user experience. Hard to communicate here if no one visits your site. FACEBOOK – reaching users from their digital home. Seeing how your users engage with each other. Seeing what they say about your brand. Can be time-consuming if you hate social media. Great for reaching people AND businesses. TWITTER/LINKEDIN – really time-consuming if you don’t live on these mediums. INSTAGRAM – great for image-based brands/content. Also reaching younger audience. EMAIL – great for high-frequency and also low-frequency fans. Great for reaching busy people or those not on social media. FACE-2-FACE – community orgs…
ShortPixel is the BEST Image Compression Plugin for WordPress
Yeaup, it’s still the best. And I keep getting asked everyday by clients, “Why?…why do you like ShortPixel so much?” ShortPixel’s advantages – IMAGE QUALITY AND FEATURES! I love its algorithm…LOSSY is really small and still great quality…GLOSSY is great for high quality images. The plugin is fast, doesn’t slow down WP admin (like other image compression plugins). It also has a convenient server function where you can batch compress by FTP folder—basically allowing you to optimize all images on your server (even if they aren’t added to media library). Really nice comparison tool…
How to Create a Successful Blog
…cars? ==> “How to buy a USED car” Thanks but I wanted more detailed steps. ==> “Step-by-step guide to buying a car” But what if I can’t afford a car? ==> “How to save up for a new car” or “How to write off your car as a business expense” What cars do you recommend for construction business? ==> “10 best cars for handyman/contractors” What car insurance do you use? ==> “10 best car insurance companies” You get my point! 4. Develop your voice I mean this not only from a writing standpoint but also…
VPS vs DEDICATED (bare metal) - Which server should you choose?
…– this is for the hardware cost alone. Doesn’t include any software or support costs. I think $200/month minimum is a safer bet. You want to save money – at the high end ($200/month and above), dedicated servers are much cheaper than VPS. You get a lot more hardware for the money compared to VPS. You have a solid datacenter and/or trust the personnel on hand – this minimizes downtimes as much as possible. VPS (virtual private server) + Cheap at the low end (compared to dedicated) + Still very fast + Same…
Genesis vs Astra - WordPress Theme Review 2019
Sick of hearing misguided information from newbies who don’t have much experience with both. I use both Genesis and Astra. Genesis is clearly miles ahead, way more senior developers and higher level community on it. It’s not even a fair comparison. Astra is like a kitchen table with the option to add your own chairs. Genesis is the entire house (but without furniture). Genesis code is more complete and with better logic. On completeness alone, it will be faster as you wouldn’t have to add extra plugins (code) like you do with Astra. Not only…
How do you land the big web development clients?
Have you ever dreamed of landing the big web design projects worth $10k and more? Read on to learn how I did it. 1. Do quality work. By “quality”, I mean that you have the BEST designs and BEST coding. End of story. If your shit isn’t good enough to be on those web design award sites, you’re far from the best and far from the top of your field. 2. Be professional. By professional, I mean that you work hard and communicate well. Nothing else. I’m not asking for perfect grammar in your…
How to FINISH your web design project (without delay)
…an impossible set of ideals. Can also be frustrating when a client wants a mix of 3-4 different competitor sites. Message to clients: please trust your designer! De-prioritized project (designer fault): The designer didn’t budget enough for the project and then loses interest after the money is paid. Message to designers: either quote higher or don’t take on jobs you can’t finish. Slow feedback (client fault): Client is late to give feedback and designer can’t find time to remember what the project details were. Endless revisions (client & designer fault): Designer set a flat rate…
Other WordPress Experts
…in admin community. WordPress developers: Sridhar Katakam – runs a massive membership tutorial site for Genesis, also another one for Oxygen pagebuilder. Awesome guy but probably too busy to do side projects. Christoph Herr – another awesome WordPress/Genesis developer. I used to use him for our “code laundry” but he’s probably too busy now. Seekmid – plugin developer who loves doing complex computations. Yin – one of our internal developers. Travis Smith – A-level developer and former WP theme/plugin repo team. $150/hr. Web designers: Swoon & Creative – nice gal who’s done work for some…
Easiest image gallery plugin for WordPress
…try my forked WP Featherlight Disabled plugin. It’s kind of funny but it’s been a while since I’ve done any image galleries but needed one the other day. After wasting time reading silly reviews of bloated image gallery plugins (trying to do fancy tiling effects, and every which option for animations and navigations), I resorted asking one of my Slack groups. The top 2 answers: Just use Gutenberg Image gallery with WP Featherlight – oh yes, it really works! Beautifully simple and easy. Bloat-free. Use MEOW Gallery plugin – if you need more advanced features….
The Lazy Man's guide to SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
…it, share your opinion on it. Don’t just toss content out there. Put an opinion. Start a conversation. Even if it’s only with yourself. Soon enough, people will join. And [if you do it right]…not long after, your community will do all the social media-ing for you. You’ll be just a overseeing (moderating) eye because everyone else is too busy sharing their own opinions. And THAT, my friend, is how you do REAL social media marketing. It’s not about creating sales, it’s about creating a community. Creating a vision. An alternate future for your industry….
Putting social share buttons at TOP vs BOTTOM of posts
…design more than anything. Clutter-free access to high-quality content! Believe me, if your content is that good….they’ll share it. I think the worst case scenario is when sites throw social share buttons everywhere and they either A) have zero share counts so it looks like a super spammy site just recycling content, or B) distract from higher value conversions like your own products, newsletter sign-ups, etc. I guess it’s not WHERE you put the share buttons but HOW you do it. Are they gonna be clean and discreet? Or obnoxious in-your-face, and begging for attention?…
Email Pop-up Plugin Review
…to avoid that cost. The UI can also be annoying/naggy. However, it’s a mature plugin and works! Convert Pro – an attempt at the email plugin market by the guys behind the popular Astra theme. It’s the new kid on the block and very attractive for its low pricing (lifetime available) and features. Some love it. Some complain that it’s still buggy, bad designer, or lacking features they need. Bloom – made by the folks behind DIVI theme/pagebuilder (which I absolutely hate). Sorry, I can’t recommend them based on that alone. Sumo – seems ultra-professional….
Affinity design software review
…Very lightweight…like 1/10th the footprint of Photoshop yet no noticeable loss in everyday features. If there is any drawback, it’s that the image compression sucks in comparison. If you try to export images at anything less than 100%, Photoshop will output a much better looking image AND smaller size file. The only workaround for this is to export it at 100% and compress it elsewhere. No big deal for me. The pricing was only $50. Yes, you heard me. Only $50! And that’s a ONE-TIME FEE! AND YOU OWN IT FOREVER!!! Affinity Designer (vector editor)…
AffiliateWP plugin review
…is the best by far. Best code, cleanest looking, tons of features and integrations. Great support and ongoing development. Don’t worry, I made sure I liked the plugin by testing with the single-site $99/year license and then paid the difference to upgrade to lifetime after 5 months. One of the best decisions ever. Try AffiliateWP today (affiliate link) I like AffiliateWP so much I built 2 addons for it: A (free) migration script to go from Affiliate Royale to AffiliateWP. A (paid) addon to track conversions and visits from an external site. Details coming soon….
Responding to potential clients saying "your price is too high"
I give them free tips and point them to competitors with lower rates. Or let them know what things I can chop out to give a lower price. Don’t even waste your time. Don’t bother trying to justify value, ROI, benefits, blah blah blah. If they don’t see your value now, they certainly won’t see it later when you raise your rates and offer even better service. After all my years of running a business, I know not to waste any time convincing people on my price. I’m doing exciting things. I’m passionate about my…
Reduce Macbook fan noise
This issue was bothering me for over a year until I figured out the 2 only fixes: Use (FREE) Macs Fan Control app. It lets you slow down your fans. Use a dynamic microphone. (See my best streaming microphones review.) More details: I’ve been trying to record videos without fan noise for my Youtube videos for a while and couldn’t figure out how to get nice clean audio sound with the loud fan noise from my 2019 Macbook Pro in the background. I keep trying even different mics like condensor mics (which supposedly block noise…
Escaping the Content Network MONETIZATION TRAP
…overnight. SEO traffic chopped by 2/3rds. Those mother-bastards! You ask around online if it’s happened to anyone else. When you find others with content sites as big as yours, the answer is almost always “yes, me too”. Boo hoo hoo, you all cry foul together. Maybe you start ramping up other social networks (like FB, IG, YT, and TW) to diversify your “organic traffic”. STEP #7 – ad & affiliate revenue decrease WHAT ON EARTH IS GOING ON?! Google Adsense rates dropped again. Amazon affiliate rates dropped again. You search around for higher-paying ad networks…
Are you selling price DISCOUNTS or INCREASES?
…during sales season This is a valid reason. If all your competitors are prominently displayed…say, during Black Friday…it might be good for your brand to be listed beside them. But now you have to be careful how you position yourself. Are your deals exactly the same or not? And what do your deals say about your brand in comparison to them? (Choose wisely.) REASON #3 – they want to stress urgency. A limited time discount says “buy now or lose this savings forever!” If you think carefully, you’re not selling on the price discount here….
LiteSpeed (Enterprise) vs OpenLiteSpeed
LSWS vs OLS. Which LiteSpeed web server version should you get? Ugh…stop asking me this question, people! If you’re broke…get OpenLiteSpeed because it’s FREE, FAST, compatible with LiteSpeed cache plugin and htaccess, and has crawler (pre-caching) capability. Otherwise…spend money and get LiteSpeed Enterprise. It has extra features like WP-admin brute force protection, ESI-caching functionality to cache logged-in users or dynamic pages. Note about .htaccess: although OLS is compatible with htaccess, you have to restart PHP on every change (not a big deal). But LS enterprise will read updates right away; no restart required. Is there…
Getting rid of WordPress form spam
…groups. Mostly from people using built-in pagebuilder (Elementor) forms functions, or other inferior form plugins. And they try to solve their form spam issues with even more convoluted ideas like: install another plugin for spam protection hacky recaptcha integrations custom urls paid services (I don’t know what they do exactly) honeypot using security plugins WAF blocking (lol) …and on, and on, and on Don’t mess with that shit. Use Fluent Forms. Their built-in spam protection is great. No need to pay for expensive services, annoy your users with captcha, or site-slowing 3rd-party integrations. You’re welcome….
Affiliate Terms & Conditions
…engines or other public directories and social networks. You cannot promote or give discounts or rebates/money-back (basically paying out from your own commission). You cannot use WPJohnny affiliate links on any page or network that hurts the WPJohnny brand or operates unethically in any sense of the word. You cannot spam or exploit other networks. You cannot link from coupon, rebate, or discount sites. You cannot purchase paid ads. You cannot pretend to be an employee, team member, or internal member of WPJohnny. You cannot pretend to be WPJohnny, or operate in a way that…
HARDCODING your (pagebuilder) header and footer
…template file is something like footer.php in your theme directory. Different themes may have different file name or place it in a different directory. Developer themes (like Genesis) customize using hooks & filters in functions.php. Which is easier in the amount of work involved but harder for non-coders to visually understand things. Add the divs, then inside you place raw html or register widget areas. For most things, you only need about 3-levels deep of nested divs. One for the section (class=”footer”) to set background. Another for the wrapper (class=”footer-wrapper”) to control content width. And…
Are plugin acquisitions bad for WordPress users?
…that truly resonate with you. Name your price. And raise it. And keep raising it to keep yourself happy. Loyal users will stay (if the quality justifies it). Price-shoppers will jump ship…as they always do! For users: Be supportive. Say nice things. Give positive reviews (on WP repo), or at least constructive feedback. Donate to the dev’s tipjar. Support price increases. Help promote the dev’s work. Don’t be a PITA. Don’t drag down the dev’s time with silly support requests or feature demands. If you’re a dev yourself, help contribute to the project…yes, for free!…
Open-Source FILE MANAGER script comparison
…Full featured – especially archiving! It seems many didn’t have. Customizable – for custom colors or branding, nice to have but not more important than other points above. Best file managers so far… TinyFileManager (demo) – best one IMO. Has all features and looks “good enough”. Minimal without wasting space. FileBrowser (demo) – still too simple, UI takes too much space, and I don’t see archive options. FileGator (demo) – too simple and missing critical features, like archiving. But some people may like its cleaner pretty-ness. Chonky (demo) – too simple, not enough critical features….
Linux Configs - Software Installs & Configurations
Walk-though and recommended configurations. None of these are confirmed at the moment (but feel free to suggest ideas). Just outlining some ideas for the 3rd course. Course not finished recording. Once finished, price will be $300. Control panels cPanel CyberPanel DirectAdmin Plesk Software packages GZIP, Brotli CSF Nano f2B Redis Memcache Monitoring installs Monix New Relic WordPress CLI GitHub Sendy, Mautic…