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Category: Web Design & Development

Adding SSL to your WordPress site can be free and easy.

I’ve been meaning to add SSL to my site for a while and now it’s done! All the glory and wonder of SSL without much work. I’m using CloudFlare’s free flexible SSL certificate. It may not be the best of the best, but it works well and is pretty easy to set up. I’ve enabled […]

Ad-blocking is good, but we’re doing it wrong.

There are good reasons for ad-blocking and there are bad reasons. However, most people are going about it all wrong. If you were to visit one of the major media sites, you’d quickly come across ads that are horrific. They prevent you from viewing content, they are distracting, and you just want them to go away. So you […]

Why I left DigitalOcean’s cheap hosting.

  When I first heard about DigitalOcean I was excited as the price point was so low and the servers so nice. I knew I’d have to learn some things as I go, but I was happy to take it on. Turns out, I don’t have the time to learn all the things I need to […]

Safari isn’t the new Internet Explorer, Google Chrome is.

There have been discussions recently that badmouth Safari for being a bit behind on web technologies. I agree that Safari needs a bit more focus, but that doesn’t make it the new Internet Explorer. If anyone is, it’s Google Chrome. Now I’m not saying that Chrome is a bad browser. It’s a really good browser, […]

Why is web hosting so complicated?

When it comes to hosting a website, you have so many choices that it can be overwhelming. Different prices, different features, lots of headaches. Do you get more by paying more? Why are lots of hosting sites so spammy and/or confusing? Shouldn’t this be easier by now? Chances are, you probably fall into one of two different mindsets. […]

Fixed: JetPack and Varnish 502/503 Error on Nginx

tl;tr: Disable Varnish, connect JetPack, re-enable Varnish. I’m not a server guy, but I do run my own server and it’s not bad most of the time. But lately I’ve been having errors with JetPack where it fails to connect with WordPress.com properly. On activation, it hits WordPress.com just fine but on its way back, […]

WP Sync DB makes moving or deploying WordPress sites simple.

Moving a WordPress site isn’t hard for some, but the less technically minded you are, the harder it is. To make it easy, check out WP Sync DB. This free plugin allows you copy site A’s WordPress database to site B. It does all the hard work and you just need to fill out a […]

PHP fixes security bug then takes down websites (502 error) when they upgrade.

I have manage my own Ubuntu server (12.04.4 LTS with Nginx) over at DigitalOcean and when I ran the upgrade command tonight (sudo apt-get upgrade) everything went offline. Instead of websites, I was getting an 502 bad gateway error. Turns out, PHP updated and fixed a security issue, that then took my websites offline as the server didn’t […]

What do you use for developing locally on a Mac? MAMP, VirtualHostX, AMPPS?

What do you use for developing locally on a Mac? Mamp, VirtualHostX, AMPPS? Something else? I asked around and everyone does it a bit differently. I’m looking for quick and easy and mainly for WordPress development. Nothing complicated. So far, Mamp is winning both the Twitter vote and other channels. What do you use for […]