This site runs on WordPress, and like all WordPress sites, it attracts more than its fair share of comment spam. For a long time, I used Akismet, which is the anti-spam plugin developed by the WordPress team, so I knew I could trust it to work well with WordPress. I was happy with Akismet, but …read more…
Having problems changing a MediaWiki password? With a little SQL magic and phpMyAdmin, you can easily change any password from the database.
I have recently updated my d12 Message Blocks plugin for WordPress. It adds two new message blocks: one with a title and no icon, and another with neither a title nor an icon. You can get it from the WordPress plugin repository. Development snapshots are available on my Git repo.
Unlike some operating systems (*cough* “Windows” *cough*), Ubuntu is pretty good about letting you know that updates are available, and how large they are. If updates are available, a convenient window pops up just after you log in that provides this information to you. However, there are times when you don’t want to update just …read more…
I use DreamObjects a lot: as low-cost online storage, as a CDN for large files (especially podcasts and image files), as a CDN for files I want to have access to from a lot of different locations, and as a place to store WordPress backups (using Ipstenu’s fantastic DreamObjects Backups plugin). The price is great …read more…
If you’re patient, installing software on your website via FTP isn’t a bad way to go, although it takes forever and depending on the quality of your internet connection, you may have connectivity issues causing the entire thing to hang. (Although I’ve installed some pretty big packages via FTP at McDonald’s of all place—my local …read more…
I’ve been working with DokuWiki a lot lately, because I’m adapting it to use for internal communications and project management at work. I’ve never really worked much with DokuWiki because I’ve tended to use MediaWiki for most wiki projects. MediaWiki is powerful and robust and has a lot of features out of the box that …read more…
I recently started using WebFaction as my main webhost. They are more reliable and cheaper than my old webhost, and like my old host, they have a custom panel—they do not use cPanel. Nothing against cPanel, but I’m not a big fan of cookie-cutter hosting options. One thing I like about WebFaction is their hosting …read more…
I recently migrated all of my sites to a new web host, which meant downloading all my files and databases from my old web host and uploading them to my new host. It’s not exactly that simple, because my new host does some things radically different than my old host, but it’s close to that simple. …read more…
For reasons that are too complicated to get into here, I have recently upgraded an old laptop to Ubuntu 14.04. It is fun, exciting, and just a little bit scary. This series of posts will document my adventure with Ubuntu, both to encourage others to take the leap, and to track my learning curve. This experiment is …read more…
Unlike some other sites, everything on this site is provided to you free of charge. But that doesn't mean this site is free. I have to pay for the hosting every month and for the domain renewal every year. It addition, it takes me approximately four hours to research and write each tutorial on average.
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