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My blog is dedicated to sharing my expertise, recommendations, and tutorials on WordPress. If you're interested in developing with WordPress, my blog is a valuable resource that you won't want to miss.

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Website WordPress

Could not create directory. Installation failed.

This happens sometimes after migrating from one host to another. The problem boils down to a permissions issue. If you copied the uploads folder to the new server via an ssh connection sometimes the owner of the files copied will be whoever you connected with to perform the copy.

If you want to confirm that this is in fact the issue you can run:

$ ls -ld /var/www/html/wp-content/

and you may see something like:

`

drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4096 Feb 11 08:29 /var/www/html/wp-content/`

Which says that root is the owner because that is the user that copied the file onto the server, even though for WordPress to write to the folder, the owner needs to be www-data. This issue can easily be fixed by issuing the following command:

$ sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/wp-content/

Now the owner will be www-data and you will be able to upgrade files again! Happy WordPressing!

Categories
Website WordPress

How to Login to WordPress

You just installed WordPress, you are feeling tech-savvy… you basically invented the internet, haha

You were able to create your nice site, or maybe got started, but you quit your browser or logged out or something else logged you out and now you just want to get back onto the WordPress dashboard. When you first set up the site it logged you in automatically, getting back in is only a little harder.

In your URL bar just navigate to <yourwebsite.com>/login: (you may have customized the URL or something so that /login will not work anymore, but this method is the default and will work as long as you did not customize anything) ((if you know what I mean then you know if you customized the URL, if you know, you know))

That simple step was the first of two steps, both of which are easy! After entering the URL described above, you wil be brought to the WordPress login page:

The above picture is what it looks like by default, but you can customize your login page if you want. Type in the username and password combo for the administrator account that you set up when you first created the website, click “Log In” and BAM, you are now on the WordPress Dashboard pictured below:

Your dashboard may look slightly different if you have installed plugins or customized it in other ways, but the dashboard is the dashboard. If you see something that resembles the image above then you have achieved great success and you are logged in!

Categories
Web Development WordPress

WordPress 5.9 “Joséphine”

Introducing 5.9, “Joséphine”. Named in honor of acclaimed international jazz singer Joséphine Baker, this latest, most versatile WordPress release is here: download it or update it directly from your dashboard.

As a lifelong civil rights campaigner, Joséphine Baker believed that all people could live in harmony together, just as different instruments in a jazz band blend together to make a whole piece. Turn on a playlist from your favorite music service and enjoy her famous renditions of “You are the greatest love”, “Sans Amour”, and “Love is a Dreamer” as you discover all the features of this brand-new WordPress release. 

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Travel WordCamp WordPress

WordCamp US 2021

Ok I absolutely missed a lot of WordCamps but at least I could attend this one virtually.

There were some interesting talks about Gutenberg Blocks and I was impressed with how seamlessly the speakers were able to move to using the online platform to give their talks instead of in-person.

I and many people loved going to the talks live which will hopefully be coming back after this pandemic but for now online is the best we can get.

Categories
Web Development WordPress

Adding User-Specific Content to a WordPress page

There are many ways to go about this but in this post I will be focusing on using php in your WordPress page template to add content that can only be seen by users who are logged into administrator accounts.

Let’s say we have a secret message for administrators “The prize is behind door number 2”. We don’t want to share this invaluable, secret message with just anyone, we only want our friends who have administrator accounts on our website to be able to see the message.

We can create this functionality easily with WordPress using some of it’s many defined PHP functions. All we have to do are the three lines of code below:

if ( is_admin() ) {
     echo 'The prize is behind door number 2';
}

We can also use this same method with a different function to require the user to be logged in to see the message:

if ( is_user_logged_in() ) {
     echo 'The prize is behind door number 2';
}

We can even use this technique to show the message to a specific user and no one else, for a personalized message or something using the code below:

if ( '3' == get_current_user_id() ) {
     echo 'The prize is behind door number 2.';
}

I hope these three short examples demonstrate to you how powerful WordPress custom code using the pre-defined functions can be. Using a relatively small amount of code, I can extend this functionality to add some really useful new features to my website and so can you. Happy WordPressing!

Categories
Plugin Web Development WordPress

Fixed ChatPress

I installed ChatPress on a website with a new theme today and it looked squished and strange. It was still legible and everything but the whole appearance just looked a little sloppy to me. I’m sure some people would have told me the plugin looked fine and that whether it works or not (which it always did) was more important.

Functionality alone is not enough for me, so I went to work diagnosing the problem and creating a fix. I found that the problems were CSS-related so I went to my scss files, made the changes and recompiled my scss into css so that I could use them for the plugin and voila, it was fixed!

Categories
Plugin WordPress

WordPress: Formidable Forms

If you want a complex form with conditional logic, advanced scoring, user registrations and much more, Formidable Forms is the plugin for you. If you want a contact form this plugin works excellently for that too, it’s much more power than you need but it is a good solution.

Formidable forms has an easy-to-use graphical interface to build forms, and then can add conditional logic/assign scores or values to responses right there. If you need to refer to the value of a field in the value of another field, email it or otherwise use it elsewhere in the form, you can just refer to the index number associated with that field or use a url parameter right in the Formidable Forms interface.

If you need complicated and very powerful forms on your site and do not want to build them with code then this is the plugin for you.

There is even a very useful API add-on that I used at work to create API sends to specific endpoints and with specific data including but not limited to the data entered on the form.

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WordPress

WordPress 5.5 “Eckstine”

Here it is! Named “Eckstine” in honor of Billy Eckstine.


Speed

Posts and pages feel faster, thanks to lazy-loaded images.

Images give your story a lot of impact, but they can sometimes make your site seem slow.

In WordPress 5.5, images wait to load until they’re just about to scroll into view. The technical term is ‘lazy loading.’

On mobile, lazy loading can also keep browsers from loading files meant for other devices. That can save your readers money on data — and help preserve battery life.

Say hello to your new sitemap.

WordPress sites work well with search engines.

Now, by default, WordPress 5.5 includes an XML sitemap that helps search engines discover your most important pages from the very minute you go live.

So more people will find your site sooner, giving you more time to engage, retain and convert them to subscribers, customers or whatever fits your definition of success.

Security

Now you can choose to update plugins and themes automatically–or pick just a few–from the screens you’ve always used.

Auto-updates for Plugins and Themes

Now you can set plugins and themes to update automatically — or not! — in the WordPress admin. So you always know your site is running the latest code available.

You can also turn auto-updates on or off for each plugin or theme you have installed — all on the same screens you’ve always used.

Update by uploading ZIP files

If updating plugins and themes manually is your thing, now that’s easier too — just upload a ZIP file.

Categories
Website WordPress

WordPress: WPOptimize

This life-saver plugin adds a button to the dashboard when installed that allows the administrator of the website to perform certain site optimization tasks such as removing old post revisions, minifying images, removing trashed comments and lots more from the comfort of their own dashboard.

Want to optimize the tables in your database? No problem, just install this handy plugin and with no configuration required you can do that with just the click of a button. If you have a WordPress site and want a boost in performance, as long as the issue(s) causing the slowness are not very uncommon and strange, this is the plugin for you.

Categories
WordPress

WordPress 5.4 “Adderly”