How to disable update notifications in WordPress

wordpress_iconsSometimes “new” doesn’t always mean “better” or “suitable”.

Sometimes we require older versions of plugins and I’d rather WordPress would not tell me that there’s a newer version available. After all, I might accidentally update a plugin – or perhaps my clients do, breaking the site or overwriting customisations.

Let’s take a look at how we can disable those notifications, both for single plugins and for the entire site.

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How to add a Custom Button in Plesk

Plesk-LogoPlesk allows you to create custom buttons to the control panel, complete with logo and URL. Since Plesk 11.5 you can even choose in which part of the panel your buttons shall be displayed.

To do this, login as administrator and head over to

  • Tools & Settings
  • under Panel Appearance, choose Custom Buttons
  • click Add Link to Service
  • give your button a Display Title and enter a URL
  • select an image (I find 100×100 works well)
  • select where you’d like the button to appear from the drop-down

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How to display an RSS Feed in Plesk

One of the many new features in Plesk 11.5 is that you can customise the Panel appearance for your customers even more than before. For example, Parallels allow us to display any RSS Feed in the control panel in the right sidebar. Adding it isn’t as easy as it perhaps should be. In this article … Read more

How to fix permission problems when restoring folders from Time Machine Backups

Airport TimeCapsuleI had an odd problem the other day: I wanted to restore a fairly large folder from my new AirPort TimeCapsule. But the restore always stopped at one particular file, with an error message about permission problems.

The folder in question was about 4GB in size and contained just over 10.000 files in total. I was baffled! Time Machine had never failed me before, so what was going on out of a sudden?

Well I guess it’s a computer, and things just go wrong sometimes. Thanks to Apple Support this problem is now solved – and I thought I’d share the insight, both with you all and my future self.

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How to use yum-complete-transaction

Tux-says-YUMEvery once in a while it can happen happen that use use “yum update” to update your Linux system.

Usually this works without a hitch, but you may have come across a message such as this:

Setting up Install Process
Resolving Dependencies
There are unfinished transactions remaining. You might consider running yum-complete-transaction first to finish them.
The program yum-complete-transaction is found in the yum-utils package.

But what does this mean, and how do we alleviate this?

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How to mount additional disk space in 1and1’s Cloud Server

Tux Linux IconAfter having a chat about what would be the best managed hosting would be with my friend at Bennet Office Technologies, I’ve just ordered a new Dynamic Cloud Server with 1&1 with a total of 800GB disk space. They rock, but they come with a minor inconvenience: due to the way these server instances are allocated, 1&1 do not automatically extend the partition for you – so you can’t actually start using the full amount you’ve ordered.

Here’s how to make use of the full disk space on a current file system:

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How to use Targets in Xcode

Targets are an extremely yet totally undocumented feature of Xcode. They allow you to write code once, and then build multiple “versions” of the same code base. This makes maintenance and code updates extremely easy across more than “product”. I use those quotation marks because usually an “Xcode Project” equals a “Product” (such as one […]

How to define Preprocessor Macros in Xcode

I’ve often wondered how to use those efficiently, and I’ve just found out how to do it. As always, they’re not difficult to implement – but not documented in a way that simple folk like me can understand it. Be that as it may… Preprocessor Macros can be useful if you’d like to compile two […]