Latest Articles

Use the navigation at the bottom to see older articles

Snapshot Backup 2.0 RC1 – Ready for Testing

by

I’ve been slaving away at the keyboard again. It’s been too long, and you’ve all been patiently waiting for your favourtive backup plugin to do something while you sleep. Say hello to Snapshot Backup 2.0 which can now create backups while you sleep. Here’s a list of new features: Automation: create backups every hour, every … Read more

How to make Get The Image only use embedded images

by

If you’re a Theme Developer you probably heard of Justin Tadlocks incredible plugin already – for those of you who don’t, let me introduce Get The Image to you.

It’s THE way to extract images from your posts and insert them any way you like in your custom made theme. It does this by checking (in this order)

  • if you have a featured image inserted, or any other custom field defined
  • if not, it’ll see if one is attached to the post
  • if not then it will scan your content for an image embed
  • and if that fails you can display a default image you select

Get The Image will also provide a link to the post when you display the image, or alternatively give you the URL if you want to use it some other way.

I needed an application that displayed only an image that’s embedded in the post.

Read more

How to find a user’s Twitter RSS Feed

by

Twitter recently made some changes to their API. One of them has an impact if you’re trying to access someone’s Twitter RSS Feed.

This used to work extremely well: on every user’s Twitter page there was an RSS Icon in your browser bar. We sued click on it and saw the feed. Well not anymore 🙁

But help is at hand – thanks to The Sociable who have kindly explained how to access it post May 2011.

Read more

How to use PHPList: Creating Lists and adding subscribers

by

You can either manually add people to your individual lists (via Users – Add a User – select which list at the bottom) or use a signup option where users add themselves. For the latter option there are either the direct link in PHPlist to the subscriber page or for much slicker integration use one … Read more

How to style the Motion Theme for WordPress

by

I had a closer look at this theme the other day when I made some upgrades on Nadia’s website.

I really like the look and feel of Motion but I felt certain things were missing from this wonderful theme, such as drop down submenus.

Let’s take a look at some tweaks and how you can make Motion your own.

This article was written for Version 1.1.6 – these tweaks may not work in later revisions of the theme.

Read more

How to use PHPList: Workflow and sending your first message

by

In this workshop I will talk you through using the PHPlist Campaign Manager.

PHPlist is another Open Source venture which has grown tremendously over the years. Even though not anywhere near as elegant as WordPress it gets the job done and it’s free to use – so we can live with its intricacies.

Using the system isn’t as easy and straightforward as it could be so I thought it’s time for a screencast.

Read more

Podcast: Download (Duration: 5:44 — 50.0MB)

Snapshot Backup – Version 1.6 Release Notes

by

After nearly 7.500 downloads it’s time for Version 1.6 of your favourite backup plugin – it’s a shame it took me so long to do so little… All my time is currently consumed with planning our move from London, UK to Miami Beach, FL which leaves too little time for hacking code. Apologies if development cycles take longer than we all had hoped.

Thanks again to everyone who provided feedback and error messages!

The good news is that once we’re settled in the US, I’ll focus my efforts on WordPress Support and development full time! Fingers crossed, it won’t be much longer now 😉

Let’s have a look at the new features of Snapshot Backup 1.6:

Read more

How to restore your Snapsnot via FTP

by

Let me talk you through the steps necessary to restore a WordPress Site if you’re backed it up with Snapshot Backup. In principle there are four options you have:

  1. Restore via FTP (available to everyone, however it’s a long and tedious process)
  2. Restore via SSH (requires root access to your server, works much faster but not everyone has root access)
  3. Restore using Snapshot Restore (doesn’t exist yet… but I’m working on it)
  4. Ask me to restore a Snapshot for you (small fee involved for my time)

In this article I’ll describe Option 1: Restoring a Snapshot via FTP.

Read more