2024-04-23 15:24
How 11 lines of code becomes 87,907, for the same outcome. Plugin abuse in WordPress is rampant, and really always has been. Hearing about a slow WordPress website is very common, particular… Read More
Blog Directory > Internet Blogs > kevinleary.net internet Blog >
Kevinleary.net Blog
kevinleary.net/blog
Tags:
wordpress
warning
chatgpt
modules
wordpress admin
custom
wordpress posts
plugin
sitename password changed
management
WordPress theme development tutorials from a WordPress website designer and developer.
2024-04-21 01:17
I often get asked what a custom WordPress theme is, more specifically how to build one and whether it is really needed. The best way to answer these are by showing some real world examples w… Read More
2024-04-12 03:14
Big list of every transactional email sent by a WordPress website, and how to stop the ones you don’t want. Built-in WordPress Emails Installation New WordPress Site User Registration… Read More
2024-04-11 23:34
Use the official ChatGPT CLI to ask a question and receive an AI answer on the command line Read More
2024-03-29 21:28
Deleting thousands of WordPress posts at once can be a daunting task if you try to do it manually through the WordPress admin dashboard. There are plugins that make the process possible from… Read More
2024-03-10 23:15
How to include JavaScript modules in WordPress using the new Read More
2024-03-06 16:57
Content management systems used by large enterprise businesses, with live examples Read More
2024-02-06 14:29
WordPress plugins track analytics on the actions you take in the WordPress admin. Some also make remote HTTP connections to display call to action promotional information directly in the adm… Read More
2024-01-31 15:36
Remotely connecting to a WordPress database is tremendously valuable in many situations. It allows developers to connect to the database from anywhere using a SQL client of their choice, man… Read More
2024-01-15 17:16
When PHP notices and warnings appear during a WP CLI command issues can happen that can cause scripts from completing properly. They’re very annoying, and make console feedback dirty a… Read More
2023-12-29 02:39
The approach outlined here uses functions built-in to WordPress. If you’re not working within a PHP/WordPress environment, the approach still applies. You’ll need to swap out the… Read More
2023-11-30 16:06
Database performance issues are relatively common on mid-to-large sized WordPress websites, here are some advanced tips on finding slow WordPress queries, and fixing them Read More
2023-11-08 20:12
Blocking access to your WordPress websites /wp-login.php page is a good way to add a layer of protection to your WordPress website. It’s not a foolproof approach, but it’s common… Read More
2023-11-06 02:08
Restricting access to datasets in BigQuery is a common request I see, but it's not so straight forward to handle with Google Cloud services. The following approach is what I typically use to… Read More
2023-10-24 20:04
SOC 2 (System and Organization Controls 2) is a framework for assessing security, availability, confidentiality, and privacy of business systems that work with stored customer data. WordPres… Read More
2023-10-18 01:19
Businesses with demanding security requirements are often worried about the use of WordPress. IT teams commonly hear about "WordPress being hacked", and it's understandable because it does h… Read More
2023-09-29 13:12
Without proper optimization (such as caching, image optimization, etc.), a WordPress website can load slowly, affecting the user experience and search engine rankings. It can also be resourc… Read More
2023-09-27 02:06
The percentage of web users browsing with built-in browser tracking protection enabled is rapidly growing, and as browsers begin to ship with these features enable by default, like Apple&rsq&hell…Read More
2023-09-24 22:00
WordPress is an online publishing system that allows individuals and businesses to create and manage a website without needing to learn complicated computer code. It can be setup easily on m… Read More
2023-09-18 13:31
Loading all requests on your WordPress website over HTTPS is a must-have these days, for security as well as SEO reasons. According to Google’s Transparency Report, about 90% of web tr… Read More
2023-09-11 00:52
Since version 4.4 WordPress has shipped with built-in responsive images. This feature will automatically add srcset size variations to all CMS controlled images. Since WordPress 4.4, native… Read More
2023-08-23 20:45
Google Analytics 4 can be directly connected to Google BigQuery, allowing us to work with the underlying data in our ways. Once a connection is configured you can query a database of Google… Read More
2023-05-16 13:33
Redirect an entire domain in CloudFlare, forwarding all non-WWW traffic to WWW, or WWW to the root domain at the page level with a single rule. This single rule will redirect a root domain (… Read More
2023-04-24 00:59
Kinsta provides good WordPress hosting that’s comparable to WPEngine in many ways, but it’s lacking one important feature that many developers can’t live without: git push… Read More
2023-04-05 02:26
Ways to disable all built-in RSS feeds in WordPress, serving a 404 Page Not Found when one is visited Read More
2023-03-27 18:33
The best way I've found to create valid SSL certificates for localhost web development, on many domains Read More
2023-03-24 14:12
SalesForce campaigns have two fields that I see commonly customized: Campaign Member Status and Campaign Type. Just about every SalesForce instance I've worked with has customized these valu… Read More
2023-03-09 21:41
One of the pesky things about WordPress MU is testing. Every time I work with a WPMU site I find myself needing single level site admins in addition to network super admin users. Multisite p… Read More
2023-02-12 23:19
A typographic widow is a word alone on its own line, and it usually doesn’t look good. On the web, it often happens with headings, and there isn’t a clean way to correct it with… Read More
2023-01-19 20:12
TikTok advertising is quickly becoming a major advertising channel for US brands. Facebook’s limitations on audiences and targeting approach for certain business categories (like finan… Read More
2023-01-19 02:05
On 1/18/2023 numerous WordPress sites using the Roots Sage theme began experiencing issues on WPEngine. If you are a developer or WPEngine customer experiencing trouble with the roots sage t… Read More
2023-01-05 19:08
Calculating a precise age in years from a birthdate with JavaScript is not as simple as it seems. To be truly precise you need to factor in time zone, daylight savings time variations and le… Read More
2022-12-19 16:58
Hubspot provides global form events that trigger three events related to forms. One occurs when a form is first loaded, and two when it’s submitted. These events provide a mechanism fo… Read More
2022-12-11 03:30
This is a follow-up to an earlier post that outlined the same method and approach, but additional examples are provided here that have been found effective in 2022/2023. Just about every web… Read More
2022-12-05 15:16
Uninstalling Elasticsearch on your own linux server isn’t that straight forward or well documented. This guide walks through the process of uninstalling step by step for reference to a… Read More
2022-12-04 23:43
Tracking conversions when a Marketo form is submitted on your website is a common step in ad optimizations. The following approach is what I’ve used with clients to track conversions w… Read More
2022-11-30 20:46
The drift documentation provides a different method, but it requires code level changes to your site. Drift is already sending custom events to Google Tag Managers dataLayer, so these JavaSc… Read More
2022-11-28 16:56
Images.weserv.nl is a an open-source image resizing and caching web API that’s used on millions of webites to optmize, resize and transform images on the fly. The images are served by… Read More
2022-11-18 01:37
CSS’s native clip-path property makes it very easy to cutoff a box-shadow on one or more sides of an element. If you’ve ever wanted to use a box-shadow like a border, imagining s… Read More
2022-11-05 13:40
It’s not entirely clear how to quickly start, stop and restart MongoDB with a command line, so I’ve documented it here based on the need for a simple, straightforward approach. M… Read More
2022-08-08 15:59
Zoom allows organizations to control certain aspects of the conferencing UX, applying colors, typography, logos, background and more to completely brand the experience of joining a corporate… Read More
2022-08-05 18:47
2022-07-25 14:34
Gravity Forms is the most well known, and most used, form plugin available for WordPress. It’s a great tool, and one that I use on many of the sites I work on. Spam form submissions is… Read More
2022-07-18 01:14
WordPress provides a built-in function for delivering programmatic emails: wp_mail. Without any modification this function will send emails directly from your web-server, which will arrive d… Read More
2022-05-28 13:57
The older universal analytics implementation of Google Analytics has a "Unique Pageviews" metrics is a commonly used performance metric for many websites. Unfortunately the concept of _Uniqu… Read More
2022-05-13 01:48
A slow WordPress admin is the worst, it can significantly reduce publishing productivity, and it’s a big pain for anyone that works in the admin frequently. It can be caused by many th… Read More
2022-04-18 18:40
Tracking important business actions that happen beyond your website or application is a critical step for businesses in a disruptive industry. It’s one of the best ways to reduce your… Read More
2022-04-12 21:15
Tracking custom analytics events provide a business with the ability to track specific customer actions online that are most valuable, rather than what an analytics platform prescribes as th… Read More
2022-04-04 14:22
3 ways to fix a common WordPress database error: "Table is marked as crashed and should be repaired". The choices involve using SQL, PHPMyAdmin, or PHP code Read More
2022-03-30 20:18
If you're building a web application or custom WordPress plugin that needs to validate a US Social Security Number (SSN) then the following approach will provide a way to validate user input… Read More
2022-02-19 18:58
If your WordPress website has broken or missing SVG images and you have the SVG Support plugin installed your issue can be quickly solve with the following quick fix Read More
2022-02-11 18:56
Over the years I've found that this regular expression provides just the right balance of loose and strict pattern recognition to safely be used as a method for validation an email address Read More
2021-09-09 15:45
If you're having trouble replacing the font-family for the block editor in WordPress, this undocumented alternative approach should provide a frustration free alternative. The standard appro… Read More
2021-07-16 01:53
"SyntaxError: Cannot use import statement outside a module" is a common Node.js error when working with `import` to include modules or packages Read More
2021-06-23 00:25
Track, log and notify team members when changes are made to a WordPress website's file system, database and DNS Read More
2021-05-19 01:14
The select HTML tag doesn't support a placeholder attribute like an input tag, and when it comes to the CSS color attribute it doesn't leave many options for style. There are a few ways to p… Read More
2021-02-24 17:08
To update a repeater field created with Advanced Custom Fields programmatically you’ll need to use the update_field() function. Populating Untouched/Unsaved Repeater Fields The followi… Read More
2020-09-10 15:40
If you’re wondering how to get WordPress post content by post ID then look no further. The following simple approaches will explain the best approaches to use, and when to choose betwe… Read More
2020-09-08 20:22
How to login to WordPress website with only FTP access by creating a new administrator user with programmatically with PHP Read More
2020-05-05 15:39
Adding custom functionality to WordPress for business themes and plugins always involves working with action and filter hooks. This is WordPress’ event architecture, and it’s a c… Read More
2020-04-27 22:17
WordPress uses a single class for all remote HTTP requests, WP_Http. This class uses cURL to handle these requests, and quite often I see developers encountering issues with localhost reques… Read More
2020-04-02 14:06
jQuery snippets for working with dropdown options: selecting an option by its text label, getting the label for a currently selected option, selecting an option programmatically and more Read More
2020-02-25 15:37
The evolution of JavaScript module patterns has been a huge headache for web developers. Attempting to work with plugins and libraries that all use different module patterns overly difficult… Read More
2020-01-18 00:58
When I upgrade MySQL I like to start with a backup of all my MySQL databases. I have 50+ databases in my localhost server, so it’s best to bulk export them all to a single .sql file wi… Read More
2019-12-21 02:08
Using Moment in a TypeScript Angular app is easier than you think. Here are the steps you’ll need to take to get it setup. Basic Moment Usage Run the following commands inside your Ang… Read More
2019-12-20 17:17
There’s a simple, native way to format numbers and floats as currency strings in JavaScript. I’ve seen all kinds of approaches to this common scenario. The toLocaleString method… Read More
2019-12-19 16:48
Displaying HTML in an Angular component that’s stored in a template variable isn’t as straightforward as you’d expect. In order to properly store and display an HTML string… Read More
2019-12-11 18:56
From time-to-time I see the following error on your WordPress website, usually at the very bottom of your pages below the footer. ob_end_flush(): failed to send buffer of zlib output compres… Read More
2019-11-26 21:10
Ionicons 4.x provides a web component that you can use to add an icon with . Using this web component in an Angular app doesn’t work though, and many developers have reported that Ioni… Read More
2019-11-25 16:30
Unfortunately the native Mac OS X dock can’t be used on multiple displays. You can get it setup so that it’s available on both, but what most people are after (myself included) i… Read More
2019-07-15 13:35
To change the width of the WordPress Gutenberg editor you need to load custom CSS rules for it. Here’s an overview of how to quickly change the width, including loading the stylesheet… Read More
2019-07-08 14:50
Simple tasks are often confusing the first time you handle them in Angular. There are many answers to most of these simple questions, but many of them are overly complex and confusing to und… Read More
2018-12-06 15:26
WordPress 5.0 will be released on 12/7/2018, and with it comes a new editing experience known as Gutenberg. To avoid broken websites, confused and frustrated clients, and havoc within your W… Read More
2018-09-18 16:33
ADA website compliance is an important aspect that every business owner should understand and be aware of. It’s always been important to develop a website following the WCAG and ADA co… Read More
2018-09-07 15:34
WordPress is a highly flexible publishing platform for the web that powers all kinds of websites, from local small businesses to Fortune 1000 enterprises. Examples of big brands using WordPr… Read More
2018-09-07 15:34
WordPress is a highly flexible publishing platform for the web that powers all kinds of websites, from local small businesses to Fortune 1000 enterprises. Examples of big brands using WordPr… Read More
2018-09-04 15:02
Hanging words are known as typography widows, they’re those annoying scenarios where you find yourself with a single hanging word on it’s own line in an HTML element, like this:… Read More
2018-07-27 18:25
Here's a quick function that you can use to make any dropdown menus accessible in your WordPress theme. This assumes that you're running a layer of JavaScript to actually make `.sub-menu` it… Read More
2018-07-05 15:18
WordPress comes pre-packaged with a robust REST API that’s great for certain use cases, but it also poses some security risks and concerns. If I’m you’re not using the REST… Read More
2018-05-23 18:28
As I upgrade older sites to use jQuery 3.3.1 I commonly encounter the following error: Uncaught Error: Syntax error, unrecognized expression: ... This error occurs when you are trying to sel… Read More
2017-11-12 18:24
Google provides a set of lesser known, but highly useful, operators that can be used to refine and finely tune search results. These operators are incredibly useful when optimizing and analy… Read More
2017-08-14 12:30
Over the past 10 years as freelance web developer I've learned important lessons about business, relationships, money and life Read More
2017-07-03 19:20
If you’re seeing a SyntaxError: Unexpected token Read More
2017-06-30 16:20
If you’re tired of manually re-formatting, indenting, structuring or beautifying HTML code in Sublime Text then you can use the following approach to automatically indent HTML files wh… Read More
2017-06-19 16:15
Markdown is a wonderful way to write content on the web, it’s what I use to write every blog article you see here on kevinleary.net. While working with Upstatement’s Timber plugi… Read More
2017-06-19 16:15
Markdown is a wonderful way to write content on the web, it’s what I use to write every blog article you see here on kevinleary.net. While working with Upstatement’s Timber plugi… Read More
2017-06-16 19:54
If you want to change the wording of an admin menu inside of WordPress without editing the plugin directly you can make use of the $menu global variable that exists within the WordPress admi… Read More
2017-06-10 19:39
The tutorial will show you how to setup and work with Angular.js inside of a WordPress plugin to create a stand-alone, API powered, Angular.js single page app or microsite that is available… Read More
2017-05-29 15:29
I find myself doing this all the time, so I wanted to make note of the snippet here for anyone else commonly looking to add a Git remote for an existing Heroku app using the Heroku CLI. Open… Read More
2017-05-17 13:29
I picked up a strange issue on my WordPress site today while reviewing stats in Google Search Console. I noticed a malicious 301 redirect happening for an old post, one that had no redirect… Read More
2017-05-05 15:58
If you want to use regex for an Express.js route rule then you must use a JS regular expression object instead if string by wrapping your regular expression in slashes (/) instead of quotes… Read More
2017-04-28 17:38
Angular’s built-in $http service and it’s $http.get() method do NOT cache responses by default. There are a few different ways you can enable $http caching, below are some helpfu… Read More
2017-04-24 12:51
Angular’s templating system is wonderful, and it build’s on some common practices established years ago by the Handlebars templating engine. Sometimes I encounter projects where… Read More
2017-04-13 14:20
This is the best way I've found to create an Angular.js directive that's restricted to a specific HTML element or tag. There's no directive configuration option in Angular.js to do this, but… Read More
2017-04-12 14:25
I use gulp-uglify to minify my JavaScript for a large Angular.js project. Recently the compile process became incredibly slow, taking upwards of 15 seconds to compile JavaScript each. I'm co… Read More
2017-04-07 02:47
What is User Enumeration? WordPress websites may reveal whether a username exists on system through the author query variable. When a web app leaks information about whether a username exist… Read More
2017-02-24 16:06
As of 2017 here are the two best ways I’ve found to handle the transfer of a WordPress database from development to production. WP Migrate DB Pro The WP Migrate DB Pro WordPress plugin… Read More
2017-02-24 15:37
WP_Query is the primary way to write custom queries in WordPress. If you’re having trouble combining a search value (s argument) and taxonomy query (tax_query argument) using WP_Query… Read More
2017-02-21 03:26
If you want to fully replicate an https/SSL Node.js/Express app server locally you'll need a self-signed AND trusted certificate setup. More often than not I see dev's settle with an untrust… Read More
2017-02-08 14:47
Receiving JSON POST data in PHP is a common scenario I come across when building custom WordPress API’s. If you’re working with JSON API’s powered by PHP you may find that… Read More
Subscribe to Kevinleary.net
Get updates delivered right to your inbox!