Runaway processes are the bane of a functioning Mac; you find them in the console in their thousands when things go wrong. I’ve had a particular problem recently with the coreduetd process. Thanks to Gordon Mackay I’ve now a solution:
1. In the Finder menu choose Go -> Go to Folder… – or cmd + shift + G
2. Type: “/var/db/coreduet”
3. Delete everything in that folder
4. Restart – I skipped this part to no harm
Phew.
So the database is the most dangerous place non-experienced/non-technical users can mess around in. And I’m certainly not comfortable rolling around in there. So you have to be cautious and if you’re going to hand this responsibility over to someone else then you need to be sure they can be relied upon. So I proceed with caution, as should you.
I spent a lot of time googling, reading guides on database optimisation, etc and I finally I came across the oddly named Optimise Database after Deleting Revisions plugin now this only has 60,000+ installs acording to wordpress, whereas the WP-Optimise plugin had 400,000+ installs, however it was updated less than a month ago as opposed to over 7 months ago for the more popular plugin and that worries me.
I generally won’t install a plugin without an official release via wordpress but I also like to have a read of the developers page and the more detailed that is, the more comfortable I feel. Finding video reviews by other bloggers, such as below, is also reassuring:
So suitably reassured I went ahead and installed the plugin.
The plugin is reassuringly neat and well behaved installing two menu options:
This is even more re-assuring. I really can’t stand wordpress plugins that clutter up your dashboard menu, after all they’re mostly plugins rather than entire feature sets.
I opted for a relatively simple setup:
I decided not to schedule optimisation. With something that can screw your entire installation I think you should opt for manual control, plus it means you can always – and you always should – backup your solution before you run any optimisation (in case you need to restore it). I also wouldn’t run it just after I’ve updated wordpress, particularly a full digit update, without checking for an update to the plugin.
So I saved 1.857 MB or 25 percent of the size of my database for a process that took 1.4988 seconds. And this was just on my site, on my work site I saved 7.007 MB more than 50 percent of the size of that database!
Thanks of course to Rolf van Gelder of CAGE Web Design for writing the plugin in the 1st place. Without people like this the wordpress community wouldn’t thrive.
So as you’ve also probably noticed I’ve been spending a bit more time examining this blog and my own personal one, as well as trying to standardise the approach I recommend to customers and friends.
When a reader arrives on your website looking to find something you’ve read they’re going to end up (hopefully) on your Blog (Posts Page) and here’s where you need to make some decisions about how things are going to look. And through the customising panel in wordpress you’re offered lots of choice.
The first thing I’d recommend is not to publish your blog entries in full on your Blog (Posts Page), even if you’re chosen to use numbered pages rather than the infinite scroll feature from Jetpack (hopefully your theme supports it), instead publish an excerpt – then people will be able to scroll through more content and be able to more quickly to find what they’re looking for. WordPress will even generate the excerpts for you. To make this change open the customizer and follow the route:
Layout > Blog (Posts Page) > Content > Tick “Generate excerpts automatically”
I also tend to hide author information on the Blog (Posts Page). I find that all this adds is visual clutter and for most people who are the only author on their website the reader is likely to know (or assume) it’s you, you don’t need to tell them!
So I don’t use featured images very much, but I do use images, and my theme seems to be bright enough (unless it’s a wordpress default?) to select the first image if a featured image is not selected. Personally I think featured images (and the management for images in general and particularly for social media could be better handled) are best full-size at the beginning of my excerpt, particularly as I don’t use photos that work well as thumbnails. But you can choose here:
Layout > Blog (Posts Page) > Content > Featured Images
Where you’re offered the following options:
And whether or not you want to align them so a thumbnail could, for example, be on either the left or the right of your excerpt (not sure how it’d work in the centre…).
Whatever you decide when laying out this crucial page, what the customizer panel does it let you see live previews of the changes so you can fiddle and find a solution that looks right for you and then just press “Save” and it’s live. Fab.
So I’ve recently got back an old website that I lost due to notifications going to an old email address (sucky domain registrars). Here we are two years later and I’ve managed to get the domain back with my main host and registrar now dreamhost.com (gotta love their simple but effective renewal of domains policy) but it was not without it’s problems.
Once I’d overcome the technical issues with my wordpress installation (thanks to dreamhost support) I decided to read up and undertake some basic wordpress maintenance. One of the suggestions was to minimise the themes you have installed, but are not using. Seems pretty straightforward, but wordpress has no in-built way to delete multiple themes. Step in the delete multiple themes plugin.
This simple plugin does what wordpress should do, allows an administrator to delete multiple themes. So I’m deleting all but the theme I’m using and the basic default wordpress themes like 2012 (as backups).
You can find out more about the plugin here and the authors Happy Plugins here.
So a few mins later I’m down from 47 to 8 themes. Quite a clear out.
So Theme Foundary are by far my favourite wordpress theme designers (and a fav of wordpress.org themselves) but they don’t seem to have read my links, links, links article (mind why would they?) but they could definitely learn a thing or two or rather learn to use 301 redirect.
Helpful tools I highlight include the fab redirection plugin and the broken link checker plugin to help you find links on your site that are broken and then easily allow you to setup 301s to point your readers in the right direction.
No customer or potential customer should have to search google and/or your site repeatedly. Hey but none of us are perfect, we can just commit to constantly improve!
If you’re having trouble finding child themes for a Theme Foundary theme then click here.
PS Thanks Theme Foundary for providing child themes!
I spend my time telling people they need to make sure that they are on each and every social network they may work on, now or in the future, but sometimes I don’t get round to following my own rules (do what I say and not what I do I suppose is the exception proving the rule).
So there’s something really important to know about vimeo, if you don’t have an account (and then later set up one) even if someone credits you to your email (and the email you use to setup your account) then it will not translate across… i.e. you’ll have to rely on the poster of the video to change your credit.
Luckily for me I’m in control of most the videos I’ve been involved in so far, so no loss, but you may not be so lucky (BTW Vimeo this should be really easy to correct and why haven’t you done it already?). So Ree Collins, set up an account asap, so I can still amend your credits.
Oh and if you’re uploading a video then I’ve a few wise words of advice (firstly I’m thinking of you Andy Berriman) always use the credits rather than add them in the text otherwise you lose the web part of the web; (secondly I thinking of you Ian Paine) if you’re contracted to make a video rely on your commissioner to credit you rather than post it yourself.
Proper use of credits will improve the penetration of your films and improve your overall position in google.
Check out the films I’ve been part of by looking at my vimeo profile and one video I helped to get off the starting blocks and am most proud of (18k views!) but am not credited in :-(.
[vimeo https://vimeo.com/56719388 w=960]
And John Kirkbride I still can’t find you on vimeo. WTF?!
So in my day job we use Vimeo for all our film projects, primarily because it enables you to credit those people involved in making a project happen and also because you can replace earlier copies of a video, which is particularly useful when you have to get approval from multiple project partners before a film is signed off. However, the advantages and disadvantages of vimeo as a video platform aside, embedding the resulting video in our site and those of our partners is an essential feature and obviously we’re running wordpress so this is made easy for us.
What the link above doesn’t tell you is that you don’t need to specify both the width and the height of your video (always a pain to work out) you just need to specify the width and the height will be automatically be generated:
(vimeo https://vimeo.com/127168308 w=960)
replacing the curly parenthesis ( ) with square ones [ ]
See it action in one of our videos, Giants in the Walls, produced for the One Planet Middlesbrough project:
[vimeo https://vimeo.com/127168308 w=560]
560 px wide – tiny!
[vimeo https://vimeo.com/127168308 w=760]
760 px wide – a bit too small
[vimeo https://vimeo.com/127168308 w=960]
960 px wide – just right!*
Jump to 3 minutes 58 seconds for my favourite part – thanks Andy Berriman, this makes me chuckle every time!
In the future hopefully this solution will also support the standard addition to a vimeo url of #t=3m58s allowing you to specify the start time, so you don’t have to rely on your readers to self select; although this is definitely a video worth watching in full!
* Find out the default size of your blog post by using the developer tool in chrome.
Can you switch off a Synology DS box from the Power Button? I asked myself this morning when I got a text from our building manager to remind me that the electricians would be in at my day job this morning and I couldn’t login via quickconnect.
This is not an easy thing to find out (if you’ve not actually switched off your box physically before) and no-one wants their box to be inadvertently powered down. But it is possible.
Fortunately I have a box at home too and can practice. The key is to hold down the blue power button until it makes a loud sharp beep and then it’ll power down gracefully.
And it worked. The fabulous Dawn was able to easily shut down the server. Crisis averted. Re-wiring of our lighting underway.
So we bought a new camera at my day job last week and whilst setting it up (BTW Canon you have worst software ever! Heard of the App Store recently?) a poorly drawn diagram just didn’t hack it for figuring out how to attach the straps to the camera. Thank goodness for youtube!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6mry_7u-eA
Hope this helps if you’re also having a #commonsensefail day…
And after watching this I also stumbled across this video, which was a fascinating exploration of where to invest your hard earned cash (or your business/employers) to make sure you get the best out of your camera.
When is a web not a web? When the things you’ve linked to are broken! I’ve just discovered this great, easy notification plugin for wordpress called Broken Link Checker. And that’s what it does. Simple as that. An invaluable service provided.
And complimented by the amazing Redirection Plugin it can make sure you’re keeping on top of not just the sites you link to, but your own links to ensure that that web remains strong and in place. I can’t recommend the combination more.
Install both and start spinning those webs!
Broken Links are even better than I thought. Not only do you get email notifications, links that are broken are highlighted on the actual page they’re embedded in with a nifty line through the text! See a real, live example from my day job:
