Enable/Disable WordPress Automatic Core, Plugins and Themes Updates

Back in 2013, the WordPress 3.7 introduces the automatic update feature. There are 4 types of updates and that includes, the WP core, plugins, themes and languages.

Although updates are a good thing to do, from a security point of view, there are some aspects that you will want to take into consideration when doing an update.

So you may want to choose the time of the update, you may want to choose what to update and most of all you would like to take a full backup, just in case things don’t go out well, specially when updating themes.

So if you want to have it all controlled and take decisions after you first test everything, you can completely disable all automatic updates by adding this line to your wp-config.php . Continue reading “Enable/Disable WordPress Automatic Core, Plugins and Themes Updates”

Change default 1M max upload filesize limit for WordPress Mutisite

If you are like me playing around with the WordPress Multisite feature and you’ve run into the max allowed upload filesize limit of 1M, you are in the right place to fix it.

There is a not quite intuitive (for me) option in the Super admin dashboard that allows you to change this. Please note that this does not overwrite your apache or php.ini settings if this last one is smaller. Here you can apply the rule of the most restrictive.

So here are the steps to achieve this:

Here are the steps to change the Maximum upload file size within WP admin: Continue reading “Change default 1M max upload filesize limit for WordPress Mutisite”

Case study: What 5 languages should I use to translate my website?

I have recently been asked by a client about what 5 languages should he use to go international with his website. Well, beside translating in the obvious English language, I did not know which one should he go next.

I think 10 is the magic number on this, so I will enumerate just the first 10 of them. If you are interested in more than 10 languages, then the order is not quite important Continue reading “Case study: What 5 languages should I use to translate my website?”

Migrating multisite WP, don’t forget to edit wp-config.php

I have previously write about migrating WP using the database search/replace php tool. But migrating a MultiSite intalation is a little bit different.

This is the first time I am playing with WordPress and the multisite feature, so I am learning from my mistakes. There is a small change that I missed the first time I have read the documentation in WP Codex about Moving WordPress:

If database name or user changes, edit wp-config.php to have the correct values.

Continue reading “Migrating multisite WP, don’t forget to edit wp-config.php”

WordPress rename/change Post name to a different post type

There are times when you wold like to rename the default posts to something else. For example, I used a WordPress installation to created a real estate related website from a standard WordPress install.

I needed to add a custom post houses so that the client would be able to add the content to the website, but on the other hand I did not need to use the standard post type since I did not need the blog or news section. So why not convert it to something else. Continue reading “WordPress rename/change Post name to a different post type”

The easy way to migrate WordPress using search and replace database

So you want to migrate a WordPress database and you came into the problem that when you load the new installation directory you are being redirected to the old domain. You probably tried to manually replace in your PhpMyAdmin in the wp_options  table the two entries that normally exist, but still no success. Maybe your website is loading but there are lots of errors in there.

This is because WordPress and lots of plugins store data and full URI in the database using wp_serialize function. Here is a little example about what I am talking about:

If you just do a search and replace you will break all this fields and data can not be recovered.

Continue reading “The easy way to migrate WordPress using search and replace database”

PHP check if mail() function is enabled on your server

To check if mail function is enabled on your apache server you can try one of the following:

Check your php.ini like this:

You should search for this in the list sendmail_path that has the default  value /usr/sbin/sendmail -t -i

You can also try to manual set it to this value by changing the php.ini file. To do this go to  /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini and uncomment the sendmail_path line like this

Continue reading “PHP check if mail() function is enabled on your server”

Complete case study: watermark detection, remove and place a new watermark- Part II

Like I said in the previous article “Complete case study: watermark replacement – part I” about replacing an old or outdated  watermark, this task is not quite trivial but more likely boring and very time-consuming.

Anyway…let’s continue. I have now separated all images by:

  • logo in the center
  • multiple logos all over.

I will try to process the images that have the logo in the center. In this group I have little bit over 40.000 images. Continue reading “Complete case study: watermark detection, remove and place a new watermark- Part II”

WordPress automatic database optimization and repair

Did you know that WordPress websites accumulate overhead due to SQL queries that are being processed.  Overhead when referring to databases, is the temporary disk space that it is used to run some of the queries. This overhead is bad for table scan, i. e. when your query needs to run over all table values, it will need to look at more empty space.

Every database will, over time, require some form of maintenance to keep it at an optimal performance level. Purging deleted rows, resequencing, compressing, managing index paths, defragmenting, etc. is what is known as optimization in mysql and other terms in other databases. Continue reading “WordPress automatic database optimization and repair”

POP vs IMAP vs SMTP vs Forwarding emails

POP vs IMAP, the eternal fight. What is POP and what is IMAP, and what in the hell is SMTP, this one is new, not to mention email forwarding. Here is the answer to all that:

What is POP Protocol

Post office protocol (also called POP) downloads email directly to your computer. When this happens, the mail is deleted from the ISP server. This process occurs to prevent you from reading the same email messages again when you access the ISP server from another computer. The benefit of POP mail is since messages are downloaded directly to your computer, you can read them even if you aren’t connected to the Internet. Continue reading “POP vs IMAP vs SMTP vs Forwarding emails”