Austin Ginder

Austin Ginder

Removing Query Strings from Static Resources

Out of the box WordPress adds query strings to CSS and JavaScript files. This means that a stylesheet which typically looks like style.css is changed to style.css?ver=4.9.2. The version automatically updates with each WordPress release and helps with cache busting. WordPress…

Avoiding HTTP double redirects with WP Engine

With HTTPS becoming a standard, redirecting your old http url typically works by selecting a checkbox. With WP Engine, select “Secure all URLs” within the SSL settings. Recently I discovered that a lot of these http urls were double redirecting.…

Bash Hacks to Reduce SSH connections with WP Engine

One of the drawbacks of WP Engine’s implementations of SSH is the time it takes to create the SSH tunnel. While this has gotten significantly better it’s still slow enough that you really should avoid creating lots of individual connections. While…

Speedy Checkouts with WooCommerce Subscriptions

I collect my hosting payments using WooCommerce Subscriptions. To make the checkout really straightforward I slimmed down the process to a single payment link. Here is how to create really speedy checkouts with WooCommerce Subscriptions. Start by creating a new WordPress…

WordPress Wrapper for Constellix DNS API

Before building Anchor DNS, I wrote a small WordPress wrapper to help me talk to the Constellix DNS API. The code is up on Github:  It’s amazing how clean the code turned out as all of the heavy lifting happens…

Introducing Anchor DNS

Last month while upgrading DNS providers, I've been working hard on something brand new. I'm introducing Anchor DNS which is available for all customers included with every plan. If DNS is not something your familiar with, it's not a problem, as…

Upgrading DNS to Constellix

A premium DNS provider is often overlooked when running a website. My first experience with a premium DNS provider was back in 2014 when I switched to DNS Made Easy. With DNS Made Easy, I've never had a DNS related outage. The…

Improving Kinsta’s deploy to staging using WP-CLI

Kinsta, a relatively new managed WordPress web host, has been consistently rolling out new features. While I’ve been impressed with their improvements, their production to staging deployment is a hassle to work with. Luckily this can be resolved with a…

Using JS to Compress WordPress Plugins in cPanel

Downloading and uploading lots of small files is never fun. It's much more efficient to first zip the files then move the .zip archive. Recently I need to grab some plugins from a large multisite installation. I only wanted to grab relevant…