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 developers can also easily change versions to something custom, like today’s date, when adding…
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. To explain let’s take a look at my personal site austinginder.com. Using CURL reveals the double…
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 that’s fine for running single long commands, you’ll need to get creative if you…
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 user and WooCommerce subscription for each customer When creating WordPress users, I uncheck “Send…
My local WordPress development setup has been greatly simplified due to my discovery of Laravel Valet. My Macbook Pro hard drive recently failed, which Apple replaced with a new hard drive. So I decided to do a walkthrough setting up MacOS for WordPress development on a clean copy of MacOS High Sierra (v10.13.2). While…
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 with wp_remote_get and wp_remote_post. Creating the documentation before building anything saved me lots of time.…
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 we'll take care of any DNS updates for you. Simply email support@anchor.host. For the geeks,…
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 same cannot be said for other DNS providers during that same timespan. That alone…
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 custom WP-CLI script using WP-CLI over ssh. Kinsta’s dashboard can get you started Within…
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 plugins so I came up with the following javascript to assist with the plugin…