Free Custom Domain Email Forwards

If you want a custom domain email address, I typically will recommend that you use a reputable email provider like G Suite or Fastmail. However if you’re just starting getting started and you’re not quite ready to pay for email services, then consider setting up an email forward instead. A great email forwarding service…

WordPress Backups with Rclone and Restic

Here at Anchor Hosting, I run incremental nightly backups for all customers, which are then stored on a B2 bucket. Incremental backups are lightweight and very cost effective. These backups are made in addition to what my host provider, Kinsta, maintains. Kinsta keeps nightly backup snapshots going back 30 days. As such, I’ve rarely…

Rclone Mount as a SFTP Client

Transmit is my SFTP client of choice on MacOS. It’s been a year since I’ve transitioned away from MacOS and I’ve finally settled on a suitable cross platform replacement. Ironically it was in rediscovering an amazing little UI feature of Rclone, a command line utility that I frequently use. So let me introduce you…

Hijacking BNFW for Email Subscriptions

A while back I wrote about using BNFW for email subscriptions. BNFW is my preferred way to send out WordPress blog posts as emails. It’s a clean and simple approach that doesn’t involve managing an email newsletter. It also nicely handles auto embeds which is not something that alternative options, like MailPoet, supports. While…

Renaming a Paid WordPress Plugin

Last week I launched my summer side project, Stackable, and then a day later I completely rebranded to WP Freighter. You can read here on why I ended up changes names. Changing brand names is painful. However if you need to change names it’s best just to do it sooner rather than later. There…

Local WordPress Development on Linux

I recently switched to a Linux laptop and have been pleasantly surprised with how well my development tools have continued to work. Linux might not be for everyone, however I do think it’s ready for a broader audience of technical folks, not just Linux enthusiasts. If you’re a WordPress developer and curious about what…

Scanning for Website Errors with Lighthouse CLI

WordPress is preparing to finally upgrade the bundled version of jQuery. The first step was completed as of WordPress 5.5 which was to remove jQuery migrate. That bumps the minimal jQuery compatible to v1.9 which is a 7 years old release of jQuery. Still many older themes and plugins in the WordPress ecosystem may…

Switching to Linux

Less than a year ago I switched from a MacBook Pro to Microsoft’s Surface Laptop 3. The Windows Subsystem Linux (WSL) was a big enabler to seamlessly switch platforms. Windows with WSL works pretty good. It’s not perfect and requires some modifications to get everything with my WordPress development workflow working. Even so, I’ve…

WordPress 5.5 Custom Code Compatibility Fixes

With WordPress 5.5 begins step #1 of a 3 phased approach for updating jQuery to the latest version. This is long over due. As of the 5.5 release of WordPress, jQuery migrate 1.x has been removed. That means any custom Javascript that hasn’t been made compatible with jQuery 1.9+ will break. To be clear,…

Why I Pay 6 Figures to Kinsta 💰

I’m pretty open when it comes to running my business. Anchor Hosting resells other managed WordPress host providers, primarily Kinsta, and bundles in routine WordPress maintenance at no extra cost for a hassle-free WordPress hosting experience. In a nutshell that’s pretty much it. If you haven’t tried out my hosting services, you should. It’s…