Half-Elf on Tech

Thoughts From a Professional Lesbian

Tag: mailbag

  • Mailbag: Chocolate Cake is a Need

    Mailbag: Chocolate Cake is a Need

    Adrian in Florida has a long one! I’m going to break it up.

    I watched your presentation about “don’t use WP MU” have decided I shouldn’t use it but wanted to ask your advice on some other things. First I want to start by pointing out re the presentation:

    • I noticed that for the Wordpress.com network sites I noticed the WP toolbar does show on the sites giving them away as network sites except for one, Gigaom (perhaps there is a way to remove it?)

    • For some of us chocolate cake is a need, not a want.

    No, the cake is a want. And I use that example for a reason. We can joke all we want about how we need the cake, but fact is this: We need food. We want treats. If we can be clear in our hearts about needs versus wants, webdev is much simpler. I don’t need coffee. I like it. I can live without it. I don’t want to and choose not to. I can blog without WordPress. I don’t want to. I choose not to. It’s very important to be clear on needs and wants and choices in life in general.

    As for turning off the .com toolbar on Gigaom, I noticed when I visit there’s a blip where it shows the space for the toolbar and then it’s gone. So that suggests it’s CSS fixing itself. But the answer is “They’re a VIP customer and probably paid out the nose for that.”

    1. I just want to learn one theme/framework to make websites with and not change. I had already paid for Elegant Themes to get Divi which is supposed to be customizable and seems to have good video tutorials, before I saw your recommendation for Studiopress. I don’t know how to tell if I should scrap Divi and pay up again for Studiopress. Would you?

    I like Studiopress a great deal. It’s secure, it’s stable, it’s updated responsibly and reasonable, and Andrea Rennick is one of my BFFs. Divi I dislike because of how they handle sessions. But whichever you use is up to you. If you want a free theme to start with, I’d pick up Theme Hybrid. Justin’s code is second to none.

    2. I want to be able to make each page in my Wordpress site show up under its own subdomain. I’ve tried a few plugs like “page links to” which doesn’t work. I saw that there are some plugins that do this for categories. Do you know a plugin that enable each page resolve to a subdomain otherwise do you recommend one of the category plugins over another?

    This stems from his URL design which is page.example.com and … I just wouldn’t. It’s a waste of time and effort and locks you into a categorization that will be insane to unroll later.

    Now as a category that’s less weird and you can try one of these plugins:

    • https://wordpress.org/plugins/subdomains/
    • https://wordpress.org/plugins/main-category-as-subdomain/
    • https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-subdomains-revisited/

    I still wouldn’t use Multisite unless you really enjoy logging into a separate site for each post and not having an easy way to cross reference.

    3. Is there a plugin out there that allows different people to receive ad revenue for their posts? We have two different writers for one website, each should get ad revenue related to each’s own posts on the same website.

    This is actually why I bothered to answer. This is a cool question and I had no idea at all when I first read it.

    Turns out, yes you totally can have separate ads per author. If you’re using Google AdSense (you didn’t say), then try Multi Author Adense, which looks like you could set the code per author. There’s also Revenue Share which may be a little simpler.

    Good luck!

  • Mailbag: Headers Already Sent

    Mailbag: Headers Already Sent

    Yasha from Russia asks for guidance!

    Hi I was searching on ways to resolve get header error in WP and saw your posts, which helped a chap with his website. I am a total beginner and having a nightmare with a divi template I am trying to upload. I have tried a ton of solutions on line and nothing worked. I would be grateful if you could provide me with some guidance. Unfortunately I am not in a position to pay you, but should our path cross I would be happy to offer you a few fine Belgian beers. Thank you in advance

    I don’t drink beer (I can’t stand fizzy drinks, I know, it’s tragic).

    I have to preface this with the honest truth. I hate Divi Templates. I’ve reached out to them under my company hat a couple times, never heard back, but I cannot stand their theme because of the first line in header.php for every single theme I’ve ever seen from them.

    <?php if ( ! isset( $_SESSION ) ) session_start(); ?>

    Pardon me while I rage flip a table.

    Why do I hate this? Sessions aren’t friends with caching. A session is used to store information for a user and have it accessible across all the pages of your website. Cool, right? The problem is a session is also saying “This user gets unique content and should have a unique experience.”

    Which kinda tells caching, and specifically Varnish caching, to take a long walk. WPEngine doesn’t allow you to use them because of that.

    But all that aside, how do you debug that Headers Already Sent?

    1. Turn on wp_debug
    2. Read the error
    3. Kill the plugin (or theme) causing it

    I hate to say it’s that simple, but it usually is.

    Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /example.com/wp-content/themes/applesororanges/functions.php:60) in /example.com/wp-includes/pluggable.php on line 962

    That error means the problem is in the theme applesororanges and you check by swapping themes.

    When you get around to these, it’s a bit messier:

    Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /example.com/wp-includes/functions.php:3560) in /example.com/wp-includes/pluggable.php on line 962

    The bit in ‘output started at…’ is a wp-includes folder! It’s unlikely core has bad code, so here you have to turn off all the plugins and switch to a default theme. There’s a reason that’s the way we debug, by the way. It’s hands down the fastest way to see if it’s you or not.

    If turning off all the plugins fixed it, great. Now turn them back on, one at a time, until you break it again.

    Remember! Sometimes it’s the combination of the plugins and theme that caused the problem, so be ready to pick a second best theme or plugin.

  • Mailbag: Delete A New Page In Multisite

    Mailbag: Delete A New Page In Multisite

    From Brige:

    If u can, could u tell me how I can get rid of a new page that created in a subfolder from multisite ? out of my admin reach now. What would be the fastest way ? Should I restore completely to get rid of all WP remnants in order not to fall into this multisite hooking error : “page not found”?

    To be honest, I’m guessing here.

    I’m going to assume that Brige means he wants to auto-delete the ‘Sample Page’ page that WordPress generates when you make a new site.

    WordPress creates a default post (id – Hello World) and a page (id – Sample Page) when a new WP site is created, be it Multisite or not.

    Probably the simplest way would be to hook into wpmu_new_blog() which runs for all new blogs and run this:

    wp_delete_post(2, true);

    That force deletes the post with the ID 2. And since that’s always the sample page, that should work.

  • Mailbag: Multisite or Not?

    Mailbag: Multisite or Not?

    From Ian:

    Hi, I wanted to comment on one of your articles and see if any one would provide feedback, but the comments are closed. https://halfelf.org/2011/dont-use-wordpress-multisite/ I have been avoiding using Multisite as you recommend. Several have tried to get me to go that way, but it didn’t seem right. So in the cases of when a business wants to have independent sites that share the main sites content, what would you recommend?

    There was more to the email but it boils down to this. They want a site that has all the local content and all the main brand’s content.

    When you get to the point of ‘sharing’ content, Multisite is less and less of a winner. While we’re still in a pre JSON API world, which would make this a bit easier, I lean towards the basic simplicity of categories.

    I’d have a main category for ‘news’ and another for each independent site (say ‘locale1’). Then I’d craft my theme to pull in posts from ‘news’ and ‘locale1’ and style it per the brand designation of each locale.

    The plugin Groups may be what you want to control access for things.

    One site. Easy to cross-relate content. Done.

    No multisite.

  • Mailbag: Debugging .Com

    Mailbag: Debugging .Com

    From Wesley:

    It’s a one-word question though so I hope it won’t take you too long: my blog is free, which means it’s a .com, not .org [redacted] so I cannot install plugins, right? And an even quicker follow up, there’s no hope for me to erase post revisions so to free space and upload a page that’s over 200K words and refuses to do so, is there? Thank you so much for your attention. Cheers

    Your site is hosted on wordpress.com so you can’t install plugins (or themes). Even on VIP you can’t, though they may do it for you. It’s a Multisite thing.

    Also you can’t erase post revisions, but you also don’t need to worry about that. It’s not why you can’t upload a page of over 200k words. That’s just WP timing out. I’m assuming it’s hanging and timing out… Hard to know for sure without a description of the error.

    Sadly, since it’s on .com and I don’t work for them, you will have to ask how to handle that here: https://en.forums.wordpress.com/

    My suggestion would be split the post into multiple posts. I’ve found people rarely read a post longer than 1500 words. If it was a self hosted WordPress, I’d tell you that you should check the PHP error logs, and see if it’s a PHP timeout (which would be my guess) or something else like a mod_security error. If it’s PHP, there’s not a lot you can do unless you’re on a VPS or better, but really ‘adding more PHP memory’ is not the best move.

    Storing massive amounts of data is slow. 200k in a post is huge. If you were to space it out, it would make a 580 page book, give or take. I may have done NaNoWriMo before. Anyway, the point is that’s why we invented chapters in the first place. I have a mental image of a guy on an old manual page press, being handed the 580 pages to typeset, and breaking down. He’s sitting in a corner, crying, rocking back and forth.

    Today he’s your database. Your database is sitting in a corner with PHP, crying. “Why are you giving me so much to do at once, PHP?” And poor PHP is sobbing. “I don’t know, I can’t even handle it!”

    Anyway. Smaller posts. People won’t read 200k in one go. Not even speed readers.

  • Mailbag: I Lost My Site

    Mailbag: I Lost My Site

    Don from Worcestershire started an email in a way that normally would result in a quick delete:

    Before you cut me off I am a 78 year old gambling historian, specializing in horse racing between 1850 and 2015.the age alone will convince you that my knowledge of this topic is limited.

    It’s not the age, Don, it’s that the email starts with a long, dramatic, kind of non-essential story about your life, your ideas, your dreams, your goals, and your son. By the way, I’m sorry for your loss.

    Yes, I read the whole email.

    It took a long time to sift through the drama to sort out the issues.

    1. Spam – He had a lot of spam and used Akismet (yay!) to deal with it.
    2. Bandwidth – The spam made his site hit the overages on his hosting.
    3. Domain suspension – Due to circumstances, he was late in paying his feeds and the domain was sniped.

    I feel bad. I really do. But here’s the thing, Don. Your domain is like your rent. If you don’t pay for it, you lose your home. And while this sucks a lot, and yes there were mitigating circumstances, you didn’t pay in time, and the company is legally within their rights to sell. It’s the same as your phone. No pay, no phone. It’s just that simple.

    Now I have good news.

    According to whois records, you still own your domain! So you actually didn’t lose the domain you lost the hosting plan.

    These are different things. They’re very easy to get confused.

    There isn’t a great analogy to all this, I’m afraid, but as it works, you’re paying for two things.

    First you pay for the domain. This reserves your ‘name’ on the internet. I recommend paying for it first for a year and then, if you like how things are going, pay for as long as you possibly can. I did mine for a decade at one point in time. I knew I wanted the domains and I knew I was using them.

    Once you have the domain, you need to pay for webhosting. The host is where you data is stored.

    Now I need to take a digression.

    BACK UP YOUR WEBSITE OFFLINE.

    If the backup tool you use only lets you backup to your webserver, it’s a shitty backup tool. Stop using it unless you are automatically downloading that backup somewhere else.

    Because you see, Don, what happened was that you didn’t pay for your webhosting. You didn’t pay for the storage unit that housed your data. And they can auction that off like they do on shitty shows like Storage Wars.

    So what do you do when this happens?

    If it’s just the webhost, it’s easy. Contact the webhost. http://www.whoishostingthis.com/ is a great resource to find out who your host is. Be honest but keep it short. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t able to pay on time and my site was suspended. Is there any way I can get it back?” That’s it! That’s all you have to do. If you’re lucky, they may still have all your data. You pay, they flip a switch, it’s back.

    The worst case … that’s why you need backups.

    If it’s the domain registration, though, that can be a mess. If you bought the domain through your webhost, it may surprise you to find out that the host doesn’t have control over your domain registration. The host is an intermediary. That means, if you go to your site and see a placeholder page owned by a domain registrar, it may or may not be a cybersquatter.

    You may have heard about domain hijacking or domain theft. That’s when someone changes the registration of your domain name without your permission. A hijacking is not the same as when you’ve failed to pay for your domain and the registrar slaps up a placeholder. A great many hosts put up a branded placeholder if you’ve registered a domain and not yet updated content. Sometimes it says “This domain has been registered at…”

    If it says “This domain is suspended” then the issue is with the webhost. If it says “This domain has expired” then it’s likely to be the registrar. You need to figure out who the registrar is, log in with your info, pay the fine, and get the site back.

    I strongly urge you to put a reminder in your to-do list or whatever you use to keep track of things. “Domain name renewal due on day X.” It’s like paying your rent. Don’t forget. Make reminders. Do it.

    By the way, no matter whom you talk to, don’t give them the sob story. While they do care, in as much as any human does, it rarely changes the reality of what’s going on. Shit happened, you couldn’t pay. Your personal drama is not their problem. I know how harsh that sounds, but it’s not. And the more you make it how you need an exception because you’re a special case, the more people hear it as an excuse.

    I know it’s not. You know it’s not. Except sometimes, Don, for a lot of people, it is. If I told you how many idiots complain they couldn’t pay for $4/month hosting, while stilly buying a top of the line iPhone, you’d understand why it’s draining.

    And as someone who’s fucked up before, I find that being honest where it’s my fault gets better results. “I’m sorry. I screwed up and didn’t pay. Is there anything I can do to get my content back? It matters a lot to me, and I’d appreciate anything you can do to help me.”

    Works great.

    By the way, Don, I see that you have your site back right now. You should upgrade. You’re running WordPress 2.6.1 and that’s really old and vulnerable.