Tag: mailbag

Mailbag: Why Don’t You Tell People How To Contact You?

My contact form scares off people. It’s supposed to. So this was asked of me at GeekGirlCon:

Your card doesn’t have your email. Why do you make it so hard to contact you?

It’s not that I don’t want to have people ask me for more information about my site, or a class I gave. I love that. I’m happy to answer those. I tell people ‘Go to halfelf.org and use the contact form.’ Sometimes I’ll reply personally, sometimes I post on the blog, sometimes both. But yes, if we’ve met in person and you have a question, it’s okay to ping me.

But I hide my contact form behind a couple ‘are you sure?’ layers because people are weird and unreasonable.

People contact me for the one thing I don’t offer, and that’s consultant work.

People want to get free help on very complex problems.

People want to be friends.

Okay that last one is nice, but if I meet you once, we’re going to be acquaintances unless we hit it off like gangbusters… And at that point, I probably gave you my email and phone number and said “When you come to X, we have to do coffee!” It happens!

But if you’re trying to ask a long question about how to write code to do a very complex thing, consider this. Would you otherwise pay someone to do it? Would you, if you were asked by someone, ask for payment? If yes, don’t just drop me a ‘hey can you help?’ Don’t drop anyone that question. Shoot them a polite message, asking if they can help you with a project. Offer to pay. And ask if they’re busy, can they please direct you somewhere?

And do check out [https://halfelf.org/get/help] – Because yes, I keep a list.

3 July, 2015
Mailbag: Multisite Subdomains Live Where?
Heather is confused, and I don’t blame her:

I am want to use subdomains in my multisite. 1. Install WordPress in the subfolder and set it up to run from root before you create your subsites. 2. You should not use www in your URL ….. Where exactly do need to change this? Settings/ General ( that’s how i saw it in your book) or in my file manager, having to change it in many different files…. ( saw and read this from other internet sources).

Let’s take this by the numbers.
1. Install WordPress in the subfolder and set it up to run from root before you create your subsites.
If (and that’s a big if) you want to install WordPress at example.com/wordpress but have the URL look like example.com then you must do this before you activate Multisite. Can it be done after? Yes. But you will go insane.
1. You should not use www in your URL
If you’re using subdomains, just don’t. The issue where WordPress breaks if you use the www here is not to do with WordPress so much as the variant hosts out there and how they handle the www/non-www redirects. Save yourself a headache. Don’t use www. You don’t use www. Yes, I know Google does. They don’t care so long as you’re consistent.

In both cases, on your single site install of Wordpress, you go to the General panel. The value for Site Address (URL) is what you want people to see when they visit your site. The one for WordPress Address (URL) is where WordPress is installed.

Make sure they both match in terms of schema and www. Then change the Site Address from http://example.com/folder to http://example.com and save it.

The official directions are on the codex – Giving WordPress it’s own Directory. There’s a bit more when it comes to moving a couple files, but really that’s it. Once it’s done and working, go ahead and activate Multisite.

By the way, I always get the WordPress Address and Site Address confused. It’s not just you.
26 June, 2015
Mailbag: Would You Review…

From ‘anon’ in Orange County:

Why did you review plugins at WCOC but you said no when I asked you to review mine?

That’s not actually exactly what he said. I’ve cleaned up the English.

At WordCamp Orange Country, I was given the rare opportunity to put value judgements on plugins. I never get to do this. I review plugins on WordPress.org every day (pretty much). I test them and evaluate them and send back comments. I look for bugs and security and guideline issues.

What I never get to do is tell people how I feel about their plugins. So when WCOC asked me to judge the Plugin-a-palooza contest ala American Idol, I replied “Oh I’m Simon Cowell. I’m in.” And when Ryan Seacrest — I mean Chris Lema asked me why I agreed to do it, I said it was because I never got to be myself when I reviewed plugins. I never got to just review and tell people how I felt.

They should have known. Right?

The plugin that won was not the one I liked the best. The one I liked the best was small, it was simple (if a little complex with the code). It did one thing and it did it very well. It wasn’t perfect by any means, but it worked. That plugin came in second.

The plugin that won, I wanted to like. In fact, I said that. I said “I really wanted to like this plugin.” And everyone went ‘oooooh’ (or possibly ‘boooo’). Chris jumped to my defense and pointed out I had warned them. So I detailed out why I didn’t like the plugin, from the UX perspective, and from the functionality. Some of why I didn’t like it weren’t it’s fault at all. It was trying to fix an imperfect system in a sensible way.

And I was asked, in the session, if it mattered to me if the flaws in the plugin were the fault of core, the APIs, or the plugin.

No.

Look. When you make a plugin, you’ve made it knowing the world around you and knowing what’s already broken (or non-optimal). So when you’ve made decisions on how you handle things, I firmly feel that you should be graceful and reliable and fail intelligently. And I don’t think they did. I think they solved the main problem, but in doing so created a host of others.

When someone asks me to review their code (theme or plugin) it’s like being asked if the pants make their butt look big. They want to hear “This is great.” I believe coding is as much art as math (and yes, I see the beauty in math), so it’s also a very critical and personal thing to be told that I don’t like this thing you’ve created. It hurts!

But for the folks in plugin-a-palooza, they knew what they were getting into. Maybe they didn’t know it was with me, but they knew. They knew they’d be judged on merits and flaws. Most people who email me asking for those reviews don’t know that. They think maybe they’ll get a security review or a comment about how things could be better.

What they’re going to get is how I feel about their work. Did the art speak to me? Did I get confused when I used it? Did I enjoy it? Do I think it did what it set out to do? Do I think it fixes the issues it claims to address?

Most people really aren’t ready for the real answers. And as much as it’s nice to be able to be me for a while, I’m still always chained by the reality that my reviews come from someone who’s involved in the WordPress community. Just imagine my ‘testimonials.’

So in the interests of not starting fights, not giving myself headaches, and not making everyone grumpy, I will decline to review your code today.

19 June, 2015
Mailbag: Static Bars and z-index
Lindsey asks:

I found this post on your site (https://halfelf.org/2013/genesis-static-nav-bar/) and had a follow up question about it. My nav bar is now static and fixed to the top of my site, but for some reason a couple of things go over the top of it when I scroll, namely two AdSense ads and a related posts plugin’s images at the end of posts on single post pages. I would love any advice you may have on fixing this. I’m sure it must be something simple, but I can’t figure it out. Thanks!

It’s the z-index. If you’ve used Photoshop, you know about layers. Well, z-index is similar for webpages. It defines the ‘stack’ order, or what’s ‘on top’ of everything else.

Logically you want a video ‘on top’ of the CSS etc of the page, so most of the time this isn’t a problem. At the same time when we’re using CSS to position a menu, it gets … weird.

The basic idea of z-index is that any element with greater stack order is always on top of an element with a lower stack order.

Here’s the CSS I used for my floating menu:
```
.nav-primary {
    position:fixed;
    z-index:99;
    top: 0;
    width: 100%
}
```
The z-index on the WP toolbar (that black bar on the top of your site) is z-index: 99999; so you can change your CSS from 99 to 99998 and that should take care of it. We do want that toolbar to always win, after all.
12 June, 2015
Mailbag: Getting Started as a Freelancer
Neil asks:

I am a web technician and proficient in Wordpress. I’ve worked on a number of WP sites, as well as other types of scripts/sites. Some of my work has been volunteer, and assisted by Dreamhost’s non-profit hosting. Would you have any suggestions as to how or where one might be able to start in obtaining freelance work? I know it’s a bit presumptuous but I thought I’d ask- I’ve seen many of your posts in the Dreamhost forums helping out. Kindest Regards, Neil

I should preface this with a reminder that I’m not a freelancer for a reason. I hate the constant hustle of it.

I don’t think I’m really qualified to answer this one. But you know who is? Chris Lema. And you know who talked on the Matt Report about how to become a great freelancer?

But that doesn’t answer where one gets freelance work.
If I had to start from zero, I’d pick the WordPress Jobs Board and snag a couple people there. Chris Lema supports Codeable, though, so that’s also a really good pick.

Hey readers, who do you use?
5 June, 2015
Mailbag: Network Shared Media
Doug asks:

On the WP Forums (at https://wordpress.org/support/topic/multisite-with-one-media-library) you posted this comment:

Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) Half-Elf Support Rogue, Volunteer Forum Mod & Plugin Referee Posted 1 year ago # http://wordpress.org/plugins/network-shared-media/ Keep in mind, this is generally something that kills your site’s performance.

Unfortunately, the thread is closed so I can’t ask you to elaborate through the forum. So can you elaborate via email reply on exactly where or how the “performance is killed” as a result of installing & activating the `Network Shared Media` plug-in? Thank you, -Doug

The problem is that WordPress Multisite was built to be multiple separate sites. You used one install of WordPress, one install of all your themes and plugins, and one ‘user base,’ but outside of that, the sites are all separate. Which plugin is active is different, which theme is used is different, and most importantly your data is segregated.

Your data includes your media.

The concept of ‘sharing media’ is a great one. If you have a network, you would want to have a way to share all common media in a way that every site can call it and insert it. But the way most plugins (including the one mentioned above) go about it is by doing sql queries:
```
$blogs = $wpdb->get_results( $wpdb->prepare("SELECT blog_id, domain, path FROM $wpdb->blogs WHERE site_id = %d AND public = '1' AND archived = '0' AND spam = '0' AND deleted = '0' ORDER BY registered DESC", $wpdb->siteid), ARRAY_A );
```
The code, in and of itself, isn’t bad, but that’s just to get a list of sites on the network. Then you have to check if each user has access to upload files to the site. Then you have to use switch_to_blog to go to each site and load the images.

What happens if you have a lot of sites and a lot of images?

Your site is slow.

We’ve made a lot of improvements on that end, but extensive DB queries when you have to cross paths like that can be ‘expensive’ on a computational level. Not to mention those large DB queries can cause headaches if you use database caching. All that data has to be generated and cached on every load. That too will slow your server down.

Now this won’t always make your site slow, but if you use it and you end up with a slow site, I’m not surprised.

The next logical question, of course, is do I have suggestions or alternatives? I don’t. I actually do suggest people use that plugin if they need shared media. Or I suggest they don’t use Multisite.
29 May, 2015