A web development/programming blog providing info, tips, and tricks on programming languages, scripting, Linux, MySQL and more
Posts tagged WordPress
Improve the performance of the WordPress plugin Statpress (and your blog)
Jul 3rd
I haven’t hid my feelings about the poor performing StatPress plugin for WordPress. However, performance issues aside, I will say that the information this plugin provides is useful, and detailed. I’ve been running this plugin for 8 months now and have a good sized data set (125,000+ rows of data). While I myself have not experienced as many issues with this plugin as I have seen on other blogs, it is mainly because I am running my blog on a virtual dedicated server as opposed to shared hosting. I have seen smaller data sets than mine cause problems on shared hosting servers.
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WordPress Woot Watcher
Feb 17th
This is my first WordPress plugin for public release. This plugin was developed in conjunction with Lee Thompson of MySQLHow2.com. WordPress Woot Watcher, will monitor and check woot, shirt.woot, kids.woot, wine.woot and sellout.woot for new products every 10 hours. When a woot-off is launched, the widget will update the woot product every 30 seconds. WordPress Woot Watcher is a sidebar widget that enables select the woot sites you want to monitor in the administration section. The default installation selects woot.com only.
Information:
-
@name WordPress Woot Watcher @filename light.gif @filename readme.txt @filename wpwootwatcher.php @filename wpwootwatcher_admin.php @description Monitor and check products on woot.com, shirt.woot, kids.woot, wine.woot and sellout.woot @authors Lee Thompson, Mark Stoecker @version 1.1
Installation:
- Click here to Download WordPress Woot Watcher
- Unzip and upload the wpwootwatcher folder into your /wp-content/plugins directory.
- Activate plugin in your plugin administration section.
Configuration:
- Place widget in your sidebar.
- Select the woots you want to watch in “Settings > Woot Watcher”.
Bugs:
- No known bugs at this time.
To Do:
- Planned layout change so all woots are not displayed in a single line.
- Make default refresh time 12:00 am central time, the time at which woot.com updates
- Display plugin in sidebar whether widgets are used or not.
Change Log:
- 1.1 -
- Initial Release
Previous Versions:
- None
Donate:
- This plugin is developed in our own free time and released freely to the public. If you enjoy this plugin, please help support it’s continued development with a kind donation via the link below:
If you have comments or suggestions, please share them below and they may be included in future versions of the script.
Our first WordPress Plugin: WordPress Woot Watcher
Feb 17th
In conjunction with Lee Thompson of MySQLHow2.com, we have released our first WordPress Plugin:
WordPress Woot Watcher
WordPress Woot Watcher, will monitor and check woot, shirt.woot, kids.woot, wine.woot and sellout.woot for new products every 10 hours. When a woot-off is launched, the widget will update the woot product every 30 seconds. WordPress Woot Watcher is a sidebar widget that enables select the woot sites you want to monitor in the administration section. The default installation selects woot.com only.
For all the details, installation, and more, visit the WordPress Woot Watcher page.
WordPress Plugins
Feb 17th
This page is for the WordPress Plugins that I have developed or assisted in development. WordPress is a state-of-the-art publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.
More simply, WordPress is what you use when you want to work with your blogging software, not fight it.
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Improve Your WordPress Blog’s Performance With this Database Hack
Jan 9th
**UPDATE**: After further research of the query below, I have found some additional information. The query was first introduced in WP 2.3 and is used for comment flood protection. I am currently running WP 2.9.1 and do not have the issue as the query has been modified and using a proper index to assist with the query speed. If you are using the latest version of WP, you won’t have this problem. I am still trying to find exactly when the query was changed so you all can know where you stand. However, I know that some people don’t upgrade their WP version due to changes they have made which upgrading will break. If you are on an older version of WP and have a large number of comments (tens to hundreds of thousands), this query will help improve your comment post times. If you are familiar enough with MySQL, look at the wp_comments table in your database. If there is an index on the `comment_date_gmt` column, you are ok. If not, read on, and run the query below as adding an index to the `comment_date_gmt` column won’t work as your query does not have that column in it’s WHERE clause.
One of daily responsibilities as a database administrator is maintaining the health of our shared hosting environment. In doing so, I deal with plenty of WordPress blogs daily. The one thing I have noticed is that many WordPress plugins are very poorly designed and can cause problems in a shared hosting environment. WordPress at it’s core though, is very well designed, although I have noticed some areas of possible improvement. As I come across common issues, I will post the fixes for them here for all to use.
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Avoid WordPress StatPress plugin like the plague!
Dec 2nd
** Update: I have released my first set of updates to the StatPress plugin. Check out the post for code to improve your blogs performance of StatPress
The WordPress plugin StatPress is an absolutely horrid plugin to use. Yes, I said it…horrid! After seeing many people praising this plugin on their sites, this is a bold statement.
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New website launch: OneWordSurveys.com
Oct 19th
Desert Web Designs is pleased to announce the launch of our latest site:
OneWordSurveys.com
The Site
OneWordSurveys.com is a site as simple as it’s concept: Simple (one word) answers to simple questions. The site poses simple questions to users, all with one word answers. Questions like “Soda or Pop?”, “Coke or Pepsi?”, “Biscuits or Muffins?”, and much, much more. The site also provides a means for users to submit their own surveys as well.
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How to Insert Google Ads into the Content of your WordPress Post
Jun 15th
Have you ever wondered how to get your Google Ads inside your post content like I have below? A couple of days ago, I was trying to figure out how to insert Google Adsense Ads directly into my post content without pasting the whole Adsense code. I came across an article that detailed exactly what I was looking for: Insert Google Adsense Code Anywhere In Your Wordpress Article.
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How to fix a broken WordPress RSS feed
Jun 9th
Looking over my analytics for my blog the last couple days, I’ve noticed I have got a couple of referral visits from my web design company website. I added a FeedBurner widget to the front of that site highlighting my 5 most recent blog posts. Out of curiosity, I was browsing on that website and notice the Widget stated “Watch this space for future items!” Well that was just weird to me since I post every day. Upon further research, FeedBurner was showing an error “There is an issue that must be addressed with your source feed for the feed”. When I went to my actual feed URL, I got the following error:
XML Parsing Error: XML or text declaration not at start of entity
Location: http://www.poundbangwhack.com/feed/
Line Number 2, Column 1:<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
^

