While trying to setup TP-Link Deco W3600 mesh wifi devices, I found that it was easy to plug one of the devices into my existing wifi router. The Deco creates its own wifi network, however, instead of boosting the signal where it was plugged in. I tried to replace my router with the Deco, and…

I switched to Laravel Valet for local WordPress development on my Macbook in December 2019. I love it. I presented at January’s WordPress Lancaster meetup about how and why I made the move. This week, I’ve written some code that protects uploads to the WordPress Media Library. (Did you know that anyone can view uploads…

I recently bought my first mechanical keyboard. The COVID-19 pandemic means I’m switching between my Macbook and a Windows machine throughout the week at the same desk, and while I was comfortable typing on the Macbook, this HP Spectre keyboard and I do not get along. The differences in shortcuts for copy and paste alone…

Are you getting this error from Azure SQL Server? Login failed on ServerName.database.windows.net.DatabaseName Please verify that the shards are accessible and that the credential information affiliated with external data source ExternalDataSourceName is correct. When I ran into this error while migrating a SQL Server instance to Azure and designing External Tables, it was because the…

This post was written the first day I encountered this error on Azure SQL Server because I could not find any web page that contained this error message. If you’re getting the error, Computed columns are not supported with external tables for sharded data. while trying to create External Tables, remove the computed column definitions.…

The company where I work migrated to a new phone provider, and I am publishing the notes I’ve taken over the last few years before I delete them. Most of these instructions begin inside the Mitel Administration & Diagnostics software. How to reset a voicemail box password when someone forgets their password Go to Voice…

A few moments ago, I wanted to append an inline style to the theme’s stylesheet from within a plugin. This requires knowing the current theme’s stylesheet handle, so here is a function that finds that string. private function find_theme_stylesheet_handle() { global $wp_styles; foreach( $wp_styles->registered as $handle => $style_obj ) { if( $style_obj->src === get_template_directory_uri() .…

WordPress provides a filter hook, robots_txt, that dynamically generates robots.txt if the file does not exist. This filter allows developers to create unique robots.txt files for each site in a multisite network, since all the sites in the network share the same root directory (and therefore the same robots.txt file). If this filter is not…

While writing the companion piece, What It’s Like To Co-Organize Your First WordCamp, I realized that I had created a list of Twitter marketing tips that should really live in their own post. Here’s that. I run a number of Twitter accounts, and some people seem to enjoy following them. A few of them, @LititzBeerFest and @WordCampLanc promote…

I helped organize WordCamp Lancaster 2017. I was a rookie and had not worked on a WordCamp before. As soon as I had agreed to join the organizing team, I went searching for a post like this and didn’t find many. There are a few good ones about organizing a WordCamp in a city that…

If you are like me and have maintained a copy of Core FTP LE simply because there is no easy way to extract passwords from the application, follow these instructions to set yourself free. No download or payment required A lot of the solutions available cost money or require you to install software. This is…

Let us imagine you are developing an application in Visual Studio 2015, and you would like your project to have a prerequisite of the Access Database Engine redistributable. You may or may not have found this blog post that details how to create the bootstrapper package and where to put it on your system. The…