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Cheaper WordPress Solutions

You Probably Don’t Need That Expensive Plugin

Solutions That Don’t Cost Megabucks

Yes, I’m a cheapskate. For good reason. As a developer for social enterprises, aka nonprofits, I’ve learned you can almost always find a cheaper, or free, solution to a problem.

One doesn’t necessarily need the highest priced theme or plugin that’s available. In the following website posts, I’ll show you show to save money by virtue of my experience.

Query Monitor Success

Query Monitor solved my problem After helping a friend test drive a couple of plugins, one of my sites started behaving badly. The load time went from 2 seconds to 5, which is not acceptable. Everything worked fine, I just had this lag that I couildn’t figure out. Suspicious that…

Do You Want to Code Forever?

Life On the Off-ramp Since I’ve retired (life’s career off-ramp), my attitude has changed on a lot of things: politics, self reflection, work habits (that’s a joke). With the Covid Crisis, life is more like having a wreck heading down the off-ramp. But, things go on, as they must. Like…

Add an Image to Header with Grid

Have you ever had the desire to add an image, in addition to a logo, to your header? I haven’t seen a theme yet that allows for it. Yes, you can add a block above or below the header, but what if you want it in line with your logo…

Better Breadcrumbs–A Plugin Comparison

Breadcrumbs can be so frustrating, yet so useful. They give users a shortcut to other parts of your website, as well as a snapshot of the site hierarchy. But, you have to implement them correctly. This is how I accidentally discovered that, and a neat trick by comparing two plugins:…

Vendor roulette

Two days ago, a client reported a problem that I suspected was on the web host side. They couldn’t upload media files. This has happened before with Dreamhost, and it was resolved by calling them, and having them clear a cache somewhere. I chatted with a support lady for 90…

Officer, why are you in my room with a flashlight?

I was talking with my landlady last night, and she asked me if I was upset about the cops coming into my room. Say what? This is another episode of my crazy dealings with renting living quarters in Maryland. Some of you may remember a previous landlady’s son being thrown…

Linux update

A while back, I posted a story about my adventures with Linux on an older PC. I was stymied at the time, but I have made significant progress since then. The memory boards I had ordered (and didn’t work), were replaced–good job, memorystock.com, and they fit just fine this time….

Linux will revive an old PC? Not so fast.

I bought several old notebook PC’s a while back, specifically for the purpose of giving them to my grandkids. I wanted to see if I could retrofit them as replacements for newer PC’s, sans Windows. Because, let’s face it, Microsoft has effectively tied their newest OS to any new machine…

A new direction on the job hunt

Okay, I’ve moved through the first two iterations of my job hunt–ramping up my profiles on Google and LinkedIn, and refining my resume so I have multiple versions. That looked promising for a while. On the upswing? I actually got two local job interviews last month. Granted they were referrals…