All posts by Keyboard

wordpress

How CM Tooltip glossary can slow down WordPress

If you’re using CM ToolTip glossary pro and noticed an abnormal decrease in page speed on your WordPress installation, that might be caused by an option set in CM ToolTip configuration. It came out my SQL database was full of transients, these entries created by some (usually bad coded) plugins to store data in order to increase SQL requests speed. It turned out the cache system used on CM Tooltip glossary did exactly the contrary in my case.

After few hours looking for a solution to my problem I’ve finally disabled the cache option as shown below :

Set the cache on off to avoid excessive transients creation in your SQL database

The site where it happened has few thousands of articles already published, so I’m guessing CM ToolTip glossary was parsing all of them when a user requested the page in order to find items that match the glossary index. SQL overload went so far that several hundreds of thousands transients were created and literally crashed my server after a while.

Clean transients manually and automatically

A plugin that really helped me to analyse how WordPress was reacting to these CM Tooltip glossary settings is Transient Cleaner. I strongly advise any wordpress user to use that plugin as a routine to periodically clean his database. Your site speed will feel the difference.

I also removed search engine plugin Ajax Search Pro,  it doesn’t work that well for me and made really bad sql requests.

Bad experience

Paypal bank account confirmation issue : two digits only

Confirming your bank account with Paypal can be a little bit disappointing sometimes. My last bad experience was about the amounts sent on my account that are supposed to be used through the confirmation process.

If Paypal sent you 0.06$ you have to enter 06 only. The text field used in their confirmation form is a two digits only and they don’t explain that. So don’t waste your time trying to enter 0.06, just use the last two digits (06 in this case) and you’re good to go.

PHP

Magpie RSS and special characters

Your site is not in english and you are trying to import an RSS feed by using the excellent Magpie RSS ? If the feed language is in french for instance you’ll probably get weird characters coming up on your display page.

The solution is pretty simple. Go in the folder where Magpie RSS is installed and look for rss_fetch.inc

Around line 357 set the default output and input encoding to UTF-8 like this :

  if ( !defined('MAGPIE_OUTPUT_ENCODING') ) {
 define('MAGPIE_OUTPUT_ENCODING', 'UTF-8');
 }
 
 if ( !defined('MAGPIE_INPUT_ENCODING') ) {
 define('MAGPIE_INPUT_ENCODING', 'UTF-8');
 }
wordpress

Disqus now forces Ads in its free version

That has to come one day. The famous commenting system that many WordPress administrators love has just announced that advertising will now come by default in its free version. If you want to remove theses ads, you’ll just have to pay 10$/month. A very fair way to thank its users who contribute to make the system famous.

Here’s the announcement :


Hi there,

We recently announced our plans for the new year including releasing new versions of Disqus with professional features. Disqus will always offer a free-to-use version that is supported by advertising. We are reaching out to you because you previously opted out of running advertising from Disqus.

Starting February 8, publishers running the free-to-use version of Disqus will be supported by advertising. Advertising will continue to be configurable for your site. We know that advertising is not the right fit for all publishers and that is why we are excited to offer publishers the option to pay a monthly subscription of $10 to remove advertising altogether.

We’d like to hear from you. If you are interested in the upgraded version of Disqus, please click below and we will reach out to you.

seo

How much does SimilarWeb Pro cost ?

You like playing with similarWeb to track your competitors and compare your site with others? Well if you want to go further and access to the full features this amazing tool can provide, you’ll have to pull out thousands of dollars a year.

Here’s a little answer I received from them :

“SimilarWeb is on average $12,000.  Exact pricing depends on how much data and which functions and features you would be needing.”

wordpress

SEO Ultimate Plus Upgrade : Is it worth it ?

Just a quick note to mention few of my wordpress settings have been lost during the upgrade from SEO Ultimate (free version) to SEO Ultimate Plus (premium version). Even if the authors indicate that no settings will be lost during the process I have to say that was not my case at all.

I followed the basic tutorial they provide on their site, which consists of simply desactivating and removing the old plugin and then activate the new using the license key sent by email. Among things I’ve lost : Link mask generator entries, Main title tags and Deep links.  Fortunately for me I had a backup and managed to recover by copy/pasting most of these lost settings. This may have been caused by another cache plugin (WP super cache) but I’m not too sure.

How to keep your previous settings from SEO Ultimate (free version)

If this happens to you you can follow these simple steps:

1) deactivate (don’t delete) SEO Ultimate+ and reinstall SEO Ultimate (FREE version).
2) go to Settings > Export > SEO Ultimate > get both the dat file and also export the deeplinks.
3) then, after you have the .dat file, deactivate SEO Ultimate and activate SEO Ultimate+
Then once you activate the license again, then go to Settings > Import > import the settings > import the deeplinks.
Anyway, if you’re wondering if the upgrade is necessary I would say yes as the classic free SEO Ultimate is apparently going depreciated.  So it’s a kind of a forced update I would say. Considering Yoast as an alternative could be a good option if you’re tired of SEO Ultimate. I personally think it does the job though and it’s still an excellent plugin.
Additionally  if you noticed that your Google Review Snippets don’t work anymore on your review articles then upgrade to the premium version and they will appear. Money magic.

A good customer service

SEO Ultimate Plus  gives at least an excellent customer support. Emails are mainly answered by Jeffrey within 48 hours maximum, which is not that bad.  I’m happy so far with all the answers I got from him. Some of my questions pointed out technical issues, such as the impossibility to get the Open Graph settings taken directly from the post itself without having to edit them manually each time you post something. Mass editing can also be a real pain if you have like me thousands of articles stored in your database.
Some of my feedbacks seem to have been taken into consideration for further updates. Let’s see how this plugin grows now it’s not free anymore.
wordpress

The best translation plugin for WordPress

I was recently looking for a wordpress translation plugin and had a lot of pain trying to identify which plugin was the best for me. My requirements were a sub domain solution that should come with a management interface in order to deal easily with my different translators and follow up the different jobs they were assigned to.

To my mind the best translation plugin for wordpress is WPML.

I don’t have any affiliation link with them so don’t look for a particular element that would push me to promote this WPML.  I’ve been using their plugin for few months now, to translate a news site into 4 different languages and have to admit this plugin works like a charm. WPML just do the job, is reliable and very well coded and documented.

There is no secret for such a quality, you have to pay, but believe me the investment worth it.

One thing to remember is not translating your content using Google translate in order to avoid any spam score to your pages. My advice : Hire real translators. You can find cheap ones on Fiverr.com and with a bit of time select the right people you can rely on. WPML integrates a full translation management interface that gives the ability to your translators to directly login onto your site and edit your articles.

Very nice one.