[SOLVED/FIXED] Apache + LetsEncrypt file ‘/etc/letsencrypt/live/…/fullchain.pem’ does not exist or is empty. Action ‘configtest’ failed.

January 25, 2019

I had setup a new Apache server and needed an SSL certificate so i went with the tried and true, quick and easy LetsEncrypt/certbot route. While testing if gzip was installed, i received errors running apachectl configtest. Never had this happened before. It seemed to be caused by the LetsEncrypt install. I probably wouldn’t have […]

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WordPress + ACF + Instagram Feed without API

November 29, 2018

With the the privacy climate these days — see Facebook’s woes with Cambridge Analytica — Instagram has finally enforced the API changes and limits they announced in January. After riding dirty with the feeds for the past few months (despite the summertime deadline), two sites’ feeds stopped working last week. Crap. I needed a quick fix; something […]

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I quickly deleted 16,000+ Tweets using Cardigan

November 16, 2018

Ideally i was looking for a free and easy way to delete most if not all of my Tweets for one of my old accounts. Scouring the web i found many articles on how to mass delete my Tweets, but they all referenced the same two or so services. All of which seemed shady, but […]

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Switching from Sublime Text to Visual Studio Code

November 1, 2018

Like many, if not most, web developers, my IDE of choice for the last half decade has been Sublime Text. Prior to ST, i was using TextWrangler and Notepad++; before that, it was NoteTab Light and code-only mode of Dreamweaver (shudders). Still odd that i switched to a quasi open source code editor created by […]

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LastPass alternative: Bitwarden password manager

October 4, 2018

Over the last few weeks i’ve been reading more and more about web and app developers who are creating cool things on Windows environments. Feeling left out, i unearthed my six-year-old HP laptop and upgraded it to Windows 10 so i could check out this Windows Linux Subsystem i kept hearing about. After installing and/or […]

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Choosing a VPN service and browser for desktop and Android/iOS

April 26, 2018

So, you’ve heard this “VPN” (Virtual Private Network) thrown around and how you should use it if you’re connecting to a strange WiFi network or you’re conducting sensitive work at the job that needs added protection. The simple answer for what is and why you should use a VPN is: private, secure (encrypted), dedicated connection […]

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How to fix a MacBook Pro keyboard and trackpad

April 19, 2018

Update: On November 2, 2018, using the DIY method, i successfully repaired the broken hardware of my MacBook Pro for $23.98 + tax. Drastic difference from the $400-500 estimate if i allowed the Mac Store folks to do it. At the end of this post i have appended what i did to fix the keyboard […]

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Firebase custom domain verification with Namecheap DNS

February 19, 2018

So i received a message that i still needed to verify my domain ownership — odd, because two weeks prior i thought i had covered my Firebase custom domain verification. I double-checked i followed the Google instructions verbatim, going so far as deleting and re-entering the records, yet after a few hours, still no luck. […]

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How End-to-End Encryption Works – A layman’s guide

March 17, 2017

All right. Here’s a simple explanation of how end-to-end encryption works. Recently there’s been a healthy amount of chatter in the news regarding WhatsApp, and i’ve noticed more and more of my contacts using (installing at least) Signal on their phones. This will give you an idea essentially of how our text message convos go when […]

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Compressing/Minifying MailChimp’s mc-validate.js

January 29, 2019

MailChimp has not be cooperative with helping developers speed up website loading by simply minifying their mc-validate.js file. There’s a growing thread on Twitter started over two — yes, 2! — years ago! Here’s what i did to stop receiving terrible grades on GT Metrix and Google’s PageSpeed Insights. Replace the //s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.mailchimp.com/js/mc-validate.js src in the […]

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Gzip compression – How to turn it on

January 27, 2019

Continuing with providing tips for website performance results — or just making sure we’re no longer getting a failing grade via performance reports from GTMetrix, Google’s PageSpeed Insights, or web.dev — here’s how to enable gzip compression on your Apache server. First, check if mod_deflate is installed and enabled. It should be installed and enabled […]

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Leverage Browser Caching – How to turn it on

January 26, 2019

So! If you’re a web developer like me, you unfortunately have to bow before performance reports from GTMetrix, Google’s PageSpeed Insights, and still-in-beta web.dev. Don’t get me wrong, the stuff they find are mostly good things, like making your site more accessible and noticeably speedier. But sometimes it can feel like you’re just running in […]

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Video Game-Playing Thoughts: Dragon Age: Inquisition (PS4)

November 14, 2018

Ahh. I’m loving this game. I legit only played about 35 minutes for the PS3 version a few years back. Seems to be a pattern with me the past few years: not playing games for long periods of time or giving them any real play-through. Dragon Age: Inquisition is an action role playing game with […]

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WordPress Developers: to use functions.php or a functionality plugin?

November 5, 2018

I first learned of the functionality plugin vs functions.php way of thinking either from a StackOverflow comment while searching for some elusive WP answer or via Dave Clements’s posts: Create Functions Plugin and Putting Things Where They Belong. Not sure it matters, but i like to attribute inspiration. Anywhoo… The more i’ve tackled WordPress projects, especially while […]

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Video Game-Playing Thoughts: Final Fantasy Type-0 HD (PS4)

October 20, 2018

Time to get back into Final Fantasy games via the physical copy of Final Fantasy Type-0 i had bought like a year ago from Game Stop. The story and cinematic scenes are engrossing, intense from the moment you hit “New Game”. Death, loss, and blood. Beautiful intro music while credits are rolling. Started playing this […]

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Fonts blocked by CORS policy on localhost: How to fix that

October 18, 2018

I’m using MAMP Pro and have a separate Host setup for each of my website projects. This let’s me navigate to local.mydomain.com instead of localhost:8888/mywebsitedirectory. You can easily setup local.mydomain.com to be a.b.c if you wanted; this is my convention for projects. Helps me separate local dev with production and sandbox/staging sites. Since i decided to serve […]

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How-to: delete “Icon?” icon\r files on your Mac

September 30, 2018

For the longest time these “Icon?” (or Icon\r) files kept popping up on my Mac without any rhyme or reason. I would manually delete them. Eventually i got fed up again when several popped up in my main Music folder and all its sub-directories. I googled a Terminal (bash) command to find and delete files […]

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[SOLVED/FIXED] WordPress Custom Shortcode Not Displaying or Breaks Page

April 25, 2018

So, i’m working locally on this site, tweaking my Wikipedia User Contributions Display plugin, and i noticed that some tweaks i pushed live are actually working fine, but locally they’re not (kinda backwards, i know). Heck, anything after the plugin shortcode doesn’t display–it actually breaks the site (footer scripts and other code fails to run). […]

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Removing article:tag from Yoast’s WordPress SEO plugin

March 29, 2018

Scroll down for the code since i’m a little long-winded on this post. Ye’ve been warned. Yoast’s WordPress SEO plugin is awesome at getting you quickly setup with adding Twitter Cards and Facebook OpenGraph data to your website. But over the latest iterations it’s either added superfluous meta data or removed the options to toggle […]

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I found the best WordPress activity log plugin: Stream

March 27, 2018

Some backstory: i’ve been developing several WordPress projects back-to-back or in parallel in the last few months, and once they’re ready to transfer from local dev environment to staging server, the content provided to me from clients or coworkers usually becomes stale, needing to be updated with increased frequency or in sporadic bulk edits, which […]

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We are closer and closer to Star Trek and The Jetsons

October 6, 2017

All things are moving faster towards a Star Trek and The Jetsons-esque reality: Google’s new Pixel Buds (wireless!) allow real-time language translation in your EAR; Amazon’s Echo and Google’s newly announced Home (and Home Mini) are full-house voice listening/activation devices to do ish throughout your abode. What’s awesome, amazing — and frickin’ freaky! — about […]

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[SOLVED/FIXED] brew update – Error: /usr/local must be writable!

August 28, 2017

So, you wanted to update homebrew with the command brew update but received a similar error below: Error: /usr/local must be writable! Simple fix is to run sudo chown -R $(whoami) /usr/local Your problem should now be fixed. If not, you might have ran into this issue that i’ve come across, too: Error: update-report should […]

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WordPress: You Changed the Site Address URL and now Blog Posts are Blank!

July 29, 2017

So you installed WordPress in a sub-directory because you want your URL to still be simple, such as installed here www.mydomain.com/wordpress-installed-here/ yet visitors will see www.mydomain.com when navigating your site, but after doing so your blog posts and pages show up as a white blank page. Not good. Luckily, there’s a simple fix! Just update […]

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Flickity is the Best Carousel Around—Period

April 11, 2017

I was in desperate need for a functioning yet robust, and most importantly, quick-to-install-and-deploy carousel/slider for a large project i was working on for my job. Perusing my job’s rival-of-sorts website, i dove into their code and learned they used Flickity, which i instantly fell in love with after reading its documentation and API. Several ways […]

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How Do Open Source Communities Govern Themselves?

March 23, 2017

Are you interested in governance in general as well as specifically to the Open Source world/community? Check out this read, How Do Open Source Communities Govern Themselves, the second part in a series about governance. It’s written by Randy Fay. This is the start of my Someone Else’s Good Read series of posts. I would like to […]

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[SOLVED/FIXED] MySQL Server Not Starting on MAMP for Mac

So if you’re like me, you do a lot of WordPress development locally and experience annoying issues. I use MAMP, personally, as do many others. One of these common headaches is the MySQL server not starting on MAMP for Mac; inexplicably stopping and whatever you try, it won’t start again. Here’s a fix that has worked […]

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[SOLVED/FIXED] WordPress Install: unknown character set utf8mb4 error

October 13, 2016

How to fix this “WordPress database error: [Unknown character set: ‘utf8mb4’] ~” error. Simply change “utf8mb4” to “utf8” in the Database Charset setting in your wp-config.php file. Voila. Update (2018.02.01): Do NOT follow any of that above. You’re going to want to keep the ‘utf8mb4’ under Database Charset in your wp-config.php file, but you’ll need […]

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