Posts in the category “WordPress”

While doing routine troubleshooting I noticed an error appearing multiple times in the server log (a truncated version is replicated below).

WordPress database error Unknown column 'actioned_text' in 'field list' for query SELECT ... FROM wc_admin_note_actions WHERE ...

Messages in the server log are not necessarily problematic but when the same one is logged multiple times that’s probably a sign to start investigating.

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Did you know you can disable Jetpack’s Downtime Monitoring module using the ever-so-useful WP-CLI? Perhaps you’re doing some routine Website Maintenance and don’t want to be barraged by emails alerting you to the planned website downtime (and if you’re the type to never do maintenance on your website, you really should think about starting).

As divisive as the Jetpack WordPress plugin is, the Downtime Monitoring module is an easy, free way to be alerted when your WordPress website goes down. The problem is that Jetpack has been very indecisive about how to allow users to disable the Downtime Monitoring module.

You can disable the Jetpack Downtime Monitoring module from the WordPress Administration. Sometimes…

Currently you can toggle it from your WordPress Admin but previous versions redirected you to the linked WordPress.com account where, in my experience anyway, it failed more often than not. So if you’ve been having trouble disabling the Downtime Monitor and if you happen to have WP-CLI installed (why wouldn’t you?), you can use this nifty command:

wp jetpack module deactivate monitor

Simple, isn’t it? Just don’t forget to turn it back on when you’re done!

Sometimes all you need is a simple plugin to add custom CSS to WordPress websites. Heaven knows there’s no lack of them in the WordPress repository.

I prefer to keep all CSS in the theme’s folder but sometimes I need to add some custom CSS on-the-fly without having to go through the trouble of updating the actual theme code. Maybe the client has reported a visual anomaly or I spotted something off while browsing their website. Either way, it’s much easier to log into the WordPress admin and add the CSS code. Migrating it to the theme can be done at a properly scheduled time.

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The Adminimize WordPress Plugin is one of those things I wish I had found sooner. To protect our clients from themselves, we remove and block access to certain WordPress Admin pages that we feel could accidentally allow them to mess up their website. We use to do this through a combination of WordPress Roles and custom code that had to be painstakingly collected and tested. Most, if not all, that code is now redundant thanks to Adminimize.

There are lots of things in the WordPress admin area that your users don’t need to see or use. [The Adminimize WordPress] plugin help [sic] you to hide unnecessary items from WordPress admin area.
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The SearchAutocomplete WordPress Plugin does one thing and only one thing. That’s right, the plugin adds auto-complete to your WordPress search. And if your WordPress search is powered by Relevanssi you’ll be happy to know that SearchAutocomplete can query your Relevanssi index. Neat!

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This article was updated on 26th September 2022.

When you’re still developing your WordPress website you usually want to keep things under wraps. Here is a list of WordPress plugins that will help support your websites while they are still in development.

Prevent development websites from updating WordPress: Advanced Automatic Updates

Advanced Automatic Updates

Advanced Automatic Updates gives you the option of preventing your WordPress core from updating in your development website. This will help minimize the risk of functionality breaking when things update. You have the option of completely disabling all updates, enabling major version updates or enabling security updates.

(Update 26th September 2022) Automatic Updates are a bit more complex than they used to be but not by much. To disable all Automatic Updates (core, plugins & themes) add the following line to your wp-config.php file:

define( 'AUTOMATIC_UPDATER_DISABLED', true );

Check out Configuring Automatic Background Updates to learn how you can customize the automatic update behaviour.

Protect development websites from being seen: WP Maintenance Mode

WP Maintenance Mode

There are a lot of “Under Construction” plugins available but I keep going back to WP Maintenance Mode. This plugin will display a customizable “Under Maintenance” message to all non-Admin users who have are not logged in. You can also select which WordPress users you want to grant access to.

An additional benefit of the plugin is that it keeps search engine crawl bots at bay too. You can allow them to crawl the development website or block them with a 503 HTTP response.

Fun fact: This is the plugin I use when doing routine website maintenance.

Get (some) Jetpack functionality without connecting to WordPress.com: Unplug Jetpack

Without getting into an argument about Jetpack’s bloat-factor, Unplug Jetpack gives you access to some Jetpack functionality without connecting to WordPress.com. Just install the plugin, activate it and… that’s all really.

(Update 26th September 2022) Unplug Jetpack hasn’t been updated in 3 years. While it still works (as of writing) it uses deprecated code which may one day cease to function. Fortunately Jetpack has an Offline Mode which you can enable by adding the following line to your wp-config.php:

define( 'JETPACK_DEV_DEBUG', true );

When enabled there will be a notification on the Jetpack Dashboard.

There’s also a filter hook if you prefer using that. Check out the previous link to Jetpack’s Offline Mode to learn more.

Stop emails from sending: Stop Emails

Stop Emails

I’ve only recently discovered Stop Emails and haven’t put it through it’s paces yet but this plugin will (you guessed it) stop emails from sending. Note that the plugin only stops emails sent using WordPress’s wp_mail() function. Any emails sent through PHP’s mail() function will still go through.

True story: I was once testing a custom function which just so happened to send emails to a couple accounts I have with Yahoo! Mail and Mail.com. I must have sent well over 3 dozen emails within the span of an hour to test things out causing Yahoo! to think I was trying to spam the account. To this day all, emails sent from that development website domain is blocked by Yahoo.

Now this was a head-scratcher: the BackupBuddy settings on 5 of my client websites simply reset for no apparent reason. And that means the websites were not being automatically backed up. Not good.

After chatting with iThemes Support (the people who make BackupBuddy), I learned that connectivity issues between the website and database can fool BackupBuddy into thinking there are no settings causing the plugin to revert to defaults. Connectivity issues could be due to DDoS attacks or a problem with the hardware. iThemes said they are aware of this issue and have built in more checks but as is life they can’t account for every single scenario.

Fortunately I caught the problem during a routine maintenance check on a client’s website. BackupBuddy now comes with a way to export the plugin settings so it’s a good idea to save a copy just in case.

It took me a while to really grasp the power of WordPress’ Actions and Filters. Now I love using them and have recently discovered how they can be used to generate the correct Schema data depending on what the WordPress Loop is generating.

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I’ve been using BlockBadQueries on all my WordPress websites for quite some time now. And I just realized BlockBadQueries Pro was released in June. The Pro version offers more minute customization options than the free version though if you just want to set-and-forget I suggest sticking with the free version.

BlockBadQueries is based on the 5G Blacklist 2013 and the 6G Beta. So you could certainly copy the rules into your .htaccess file if (assuming you’re comfortable with Apache commands & regular expressions) you want to customize the rules for free.

Over the past few months I’ve been using a lot of what I call Page Builders, WordPress plugins that come with a set of modules which you drag-and-drop into a grid-based layout. I haven’t used, nor could I possibly use, all the available Page Builder plugins but here is what I have played around with:

Of course, there are a lot more Page Builders than these. You also have Visual Composer., Startup Framework, Qards… the list goes on.

I am not going to be reviewing the Page Builders I have used. Rather I want to share my thoughts on them after having gained some experience using them.

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