In this post I skimmed through some of the “20 Best WordPRess Events plugins” and whittled the list down to five. These are based on the standard requests I get from my clients, which generally tend to require:
Stripe integration
Multilingual support
Calendar integration (iCal or Google)
I also use Elementor on alot of sites, so my personal preferences is for a plugin that is Elementor compatible.
Of those listed below I’ve used Amelia before, but that has been for short events bookings, like language lessons or a short consultation slots of 30 minutes or one our, such as those typically associated with a hairdresser or accountant or a fitness studio rather than for paid for events that take place over one or many days. The list below is put together specifically with half-, full- or multi-day events in mind.
Events Organiser Pro
Interface looks dated. I didn’t like the demo on the site.
This plugin is very reasonably priced at 49 USD and uses WooCommerce for payments etc., meaning that there is no additional cost for Stripe payments. The only complication is that you have to have a unique product for each event.
This is a very tidy-looking plugin but is lacking a few features you might need, such as WooCommerce integration and the ability to book recurring appointments and packages.
Why use an Events Plugin on your WordPress site
Most plugins (any worth paying for) will automatically generate the appropriate Schema tags for your events. Schema as essential code that is ready by search engines that identifies the type of content on the page: in this case, you want the search engine to know this is an event with a start and end time, a title, description, and a price.
All computers start to run slowly as they age. This isn’t because they age (not like we do!) but typically because they fill up with junk that puts pressure on system resources. As new computers become faster and more resource intensive, our older machines start to struggle. Instead of rushing to the nearest computer shop for the latest and greatest, keeping on top of the clutter will help squeeze more life out of your old machine.
First Steps – Back everything up
Before doing anything like this is it’s important to have a full backup. If you’re using iCloud (or another Cloud service) to backup your files and photos, check that this is fully sync’d.
Then make a backup using Time Machine or another backup tool that will work with your Mac.
With the backup step completed, you can start to delete things and clean up unwanted files but first… restart your Mac. This is something Mac users rarely do – it’s not strictly needed in day-to-day usage – but when you do a full restart, which shuts the system down fully, the logs are cleared and updated and system apps are refreshed: it’s a simple step that can make things run more smoothly.
Once your Mac has started up again, you’re ready to clean things up.
Check and Update the Disk Space Settings
Another first step is check the disk space you have available. This will give you a useful “before” to compare to your efforts “after” you’ve cleaned things up.
First click on the Apple icon (top left of the screen) and then select About This Mac.
Select Storage, then make a note of the available space.
Click Manage to check/change the settings for this Mac. This may take a few seconds while the tool runs through the setup on your machine.
Here you can select four options:
Store in iCloud – to determine how the iCloud connection is managed. For slow systems it’s best to set things up so that only the most recent files are on your computer and the rest are stored in iCloud.
Optimize Storage – definitely set this so that old TV shows etc. are deleted. Any you’ve paid for will still be accessible via iTunes and keeping on your system will take up a considerable amount of space. Unless you send a lot of emails with attachments you can leave that option alone.
Reduce Clutter – we’ll leave that one as we’re going to look at other ways to clean up all the old junk files.
With that out of the way, you’re ready to do some cleanup.
Reduce the Applications that Launch on Startup
When an application installs, quite often they default to opening in the background on startup so it’s ready and waiting, just in case you need it. However, some of these tools are both resource intensive AND rarely used, in reality. You can reduce the load on your machine by disabling automatic startup. To do this:
Open System Preferences, then select Users & Groups, and then click on your username.
Select Login Items and check through the list of programs that are set to start when you login.
If there are any you don’t need (or rarely use) just click the “–” symbol below the list. This will remove them.
Clean Up your Desktop
Just like in the real world, a clutter desk can make things hard work! If you’re using your desktop to store your files and folders, you need to stop right away! Each file stored there uses RAM, which the processor needs to use to work effectively: the more RAM taken up by your desktop files, the less there is for your applications. Files, documents, photos, etc. should all be stored in the Documents section (in Finder). The desktop should only really be used for shortcuts to files and folders that are stored on another part of the Mac. Likewise, you may find you have redundant files here that you can delete: installation packages that can be cleaned up and other files that you dropped there temporarily and forgot to clean up.
Go through the Desktop and delete any used files.
Open Finder and start to move files, photos, folders, etc from the Desktop to your Documents folder. If you need to access them quickly from the desktop, just create a shortcut.
Remove Old Downloads
The Downloads folder typically stores a lot of files that we use once or twice then forget about. You can free up a considerably amount of space by going through this folder and deleting old and unused files. If you sort by date you can go as far back as your first undeleted download and start there.
Run Clean My Mac
Many of these steps can be done manually, or you can use a tool like Clean My Mac to make things easier. The steps in this article are based around the use of Clean My Mac, which can be bought (by subscription) here for 39.95 euros.
When the scan is completed, click Review Details to see what exactly CleanMyMac has found.
Most of the sections below will be covered in this scan. You can just work through each item one-by-one or go straight to the instructions below to cleanup specific areas of the system.
Clear your Cache and other Junk Files
The cache is a repository for temporary files that are needed in the background to complete certain tasks while you work. An example is files that are downloaded from your browser to speed it up while you are viewing the internet. The cache serves a very useful purpose BUT it does need to be cleared, or just like any other place you regular dump stuff, it can clog things up.
Click Scan and let the application run. When it’s finished, you’ll see how much space can be cleaned up.
Click Clean to remove all the junk from your machine.
Done!
Run the Maintenance and Optimisation Tools
Two great features in Clean My Mac are the Optimisation and Maintenance sections.
In the Maintenance section, select (as a minimum) Free Up RAM, Free Up Purgeable Space, and Run Maintenance Scripts. Just these three options alone should improve performance, especially if you’ve never run this tool before. To run the tools, just select them (tick the box) and then click Run. That’s it!
Now we’ve cleaned it up we can look at Speed Optimisation.
This tool looks at Login Items, Launch Agents, Hung Applications, and Heavy Consumers. Click the button to open the list of recommendations and decide, based on how often you use them, whether you need them at all, to clean things up.
If you followed the steps in this article you will already have cleaned up many of the startup items, but you may find other application here that you missed or that you had forgotten about.
In Conclusion…
Once you’ve been through all these steps you’ll have done the best you can to keep things running smoothly. Don’t wait 5 years to do it again! Make it part of your “spring cleaning routine” and do it whenever you feel things are slowing down.
Google Translate has it’s good and bad points: as translation tools go it’s not perfect but it is very convenient. One of the little-known features of Google Translate is that, in addition to translating web pages or blocks of text, it can also be used to translate your text and PDF documents.
Click the Browse your computer button and find the file you want to translate then click Open. Your document will appear as in the screenshot below.
Click the Translate button – then wait. After a short time a new window containing the translated document will open. That’s it!
This is such a simple tool to use but how many of us know about it? You can use it for many standard text-based document formats, including Word (doc and docx), Open Office (odf), PDF, PowerPoint (ppt and pptx), Excel (xls and xlsx), Postscript (PS), and Rich Text Format (rtf), which should cover most bases.
Have you used Google Translate for your documents? How helpful was it? Are there other better tools out there that you would recommend. Share your thoughts in the comments below!
Following on from the post about what’s involved in maintaining your WordPress website, this post shows you how to identify any updates that are needed and then work through them. The most important step, before doing anything (and there is a step in the procedure below to ensure you don’t forget!) is to make sure you have a current backup. Things do sometimes go wrong and being able to restore your site fast is vital.
With that warning placed ahead of any changes we’re about to make, let’s get started…
A guide to updating your WordPress core, theme and plugins: step-by-step with a little bit of nagging about the importance of a backup.
Login to your WordPress Dashboard
For this you will need an account with Admin-level permissions. As soon as you have access to the Dashboard you will any updates will be shown next to the Updates and Plugins options as a red dot with a number, as in the example below.
Find out whether there are updates
If you click on Updates you will see a list of everything that needs to be updated. This will include any WordPress core updates, your themes, and also plugins.
In this example there are 17 updates pending – but what are they?
What updates are required?
If a WordPress Core update is required (this is the software used to run WordPress) you will see an alert similar to the one shown above.
Scroll down the page and everything that is ready to be updated is listed there.
If you see anything listed on this page, updates are definitely needed.
BUT don’t do anything yet. First we need to make a backup.
Backup your installation
If you’re working on the Live version of your site (rather than a local copy or a staging site) it’s imperative that you take a backup before proceeding. There are various ways to do this, for example, using UpdraftPlus (from the WordPress dashboard) or using Softaculous or a backup tool (from your hosting account cPanel).
If you don’t already have a method for creating site backups you must set that up before doing anything updates.
With your site all backed up, you can move on to the next step.
Update WordPress
With your backup complete, return to the Updates page and click Update Now under the heading “An updated version of WordPress is available”. If you don’t have any Core updates to do, skip ahead to the next step.
Update Theme(s)
If you scroll on past the Plugin list you’ll see the list of any Themes you have installed on your site that need to be updated. In this case the site has just the main theme used on the site (OceanWP) and one of the default themes.
To update them: Click Select all and then click the Update Themes button.
On the subject of Themes, you really don’t need to keep old themes, such as any that you trialled and then disguarded, for example, or all the defaults that comes with a clean WordPress installation. It’s worth keeping one of the default, as they can be handing for troubleshooting issues – particularly after updating your site! – but the rest can and should be deleted since they don’t serve a useful purpose.
Update Plugins
Next you can start working through the list of plugins.
Each listing will show the change in the version numbering for the plugin with a link to the version details and also state compatibility with WordPress.
Note also that if there are any issues with a plugin’s compatibility, you’ll see an alert here, as in the last example shown above, which has flagged a PHP compatibility issue (check this blog post for help with this).
Now go through the list updating each plugin. You can do these all at once (not recommended), one at a time (ideal but can take a while) or in batches, determined by how “safe” you think they are. Generally I update the less invasive plugins in batches then the more integrated ones, like page builders, on-at-a-time.
That’s it!
All being well you won’t have had any issues and your site is working perfectly, just as before with the added bonus that it’s now up-to-date, meaning it’s safe and secure.
If you did have any problems, what to do?
In the next post I’ll go through some of the issues that sometimes come up when updating your site – and suggest ways to resolve those same issues.
If you’re running a WordPress site and have a self-hosted setup (so you pay for hosting that isn’t with wordpress.com) you may have noticed a warning about your PHP version being out of date. If you’re seeing this, what should you do?
Updating it is relatively simple to do if you follow the steps below.
First, back up your site! You can use a plugin for this but the safest way is to download the SQL database and make a copy of the files from the server.
Next, you can install a plugin like PHP Compatibility Checker to check the compatibility of your plugins. Most will be fine but the odd one may not be happy with the current version of PHP (v7.4 at the time of writing.)
Fix any errors, either by updating the plugins with issues or replacing them (obviously there may be some work involved if issues come up.)
Next login to your site’s cPanel and find the section for the PHP version. You can do this yourself or, if you’re not sure about DIYing it, open a support ticket and ask tech support to help. If you’re with a reputable hosting company they’ll do it for you. Find the dropdown that shows the PHP version you are currently running and change it to the latest version. Save your changes.
When all this is done, login again to your WP Dashboard and check things are working. In 99/100 cases you’ll have no issues.
That’s it!
If you’re not confident doing this for yourself you can always get in touch and we’ll do it for you.
This tutorial will walk you through the steps to take to create a new email account for a domain you own using your cPanel dashboard.
Total Time:5 minutes
Login to your cPanel account
Go to https://yourdomain.com/cpanel and enter your login credentials (username and password).
Open the Email Accounts Area
Scroll down to the EMAIL section and click Email Accounts.
Click Create
Click the blue + Create button to open the next screen.
Create the new account
1. Select the domain to use for the email account from the Domain list. 2. Add the username. This is the bit that goes before the “@” of the email address, so you might put “hello” to create a new email account hello@yourdomain.com. 3. Enter a password to use for this new account. Remember to make a note of it. 4. Set a storage space limit. It is recommended to NOT change this from the recommended default. 5. Leave everything else as-is and click the blue + Create button.
Access your email
With the email account created you can log out of cPanel (just close the browser window). Your email account is now ready to use.
You can access it one of three ways: – via cPanel (just click on the Check Email button next to the email address in the list of email accounts.) – using your browser, using the web address yourdomain.com/webmail. – by setting up POP/SMTP or IMAP access from an email client such as Outlook, Gmail, or Mail.
I was recently asked by a client to set up a some email signature templates that would work alongside her newly launched website and related branding. Great idea!
As a consequence I researched a bunch of tools that enable this and I ended up signing up to Scribe so I could test it before recommending it (or not). Here’s my review of Scribe.
The Brief
My client was specifically looking for a tool that would enable her to have a single branded email footer that could be used by her and members of her team. Each individual had a different computer setup and preferred email tool, with some on Apple, others on Outlook, and then various combinations of webmail and Gmail. This meant the solution would need to work across various platforms.
Having a reviewed a few other tools I decided, for the price, Scribe would be worth a look so signed myself up on a lifetime deal. For this price I get:
Lifetime access to Scribe
All future plan updates
GDPR compliant (partner verified)
60-day money-back guarantee, no matter the reason
Calls-to-action (CTAs) and banners
Analytics tracking
One-click installation
Co-workers signature personalization
Sounds like a lot of good stuff!
First Impressions
My first impression was very good! It’s a cloud-based tool so I just logged in with the email address I used for the purchase (via AppSumo). Once logged in via https://app.scribe-mail.com I have access to comprehensive looking “dashboard”.
The Departments View in the Scribe Admin Dashboard
As you can see, I had the option to create deparments, which would mean I could create variations on my main signature for different teams. If I have co-workers to add (currently I don’t) I can assign them to one of the departments I create. For now it’s just me, so I don’t need this featured – but it’s useful to have for the future.
Next in the menu is the Email Signature configuration, which is the reason for me testing this out. There are few more options here, but it’s pretty self-explanatory: on the left is a form to fill out, with your name, job title, logo, etc. and on the right is how it will look. There are options for changing the colors for the phone, address and social media icons, and various font optiotns. I changed from the default to Montserrat, which matches the paperwork I sent out (invoices, proposals, etc.)
Customizing the Email Signature in the Scribe Dashboard
You can see at the bottom of this screen there are options to add calls-to-action, promotional banners, and a special Covid-19 banner. What’s great about these is that they are trackable, so if you do put one of these on there you will have access to stats tracking. I think that’s a really great featured in these days when mailing lists and client communications are such an important part of promoting your business.
And, of course, if you don’t want to use these features, you don’t have to.
Other configuration options include the classic or minimal layouts.
Classic Template
Minimal Template
The other section of the dashboard are there for you to add Coworkers, who you can then assign to departments and create unique signatures for, and also to track your analytics and manage your account. If you have questions or feature request, you can click on the Feedback Board and submit them.
In Settings there are also some interesting features that include integrations (currently just Mixmax), enabling or disabling the tracking cookie feature (disabling this will disable analytics if you have any CTA buttons on your signature), and also the option to configure the tool so that the email signature is “sent” using your custom domain.
And that’s pretty much it.
Using your custom signature
Once you’ve set everything up it couldn’t be easier to implement your new signature.
Just go into the Signature section and click the Install Signature button at the bottom of the page. This gives you various options that include:
Copy HTML code
Copy Gmail code
Copy Outlook code
Copy Outlook.com code
Then you just paste it in.
If you’re not sure what to do with this code once you’ve copied it, try the relevant link below for an explanation. If you need help, get in touch!
I like the interface – it seems pretty intuitive and doesn’t have a vast number of options, so I don’t think it will be overwhelming to a non-techie user.
The result is clean and fresh. It’s easy to customise – with a logo, avatar, photo, or custom colors – and, as long as you are familiar with the signature tools in your preferred mail app, easy to install.
My only gripe – and this is something I raised a ticket with them about – is that it doesn’t work 100% in Gmail because Gmail doesn’t support a full set of custom fonts; ironic given the font I use is a free Google font! What do I mean by this? Well, in Scribe I set my signature to use Montserrat, which matches my branding (well, the latest branding that is yet to make it to my website!) – however, in Gmail the email signature is displayed using the default Serif font. Not what I wanted. I’ve stuck with it because a) the developer has an active user forum and b) it still looks better than before I used Scribe, but I think this is an issue they need to overcome if they’re to claim full support for Gmail. I haven’t tested the signature in other mail applications so can’t comment, but if you have found the same then please let me know and I’ll update this post to reflect the signature’s behaviour in your particular email client setup.
This post contains an affiliate link. We only include links to products we have personally used or tested and are happy to recommend to our clients. What this means is that we receive a small commission for any sales made by anyone who click an affiliate link from this page. You do not pay more for this; it’s almost not worth mentioning but legally we have to!
Sometimes, after adding installing an SSL certificate or migrating a site from one platform to another, it doesn’t behave as expected. There are several fixes for this so, if your site isn’t functioning properly after applying an SSL certificate, read on.
Generally the issues are caused by problems with your page links; that is, links to your site that were listed as http but are now https. Sometimes these slip through the cracks. The three main steps to try are:
Running the Really Simple SSL plugin
Updating the URLs in the WordPress database
Updating the site’s permalinks
Let’s get started.
Run the Really Simple SSL Plugin
This plugin is really simple to use, just like it says! You can install it from the Plugins library, then Activate it.
Once activated you will see a message box like the one below. Just click Go ahead, activate SSL and you’re done! (Yes, there are a few more configuration options but essentially that’s it!)
Update URLs in the WordPress Database
This is a bit more technical because you have to go into the database via PhpMyAdmin and use SQL searches to hunt down any old instances of the HTTP address and replace them with the HTTPS versions. I’ve found that whenever it gets to this stage, the find/replace usually does the trick and it’s one of the first things I check after finding any migration issues.
I usually run a search first to see whether there are any HTTP address lurking in there, and usually there are. To do this:
Click the Search tab in PhpMyAdmin (make sure you’re in the correct database!)
In the Words or values to search for (wildcard: “%”) field, type the search term, in this case the full website address using http://, e.g., http://www.mywebsite.com.
Copy and paste the results into a text file. If you have any instances of the search URL in your database you will want to run the SQL statement to change them.
Rerun the search using the variant of the URL without the www prefix, for example, http://mywebsite.com.
Again, copy the results into a text file so you have a record you can refer. These search results give you the correct table names to use.
Now you’re ready to replace the URLs. The SQL statement to use is:
UPDATE wp_options SET option_value = replace(option_value, 'Existing URL', 'New URL') WHERE option_name = 'home' OR option_name = 'siteurl';
UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = replace(post_content, 'Existing URL', 'New URL');
UPDATE wp_postmeta SET meta_value = replace(meta_value,'Existing URL','New URL');
UPDATE wp_usermeta SET meta_value = replace(meta_value, 'Existing URL','New URL');
UPDATE wp_links SET link_url = replace(link_url, 'Existing URL','New URL');
UPDATE wp_comments SET comment_content = replace(comment_content , 'Existing URL','New URL');
To use it:
Click the SQL tab in PhpMyAdmin (make sure you’re in the correct database!)
Copy and paste the SQL statement above into the SQL Query field.
Modify the original statement so that it shows your URLs (old and new) and amend the table names, if yours are different.
Click Simulate. Then, if it all looks good, click Go.
That should have changed all the URLs.
Sometimes you’ll have a table or two not covered by the SQL statement above, or there may be another field in the table that is not listed. In that case you’ll need to add additional statements to cover those tables and/or fields. If you’re not happy to do this yourself, contact me for help.
If the above still hasn’t fixed your site, there’s are still two more things to try. Next we’re going to change the permalink settings, then we’ll try reinstalling the template from a download.
Update the Site Permalinks
In the Dashboard, click Settings and then Permalinks. You see a list like the one below.
By default you probably have your site set to use the Post name for links. Whatever setting you have, these are the steps to follow:
Click Plain then Save these amended settings.
Click Visit Site to see whether the sites is back on.
Go back into the Permalink settings, then click Post name (or restore to whatever setting you had before, if different.) Click Save.
Visit the site again. Is it fixed?
If you’re still having issues there’s one more thing to try: deleting and re-installing the WordPress theme. This will create a little more work as all your customisations are likely to disappear, unfortunately, but at least it should get you back up and running again!
The steps for completing that task are in a separate post. Good luck!
Generally, things go smoothly when you update your WordPress theme, but sometimes they don’t. When this happens the way to fix it is often to completely delete the old theme and then reinstall it using the theme files direct from the developer. This post walks you through this process step-by-step.
There are several ways to remove an old theme: from the Themes menu in the Dashboard, or from the File Manager on the server, of via FTP. In this tutorial, we’ll stay within the WP Dashboard.
Visit the theme developer website and download the files for your chosen theme. These will be available for download as a zip file.
In your WP Dashboard, select Appearance and then Themes.
If you haven’t already changed to a theme that works, do this now as you won’t be able to delete a theme you are using. Choose a “safe” default like Twenty Twenty or Twenty Fifteen.
Find the theme you want to replace and click Theme Details (this flashes up when you hover of the image.)
At the bottom of this page you should see two buttons (Activate and Preview) and a red text link saying Delete. Click Delete.
Now your site is ready to be updated.
Back in the Themes list, click Add New then attach and upload the zip file containing your theme files.
Wait for this to upload (you’ll see a % indicator at the bottom of the screen while it uploads) then Activate the theme.
You’ve finished your WordPress website (or your webdev has handed it over to you) so now you can get on with writing and sharing your blog posts and updating the content now and again and that’s it, right?
Unfortunately, as with all your tech, a WordPress website is just like any other and regular maintenance is needed to keep it all running smoothly and, importantly, securely too.
But where to start?
What do I need to update?
Generally there are three main areas of your site that need to be kept up-to-date. These are:
The WordPress “core”
Your theme
Plugins that are used on your site
Those are the three building blocks, if you like, of your site. In order for the site to function all three need to be kept in sync, which is generally why there are always updates.
In addition, very occasionally there is the need to update the PHP version the site run on. This is basically the programming language that WordPress uses to “talk” to the database that stores all the content for your site. As with any language, it evolves, so sometimes changes are needed in order to keep everything in sync.
None of these jobs is beyond the abilities of all but the biggest technophobe but, because sometimes things go wrong there are “safe” and “risky” ways to go about it.
So, now you now what you need to update, let’s find out why it’s necessary – and get a taste of what can go wrong.
Why are updates needed?
One of the main reasons for updates is to fix security flaws. These are usually issues that don’t affect the performance of your site (as it in it still works) but plugs any gaps – “vulnerabilities” – that would enable a hacker to access your site. If you don’t want to risk losing your site, these updates are on the critical list!
But many updates are a result of improvements to the software, trying to reduce “bloat” (which is tech talk for tidying up the code) or implement new features.
As an example, WordPress recently issued a major update, going from version 5.4.x to 5.5.0. In software terms a major update is a Big Deal, which is why there was a Mexican wave of screams on developer forums, because the update changed something quite significant in the way WordPress works and consequently loads of plugins stopped working! Obviously then the knock-on of this is that lots of plugin updates were rolled out. Actually, these are still coming out, because as the updates are released new bugs are found (they had to react fast to try and fit in with WP 5.0.x, which is never a good place for a software developer to be!)
Likewise the changes impacted themes, which are built around the WordPress “core” software. Furthermore, some themes are designed and tested to work with certain plugins, so you can see how the whole things is interconnected and faults in one will impact another.
How do I know what needs to be updated?
The caveat with all this is that you have to have Admin level access to be able to keep on top of this, so if you have an account you use for site updates and another for full access to the Dashboard, you need to login as an Admin from time-to-time to see whether there’s anything do.
Likewise, if you don’t have an admin level account, you should (must) ask the person who created your site to either create one for you OR to create a new account for you. As the owner of the site, you really should have full access to it.
Once you’re logged in as an Admin you can check for updates and start to apply them. You can find the list of everything that needs updating in the Updates list, under Dashboard.
I don’t know where to start. What’s next?
There’s no magic to updating a WordPress site and – usually – it’s fairly straight forward. As with anything tech-related, before making any changes you should make sure you have a full backup. There are various ways to do this, and I’ll explain one or two in future posts.
When was the last time you updated your site? Did you run into any issues with the major WordPress update that was rolled out?
