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Archive: June 2018

Upgrade PHP 5.5 To 7 In WAMP

28 June 2018
Grimey
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Categories: PHP, WAMP

I installed Chronoforms 6 for WordPress and it requires PHP 5.6 or higher. I am running PHP 5.5 and 7.3 is available.

This video got me started:

 

I downloaded PHP here: https://windows.php.net/download/

I moved the PHP.ini, wampserver.conf, and phpForApache.ini files from my PHP 5.5 folder to my new PHP 7 folder.

I made a few changes to the PHP.ini and phpForApache.ini from John Dugan’s instructions.

In my PHP.ini the only line I changed was line 1943.

zend_extension = “c:/wamp/bin/php/php5.5.12/zend_ext/php_xdebug-2.2.5-5.5-vc11-x86_64.dll”
In my phpForApache.ini the only line I changed was line 718.
extension_dir = “c:/wamp/bin/php/php7.0.30/ext/”

WAMP wouldn’t start after I changed the version to PHP 7.

In the wampserver.conf file I needed to change the following two lines:

$phpConf[‘apache’][‘2.4’][‘LoadModuleName’] = ‘php7_module’;
$phpConf[‘apache’][‘2.4’][‘LoadModuleFile’] = ‘php7apache2_4.dll’;

I restarted WAMP and it was up and running.

The first issue I ran into was CURL needed to be enabled, but the fonts on the site I was working on switched from a Sanserif font to a serif font. Not sure why.

I hope this helps someone else out there…

 

Using Built-in Font Awesome Fonts In DIVI

27 June 2018
Grimey
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Categories: Child Theme, Divi, Divi, Font Awesome, WordPress

Divi theme has some built in icons that you can call in a style sheet such as the following:

.someclass:before {
font-family: “ETmodules”;
content: “\6c”;
}

This will give me the icon of a pad and pencil.

I originally got this tip from Josh Hall on YouTube. Thanks for sharing Josh!

This issue I had was being able to figure out the code number for which Icon. The code numbers do not match Font Awesome font codes.

I finally found Elegant Themes cheat sheet for these icons.

The Elegant Icon Font – 360 Of The Best Free Icons For The Modern Web

I hope this helps someone else out there…

 

Elegant Themes DIVI – Custom 404 Page

21 June 2018
Grimey
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Categories: 404 error, Divi, WordPress

I had a customer complain about not being able to reach the new site we just finished. They were getting a 404 page not found page. This is because Google has the old pages indexed.

First I added the website to Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools so I could get the ball rolling on getting the old URL’s removed from their index.

Second, I got working on creating a custom 404 page. The following article helped me understand how to do this in DIVI.

Build a custom 404 / page not found template

It took about 30 minutes start to finish to get this working.

I hope this helps someone else out there…

 

Best WordPress Backup Solution – Akeeba

20 June 2018
Grimey
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Categories: Akeeba, WAMP, Web Hosting, WordPress

I have used Akeeba for years for Joomla and made moving and backup up sites so easy. I started purchasing the Pro version so I could exclude various directories and back up to Amazon Web Services. With the use of a Cron Job my sites were taking care of themselves.

I was so glad to see Akeeba make their backup solution for WordPress. The best part was the way it ran the 3 SQL statements you need for updating the permalinks automatically. Although this was best solution I had used for backing up and moving a WordPress site it didn’t always work. Sometimes it would never finish running the SQL permalink updates and the site wouldn’t complete the move. In addition, the plugin would tell me I had an update available, but when I tried to automatically update it the site was breaking. I would end up with a blank white website.

Well this latest version of Akeeba Backup / Kickstart software is working really well. When ever I have moved a site the Permalinks update works well, and the latest version updates through the plugin manager without a hitch. I would highly recommend this software to anyone. The pro version is totally worth it.

I hope this helps someone else out there…

 

Free QR Code Generator

19 June 2018
Grimey
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Categories: QR Code

As trivial as it sounds there is a quickness to QR Codes that make them so handy. While hiking in Italy we didn’t know where we were exactly but we came across an old sign which told about the area; however, it was too worn out to read. In the corner was a QR Code that we able to scan and get a ton of information about where we were.

Here is a link to a site I used to generate some QR Codes for my companies various division contacts.

https://www.the-qrcode-generator.com/

I hope this helps someone else out there….

 

Joomla Site Clean Up Tools

12 June 2018
Grimey
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Categories: Filezilla, Joomla, MySQL, Security, Web Hosting

Here is a list of “Tools of the Trade” according to Ben Martin at Sucuri Security.

  • Filezilla (FTP Client)
  • NoScript (Script Blocker)
  • VirtualBox (Virtualization Tool)
  • ublock Origin (Ad Blocker)
  • PHPMyAdmin or Adminer (Database Management)
  • User Agent Switcher
  • Support Forums (ie: https://forum.joomla.org)
  • OSSEC HIDS (Server Monitoring)
  • SSH / BASH connection

I hope this helps someone else out there…

 

DIVI Blurb and Button Not Matching Width

5 June 2018
Grimey
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Categories: Divi, Divi, WordPress

Working with a blurb and button below it I was getting the mismatched width at full screen or over 1900 pixels.

The CSS for the button was:

.et_pb_button_alignment_center {
width: 92%;
background: #FFF;
margin: auto !important;
}

I needed to get rid of the margin:auto !important;

The width was set with this CSS.

.et_pb_button_alignment_center {
width: 95%;
background: #FFF;
}

The blurb container was set;

.et_pb_blurb.et_pb_text_align_left .et_pb_blurb_content .et_pb_blurb_container {
text-align: left;
width: 100%;
height: 300px;
background: #FFF;
margin: auto;
}

 

The blurb content was this:

.et_pb_blurb_content {
position: relative;
max-width: 550px;
margin: 0 auto;
text-align: center;
}

Part of the issue is I had the “Advanced tab” and “Main Element” set with a width, but the child-theme stylesheet had different width. I also had the “Additional CSS” in the theme customerize setting the blurb to another width.

DIVI has a lot of options and perhaps too many.  When your working with DIVI try to not set the styles in more than one place.

I hope this helps someone else out there…

 

 

 

 

Using An Image For Joomla Search Button

3 June 2018
Grimey
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Categories: Gantry, Joomla

This should be a really simple thing, but does seem to be. I wanted to use an icon for my search button. In the module I set “Use an Image” to yes, but this did nothing. My first search lead me to this page.

https://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?t=282140

This did not work for me.

This page finally got me closer to what I needed; however, I really don’t like using a .gif file. The format is not as smooth as other formats.

https://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?t=728841

I am using Gantry 5 Hydrogen theme and simply adding the “searchButton.gif” to the “/g5_hydrogen/images” folder got things working quickly.

I hope this helps someone else out there….