Web Development

WordPress Quick Tip: Fix Form Mail Not Being Delivered

I ran into a problem recently where emails from from submissions on a client’s site were not being delivered. The site is hosted on Godaddy, the mail is hosted elsewhere, the DNS is on Godaddy but in another account. The emails had been working fine up until a few months ago (the client only just

WordPress Quick Tip: Fix Slow WordPress on MAMP

My local WordPress sites are super slow. Why? Other non-WordPress local sites run just fine. My problem is not the much documented bonjour vs .local TLD issue. I am using a custom TLD. tl;dr: Add the port MAMP uses for mySQL to wp-config.php: [UPDATE 20240127] If that doesn’t work, try bypassing MySQL TCP/IP. [UPDATE 20240127]

WordPress Quick Tip: Custom Link Current Class in Menu

Yesterday, a custom link in my menu wasn’t getting the current-menu-item class. Why? I’d used a relative, instead of absolute, URL in the link. So instead of this: /products/a-product-in-the-main-nav do this: https://www.example.com/products/a-product-in-the-main-nav Done!

Custom Color Palettes in WordPress without a Plugin (with Pootlepress 18 Tags Theme)

When I first heard that WooCommerce was probably going to stop selling and eventually stop supporting their Canvas theme, I started using 18 Tags Pro and PageBuilder Pro by Pootlepress as a starting point for my WordPress sites. It’s pretty customizable from within WordPress, and I typically do a decent amount of customization in a child theme.

MAMP can’t start MySQL: InnoDB: Unable to lock ./ibdata1, error: 35

If you have trouble where MAMP couldn’t start MySQL and you’re seeing lots of errors like this InnoDB: Unable to lock ./ibdata1, error: 35 in terminal (* are notes, not commands to run) sudo launchctl unload -F /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.oracle.oss.mysql.mysqld.plist * stops the system mysql in case it got started for some reason ps -ef | egrep

Modern IE: New IE9 Win7 Won’t Start Up in VirtualBox

I download a brand new IE9 Windows 7 virtual machine for VirtualBox from Modern IE, and after I imported it, it wouldn’t start up. Short answer: Download The Unarchiver as recommended by Modern IE and extract the zip using that instead of Mac OS’s built-in archive utility. Then double-click the .ova file, it will import, and

Rails Complex Nested Form, validates_presence_of Parent on the Child

The answer should have been easy to find. But I should just be a better developer and should either have known it or been able to figure it out by myself based on what I do know. Alas… Anyway, here’s the sitch: I wrote an inventory management system for Patrick’s small book-selling business. It’s got a