Badly Wired

Cloud solutions, technical snippets and other goodies

alan

DezRez XML import into WordPress

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I am about to embark on some custom work on a DezRez XML import into WordPress, and want to gauge if there is any interest in this as a plugin, please use the comments to express issues and thoughts.

My plan is, rather like my Rightmove XML converter, is to let WP All Import ( Pro) do the heavy lifting, as there is no point in reinventing that wheel.

You may well ask, as the DezRez API is already in XML format, why not just read the XML in to WP All Import?

The main consideration here is performance and bandwidth, DezRez uses an API call for images, which in turn seems to download all images when All Import is run just for the sake of it.

By creating a pre-processor that examines last updated dates it is possible to write a more efficient process – and by coupling with WP Cron eliminate the need for complex set ups.

At this stage it is just an idea, so I’ll ask again please use the comments to express issues and thoughts, and lets see if this has any legs.

 

 

Recipe for a Raspberry Pi Kiosk

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Ingredients

  • Raspberry Pi 3 B wireless

  • 16Gb  micro sd card

  • HDMI Cable

  • USB power cable

  • Case

  • Temporary USB Keyboard & USB mouse

Preparation and Cooking time

About 1 to 2 hours depending how many mistakes you make and start again 🙂

Method

Preparation

First Boot

Insert SD card to Raspberry.  Plugin HDMI to Raspberry – TV / Monitor. Plugin in USB keyboard. Plugin the power, should boot to a login screen.

user: pi

password: raspberry

Basic Setup

Set up secure password (option 1) – as SSH opens up access

Set up host name ( option 2)- makes it easier to find for login in as SSH

Set up Boot Options (option 3 -> B1 – >B2 ) – we will want the Raspberry to Boot into Console / Autologin

Set up SSH (option 5  -> P2 ) – this is important – as once you set up a true kiosk you can’t login, so SSH gives you away to set up easily. (option 5  -> P2 )

This is all done by the Raspberry Configuration tool

 


 

 

Set up Wireless Access

If you are not using an ethernet cable you will need to set up Wireless access. Raspberry instructions here https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/configuration/wireless/wireless-cli.md

Edit the config file ( I will use vi but you can use nano ).

and add a network, you can generate this with

which outputs

so you can if you want to be fast and if you like to append directly

I found I had reboot to activate.

Test SSH

OK you should be all ready to test connecting from your computer on the same lan via SSH

linux or Max terminal

If you are on Windows, you will probably use Putty for SSH.

and you should be in!

Install all the software needed

to make sure all is updated ( and you are connected to the internet )

to get Chromium

you will also need xinit

and xdotool

Setting up the X window

Before going full kiosk lets see if Chromium will launch.

edit  the .xinitrc file in pi home directory

and input

The width and height are there as I found Chrome doesn’t know how to go full size. You can apparently to it in chromium defaults file, but this way is easier.

Now login on the console (not via SSH) via the keyboard and mouse attached to the pi and type

Chromium should launch and you should be able to browse the web

Set up the Kiosk

we add

to turn off screen savers

We add an hourly loop ( if required, or adjust the time in seconds ) to refresh the page (ctrl-F5)

and some more  options to chromium –

I also found I needed this --disable-webgl  as one webpage page wasn’t displaying properly, so the final file is

 

Start it on login

And then we want to auto start on login, I found the easiest was was to use .profile  ( rc.local seemed to load too early )

and add

The if statement just stops us trying and failing to launch when an SSH login

-- -nocursor  removes the mouse cursor

 

Tidy up boot up messages

Finally, when the PI is connected to the usb port of the monitor it will boot on power up, but there re lots of boot messages. I manged to get rid of most of them by editing cmdline.txt

and adding this to the single line

and also changing console=tty1  to console=tty3

Back it up

Nothing worse than doing all the work and then some how your SD card get corrupted –  Backup the SD card.

Backup instructions here https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/linux/filesystem/backup.md

for  linux users, put the card in your machine, find out what device it is and

where /dev/sdbx  is the actual device name of your card of course

Did I miss anything?

I wrote this after the fact, so I could remember what I did if and when I do it again. I may have missed something, or something may need a better explanation, please use the comments box to let me know.

 

 

September Promo Discount codes for Sage

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The following discount codes and promo codes are only available during September for Sage.

Sage has a variety of accounting products and offer discount codes from time to time.

These are all valid from 1st Sept to 28th Sept.

  • 30% off Accounts & Payroll stationery with voucher code BACKTOSCHOOL30 (expires 28th September) – click here
  • Sage 50 Accounts Essentials Elearning Bundle (was £90 now £60 bundle) with voucher code ELEARNSEPT (expires 28thSeptember) – click here
  • 50% off Sage 50 Accounts Elearning Bundle (was £460 now £230) with voucher code ELEARNSEPT (expires 28thSeptember) – click here
  • 50% off Sage 50 Payroll Elearning Bundle (was £300 now £150) with voucher code 50PAYSEPT (expires 28th September) – click here

Leave me a comment if these SAGE promo codes saved you money.

Sage accounting products are market leading and offer fantastic value at all times, but with a Sage Promo Code you get even more fantastic value.

Sage One Discount Code

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Update 7th March

……….

Sage One Accounting is now Sage Business Cloud Accounting.

The  50% off Sage Business Cloud offers has been extended and will now expire on 31/5/2018  – you can get this fantastic discount by following this link

 

Original text

………………….

Looking for a promo code or discount code for Sage One Accounting?

Sage One Accounting is one of the leading cloud accounting systems for small UK business.

There are some more current  Sage Promo Codes here, check them out.

You probably know that and are just looking for a deal.  Well you have found one, at least until 31st January 2018, where by following this link you can get 50% off for the first 3 months. So that is now just from £10 per month.

50% off Sage One Accounting  limited time deal so do it now.

I’m not going to out and out sell you Sage One, as you probably have already made you mind up by now, but it is simply a leading product.

Good luck and I hope that Sage One promo code is still available.

Four years ago, Sage One was a late comer to the market as cloud based accounting system. Both Kashflow & Xero had become established as the go to solutions fora  cloud solution.

However with Sage’s long history of accounting systems, it was inevitable they would respond to the cloud challenge.

Clod based accounting systems are ideal for smaller businesses, although for some a monthly subscription is not something they are used to, as previously they would have paid a large licence fee upfront and feel they ‘own’ the product. ( they don’t of course it is still a licence). However when you do the calculations the continuous updates of a cloud subscription model for an accounting system start to make sense.

If you have previously ‘own’ Sage software, why not look back at the actual costs and compare. And the also think about the flexibility that accessing your accounting system on any device any where brings to a small business person on the move.

 

 

 

 

WordPress Plugin install fails with Forbidden, you don’t have permission to wp-admin/update.php on your server

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This issue is fairly common on servers that are running Apache with mod_sec  ( mod security ). Mod security is a complex system that looks at the sort of web traffic ‘bay guys’ use to hack servers and stops them.

In this case it is thinking that your actions are suspicious and blocks them.  This is actually quite common on WordPress when uploading large plugins.  Of course, if you sure your plugin is safe and want to upload it this is a problem for you.

This is something that normally has to be fixed at host level, especially if you are on a shared server, where the hosting company may be very reluctant to reduce security.

However if you are on your own VPS or server than the steps are fairly easy.

First inspect your Apache log file for your site, normally error_log.  You can do this visually ( looking for the words Mod Security and the value after id )or if you have shell access this command line is good.

Which will give a result like

The next step is to compose this directive ( based on the above )

And add it to the appropriate Apache .conf file.  If your domain is a <VirtualHost>  then just before the </VirtualHost> for your domain is appropriate.

If you want the rule to apply to all sites /etc/apache2/conf-available/security.conf might be more appropriate

Let me know where you put this on your system, please feel free to comment below.

 

Problem with WordPress 4.8 screwing up your website layout?

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WordPress 4.8  has just been released, and many web designers have reported that their layout have been mucked up with this release.

*** UPDATE ***

Since writing this blog post I have written a plugin – https://wordpress.org/plugins/add-paragraphs-option-to-text-widget/ – that solves this problem in a very neat way.

***

There could be multiple reasons for this, but one reason is that text widgets now always automatically add paragraphs to the html.

In theory, every thing should be OK if you don’t edit the text widget, but as soon as you do, any blank lines will get <p> inserted, and if for instance you are using the text widget for a <script> and there are blank lines the insertion of <p> will break the script.

Web developers have relied on the text widget to be able to add raw code, but no longer.

However there is a quick fix, that will stop paragraphs being insert, but it applies across all text widgets.

Add this to an appropriate place in your ( child ) theme’s functions.php

Of course, if  this is a bit beyond you, you can contact me and I can quote to help support your WordPress site.

 

Hugo: I’m receiving the message “We were unable to load Disqus.”

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When building a Hugo site you may well get  the message “I’m receiving the message “We were unable to load Disqus.” ”

It took me a while to trouble shoot on mine.

Basically Hugo them developers have a habit of setting the baseurl in the config.toml as “/”

Your site will seem to work – but Disqus javascript needs the full url

So if you get the message from Disqus on your Hugo site saying it can load – set your baseurl  to a the full domain e.g. https://example.com  and clear your browser cache and try again.

The clue to the solution is at the very end of the Disqus help page https://help.disqus.com/customer/portal/articles/472007-i-m-receiving-the-message-%22we-were-unable-to-load-disqus-%22

 

Looking for a Discount or Promo for Jobber

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Updated: August 2018

Jobber may look expensive initially compared to the alternatives but when you start to understand the limitation of the alternative you will appreciate why Jobber is a great tool.

Naturally, you will be searching for a Jobber Discount Code, or a Promo Code for Jobber.

Get $150 credit for Jobber now when you sign up for a free trial

The way it works is through referral code, so the best way is to sign up for a free trial now, using this link, that way when you start to pay after your free trial of Jobber you will get a $75 dollar credit.

The great thing is, unlike a Discount Code or Promo Code for Jobber you can then refer your associates and get $75 credit for yourself when they sign up to a free account. So better than a Jobber discount code, which would be a once only event, your discounts grow with your referrals.

So simply follow this link and sign up for a free trial and you will get a $75 credit once you have upgraded to paid.

So why is Jobber a great fit for your businesses?

Firstly this app has been thought out and developed to cover all the basic needs of a small to medium business going ‘onsite’ to perform predfined or adhoc tasks.  For example a plumber, a landscape gardener, electrician and more.

  • Schedule of jobs / calendar
  • Client lists
  • Properties List
  • Quotes
  • Jobs
  • Invoices
  • Time logging
  • Integration into Quickbooks or Xero (optional)
  • Take payments through Paypal, Stripe & Square (optional)
  • Chemical Tracking (optional)

Any device / anyway web app.

Additionally Jobber can be used to manage franchises with special franchise feature available from Jobber.

Still looking for Promo code or Discount code  – try this link to sign up for a free account

  • the previous discount credit was $75 so this promotion has doubled the benefit

Surrey Lawn Care Services

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The Lawn Crew website was built using the Genesis Framework and a Studio Press premium theme ‘Show Case Pro’.

There have been some customisation to reflect Surrey Lawn Care Services  brand, which of course is providing lawn maintenance services to the lawns in and around Surrey.

Despite looking quite different to the demo theme this is achieved with some simple CSS using WordPress customiser features.

Hopefully this website will soon be optimised for and ranking for serach terms such as Lawn Care Surrey, Lawn services Surrey etc.

 

Google Compute Engine Snapshot automation

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Google Compute Engine comes with an incremental snapshot capability.

The product doesn’t have a specific automated method to take snapshots and to tidy them up either, but scripting using the gcloud command line is fairly straight forward, once you understand the power of the command line.

I have seen many attempts at automating this using bash scripts, python and even ruby, but in the main complex scripting isn’t actually required.

For my purpose I have used bash as the scripting language, but you will see that all is required is two simple loops and could be implemented in any scripting language that can execute commands.

Before we begin, you will need to have install the Google Cloud SDK which includes the gcloud command line interface (cli) this is available for most platforms here. https://cloud.google.com/sdk/downloads

Additionally, it is well worth understanding a bit about Persistent Disk snapshots, in the way they work incrementally.

Compute Engine stores multiple copies of each snapshot redundantly across multiple locations with automatic checksums to ensure the integrity of your data. You cannot share snapshots across projects.

If you delete snapshot 1 all the data in 1 gets migrated into snapshot 2. As it is incremental you are not really duplicating a lot of data, all depending on the volatility of the data on your server.

You would have to delete ALL snapshots for a disk to effectively start again, otherwise you are always building on the previous image.  For systems that are relatively static this makes a very cost effective and simple snapshot solution.

Also read the part about consistent state of data. In a highly volatile data environment suspending updates and flushing data is important, for a more static environment (e.g. serving simple websites ) this is less so.

The use case for this script is to list all disks in a project  ( regardless of what server they are mounted on ) and to take a snapshot.

The second function, is simply to delete older snapshots where granularity is no longer required, remember deleting old snapshots doesn’t lose data it just pushed it into the more recent snapshots. Strictly speaking there is no real need to delete snapshots, but too many would be unmanageble.

Therefore we need two loops.

The elements of loop 1 are:

Which lists all disks in a project  – the format=’value(name,zone)’  forces the command to return a tab delimited list without headings, containing name & zone. There are other format options, see https://cloud.google.com/sdk/gcloud/reference/topic/formats , so you can choose what is best for you, but this works nicely with a bash loop.

then

which uses the list to create snapshots appropriately prefixed and named ( so we can find the ones created by the script.

The elements of loop 2 are:

Which lists all snapshots will a creation date less than, in this case, 60 days. This is driven by the –filter= expression, it seems that the filter handles dates and partial dates without any need for specific conversions. It also only lists snapshot with a prefix of “autogcs-” that we set earlier, to stop deleting other manual snapshots, this is done by the flag –regexp=”(autogcs.*)” (although I suspect that this could be incorporated into –filter).  The final flag –uri returns a full path needed in the delete.

and then for each found

Which should be self explanatory.

If you would like the full bash script and also details on how to install and set up cron job you can find it here  https://gitlab.com/alan8/google-cloud-auto-snapshot

Please leave any comments or suggestion below or at gitlab.