Category: Useful Images

14 places to get Free Stock Images for Websites

8th July 2016 by Alan Leave a Comment

Sourcing images for websites is a tricky and time consuming businesses.

The worse thing you can do is go to Google, find and image you like and download it and upload it to your website. It is not rare that the copyright owner will find you and request payment for the use you ‘stole’ from them. Companies like Getty Images do this on a regular basis, and their fees are high. Also, you can’t even blame your web designer, as you are responsible fir your website, so if your web designer uses stock images for you, you better check he has the rights to do so.

The best thing, always, is commission your own images. Your own genuine images on your website convey a much better image of your business than stock images.

However, there are times when stock images are really useful

To bring to life blog posts
As background images

To name a couple.

So you came here looking for free stock images, and one of the best ways is to sign up for a free trial with a major stock image company.

My favourite is BigStock and you can sign up for a 14 day Free Trial with BigStock here

Once your free trail has expired, if you don’t want to continue then here are some sites that offer free stock images, I can’t personally warrant they are really copyright free, but I would hope so, but do double check.

I hope the list is helpful.

Please leave comments on the comment form if you discover any more or have issues with the above list.

Coding jQuery safely in WordPress

6th March 2015 by Alan Leave a Comment

I keep forgetting the syntax so this is just to remind me.

In WordPress you want to ensure you don’t get conflicts with jQuery so there is a safe way to code it

jQuery(function( $ ) {
  // Your code using failsafe $ alias here...
});

jQuery(function( $ ) {

// Your code using failsafe $ alias here...

});

And if you want it when the DOM is loaded then you can do it like this

jQuery( document ).ready(function($) {
    //  your code referencing $ here
});

jQuery( document ).ready(function($) {

// your code referencing $ here

});

Moving where Gravity Forms stores uploads

17th October 2014 by Alan Leave a Comment

To migrate where Gravity Forms stores uploads, first you need to add a filter to your functions.php

I needed to do this as a wanted a secure place and the default location was giving me problems.

Create a directory of your server that is visible from the web, and secure it with .htaccess appropriately e.g. http://weavervsworld.com/docs/other/passprotect.html

This is code for functions.php

<?php
add_filter("gform_upload_path", "change_upload_path", 10, 2);
function change_upload_path($path_info, $form_id){
$path_info["path"] = "/home/mydomain/public_html/safe/";
$path_info["url"] = "http://mydomain.com/safe/";
return $path_info;
}
?>

<?php

add_filter("gform_upload_path", "change_upload_path", 10, 2);

function change_upload_path($path_info, $form_id){

$path_info["path"] = "/home/mydomain/public_html/safe/";

$path_info["url"] = "http://mydomain.com/safe/";

return $path_info;

}

The filter is explained here -> http://www.gravityhelp.com/documentation/page/Gform_upload_path

And then move the files from old place to new, FTP will do fine.

Then you need to update the database to change the location of the old files. You can use PhpMyAdmin if you have it.

UPDATE wp_rg_lead_detail
SET value = REPLACE( value, 'http://mydomain/wp-content/gravityoldpath/', 'http://mydomain/safe/' )
WHERE value LIKE (
'%http://mydomain/wp-content/gravityoldpath/%'
)

UPDATE wp_rg_lead_detail

SET value = REPLACE( value, 'http://mydomain/wp-content/gravityoldpath/', 'http://mydomain/safe/' )

WHERE value LIKE (

'%http://mydomain/wp-content/gravityoldpath/%'

)

Note the table name may have a non wp_ prefix and on a multi site it will have a blog id , eg. xx_999_rg …

Note by default Gravity stores uploads in month folders, so you may have to iterate through several months, and you may have to deal with the odd duplicate file if you are combining into one folder.

Obviously, not just apply the code above without thinking about the path names etc as it won’t simply work copying and pasting.

You could extend the filter to user date(‘y’) and date (‘m’) to replicate the folder structures, but I’m not sure if Gravity will create new folders or you would have to code a bit like this, as I haven’t tested it.

<?php
if (!file_exists('path/to/directory')) {
    mkdir('path/to/directory', 0777, true);
}
?>

<?php

if (!file_exists('path/to/directory')) {

mkdir('path/to/directory', 0777, true);

}

How to remove an ip from fail2ban

3rd June 2013 by Alan Leave a Comment

If fail2ban locks out an IP address that you want to re enable

First find out what fail2ban jail the ip is in by using the command
[code]iptables -L[/code]
and
[code]iptables -D fail2ban-JAILNAME -s xx.xxx.xxx.xxx -j DROP[/code]
Where JAILNAME is something like SSH and the IP address is xx.xxx.xxx.xxx

Adding Hyperlinks to WordPress Pages & Posts

27th March 2013 by Alan Leave a Comment

This video shows you how to add hyperlinks to WordPress Pages & Posts.

I am often asked, ‘can I add a link’ to my WordPress website. And the answer is it is very easy.

It is simply a matter of highlighting the text, clicking on the link icon on the editor bar and putting your link in.

GoDaddy service fails millions of websites.

10th September 2012 by Alan Leave a Comment

Today, Monday 10th Sepetember, Godday has crashed. TheMain site Godaddy.com is accessible but technical problems means that millions of sites have been offline.

Even sites that are not hosted on godaddy have been impacted, as any forwarding of sites via DNS A records seem to be impacted too.

In the case of ‘badlywired’, even though we run on our own servers unfortunately the Nameservers are doamins are on Godaddy, and that makes our sites unreachable to anyone that hasn’t got our IP addresses cached.

So there is a lesson about putting all your eggs in on basket isn’t there. So now I’m thinking how best to diversify Nameservers.

Queens Diamond Jubilee

9th March 2012 by Alan Leave a Comment

Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, as shown here is available for download here here