Website Tech

Category: WordPress

  • What Does “Unlimited” Hosting Mean?

    When you are searching for hosting accounts, you will often see “unlimited disk space” and “unlimited bandwidth” as top features. A few years ago, hosting providers would give you a clear limit on how much space and bandwidth they would give you; if you exceeded either one, your hosting provider would either a) charge a lot for more space or bandwidth, usually without even having sent you a message you were approaching your limit, or b) shut down your hosting account, again usually without warning. So “unlimited” was a really good thing.

    What Does “Unlimited” Mean?

    It means if you are using your hosting account for hosting a normal personal or small-business site, they don’t monitor your disk space or traffic. It doesn’t mean you can host a file sharing service for thousands of customers, or host thousands of hours of video for a movie rental business or porn site, or have millions of site visitors like a large business would.

    If you show up on their list of accounts using the most server resources, you may get instructed to reduce your usage. These resources include disk space, bandwidth (how many bytes are transferred and/or transferred at once), memory or CPU usage (a program running out of control), number of files stored (huge number of files slows down the server since the file index gets enormous, and operating systems limit how many files can be on a single hard drive).

    Host Gator says it this way:

    There are no set limits on the disk space or data transfer (bandwidth) that we provide in our shared and reseller hosting plans. We want you to have the resources you need to build a great online presence.

    That being said, we do require all customers to be fully compliant with our Terms of Service and utilize disk space and bandwidth in the normal operation of a personal or small business website. While it is rare, we may need to put constraints on accounts that are using resources that impact other customers on the same server.

    Typically, customers only run into issues if they use their accounts for storage or file sharing, which is not what our services are intended to support. In accordance with our Terms of Services the disk space and bandwidth you use must be integrated into the normal operation of your website.

    For Example, customers who are affecting other clients or are using 25% or more of system resources for longer then 90 seconds would be in violation. Please see our TOS or contact us for complete details and restrictions.

    If you need more bandwidth or disk space, pay your hosting provider for the extra amount you need. Don’t flame your hosting provider about “they said unlimited” when you’re using more resources than 99.9% of their customers. (more…)

  • Check Plugins are Multi-Site Compatible

    As a WordPress Multi-Site administrator, make sure a plugin works with multi-site before installing it. Plugin authors should state if the plugin works with multi-site.

    Testing is best done on a separate installation of WordPress (the one good reason for having multiple WordPress installations), so if there is a problem it doesn’t affect your production site.

    Plugin Authors: If you have tested the plugin with multi-site, then claim the feature in your marketing. I would not use a plugin that doesn’t say it works on multi-site, since even though I am technically qualified to do that testing it is much too much work to have to do.

    Does the plugin always request the table prefix from WP? (One immediate clue is a plugin that uses ‘wp_’, the default, even though that isn’t what you used when installing WordPress; then WordPress appends the site ID to that prefix for all user data.)

    Does the plugin always request the folder locations from WP? In multi-site mode, each site gets a unique file upload location.

    Does each site of the multi-site get its own set of plugin tables, for plugin options and for user data?

    When a plugin is activated on an existing site, are tables checked for, and created if needed? (Or do thousands of error messages about missing tables clutter the error log? Yuck!)

    When the plugin is network activated, and a new site is created, does the plugin activation work? Is there a reminder in administration panels, to configure the plugin for the site?

    When a site is deleted, does the plugin deactivation work?

    If the plugin creates file (for example, a podcast creating plugin would have the podcast episodes listed in a .xml file), does each site get a separate result file, or separate collection of files?

    Improper multi-site use would assume the table prefix, or assume the folder locations, or use one set of plugin tables for all users, or use one folder for all user’s media files, or allow unauthorized people to include in their post or results some information from other users, or allow unauthorized people to modify someone else’s tables or files.

    Plugin Author: State in the installation instructions or FAQ whether the plugin is safe to use in a multi-site installation. State whether the plugin can be network activated or must be activated on each site. State in the change log when multi-site features are added or fixed.

  • Posting to Multiple Sites

    Generally writing the same thing on more than one of your sites is not such a good idea.

    But especially if you have custom post types, for example for products that you are selling, they may make perfect sense on more than one of your sites.

    With WordPress Multi-Site, making more than one site (in the same installation of WordPress) is very easy.

    How do you put a post on more than one site? Of course you can copy and paste the main text, and then manually enter all the other settings for the post (for example, SEO settings, and the many settings for your shopping cart system), but is there a better way?

    There is a Multi-Post plugin, http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/multipost-mu/ but warning this plugin is no longer updated, probably should look for another.

    “Allow a WordPress MU site administrator to duplicate posts and pages to multiple sub-blogs at once.”

    Gives a simple list of checkboxes on the Post/Page edit page, for which other sites to also post to.

    Modify the Original page, and the copies reflect the change. Modify the copied one, and it is generated as a separate post, no longer linked.

  • Allow Multisite Administrator Rights to Individual Site Owners?

    I have a client (actually their IT guy) who is asking for “FTP” access to their WordPress site. He is saying the “client” admin role we have given him doesn’t allow him access to changes he wants to make for SEO, plugins, etc. Is this possible in our Multisite installation set up? We can’t give him the same Admin permissions we have because he would have access to all the sites.

    Absolutely no FTP access to the WP server. (Maybe give them FTP access to a very limited folder, but they can upload files directly from WordPress, it has media import features).

    One of the huge benefits of WordPress in Multi-Site mode is you as the Super-administrator control whether Administrators can install plugins and themes. (Installing plugins and themes are key source of security holes, system crashes, trouble.)

    SEO by Yoast is well recommended, and I’ve been using All-In-One SEO.

    There is an option where you can allow individual site administrators to enable plugins, from among the plugins that are installed by you.

    In /wp-admin/network/settings.php you can “Enable Admin Menus” that let a site owner change which of the installed plugins are activated.

    In /wp-admin/network/users.php, hover over a user and click Edit, to “Grant this user super admin privileges for the Network.” (use this for people in your company who are developers, never for customers)

    Normally users can only be Admin only for the sites where they are registered. See http://codex.wordpress.org/Roles_and_Capabilities for a Summary of Roles. Notice the differences in Roles for Multisite vs single site.

    Administrators in Multisite can activate plugins and change settings, but not install or update them. Create a user with Administrator rights for a site (do this logged in as a Super-Administrator), experiment with what they can access.

    If you really need more flexibility than the default, which I doubt, try the User Role Editor WordPress plugin.

  • PHP Unzip bug makes WordPress Updates hang

    I have been having problems with WordPress Updates for a while. No error messages, just the WordPress Update, or WordPress Plugin Update, hangs.

    Then I found out that the WordPress backup plugin I am using, BackWPUp, failed if I configured it to use any compression.

    Then I found out that the problems I had been having with random-seeming 500 Server Errors was from the WP-Super-Cache plugin configured with, hmm, compression.

    WordPress Updates would create new folders, but no files in them.

    I wrote a PHP program, outside of WordPress, to test if the problem was in WordPress, or in the version of PHP used on my server.

    The problem is in PHP. The PHP unzip routines lock up. No error message on screen, in the PHP log, or in the system log.

    WordPress 3.6.0 and 3.6.1, Multi-Site, Apache, PHP Version 5.2.17, [HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING] => gzip, deflate

    PHP itself has a bug in Zip/Unzip in old versions. Hangs without any error message displayed or in logs. Affects WordPress Update, and Plugin/Theme Updates, and any plugins that use compression (e.g. WP-Super-Cache or BackWPup)

    PHP Change Log http://www.php.net/ChangeLog-5.php#5.3.4 says
    PHP Version 5.3.4 released 09-Dec-2010 – Fixed crash in zip extract method

    Note: PHP versions are numbered so version 5.3.10 is higher than 5.3.9 (5.3.1 is lower)

    (more…)

  • PHP Unzip bug makes WordPress Updates hang

    I have been having problems with WordPress Updates for a while. No error messages, just the WordPress Update, or WordPress Plugin Update, hangs.

    Then I found out that the WordPress backup plugin I am using, BackWPUp, failed if I configured it to use any compression.

    Then I found out that the problems I had been having with random-seeming 500 Server Errors was from the WP-Super-Cache plugin configured with, hmm, compression.

    WordPress Updates would create new folders, but no files in them.

    I wrote a PHP program, outside of WordPress, to test if the problem was in WordPress, or in the version of PHP used on my server.

    The problem is in PHP. The PHP unzip routines lock up. No error message on screen, in the PHP log, or in the system log.

    WordPress 3.6.0 and 3.6.1, Multi-Site, Apache, PHP Version 5.2.17, [HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING] => gzip, deflate

    PHP itself has a bug in Zip/Unzip in old versions. Hangs without any error message displayed or in logs. Affects WordPress Update, and Plugin/Theme Updates, and any plugins that use compression (e.g. WP-Super-Cache or BackWPup)

    PHP Change Log http://www.php.net/ChangeLog-5.php#5.3.4 says
    PHP Version 5.3.4 released 09-Dec-2010 – Fixed crash in zip extract method

    Note: PHP versions are numbered so version 5.3.10 is higher than 5.3.9 (5.3.1 is lower)

    (more…)

  • Web Site Development Tools (Windows and OS/X)

    Web Site Development Tools (Windows and OS/X)

    You really should use an FTP program. (No, don’t use your web hosting company’s HTML file browser. Not as fast, easy, reliable. Also, don’t edit plugin or theme files using WordPress built-in editor, you need a programmers editor, and then FTP.) Windows FileZilla or FileZilla Portable; OS/X FileZilla Client or just search for FileZilla on download.cnet.com, it’s completely free and well done. Find out from your hosting provider if you can connect securely (SFTP is most common).

    If you don’t already have a good programmers editor, get Notepad++, Notepad++ Portable, or for OS/X TextWrangler or BBEdit look like good choices (but I haven’t used either). TextWrangler vs BBEdit Comparison. Both are from the same company, so get TextWrangler (free) until you know you Need a feature in BBEdit.

    I have clients who use CoffeeCup Free HTML editor, or who have purchased the full version. Very nice. I haven’t used their other tools, I either already had free tools that work great, or wasn’t interested, but those tools all look well done. http://coffeecup.com/

    Having a development server lets you put only working pages on your public web site. I use XAMPP, a full free Apache server, with PHP, Perl, MySQL, and more, to run on your Windows computer. Even a portable version (install on a USB drive, have a web site development server on any Windows computer). Changes the development flow; instead of making updates with edit-upload-refresh browser-repeat, updates become edit-refresh browser. Small change, but it really adds up. Plus of course, it enforces developing and testing on one server, putting the working product on the production server. Develop WordPress plugins on your notebook, without crashing your production WordPress multi-site setup with 30 client blogs.

    If you want a full professional HTML/PHP/Javascript development environment with debugger, I’ve used NetBeans IDE and like it. Versions for Windows, OS/X and others. Get the “PHP Bundle” unless you know you are going to use other languages; you can always “add or remove packs later using the IDE’s Plugin Manager (Tools | Plugins)”. But unless I am working on something where stepping through the code to find bugs is what I need to do, I find I use NotePad++ most, perhaps just because I learned it first.

    For website development you have to have Firefox, with the Firebug addon. And it’s really good to have Google Chrome too, there are occasional CSS slight differences; mostly I’ve found I was sloppy with CSS sometimes, Chrome would show my sloppiness where Firefox would interpret my CSS to do what I meant. Chrome has the developer tools built in (the Inspector), that look a lot like Firebug; both let you see all the CSS statements are loaded for the element, which are over-ridden vs active, and adjust the CSS until you see the results you want. Both have a lot more, and that’s the feature you’ll use every time something on any page doesn’t look right.

    (I don’t use Internet Explorer except occasionally I quickly check my site displays in an older version; IE9 came on my new computer. Any version of IE older than that gets the same standards compliant, responsive, minimal HTML, formatted by CSS web site that I give to any smart phone, plus a very small IE-specific CSS file that makes it display simply; anyone using old IE today is used to web pages not looking great.)

    I use the Fireshot plugin for screen captures, Firefox/Chrome/IE. Excellent for communicating technical visual things with other people.

    Check out Xplorer2 for file browsing, much easier to have two panes in a single window, than using Windows Explorer. Use bookmarks for your favorite folders, instead of endlessly navigating up and down the tree of folders. (on download.cnet.com)

    For images, I use IrfanView for viewing and minor edits such as cropping and color balance. GIMP is the best free image editor; I barely know how to use it for simple things; graphic artists compare its features to PhotoShop.

    For keeping all my passwords for all those sites and banks and stores, settings for FTP sites, settings for databases, etc, I use KeePass Portable (on download.cnet.com)

    GMail and Google Hangouts have custom email accounts for free, view email from any web browser, forward GMail messages to any POP or IMAP account (e.g. on Thunderbird). Google Hangouts is connected to a GMail account, chat audio or webcam audio/video. Screen sharing, if you do any technical support you can guide the other person as you watch their screen. Completely free calls to any USA phone number.

    VLC Media Player: http://videolan.org/vlc excellent media player capable of reading most audio and video formats.

    7 Zip: http://7-zip.org An open source, free alternative to WinZip, has higher compression, great integration with Windows Explorer or xplorer2.

    Adobe Reader: http://get.adobe.com/reader the standard free PDF viewer.

    Audacity: http://audacity.sourceforge.net for recording & editing audio files, a lot of professional-level multi-track editing capabilities. Easy for trimming audio (e.g. the long pause from starting recording to start of talking), and making people who talked at different volumes sound the same. Open source.

    Evernote: http://evernote.com Scan your notes, receipts, etc, will OCR the content, save it, and make it searchable. Free.

    GIMP: http://gimp.org (free download)
    An open source program used to create & edit – free alternative to Photoshop.

    Open Office: http://openoffice.org (free download)
    Open source office suite software – word processing, spreadsheets, databases, presentations. Reads .csv files better than Microsoft Office (if a text field has multiple lines, MSOffice can’t read it).

    Panda Cloud Antivirus (download.cnet.com) or AVG: http://free.avg.com (free download)
    Anti-virus and anti-spyware protection.

    BrowserShots: http://browsershots.org (free online tool)
    Use this to see how your website look in various browsers, browser versions, operating systems.

    Other Software, Others Recommended

    CamStudio: http://camstudio.org (free download)
    Lets you record all screen & audio activity on your computer and create video files.

    CCleaner: http://ccleaner.com (free download)
    Removes unused files from your pc allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up space.

    Color Cop: http://colorcop.net (free online tool)
    A multi-purpose color picker – great for web designers and programmers.

    Down For Everyone: http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com (free online tool)
    Is your site down? Use this tool to see if your website is down for other people.

    DupeFree: http://dupefreepro.com (free download)
    Quickly check for duplicate content & LSI keywords.

    Give Away Of The Day: http://giveawayoftheday.com (free download)
    Unique site that offers you a free license digital product daily.

    Launchy: http://launchy.net (free download)
    Opens your documents, project files, folders, and bookmarks with just a few keystrokes .

    NicheBot Classic: http://nichebotclassic.com (free online tool)
    Online keyword research tool helps you target the correct keywords.

    OSWD: http://oswd.org/ (free downloads)
    Open Source Web Design offers free web design templates.

    PDF995: http://pdf995.com (free download)
    Use this tool to easily convert files to PSD format.

    PDF to Word Converter: http://pdftoword.com (free online tool)
    Easily create editable Word Doc files from PDF content – for legit purposes only! 🙂

    Pixie: http://nattyware.com/pixie.php (free download)
    Great for web designers – just point to a color and it will tell you the code value for that color.

    Private Label Rights Forum: http://resell-rights-weekly.com/forum (free online tool)
    Very helpful forum with lots of good info on internet marketing. Friendly members too.

    Resell Rights Weekly: http://resell-rights-weekly.com/ (free downloads)
    Free membership where you can download over 150 PLR/RR products for free.

    Roboform: http://roboform.com (free download)
    Easily & safely manage your passwords.

    ScreenHunter: http://wisdom-soft.com/sh/sh_free.htm (free download)
    Software that allows you to “capture” any part of your desktop, a window or full screen.

    ShortKeys: http://shortkeys.com (free download)
    Allows you to set up replacement text or paragraphs for any user defined keystrokes.

    SpyBot: http://safer-networking.org (free download)
    Effectively detects and removes spyware from your PC.

    Textpad: http://textpad.com (free download)
    A powerful text editor, for editing HTML code.

    TimeLeft: http://nestersoft.com/timeleft (free download)
    A countdown, reminder, clock, alarm clock, stopwatch, timer, & web countdown tool.

    Tweet Deck: http://tweetdeck.com (free download)
    Great for staying in touch with your contacts across Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and more.

    Kompozer: http://kompozer.net (free download)
    An easy to use WYSIWYG HTML editor. Less buggy than NVU (the project was picked up where NVU left off). But doesn’t know anything about PHP, won’t even open a PHP file (copy/paste results into your PHP file, in NotePad++.) As of 9/1/2013: “Latest development version: 0.8b3 (2010-02-28)”, so the project has halted. I recommend get the CoffeeCup Free HTML Editor, which displays the preview in a portion of the screen. Or if you really want to have WYSIWYG web editing, use WordPress!

  • Robots.txt Tips

    Each web site you write should have a robots.txt file in the main folder, to suggest to search engines which folders you want them to not scan or index.

    You can make this file in any text editor (but not a word processor, must be plain text).

    Comments start with #, so the first line is for your information, specifying which web site this is for. Comments can be after any directive.

    The Sitemap line (can be anywhere in the file, but I put it at top) is a way to tell search engines the full URL where your site map is.

    The “User-agent: *” line says “for all User Agents, this is for you” (The User-agent normally would be browser type, e.g. Firefox or Chrome or IE, but search engines also tell web servers some User Agent.)

    # robots.txt for yoursite.com
Sitemap: http://www.yoursite.com/sitemap.xml

User-agent: *    # all search engines should ignore the folders Disallowed below

# Maybe have one folder for site images that shouldn't be indexed
# another for photographs you want indexed by search engines
Disallow: /images/
Allow: /photos/

# Here are more examples, use the folders that apply to your site:
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /freecontactform/
Disallow: /junk/
Disallow: /newsfeeds/
Disallow: /oldboring/

    You can exclude individual files this way (but probably simpler for you to put files into a separate directory):

    Disallow: /test/junk.html

    If you have WordPress on your site, include these lines:

    # WordPress
Disallow: /wp-admin
Disallow: /wp-includes
Disallow: /wp-content/plugins
Disallow: /wp-content/cache
Disallow: /wp-content/themes
Disallow: /category/*/*
Disallow: /comments
Disallow: */comments
Disallow: /feed
Disallow: */feed
Disallow: /manager
Disallow: /trackback
Disallow: */trackback
Allow: /wp-content/uploads

    (more…)

  • Robots.txt Tips

    Each web site you write should have a robots.txt file in the main folder, to suggest to search engines which folders you want them to not scan or index.

    You can make this file in any text editor (but not a word processor, must be plain text).

    Comments start with #, so the first line is for your information, specifying which web site this is for. Comments can be after any directive.

    The Sitemap line (can be anywhere in the file, but I put it at top) is a way to tell search engines the full URL where your site map is.

    The “User-agent: *” line says “for all User Agents, this is for you” (The User-agent normally would be browser type, e.g. Firefox or Chrome or IE, but search engines also tell web servers some User Agent.)

    # robots.txt for yoursite.com
Sitemap: http://www.yoursite.com/sitemap.xml

User-agent: *    # all search engines should ignore the folders Disallowed below

# Maybe have one folder for site images that shouldn't be indexed
# another for photographs you want indexed by search engines
Disallow: /images/
Allow: /photos/

# Here are more examples, use the folders that apply to your site:
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /freecontactform/
Disallow: /junk/
Disallow: /newsfeeds/
Disallow: /oldboring/

    You can exclude individual files this way (but probably simpler for you to put files into a separate directory):

    Disallow: /test/junk.html

    If you have WordPress on your site, include these lines:

    # WordPress
Disallow: /wp-admin
Disallow: /wp-includes
Disallow: /wp-content/plugins
Disallow: /wp-content/cache
Disallow: /wp-content/themes
Disallow: /category/*/*
Disallow: /comments
Disallow: */comments
Disallow: /feed
Disallow: */feed
Disallow: /manager
Disallow: /trackback
Disallow: */trackback
Allow: /wp-content/uploads

    You can say a specific search engine has different permissions, if you want. (I don’t, all are commented out in the example below)
    Don’t use Allow: /*
    (I actually saw this on some dumb robots.txt teaching site!) Google correctly reads the Allow: /* as overriding the folders for ‘any search’ (see that line above, User-Agent: *), “Ah, everybody but Me shouldn’t read /youtubevideosite/ etc.” and then reports hundreds of errors from your YouTube, Amazon etc. site widgets having bad links that it can’t find on your site. (Of course not, those links are on YouTube or Amazon or the comment writer’s own site.)

    User-agent: Googlebot
# Disallow:
# Allow: /images/

# Google Images
User-agent: Googlebot-Image
# Disallow:
# Allow: /images/

# Google AdSense
User-agent: Mediapartners-Google*
# Disallow:
# Allow: /ads/

# digg mirror
User-agent: duggmirror
Disallow: /

    See Google’s test page, to make sure Google is reading your robots.txt the way you expect: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ and under Crawl click on Blocked URLs:

    Google webmaster tools

    Robots.txt does not provide Any security. Use .htaccess for that. Robots.txt is a suggestion for good search bots, e.g. Google or Bing, to not bother indexing files. Do NOT mention private areas in robots.txt, you just told bad search bots to go looking there! Don’t bother filling your robots.txt with lines like this, since bad bots don’t even read your robots.txt

    User-agent: Flaming AttackBot   # waste of time, bad bots ignore it
Disallow: /

    There is no way to specify, in robots.txt, to not index “everything except” a single file, there is no use of ‘wild cards’ in file names. Best is put the files you prefer search engines ignore in separate directories.

    There is a way to specify inside an HTML page that search engines shouldn’t bother indexing it. However, this is only seen once the search engine has loaded the page (robots.txt is generally read by search engines before loading any pages in that folder). Simply put a “noindex” meta tag in the <head> section of the page: <meta name="robots" content="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW, NOARCHIVE" />. I use this on the “thank you” page after a form was submitted, and on my site error pages.

    Also see http://perishablepress.com/robots-notes-plus/.

    Here is my robots.txt in one piece:

    # robots.txt for lernerconsult.com
Sitemap: http://www.lernerconsult.com/sitemap.xml

User-agent: *
Disallow: /htm/
Disallow: /lists/
Disallow: /sitespecific/
Disallow: /images/
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /cgi-bin/apf4/
Disallow: /ddtabmenufiles/
Disallow: /feedforall/
Disallow: /newsfeeds/
Disallow: /utils/
Disallow: /shared/
Disallow: /shared/youtubevideosite/
Disallow: /socialbookmarkscript/
Disallow: /styles/
Disallow: /youtubevideosite/

# WordPress
Disallow: /wp-admin
Disallow: /wp-includes
Disallow: /wp-content/plugins
Disallow: /wp-content/cache
Disallow: /wp-content/themes
Disallow: /category/*/*
Disallow: /comments
Disallow: */comments
Disallow: /feed
Disallow: */feed
Disallow: /manager
Disallow: /trackback
Disallow: */trackback
Allow: /wp-content/uploads

# See test page https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ then under Crawl click on Blocked URLs

User-agent: Googlebot
# Disallow:
# Allow: /googlefolder/

# Google Image
User-agent: Googlebot-Image
# Disallow:
# Allow: /googlefolder/

# Google AdSense
User-agent: Mediapartners-Google*
# Disallow:
# Allow: /googlefolder/

# digg mirror
User-agent: duggmirror
Disallow: /

  • Screenshots on Windows, OS/X, iPhone, iPad, Android

    Windows:

    On Windows, you can take a screenshot of the currently active window by pressing Alt-PrntScrn (aka Alt-PrintScreen, hold down the Alt key, press PrntScrn, release both) and the screenshot is put in the Clipboard, open up any image program (I like IrfanView best, get it on http://download.cnet.com) or even Word or WordPad, press Ctrl-V to paste. To get the entire desktop (everything showing on screen) press PrntScrn instead of Alt-PrntScrn.

    To capture menus, including right-click menus, it is usually easier to grab the entire screen (press PrtnScrn) and then crop the captured image.

    OS/X:

    On OS/X there are several keystrokes, to get different portions of the screen. The keystrokes put the screenshot into a PNG file on your desktop (PDF in Mac OS 10.3 and earlier). If you want it put in your clipboard instead, add holding down the Ctrl key also, e.g. Command-Control-Shift-3. (Note: http://www.osxkeyboardshortcuts.com/keyboard-symbols.html has a chart of keyboard symbols and the easy-to-type names used in documentation.)

    Entire Desktop: Command-Shift-3
    A portion of the Desktop: Command-Shift-4, position the mouse at one corner of what you want to capture, click-drag to the opposite corner, when you release the mouse button the area will be captured.
    A specific application window: Command-Shift-4, space, move the mouse pointer over the application window you want captured, click the mouse.
    To include the mouse pointer or a menu in your screen shot: use the Grab utility by selecting Dock > Utilities > Grab. Set the Grab Preferences to use the cursor icon you wish to have in your screenshot.

    iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch

    Press and hold the menu button (the main button below the screen), press the power/lock button (the switch on the top edge of the device). The screen will flash white and make a camera shutter noise, to indicate the shot has been taken. Release both buttons (holding too long will give the power-down confirmation). The screenshot is saved in the default Photos app in the “Saved Photos” or (depending on your device) “Camera Roll” album. Email the photo by clicking the Menu icon (rectangle with arrow coming out of it, bottom left corner of screen). Or, click the Menu button from an index page to select multiple pictures to email.

    Android

    Different devices use different buttons, most use one of these button combinations: Power + Home, or Power + Volume Down. Open the Gallery application, the file is in the Screenshots album. In Android 4.2 and later, your screenshot will appear in your notication bar, to open it in Gallery or to Share it.
    There are apps for screenshots, make sure an app specifically supports your device. Generally they give you more control over your screen shot than the built-in screenshot function.
    You can connect your Android device to your computer, take the screenshot with your computer, see http://www.wikihow.com/Take-a-Screenshot-of-an-Android-Device-%28from-a-Computer%29

  • Screenshots on Windows, OS/X, iPhone, iPad, Android

    Windows:

    On Windows, you can take a screenshot of the currently active window by pressing Alt-PrntScrn (aka Alt-PrintScreen, hold down the Alt key, press PrntScrn, release both) and the screenshot is put in the Clipboard, open up any image program (I like IrfanView best, get it on http://download.cnet.com) or even Word or WordPad, press Ctrl-V to paste. To get the entire desktop (everything showing on screen) press PrntScrn instead of Alt-PrntScrn.

    To capture menus, including right-click menus, it is usually easier to grab the entire screen (press PrtnScrn) and then crop the captured image.

    OS/X:

    On OS/X there are several keystrokes, to get different portions of the screen. The keystrokes put the screenshot into a PNG file on your desktop (PDF in Mac OS 10.3 and earlier). If you want it put in your clipboard instead, add holding down the Ctrl key also, e.g. Command-Control-Shift-3. (Note: http://www.osxkeyboardshortcuts.com/keyboard-symbols.html has a chart of keyboard symbols and the easy-to-type names used in documentation.)

    Entire Desktop: Command-Shift-3
    A portion of the Desktop: Command-Shift-4, position the mouse at one corner of what you want to capture, click-drag to the opposite corner, when you release the mouse button the area will be captured.
    A specific application window: Command-Shift-4, space, move the mouse pointer over the application window you want captured, click the mouse.
    To include the mouse pointer or a menu in your screen shot: use the Grab utility by selecting Dock > Utilities > Grab. Set the Grab Preferences to use the cursor icon you wish to have in your screenshot.

    iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch

    Press and hold the menu button (the main button below the screen), press the power/lock button (the switch on the top edge of the device). The screen will flash white and make a camera shutter noise, to indicate the shot has been taken. Release both buttons (holding too long will give the power-down confirmation). The screenshot is saved in the default Photos app in the “Saved Photos” or (depending on your device) “Camera Roll” album. Email the photo by clicking the Menu icon (rectangle with arrow coming out of it, bottom left corner of screen). Or, click the Menu button from an index page to select multiple pictures to email.

    Android

    Different devices use different buttons, most use one of these button combinations: Power + Home, or Power + Volume Down. Mine requires holding down the Power + Volume Down for several seconds until the screenshot appears half-size on the screen.

    Open the Gallery application, the file is in the Screenshots album. In Android 4.2 and later, your screenshot will appear in your notication bar, to open it in Gallery or to Share it.

    There are apps for screenshots, make sure an app specifically supports your device. Generally they give you more control over your screen shot than the built-in screenshot function.

    You can connect your Android device to your computer, take the screenshot with your computer, see http://www.wikihow.com/Take-a-Screenshot-of-an-Android-Device-%28from-a-Computer%29

  • Should You Use WordPress as Single- or Multi-Site?

    I recommend Everyone with a business install WordPress in Multi-Site mode.

    You might think you only need one blog. You definitely should focus on a single business at a time, and I bet you will find good ways to use multiple WordPress sites.

    If you are a good writer, each book you write would have a blog specific to the book, and the questions people have about the book, and how they’ve used what they learned.

    Or you could market to different groups of your customers. Let’s say you have a course or coaching for single parents. Maybe marketing separately to single moms and single dads would be more effective, or maybe some things you offer would be best marketed to both. The only way to know is to Test, find out what actually works better. The best marketers know that what they think will work is rarely what actually works; they write ads and sales letters that use their knowledge of what makes a good ad, write many of them that each could work well, and let the people tell them which ads are best by responding to the ads. (more…)