digital development, design and training
It takes maybe less than 30 minutesInstall Linux 😉
Seriously, would you trust your machine without completely wiping the hard disk and reinstalling (something) anyway? And if there’s any residual Windows infection on the hardware you need an operating system immune to Windows nasties.
Personally, I would consider replacing the hard disk as well
Eugene at #WPUGL recently gave a talk to a group of WordPress users on the importance and ease of backing-up your WordPress site. Indeed, when weighing up the value of the effort versus the time and difficulty, it is a no-brainer: taking less than 30 seconds when you have just posted something, why not? Continue reading “Backing Up Your WordPress”
Compare the last version, which looked rather old fashioned, and worked
New version, in summary:
In just 24hrs lovewatches.co.uk built and launched their (basic, but being updated) e-commerce site using WordPress. Not using any fancy plugins, just a basic site layout and a little customisation. Even using a simple child-theme for future customisation, this only goes to prove what a straightforward process that was!
Learnt some interesting stuff, even though can’t say I contributed much – still recovering from a cold. But am now more primed for next time.
Spent some good time with the translators: every version has strings of text that have to be identified and manually translated into hundreds of different local languages and dialects (over 170?).
Democracy: give people a voice online
So that WordPress can continue to be embraced by all worldly communities, and bring freedom to online publishers everywhere, it must be ‘language accessible’. Not everyone speaks english (thankfully) and should have the freedom to publish using tools written in their own language: there have been over 2 million WordPress installs in Japanese alone. There are languages you’d never believe still existed.
Same goes for the documentation.
Using WordPress? Now, you all speak something – so this is something everyone can contribute to. Whether its WordPress admin pages or the documentation, have you seen anything that’s ‘not quite right’? Get in and change it, make it better, give back and everyone benefits – writing code is not compulsory.
Find out more about the translations here and the polyglot homepage here. Information about documentation is here
Thanks to the organisers, WordPress London and sponsors CampaignMonitor, SiteGround, MooveAgency and humanmadeltd and support from London University.
Maybe its not actually a memory leak, but I was suffering with mate-panel increasing from a boot level of around 14-15MB expanding substantially to the order of 1.5GB: I could not find any real, or apparently relevant, help online.
So explore, that’s what Linux users do isn’t it?
I dont reboot so often, but paid special attention to mate-panel when I did. My panel, one of several, is normally hidden with a semi-transparent background of plain colour, nothing too innocuous.
Every time I swept my mouse over the panel to make it visible, on hiding the memory use increased (about) 2MB – changing the background to none (‘theme’), the memory increase fell to almost nothing.
There was still a small increase, so noticing I had left the test setup with transparency on (even though background colour was none), a quick reset and back to fully opaque – now I cannot see any significant memory increase.
Having several panels running makes it difficult to see exactly what is causing the increases, but it was clear in the beginning, every time the panel appeared, memory increased 2MB.
The issue appears to be in the having transparency to any but ‘fully opaque’ (whether you are using that setting or not?)
BTW, I had a similar memory problem with wnck-applet (dont have the details to hand) that was resolved by changing the style somehow ..
I’ll continue to monitor the situation and update if necessary, but as of now its considered fixed for me. Aren’t you glad I didn’t have to mention the terminal even once?
The panel info:
- not 100% width
- contains notifications and several shortcuts (and drawers)
OMG 4G networks are now delivering only 3G speeds
Brits clamouring to sign new mobile contracts to get their hands on speedier networks might want to pause for thought: 4G speeds have halved in the past year just as demand rose.
Which? said:
We … found that average 4G speeds are slowing – from 19Mbps to 10.16Mbps in just under a year. The reason? It’s likely because more customers have signed up to 4G, thus increasing demand on the network and slowing speeds.The good news is that as customers continue to sign up, we won’t necessarily see speeds fall any further [ie. they will stay at 10Mbs]. That’s because providers are hoisting more masts to cope with the extra demand.
Of course, that’s exactly what happened to 3G services [that provide up to 14Mbs], and (un)surprisingly the more expensive 4G alternative was the solution – you suckers
Is 4G really better than 3G?
So the offered service could not actually deliver what was promised once user started competing for the bandwidth. They would have know this from the outset and only catered for the initial few thousand connections.
4G suffers even more than 3G from mast density: to have full performance you need good clear access to your local mast/s, and they need to be close together (high density).
Of course this is no more than the usual story of never-actually-delivering-headline-speed: sell a product advertised as fast, whilst the small print relinquishes all guarantee of actual performance.
When did you last belive in quoted ADLS performance, for example? Or wifi speeds?
In most cases the issue is not so much of what the technology can theoretically provide but, in the case of wireless, local prevailing conditions, and most significantly, the actual ability of the company’s infrastructure to deliver the promised capacity – this is what’s happening in the above survey. I have certainly seen ADSL being affected like this too – look what happens to download speeds at busy times, and why ‘bandwidth management’ (throttling) is used.
To get any chance of full throughput you pretty much need a proper network cable connection. Internally, that’s Cat 5/6 and for broadband something like Virgin Media cable service (not the ADSL offering) or possibly ADSL/Fibre (I have no data on performance).
Ending the iPod Classic
During the event, Cook was also asked why Apple recently stopped selling its iPod Classic device, which although overtaken by newer products like the iPod touch and iPhone, remained a symbol of Apple’s comeback as a consumer electronics company.
“We couldn’t get the parts any more. They don’t make them any more,” said Cook, according to Engadget. “We would have to make a whole new product… the engineering work to do that would be massive… The number of people who wanted it is very small.”
Doesn’t bode well for repairs then, does it?
Hungary to impose world’s first internet tax
Hungary is preparing to impose the world’s first tax on internet usage .. which include a charge of Ft150 (62 U.S. cents [40p]) for each gigabyte of internet data consumed. Mr Varga [economy minister] said the tax – to be paid by internet service providers – was a logical extension of levies on phone calls and text messages the government announced in 2011.
Hungarians stage Budapest protest against internet tax
In response, the ruling Fidesz party said it would submit an amendment to the law ensuring that monthly payments of the tax were capped at 700 forints.
Although we all pay an internet tax (by way of VAT on our telecoms bill), this is particularly despicable. Presumably this fee is on top of the taxes already levied.
It seems the charge applies also to data uploaded, not just downloaded.
Part of the problem is from webpages being overloaded with garbage for a ‘prettier experience’: the average ebay page is approaching 2MB, and they’re not alone. Much is to do with ‘needing’ oversized, high resolution images to cater for the higher resolution screens, and the fashion for more and more visual effects and features being being managed browser-side (cf. traditional ‘server-side’ intelligence).
Dont get me started on the CO2 footprint for all these ‘superfluous’ bits being transported 😉
Often it’s worth using the mobile site instead, for a more efficient service. Maybe its time for a ‘download accelerator’ service, akin to Opera’s turbo ‘on the road’ option. I suspect that when people complain about how ‘slow their computer is’, in fact it has little to do with their computer and more to do with the amount they are having to download, with the subsequent extra processing necessary.
[I am aware CDNs, for example, reduce the real weight of each page as you explore the site, but that doesn’t change the original situation so much]
Add the imposition of certain OSes that demand you download all your updates & upgrades, as well as software only available by download, and you have the recipe to create many thousand computers running obsolete (may I say ‘poor quality’ or ‘bloated’) software with the issues this presents.
Extending the point about forcing these massive downloads, it is worth remembering not everyone on the planet has access to lovely broadband. Even in the UK, many people still have to rely on expensive dial-up modem services, or not much cheaper mobile connections.