Query Monitor detects slow plugins, themes and functions

WillWP.com - Query Monitor plugin

For WordPress there are many plugins and themes. Unfortunately, their focus is often not on performance. This plugin helps you to identify the slow components of your website. Most performance breaks in WordPress can be identified very well and quickly in the front end, but sometimes it is necessary to look under the hood to see what slows down the build of the WordPress installation. The Plugin Query Monitor can be of great help. What can Query Monitor do? Query Monitor is a developer tool for WordPress that allows you to debug database queries, PHP errors, hooks and actions, gutters, inserted scripts and stylesheets, HTTP API…

QR Code creation

First up this is for MacOS at the moment, if there is any interest in a Windows option leave a comment. I also won’t go into installing Homebrew too much but you will need this, start by opening a terminal window and enter: Use this to then install qrencode. To get started with creating QR codes it’s pretty easy. You just need to call it and then set a output file and what content you would like to include. This sample creates a QR code for this blog post and opens it’s out in Preview. This creates a QR code…

How to Gutenberg

Compressing with Squash File System

I still always learn something new, SquashFS had it passed me by and I hadn’t taken notice of how useful it can be to compress directories for transfer. The task was compress a load of big directories with tons of small files in them so I can transport them via SSH. I always tend to zip them but it seems way faster and can be installed on macOS easily with homebrew. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SquashFS

Add MySQL Index to WordPress Tables

A great example where an index may be a good option is the wp-options table, it can become bloated due to settings placed there by themes and plugins. This is because many plugins and theme builders store large amounts of transient or session data in the options table. If you’d like to speed up the WP-Admin side of your website as well as the front-end you definitely want to start optimising how you store and access the database. One way is using object caches such as Memcached or Redis services to store the data in RAM for fast access. The other…

SSH into your website via a mobile phone

SSH can be tricky on a mobile device, but it’s also very powerful since you can achieve a lot using just a short command rather than booting up your machine to do much the same. It can quickly save you from downtime if your alerted to your site being down due to apache crashing and requiring a restart. JuiceSSH is my favourite app for android devices. It’s free but does have a Pro version for more advanced features such as storing Snippets for ease of access to more complex commands and synchronisation using CloudSync for multiple devices.

SSH into a website using MacOS

SSH can be a great way to work with your WordPress website It’s pretty basic to use it as a replacement for insecure FTP, all you need is a username, password and IP address or valid hostname. On a mac it’s easy to get started. Open terminal by pressing CMD ⌘ + spacebar to open Spotlight Search and type terminal, then press enter to open it. In terminal just type the following replacing it with a valid IP or your hostname (often just your domain!) then enter your password when promoted. Congrats! Your now connected to your server via SSH.     TL;DR Replace…