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Technology Posts

Poor User Experience With Google Advertising Accounts

With Google Ad Manager and Google AdSense you are only allowed to have 1 account. No big, we are happy to play by your rules. However, now I find myself in a pickle. This problem I caused myself, not realizing I was violating Google’s only one account policy. You know, sometimes you are in a … Continue reading Poor User Experience With Google Advertising Accounts

Smarter Tactics Spam

This spam from SmarterTactics-Com says my design is “Absolutely Brilliant“? Oh wow, thank you! However, your “I noticed a mistake” comment about my SEO is bullsh*t! here is the spam email Smarter-Tactics sent: Hey, Your website’s design is absolutely brilliant. The visuals really enhance your message and the content compels action. I’ve forwarded it to … Continue reading Smarter Tactics Spam

Known WordPress Vulnerabilities – July 2019

According to Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures and The Free and Open Software Security Community here are the main current security issues with WordPress. The known issues are in plugins and one theme. The WordPress Application itself (the Core) does not have any know issues at this time. The plugin names in bold are ones I’ve … Continue reading Known WordPress Vulnerabilities – July 2019

phpMyEdit for PHP7 and MySQLi

Note: An updated version of phpMyEdit that is compatible with PHP7 and PHP8 is available on GitHub, maintained by Rajah01:https://github.com/Rajah01/phpMyEdit.class.php-PHPv8 I’ve stated using the GitHub/Rajah01 version. – KimballApril 2022 One of my clients uses phpMyEdit but unfortunately when we updated their web hosting account to PHP 7, phpMyEdit v5.7.1 stopped working. The changes required to … Continue reading phpMyEdit for PHP7 and MySQLi

NOAA Weather Forecast – WordPress Plugin

I built a WordPress plugin for displaying the weather forecast. The forecast data is pulled from the NOAA NWS Forecast API. The plugin has a shortcode that can be placed on a post, page, or in a widget, anywhere you want to show the forecast. The shortcode takes two perimeters: 1) the location (as latitude, … Continue reading NOAA Weather Forecast – WordPress Plugin

Controlled User Submitted Content

Two clients recently wanted forms for accepting user input. When submitted the input is rolled up into a standard WP Post. But we want to prompt the user for certain types of information in order to generate consistently structured and organized posts. To make this happen I started with a free WP plugin that accepts … Continue reading Controlled User Submitted Content

AdSense Needs A No Remarketing Ads Option

I’ve been using Google AdSense off and on for about 10 years ago. They preformed OK in the beginning, then Google introduced “re-marketing” ads. These ads are chosen for you based on your browsing history (something you looked at yesterday perhaps), and not based on the content you are currently reading. When you are on … Continue reading AdSense Needs A No Remarketing Ads Option

Vi. “The First True Artificial Intelligence Personal Trainer” Review

Vi. “The First True Artificial Intelligence Personal Trainer” Rating: 1 (1/5 stars) Reviewer: Kimball, Goffstown NH, June 22, 2018 Kickstarter Pledge: $199 Here is my review of Vi waterproof wireless headphones for runners after running with them more than 226 miles, some 46 hours. In a nutshell: Vi AI is a FAIL! I was an … Continue reading Vi. “The First True Artificial Intelligence Personal Trainer” Review

Building a Custom Trail Map Using OSM and Mapbox

Here is an high level overview of the process I use for building my own custom hiking trail map. The data I’m using (trails, summits, etc…) are available as open source from OSM. After I fetch and clean up the data I use MapBox to generate the map tiles, in a map style I designed.  The custom trail … Continue reading Building a Custom Trail Map Using OSM and Mapbox

Migrating from HTTP to HTTPS

I recently switched my hiking conditions website from HTTP and HTTPS.  Google’s documentation noted there may be a dip in my search rank and traffic while they re-index the site, but my experience was almost no detectable dip in the numbers. Here is the before and after from my Google Analytics account: That being said. Don’t … Continue reading Migrating from HTTP to HTTPS

Who is iDNS and Should I Pay Them?

Did you get one of these iDNS “Domain Name Expiration Notice” letters in the mail? DON’T PAY THEM, and here’s why … This post is an update to my July 2015 review of iDNS: Review: Internet Domain Name Services (iDNS)   Who is iDNS? iDNS runs a scam designed to trick you and take your money. They … Continue reading Who is iDNS and Should I Pay Them?

Parsing HTML5 IMG srcset

I needed a simple function to use in a TrailsNH Bot to find the largest image in an HTML5 srcset. Here’s what I came up with. function getLargestImage($srcsetString){ $images = array(); // split on comma $srcsetArray = explode(“,”, $srcsetString); foreach($srcsetArray as $srcString){ // split on whitespace – optional descriptor $imgArray = explode(” “, trim($srcString)); // … Continue reading Parsing HTML5 IMG srcset