Recently I wanted to add a small, yet nice looking gallery of work to my site, specifically to my About page. Although I do use and advocate for Elementor as a product (especially for non coders) I didn’t much like the galleries on offer there, and I am generally not one to use “non Elementor created” add-ons.
I decided to go with FooGallery as I like the typical style it uses and had used it years previously, with good results.
Adding the gallery itself is a breeze, and I was organised enough to have all of my images sized to what I liked, so creating a carousel with a half dozen or so images of websites I had either created, or designed and created, didn’t take too long at all. Thinking it would be good to also have a link to the website, I carefully added custom URLs to each of the images in the gallery.
Check the Gallery Settings, Thumbnail Link
I am using the Carousel style gallery, so one thing to check here is that the Thumbnail Link setting (at the bottom of the General settings of the Gallery) is set to “Custom URL”.
I figured once done, I could save the gallery, view it on the live page, and people could click through to the real deal. WHAT A FOOL I WAS!!
Check the Lightbox Settings
With the above set, you also need to check the Lightbox settings on the Gallery itself (not the general Foobox settings) and set this to something other than the default; set it to FooBox.
This solution was found largely thanks to a WordPress support topic, found here, but part of me wanted to write this blog about it if for nothing other than to remind myself this issue existed!
Once then saved and page loaded, the custom URL was working as expected.
I hope you found this helpful! If so, please share with your socials, or let me know if you run into any issues in the comments section.
I was working on a project where I was transferring to a different CMS (WordPress), and the original blogs all had “blog” in the URL. I wanted the same format in the new site, figuring this was the best thing to do for existing SEO.
However, the new WordPress site is also using Custom Post Types (CPTs) and I didn’t want to affect the URLs of those posts. My instinct was to change the Permalink Settings to add “/blog” to the front, but this also affected the CPT URL.
Checking with my good friend Google seemed to take me longer to find the solution than expected, and admittedly I may be just stupid, but I thought I’d write this to see if it helps anyone else in the same, or similar, situation.
Why not use a Custom Post Type plugin to handle this?
It is highly likely that a decent Custom Post Type plugin would be able to handle this “out of the box”, however I had already created the post type somewhat manually, using what I think is a very nifty little plugin called WPCode which typically means for me less plugins installed overall (seriously, check it out, it’s great).
Ultimately it meant I had basically entered the CPT code manually, but obviously had something missing that might allow me to “strip” or ideally “ignore” this starting part of the URL structure.
Links high up the Google SERP had me looking at various Custom Post Type plugin solutions, or more like stripping it after the post was published or upon retrieval which seems like a slow way of doing things (or if not slow, less efficient), meaning doing something via the functions.php file.
Finding what I thought was going to be my answer, as it at least spoke about the Post Type registering process, only gave me half the answer and contained my bug bear (one of many) of typically developers (yes I am looking at mostly ALL of you developers out there!) that tend to post incomplete code snippets under the assumption that I am smart enough to figure out the rest. Well I am NOT, dammit!
My answer with a more or less complete code snippet
My Custom Post Type is Projects. I want the URL / slug to appear as “project”, so something in the line of https://mysite.com/project/project-post-title.
So in my arguments array, the start of which looks like below:
// Set other options for Custom Post Type
$args = array(
'label' => __( 'Projects', 'responsive-mobile-child' ),
I had the following right at the end or the array:
'rewrite' => array( 'slug' => 'project'), // my custom slug
);
Which worked perfectly fine until I changed the Permalink structure as per above, which meant I now had https://mysite.com/blog/project/project-post-title.
Not cool, and probably not ideal for SEO considering the original “projects” had the more desirable URL.
All I had to do though was slightly edit that rewrite line, so it now included ‘with_front’ => False and now it looks like this:
Saving the Permalink again at this point seems a good idea, so after doing that my “Projects” all had the appropriate URL (with just “projects” in the URL) and my regular posts have “blog” in the URL.
Huzzah!
Hope this has helped someone, and if any more explanation, or code snippets, are required then feel free to get in touch. And don’t forget to share!
Scammers online are rife these days, with Australian victims perceived to be rather soft targets.
Gone are the days where we might be duped by Nigerian Princes or very poorly written emails from, apparently, Margot Robbie (yes, I got one of these once). Instead, scammers often rely on your goodwill or perhaps a moment of vulnerability to trick you into thinking you need their help to avoid “unnecessary and unwanted charges”, and before you know it they are accessing your computer and perhaps your bank accounts.
So how do you spot these from the real deal?
Read on for some tips on how to avoid being scammed.
How is this service contacting me?
With the abundance of choice of streaming services or similar, comes a vast choice of ways for scammers to grab your attention.
Whether it’s a big bank, Netflix, Disney+, Amazon, the ATO, Telstra, or something else, scammers will throw any well known service out there, casting the net as wide as possible, and see what lands. This sort of scamming can be described as phishing, as the scammers are trying to land any fish. That’s you, you’re the fish. Don’t be the fish.
The way this works is you receive an email, text message or phone call out of the blue that appears to come from a bank, or a service you might use (eg. Netflix) that either tells you that your credit card details are out of date and need updating, or that you have just been successfully charged and if you no longer want to be charged, click THIS button!
These emails are often alarmist in nature (YOUR SERVICE IS ABOUT TO BE CANCELLED!), often require you to do something quickly (ACT NOW!), and/or trying to trick you into thinking you have been charged something when you haven’t (THANK YOU FOR THE PAYMENT OF $70 IF THIS IS IN ERROR CLICK HERE OR CALL THIS NUMBER!), for the purpose of you making a rash decision and calling the number, or clicking the bright shiny button.
Clicking the button within these emails might do one of several things:
Take you to a fake, sometimes well branded (sometimes not), website for you to enter card details
Convince you to make a phone call to the number provided to talk about your “refund”, and thereby hand over card or banking details
Perhaps ultimately convince you to download some sort of remote access software to “help” you with the refund
Something else that is just as dangerous
All of this spells major trouble, and the downloading of remote access software (eg. AnyDesk, AnyPlace Control, Ultra Viewer) fills me with the most dread.
Some personal experiences
In the last month I have had no less than 3 customers contact me due to activities based on the above. All of them had a similar story to tell, they were all a little embarrassed about what had happened, were a little vulnerable at the time due to a hectic life or less than ideal personal circumstances, and had unwittingly allowed access to their machine and in some cases, bank accounts.
One person hadn’t lost anything and realised what was going on, and quickly shut it down.
Another lost a few hundred dollars, but was apparently getting it back from the bank after discussing the situation with them. In this instance, it was bills that appeared to come from Google that the victim had paid, and having an online business was quite used to receiving such bills.
Another had someone in their accounts and setting up payments to a third party before they realised what was going on. Last I heard, they were trying to talk to the bank about getting over $9,000 back …
Another common scam is to say that you have been charged a relatively small amount of money. For the sake of an example, let’s say $50.00 and now you are looking for a refund because you never signed up for this service to begin with, so how dare they take your $50 to begin with, right? Helpful Company (the scammer) says they have refunded you, but OH NO they have made a mistake and refunded you $500.00. Now if you can just be kind enough to refund that money back to the account number they’ll provide (“you might not see the $500 in your account yet, because you know it clears overnight”), because if you don’t they’ll get fired and then who will feed their 5 children … you get the idea but in this way they are trying to prey on your goodwill and sense of doing the right thing. Now just download this Remote Access software and Helpful Company will walk you through it!
Things to look out for
Poorly spelled email subjects, or content. Dead giveaway, though less and less common. However, legit company emails are good at getting the spelling perfect. Also look for impersonal emails (Dear Customer, versus your real name).
Do you even use the service? I got an email recently that I admit looked great. Content was solid, good use of logos and other imagery. Only a slight typo in the subject which I didn’t actually notice on the first read. If I actually had a Paramount+ account, I might have even believed that I was about to be cut off!
Buttons, links, click-throughs that go somewhere completely different to the expectation. A lot of email viewers these days will show you where the email has come from (return email address) or where the link is going to, when you hover on it. Try this, and see what it says. The email that I received recently telling me that my Disney+ account currently has “suspension your account” I doubt should really be using imagery or links from “lumiere-a.akamaihd.net”. That all of the footer information was in Spanish is quite the red flag also.
ANY text message or SMS that wants you to click a link. This is popular with bank and tax/ATO scams. If in doubt, don’t believe them, and contact your bank or service via another means (look up the phone number in a separate Google search). The real service providers don’t want to lose your business, and won’t simply cut you off. Just TRY and genuinely disconnect from Foxtel to see how difficult it is!
No service wants to be paid via Apple iTunes cards (a still popular ATO scam).
Nobody is going to buy your car sight unseen via a friend/agent that only wants to pay via PayPal and pick it up to deliver to Far North QLD or the NT.
If you have been told that an amount from a service you don’t use has been successfully charged, check your bank accounts to verify it is true. And don’t click the button.
The last word
It only takes a couple of bites, a small number of people to take the hook, for the scammers to make a good amount of money. This is a large part of why such scams continue to be seen.
By being ever vigilant and perhaps even a little suspicious of any email asking you to click a link or button to avoid cancellation of a service (or to commence a refund process) you can help keep yourself and your money safe.
Please don’t ever, EVER, allow someone you don’t know and trust to install any sort of remote access software on your computer.
Recently I created a custom Blog and Blog Archive page for a site using the Avada theme, and this brought my first experience with Fusion Builder.
This in itself was a reasonably smooth process, once I watched a tutorial or two on how to best delineate between header, content, and footer.
Whilst I got the Blog page working the way I wanted it, I noticed on the Blog Archive page that, within the meta information, some extra strings were being presented such as showing “Published On:” before the published date, and “Categories:” before the list of categories. These don’t show on the standard Blog page, and it seemed more tied to the Post Card Blog Archive element I was using.
I couldn’t find any way within Avada options (nor element options) to control this, or change the labelling.
Thanks to this Stack Overflow question, I was able to find more generally where the issue was coming from but then had to dive a little deeper to find out the exact file in question, as it wasn’t mentioned in any of the answers.
Part of the issue is that the above mentioned strings all form part of a single span, meaning that the “Published On:” string was immediately followed by the actual published date, and contained within a single span. This meant a CSS solution alone was not going to work.
So, for those that might have followed the same path and looking for something a little more specific, I can tell you that the way I fixed it was to find the Fusion Builder plugin (fusion-builder), then the “shortcodees” folder, “components” folder, meta.php file.
Doing a search for “Published On:” within this file showed this:
Rinse and repeat for “Categories:” and any other meta label you might want to remove. Save the file, and upload it to the server, refresh the page and got the result I wanted.
The downside of this method is that the changes will need to be made again if and when the Avada theme is updated, but to date I have not found another way to handle this situation.
In the meantime, I hope this information has helped you!
As the father of a child under the age of 13, I am often tasked with giving permission for her to purchase / install apps on her iPad, including purchases of Robux for her rather popular Roblox app. Sometimes though the permissions don’t seem to work, and I either don’t get the notification at all, or trying to act on it doesn’t work as expected. Here’s how we fixed it.
Despite her best intentions, such as saving her pocket money and literally giving me the money to pay for her desired Robux purchases, something screwy seems to go wrong with the whole Parental Controls thing when it comes to the Apple app store.
She would request the Robux purchase. The app would tell her she needs to ask permission. She’d do that. I’d get the notification. I’d try to open the notification (which for some weird reason has started opening in Apple Messages). I’d click View in Store. I’d get a message on screen, “Cannot Connect to App Store”.
What we tried
Restarting both iPads; shutting them down and cold booting them up again (not just a restart).
Making sure both iPads had the most up to date versions of iOS.
Making sure she had the most up to date version of the app. To be fair, these first two or three things have normally fixed things for us in the past. Not this time.
Googling a lot.
In some desperation, even going to Bing.
Yelling a lot.
How we fixed it
Need to give the credit to my 11 year old here.
Her idea was to install Roblox on my iPad, and then log into it using her account. We then made the purchase of Robux and because it went via my natural Apple App Store, no permission was required (which is good because my parents would have said no).
Back onto her iPad, and restarted Roblox, logged in, and voila! Robux purchase was there!
I could then remove Roblox from my iPad. This kind of work around / fix might work for other apps too, so long as you have another Apple device that can be used to install the app on. If this has helped you, please let me know in the comments!
As you may know, as of April 21 2015 Google will rank mobile-friendly websites higher than those that are not mobile-friendly. If you’re not sure whether you pass the mobile-friendly test, Google provides a link where you can simply enter your site URL, and see some general results. If not mobile-friendly, Google offers some advice but often these pieces of advice can’t be directly applied to a WordPress site, although it does go some way to explain general design principals of making a WordPress site more mobile-friendly.
Yes I admit, I play Clash of Clans. Much to the chagrin of my wife. It’s one of few things I actually use my iPad for. My 2 and 4 year old daughters have a far more impressive array of apps. However, sometimes it isn’t handy to use the iPad, whether one of my kids has it, or it is busy charging, or I am already at my computer desk it’d just kill me to have to get up and retrieve my tablet. Recently I have discovered how to play Clash of Clans on PC, and indeed, any Android game or app available in the Google Play store. Here’s how. Read more How to play Clash of Clans on PC (or Mac) ›
Whether it’s a big bank, Netflix, Disney+, Amazon, the ATO, Telstra, or something else, scammers will throw any well known service out there, casting the net as wide as possible, and see what lands. This sort of scamming can be described as phishing, as the scammers are trying to land any fish. That’s you, you’re the fish. Don’t be the fish.
In the last month I have had no less than 3 customers contact me due to activities based on the above. All of them had a similar story to tell, they were all a little embarrassed about what had happened, were a little vulnerable at the time due to a hectic life or less than ideal personal circumstances, and had unwittingly allowed access to their machine and in some cases, bank accounts.
