Insights - Ryan Sechrest (Page 2)

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Insights

Objectives and how they were achieved.

Octocat and a baby Groot looking over a newspaper.

Bash shell prompt dissected: Display Git branch name and status in color

I received a snippet of code from my good friend Jason today. It goes into your .bash_profile and what it does is add two pieces of information to your Bash shell prompt when you’re in a Git working directory. With it, you’ll be able to tell: 1.

Keyboard buttons spread around an open lock.

Control server access: Prompt for credentials (basic auth) on approved networks, allow access to itself, and deny everyone else

To get a site feature from development to production, it goes through four servers: 1. Development 2. Quality Assurance (QA) 3. Staging 4. Production Except for the development server, which is localhost, there are times people, other than developers, need access to view a particular site on the QA or

Stacked crates of SPAM containers.

Prevent contact form spam in WordPress with Contact Form 7 and Akismet

If you’re running WordPress and have a contact form on your website, there’s a good chance you’re using Contact Form 7. You can get away with using it as-is for a while, but as time goes on, spambots begin to find their way into your inbox. At

White table with white computer appliances and a green dinosaur.

Monitor database availability with Pingdom

I’m testing out a new VPS with a couple sites on it, and after several hours of uptime, the mysqld service (database) was sacrificed in order to clear up RAM. As it turns out, I didn’t have a swap space for the VPS to offload inactive pages in

Monkey holding a mirror and staring at their reflection.

Bash script to mirror directory and database of website between servers

When you have a site that’s an on-going project, and you’re using a development, staging, and production server configuration, time and time again you’ll have a need to mirror the production site content with your other environments. Previously, this either meant to manually (FTP) or semi-manually (rsync)

Empty terminal with planes parked outside the windows.

Prevent SSH connection from timing out in Terminal

If you’re constantly connected to multiple servers via SSH and perform work on them throughout the day, dealing with timeouts can be cumbersome. Here’s how you can keep the connection alive. Create a config file in your home’s .ssh directory: $ vi ~/.ssh/config Add the following by

Sign on the side of a building with a human throwing away trash.

Prevent WordPress from automatically purging trash from custom post type

WordPress has a constant called EMPTY_TRASH_DAYS that it automatically sets to 30. What that means is that WordPress will automatically delete all posts, pages, custom post types, etc, that have been in the trash for 30 or more days. // wp-includes/default-constants.php function wp_functionality_constants( ) { // more stuff

Plushy elephant with PHP written on it, standing on top of a MacBook keyboard.

How to use PHP variables in jQuery in WordPress

Often times you need access to server-side data in your JavaScript. Most people accomplish this in one of three ways: 1. Echo out JavaScript in PHP 2. Place data in HTML attributes for jQuery to grab 3. Make Ajax request to PHP I won’t go into the pros and

GitHub's mascot sitting on top of a MacBook's trackpad.

Insights Featured

Managing file and folder permissions on CentOS when deploying with Git

I use Git as a version control and deployment system. When a website gets pushed to a server, all files get pulled into the web root (i.e. htdocs) by a user named git executing git pull in the post-receive hook. By default, all files and folders git creates have

Horse stable with a single horse at the end of the aisle.

Manually install stable version of APC in CentOS

First you’ll want to make sure you have all required packages installed: yum install php-pear php-devel httpd-devel pcre-devel gcc make Most tutorials will now say to use PECL to install APC: [root@vps ~]# pecl install apc downloading APC-3.1.13.tgz ... Starting to download APC-3.1.13.tgz (171,

Dock over water with LED sign that reads "Sweet Escape".

How to escape pound sign in Apache RewriteRule

If you’re setting up a redirect and want to redirect to a specific page and “tab” on that page, you need to make sure Apache does not escape the URL, otherwise # will turn into %23. You can do that by using the NE (no escape) flag: RewriteRule ^/(.*) http://domain.

Tree trunk with large number of exposed roots.

Remove post type slug in custom post type URL and move subpages to website root in WordPress

I recently had a need to rewrite the URLs of all parent and child pages in a custom post type so that they appeared to live at the website root, but in reality, continued to live in a custom post type within their hierarchy. Preface The situation: 1. I have

Squared notebook with a checklist on one of the pages.

Prevent checked categories in meta box from appearing at top in WordPress

I previously shared a jQuery snippet that enforces parent checkboxes to be checked when a child is checked and children to be unchecked if the parent is unchecked. This works really great in theory, except that WordPress, by default, moves all checked checkboxes to the top of the category list,

Parent and child walking on the beach while holding hands.

Automatically check parent checkbox if child is selected in WordPress

To keep all posts in WordPress organized in terms of categorization, it helps to make sure that when a user selects a category that’s three levels down, i.e. has two parents, that all the corresponding parents get checked. What follows is a short and sweet JavaScript solution to

Open notebook calendar displaying a monthly planner page.

MySQL query for getting three most recent posts for last 12 months in WordPress

I recently had a need to retrieve the last three posts for the last 12 months that had at least one or more posts in WordPress. Another requirement was to display a “more” link that would redirect the user to the archive of that month, provided there was at least

Wooden table with two succulent plants on it.

Dynamically insert data into MySQL table based on select query result

I was working on a new feature for a site, and while it closely resembles WordPress’ native post formats, it offers more flexibility and control. Users can choose from predefined post layouts and it will display the post using a custom layout and branding. Since this is a new feature,

Many colorful and empty frames stacked next to and behind each other.

Proportionally constrain image based on fixed width or height using PHP

The following post isn’t WordPress specific, however I’m using this in a WordPress environment, so you’ll find several references to it. Array containing the file details I have a custom meta box that allows a user to upload an image (or any file, really) to a post,

LED sign that reads: Do Something Great.

Convert random-looking string into readable PHP, using bitwise operator, to reveal pharma hack

Today I came across an interesting piece of code in an archived WordPress 3.4.1 installation. At first it didn’t make much sense, but after careful examination, it wasn’t so random after all — malicious code never is. In this post we're going to reverse-engineer the

Drawing of streets on paper with toy cars on top.

Backup your Drobo 5N to CrashPlan Central

Below are the steps for creating a Drobo read-only user, creating a batch file to automatically mount your share, setting up a task to automatically execute your batch file when your computer logs on, and last but not least, adding the new share to CrashPlan for backup. Create a read-only

Orange arrow, on a brick wall, pointing down.

Update a field in a MySQL table based on two fields from another

I have a custom post type in WordPress for employees and used a combination of first and last name as the post title. Both the first and last name are also stored in individual fields in the post meta table. Later I decided to change the structure of the post

Computer with a Windows loading screen.

How to change your Windows 7 login screen background

Tired of looking at the same ol’ Windows login screen? This guide shows you how to replace the standard Windows login screen background with an image of your choice. It also covers what types of images work best, how to create or find them, and what changes need to be

Dartboard with a dart in the bullseye.

Target and style an HTML element only if it has two classes

I was working with custom menus in my WordPress theme and assigned each menu item its own class so that I could have a custom background image. This is basically how WordPress renders the menu (I simplified the number of classes in the example below, as WordPress generates a lot

Colorful sphere sitting on a lit up grid.

CSS clearfix leaves space below container

I’ve been using clearfix to clear floats for years now, and I always knew that it left a little bit of space after the HTML container that is was applied to. Most of the time I sort of worked around it, but I was curious whether there was a

Notebook with a checklist.

Change your list bullet to a custom character in CSS

Today I was wondering whether I could use a custom character as my list bullet. The requirement was that it was strictly CSS and not a background image. Turns out, it’s actually pretty straightforward: ul { list-style: none; } ul li:before { color: #f00; content: '» '; font-size: 1.2em; font-weight:

Screenshot of a code editor with CSS.

How to get Sass support in Sublime Text

I was working with a few .scss files in Sublime Text 2 today and noticed that it didn’t support Sass syntax out of the box. There’s actually a really awesome Sublime package for installing other packages called Package Control. Here’s how you can get that up and