WordPress: Add custom columns to media library March 17th 2011

You can easily add extra columns to the WordPress back-end Admin lists for a better overview of your posts, pages, media and comments.

Searching through your WordPress media library for items without “alt” text, caption or description can be time consuming and is error prone, especially if you’ve more than a few images to check. A quick scan could easily reveal what information is missing; if only these three columns were available. Well, as you’ll see, its easy to add them with two minor additions to your WordPress theme’s functions.php file.

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Gmail: Delete big attachments with IMAPsize June 21st 2010

IMAPsize is an easy to use freeware tool to find and delete those big attachments that tend to accumulate in Gmail archives over time.

This was becoming an issue as I keep a local backup of my Gmail account using IMAP Backup. And while you can find attachments in Gmail using search modifiers has:attachment and filename:zip, you can’t search or sort on attachment size.

The solution: the IMAPsize freeware Windows IMAP utility found via this blog post from Amit Agarwal. IMAPsize’s speciality is searching your Gmail account for folders (Gmail labels) and messages based on attachment size.

I quickly found and deleted my large attachments using IMAPsize. Backup problem solved. Recommended.

WordPress 3.0: Minor CSS issue with “W3 Total Cache” June 20th 2010

The WordPress 3.0 update was OK; I only found a minor CSS issue with the W3 Total Cache plugin that improves WordPress performance.

One of my hosting accounts limits PHP memory, so for these blogs I need to deactive all plugins before running the automatic update. My other hosting service has enough PHP RAM to not have to do this, which is nice.

All my blogs have now been running WordPress 3.0 in production for a few days and so far I’ve not met any problems with the core product.

One minor issue has been with the CSS minification in the W3 Total Cache plugin. I’m using the latest development version of W3TC but it has an issue with CSS so I’ve disabled minification until I’ve time to look into this further.

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Web frameworks: Something new for COBOL developers June 4th 2010

If you’ve worked with mainframe COBOL in a previous life you might appreciate the “COBOL ON COGS” web framework.

You’ve heard of Ruby on Rails, but what about all those COBOL developers? Well, we can goto COBOL ON COGS and reminisce. Pay attention as the screens change to bring back fond memories of the massive, built like a battleship, IBM 3270 green-screen terminals. A very nice touch!

WordPress: Redirection plugin great for moving house June 3rd 2010

The Redirection WordPress plugin manages 301 redirections, keeps track of 404 errors and tidies up any loose ends your site may have.

If you’re changing your WordPress site or blog structure and moving posts and pages around, then John Godley’s Redirection plugin makes it easy to add 301 redirects to the new canonical definitions. It also catches 404 errors, with an easy way to add redirects for incorrect URLs, common typos etc.

Andrew Biss: Experienced software industry executive May 2nd 2007

The personal blog of Andrew Biss: TechPresenting.com curator, founder of strategy consultancy ISVfocus.com Limited and an experienced software industry executive.

Andrew-Biss.com is my personal blog. I originally intended to use this domain for my online resume, but that’s now over at LinkedIn. I now post here from time to time about software industry issues that catch my eye.

I started my software industry career working as a developer in the financial services sector. A stint in consulting followed, where I championed using automated software tools to create business applications. I later held VP positions in strategy, marketing and engineering at software tool companies in the UK, US, France and Germany.

Not found what you’re looking for? Then try the Andrew-Biss.com site map to explore by article title, category, tag, month and author.