WordPress backend: Addding custom columns March 17th 2011

Get 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 attachments: Tracking the big ones June 21st 2010

Using IMAPsize to find and delete large attachments

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 updates: 3.0 ahead of the game June 20th 2010

“W3 Total Cache” CSS minification broken with Thesis theme

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: COBOL ON COGS June 4th 2010

Nostalgia for IBM mainframe COBOL developers

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 plugins: Redirection by John Godley June 3rd 2010

Easily manage 301 redirections and 404 not-found errors

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.com blog: Talking about software May 2nd 2007

An experienced software industry executive’s personal blog

Andrew-Biss.com is my personal blog where I post on software industry topics. An experienced software industry executive, I help independent software vendors (ISVs) exploit new business opportunities at strategy consultancy ISV Focus. I also curate presentation blog Tech Presenting to help you give technical presentations that get audiences to take action.

Andrew-Biss.com blog: Hello World!

A blog where Andrew Biss talks about software

This is a dummy post to ensure FeedBurner doesn’t see an empty RSS feed.

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.