Code representing version control - Photo by Sai Kiran Anagani on Unsplash

Version control with WordPress

I presented at the Chicago Northside meetup talking about version control with WordPress. This popular meetup is always well attended and this was no exception.

In the presentation I aimed to demysitify version control and

  • Cover some of the whys, whats, and hows
  • Cover some of the tools
  • Help understand some of the things we can track with version control
  • Demonstrate some basics
  • Describe the benefits to any type of business / developer

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Git stash

I use Git when working on my WordPress projects.

On occasion, when I’m working on the latest branch and testing out some changes, styling, code etc, I’m *really* excited that I’ve squashed that bug / made that visual improvement.
However, it’s only then that I realize I didn’t create a new branch for my current round of changes.

So, it’s copy/paste, multiple CTRL-Z’s and then paste in. But wait! The changes are in multiple files. Darn.

Have no fear. Git can help.

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WordPress Backups

Backups. Everybody talks about them and says they are doing them, or going to do them or definitely going to do them. However, sometimes the truth is no backup is in place. I wanted to raise awareness and encourage backups for WordPress site owners by describing one of the backup options in the WordPress field.

WordPress backup with PressBackup and Amazon S3

Talking at the Chicago Northside WordPress meetup on Updates, Backups and maintenance I described how you could configure a WordPress backup solution, PressBackup, to work with Amazon S3. By using Amazon S3 you get the benefit of  potentially unlimited backup file storage for free (12 months initially) or for relatively low cost. You create an account with PressBackup and then you can use your Amazon account by adding the S3 service (a few sign up steps), retrieve the Amazon security and authentication keys and put them into PressBackup and then the backups can begin.

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Slow WordPress tag queries

While working on a real estate project I encountered very slow response from WordPress on certain queries. These queries are multiple tag queries in the form: http://www.site.com/tag/TAG_ONE+TAG_TWO My application is using WordPress tags to annotate the content and I am providing links to those multiple tag queries throughout the site. Read more…