Category: open source
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WP Super Cache To the Rescue
The past few weeks have been frustrating for me because my primary WordPress website (this one: speedofcreativity.org) has been crashing immediately after I’ve published a new post and shared that link on social media. (Twitter and Google+). Based on the numerous trouble ticket exchanges I’ve had with my web host, it sounds like each time my server crashed…
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WordPressOKC Meetup Notes: 31 March 2014
These are my notes from the March 31, 2014 WordPress OKC Meetup group. Since our church session generally meets the last Monday of the month (when the WordPress OKC meet up is held) I haven’t been able to attend for the last year and a half. Our session met last Tuesday because of scheduling conflicts,…
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4 Free WordPress Plugins to Reduce Comment Spam
As eCommerce has continued to grow over the past decade, comment spam on blog websites has also increased dramatically. There are several reasons for this, but the primary one is financial: In an attempt to increase the “page rank” (Google search engine ranking) of different websites, unscrupulous people have employed comment spamming methods to try…
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First Choose Your Own Adventure Story with Twine: The Spark
Update: philome.la (@philomela_twine) is a website providing free hosting of Twine stories powered by TiddlyWiki. For official Twine news follow @twinethreads. Twine is a free, open source software program and browser-based platform (in alpha) for creating “choose your own adventure” style stories. I loved these books when I was in elementary school. You can read…
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Why I Switched My WordPress Web Host from WP Engine to Site5
Over the past two weeks I’ve reluctantly completed the arduous and stressful task of migrating 30+ websites to a new web host. Most of these sites run WordPress. In this post, I’ll share some of my lessons learned and the specific reasons why, after 8 months as customer of WP Engine, I switched to Site5…
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Create a Personal Publication Archive with Open Journal Systems (OJS)
A couple years ago I started looking for a free content management system I could use to archive and share publications I’ve written in my educational career. Since I’ve used WordPress extensively to publish content online, I was first drawn to “Annotum: an open-source, open-process, open-access scholarly authoring and publishing platform based on WordPress.” I…
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Self-Hosting Oral History Audio (or Lectures) with Free Podcast Generator Software
Radio shows and audiobooks are wonderful resources for learning, particularly for people with commutes or who like to walk / jog / exercise regularly. There is a “texture” and communicative power to the spoken word which isn’t captured fully in written texts. Pre-recorded (asynchronous) audio recordings provide fantastic flexibility for listeners, who can start and…
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Restore or Move a Large mySQL Database with mySQLDumper
This afternoon was an abnormally geeky one for me, but thankfully successful. I don’t normally wrangle with mySQL databases, but today I had to. At LONG last I’m completing the migration of my websites to a new web host, and the last two sites I’ve needed to backup and restore are my custom URL shortener…
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Migrating from Podcast Generator to WordPress and Podlove
In December of 2010, I created “Fuel 4 Educational Change Agents” as a secondary podcast channel to complement my primary “Moving at the Speed of Creativity Podcast” channel. I created this secondary channel of “no-edit” and lightly-edited audio recordings using the free, open source software program Podcast Generator, which I learned about doing research for…
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Two Rising Stars In Africa: eLearning and the Kuali ERP
In 1997, while still working in Oklahoma, I attended a best practice site visit at the Colorado Community College system. The president of the system opened our visit by saying, “We have had requests from schools in your state to bring in classes….we are coming and there is nothing you can do about it.” I…