News and Updates

Posted on May 13, 2019April 24, 2019 by Arnan — Leave a comment

MacBook Pro 2018 after 3 months of daily use

In February 2019 I got the latest and greatest MacBook Pro 15inch for myself. This will be my only computer which I use to develop my plugins on; AdRotate Pro and Analytics Spam Blocker and stuff like that. I also like to play a game every now and then. I watch movies, listen to my music. You know, the main computer I have to depend on for at least 1 to 2 years.

Coming from a 2015 MacBook Pro 13inch. I really like the design of the MacBook Pros and this new one is no exception. But it’s not without it’s flaws.

Over the last few years Apple, in my opinion, has been moving steadily away from ‘innovative and cool’ to ‘money-grab and elitist’. For this reason I gave up on iPhones and iPads. Never cared for gimmicks as the Apple Watch or AppleTV. And will probably never own an iPhone again with this very reason at the top of my little list of gripes.

Posted on May 10, 2019May 17, 2019 by Arnan — Leave a comment

No-Bot Registration 1.5 – Compatibility update and new dashboard

A quick update to improve WooCommerce compatibility as well as being up-to-date with WordPress 5.2.
I’ve also overhauled the Dashboard so it looks a bit more modern and current.

Texts and setting names have been reworded to be more straight forward and simple to understand.
And overall the whole dashboard looks much nicer now.

An error occurring when someone tries to register via WooCommerce has been resolved.
Let me know if you find more quirks 🙂

Posted on May 4, 2019May 17, 2019 by Arnan — Leave a comment

Analytics Spam Blocker version 2.8 – Things actually work now…

Over the last few days I did some troubleshooting for this site in general and came across some issues with the Analytics Spam Blocker API. Which have been resolved today. It took a lot of testing and trial and error. But the new API 2 now actually works.

So, yay!

Sites should now get new blocklists again, and get them reliably. Registration of new users is now also faster and works. For some users the response would be empty or null… Or registration would flat out fail… None of that anymore.

Posted on May 3, 2019May 17, 2019 by Arnan — Leave a comment

AdRotate Free version 5.1 – Available now

An update for performance and stability. CSS for the header is no longer generated on pageload, but when you save your group. This should speed things up a little.
Graphs for stats now render correctly and a number of other tweaks to the dashboard have been made.

At the request of a number of users the transition for rotating adverts in Dynamic Groups has been changed to a fading effect. Please let me know what you think of that and if it’s too slow or fast.

Posted on May 2, 2019May 17, 2019 by Arnan — Leave a comment

AdRotate Pro version 5.1 – Fixes, new Advert Generator and more…

A number of fixes are included in AdRotate Pro 5.1, most notably that graphs now render correctly. Another improvement is that CSS for the header is no longer generated on pageload, but when you save your group. This should speed things up a little.

The transition for rotating adverts in Dynamic Groups has been changed to a fading effect. Please let me know what you think of that and if it’s too slow or fast.

The Advert Generator got overhauled and expanded upon. Image sizes are now detected by AdRotate which lets the Advert Generator create smarter and more complete code. At the same time, the useless HTML5/Flash option has been removed from the Advert Generator. You can just paste your code in the advert instead. Which is faster.

Posted on April 24, 2019May 17, 2019 by Arnan — Leave a comment

How to deal with email changes the right way

This is a bit of a rant, but for good reason. And if you read and follow my quick advise further down this article the world will be a better place. At least in the world of email etiquette.

Over the last few months this has turned into a thing that happens multiple times a week, where I get a dumb and unintuitive auto-reply telling me the email address I tried to reach doesn’t exist anymore and I should re-send my email to some other address. Or whatever silly “solution” they came up with instead of doing something logical.

Posted on April 20, 2019April 20, 2019 by Arnan — Leave a comment

How-to: Fixing macOS spellcheck and dictionaries

Over the last few months I’ve been annoyed to no end by Apple macOS’s stupid and illogical dictionaries.
Correct words getting corrected to a language I don’t know or care for. Questionable grammar decisions and other nonsense.

This started happening in macOS Sierra, but got better with updates. It then happened again in macOS High Sierra and I thought; “oh well, annoying, I’ll just turn it off”. And from what I found on the internet that’s what many people did.

But now in macOS Mojave it’s the worst – And adding Spanish to my vocabulary I kinda requires me to have a working spellchecker and functional dictionary. My Spanish sucks…

So, on-and-off I’ve been looking for a solution. Resetting this, deleting that config file. Installing Grammarly (or considering it). Scouring forums for answers. The general consensus seems to be that Apple sucks at words and you should turn off spellcheck.

But then I figured it out…

Posted on April 12, 2019 by Arnan — Leave a comment

Analytics Spam Blocker – Fixed Communications

A quick update fixing a communications error that affected a few users. Something went wrong with processing reports and new registrations on the server. This has now been fixed.

Report Referral Spam

Referral spam continues to be a bother for many site owners. Using Analytics Spam Blocker helps you get your stats back and true. Report any suspicious domains via your Analytics Spam Blocker dashboard to make sure they are blocked from your analytics.

Your report is important to make stats better and discourage the use of referral spam domains. The more reports get sent in, the less effective the domains become. Which may cause referral spam to die out.

Changes for v2.7.1

[fix] Communication error with the server for some people

Posted on March 29, 2019 by Arnan — Leave a comment

AdRotate Pro 5.0 – Better stats, better exports

Better stats, Better dashboard

This update focuses on the dashboard and display of stats. While the graphs in themselves haven’t changed – You can now navigate them much easier with datepickers. You can pick any range you want and see much more than just one month at a time. It took a while to figure out but this seems to work fine 🙂

A much requested feature for some time now. And finally it’s here. Let me know if you run into any quirks with the datepickers so I can improve them if nessesary.

Throughout pretty much every dashboard page there have been little tweaks and changes. Nothing all that drastic, but just small updates to make it just that better looking. Spacing, typos, field sizes. Pretty much everything got a good look and probably a little tweak. If you notice any irregularities, let me know 🙂

Posted on March 26, 2019 by Arnan — Leave a comment

AdRotate Free v5.0 – Polish and shine

This update brings many small improvements and updates to the dashboard. A few minor improvements to the underlying code. But mainly visuals. Over time the dashboard got a bit out of balance and looked untidy in a few places. This has all been fixed and updated.

Not immediately noticeable for many people but a lot of little irritation points have been ironed out and the plugin looks much better now. I’m still working on some new features but haven’t really decided where in AdRotate (Pro) they belong, if at all.

If you find quirks with the dashboard, anything at all, let me know.