Tag: webhosting

AdRotate Pro got featured on CyberChimps

Today AdRotate Pro got featured on the website of CyberChimps. The popular theme maker for WordPress themes. They wrote a really nice review outlining some features and benefits of using AdRotate and/or AdRotate Pro!

I am always interested in techniques to help one make money out of a website and one of the time-tested ways is to sell ad space on your website. While this can seem like a low-effort, no-brainer task – it can depend largely on how automated your Ad Management process is. And if you have a WordPress website, you would want to install the best ad management plugin out there – one that takes care of the entire advertising campaign cycle.
Read more »

AdRotate Free 4.10 – Available now

I’ve finally added Jetpack Photon support. This update also includes a number of small improvements to the dashboard and improves the Borlabs Caching integration. Datepickers have been added for scheduling which should make that a more intuitive action.

Lastly, and ongoing, is the improved compatibility with PHP7.2. If you find more quirks with PHP7+ let me know ASAP.

Changes for 4.10

  • [fix] Improved integration with Jetpack Photon
  • [fix] Improved PHP7.2+ compatibility
  • [new] Date pickers for advert scheduling
  • [change] Compatibility with Borlabs Cache 1.1.9.1+
Read more »

Infrastructure upgrades and API changes

New infrastructure and servers

Over the last week I’ve been hard at work to finally resolve the issues with performance and up-time that plagued the AJdG Solutions website since mid December last year. MediaTemple kept denying any issues and couldn’t stop pointing fingers are everyone but themselves.

Very unprofessional for the stupendous amount of money I paid them monthly. But alas, their support was, as usual, completely inept. Too bad! So after a few days of frustratingly dealing with tickets and people pretty much ignoring me, I gave up and moved to a new hosting provider. So far that seems better and more stable.

I’m still ironing out some minor kinks, but so far so good.

Old AdRotate Geo API discontinued

Users of my AdRotate Pro plugin will know I offer various API for updates, AdRotate Geo and some other stuff.

Due to ongoing abuse of the older AdRotate Geo API, versions 1 and 2 will be obsolete effective immediately.

These API versions will soon be shut down and no longer return Geo Targeting information. If you’re still using AdRotate Versions 3.18.2 or older and you’re using AdRotate Geo, your geo targeting will no longer work in a few days.

Updating to the current version of AdRotate Pro will fix this and is the only solution. I’m not going to develop work-arounds or silly hacks. No need to ask… Just update the plugin!

A step-by-step update guide is available here. If you need help with updating, or simply do not want to do it yourself you can use my AdRotate update service.

You are urgently advised to upgrade to AdRotate Pro 4 or newer. Version 4.11 has been released earlier today and is available for free for everyone who bought a license!

Caching to improve your lousy hosting

An interesting thing and general misconception about website caching is that caching is good. Well yes, it can be. But do you really need caching? I think most people do not…

This post is not about how useful Caching can be. It is about how people misuse caching and the illusion of making things better.

most people use caching to make up for sloppy shared hosting

That’s right. You have found the cheapest hosting provider you could get and now you discovered your site is slow. Like any sane person everything is to blame but the server. Because the provider says its “quality premium ultra hosting on fast and reliable servers” and they’re experts.

Read more »

5 ways to a faster and safer WordPress

Having a WordPress website is often great, but it also makes you vulnerable for all kinds of attacks and mischief – Or maybe not vulnerable, but it invites many wrong doers to try and attack you. You’re an easy target. Let’s make it a bit less easy for them!

Recently I’ve been plagued on another website by slowness, the occasional downtime and other annoying stuff. Paying more attention to usage stats and the error_log it turns out there was a bunch of stuff going on. A few of IP Addresses constantly tried something with wp-login.php and some other pages and files being loaded over and over again for no apparent reason.

Another issue was the RSS feed WordPress generates. Sure, it works fine. But if you get almost 10000+ requests on it per hour, that’ll slow things down, too. Sometimes.

So I did some research and have come up with a few things to try and prevent this kind of behavior. Of-course it’s no use blocking IP addresses but you can prevent access to things or if they access those things lessen the load on your server a great deal.

Read more »