Server Setup

Dave Hilditch

Latest posts by Dave Hilditch (see all)

secure-databackup[1]

How to run backups on huge WordPress websites without your website being brought offline

, , 0

Dave Hilditch

Latest posts by Dave Hilditch (see all)

One of the best backup plugins for WordPress is Updraft Plus. I use it on many sites and I find it reliable at backing up and crucially the restoration process is pain-free. In addition, the free version lets you send the backups off-site – e.g. to Dropbox or Google Drive or another server through SFTP. However, if […]

More

Dave Hilditch

Latest posts by Dave Hilditch (see all)

create-aws-access-key

Using Amazon S3 to store your affiliate product images

, , 7

Dave Hilditch

Latest posts by Dave Hilditch (see all)

Storing images is a massive concern for affiliates as this by far is the biggest space hog on your server. The best approach to storing and serving images is to combine Amazon S3 and Cloudflare. Amazon S3 provides elastic storage and is VERY cheap for storing images – elastic means it grows and stretches according […]

More

Dave Hilditch

Latest posts by Dave Hilditch (see all)

wordpress security1

Complete guide to WordPress security

, , , 6

Dave Hilditch

Latest posts by Dave Hilditch (see all)

Here it is people – the complete guide to WordPress security. In this guide I’m going to cover everything you need to know to keep your WordPress site secure. Security requirements will vary – if you’re running a large store, the last thing  you need is someone gaining access to your site, gaining access to […]

More

Dave Hilditch

Latest posts by Dave Hilditch (see all)

datafeedr hosting

Best hosting for Datafeedr affiliate stores

, , , 12

Dave Hilditch

Latest posts by Dave Hilditch (see all)

If you’re using the Datafeedr API, chances are you have ambitions of building a large store. Many of my clients come to me looking to build something like Shop Style which has somewhere in the region of 1,000,000+ products. Adding that many products to WordPress using WooCommerce and the default settings and shared hosting will […]

More

Dave Hilditch

Latest posts by Dave Hilditch (see all)

s131

DIY Mercury installation for super fast WordPress performance

, , 28

Dave Hilditch

Latest posts by Dave Hilditch (see all)

I’ve just released a new service to set up, migrate and configure your WordPress site for you on Digital Ocean using the latest and greatest Mercury Install. BUT, maybe you want to set this up yourself? If so, read on for the full guide. This includes: Nginx – web server (far faster than Apache) Memcached […]

More

Dave Hilditch

Latest posts by Dave Hilditch (see all)

Setting up HHVM with WordPress

, , 13

Dave Hilditch

Latest posts by Dave Hilditch (see all)

If you are using WooCommerce with lots of products, you’ll have noticed it slows down significantly. There is some pretty bad code inside WooCommerce which iterates through every single one of your products in PHP to build category lists – these operations take milliseconds in mysql but tens or hundreds of seconds in PHP depending […]

More

Dave Hilditch

Latest posts by Dave Hilditch (see all)

cronjob small1

Set up a REAL cron job for Datafeedr Woocommerce Product Sets

, 2

Dave Hilditch

Latest posts by Dave Hilditch (see all)

You really shouldn’t rely on WP Cron if you’re using Datafeedr. Using the default WP Cron it will only run when visitors are accessing your site. Given that you’ve got all those Datafeedr product sets to update, you really want your CRON to be able to run overnight. Also, you get some easy access to cron […]

More

Dave Hilditch

Latest posts by Dave Hilditch (see all)

Installing Wordpress on Digital Ocean

Setting up Digital Ocean for WordPress

, 5

Dave Hilditch

Latest posts by Dave Hilditch (see all)

Digital Ocean provide great deals on a variety of VPS options to power your WordPress website. Prices start from $5pcm for a 500MB VPS. One of the great things about Digital Ocean is that the servers are up and running within a minute, but also – they use very good hardware. Every server uses a […]

More

Dave Hilditch

Latest posts by Dave Hilditch (see all)

Cloudflare set up and installation

Mail forwarding with Cloudflare

3

Dave Hilditch

Latest posts by Dave Hilditch (see all)

I’ve recently started migrating all of our name server management over to Cloudflare. Cloudflare, in case you don’t know, provide a free CDN which means your WordPress sites become far faster and far more scalable. By using Cloudflare to serve up your images, .js files, .css files and .xml files you leave your WordPress server with […]

More