Skip to main content

Download from Google Drive direct from cPanel server

I store cPanel backups on Google Drive and needed to restore a backup of a website which was 9GB.

Instead of downloading the file to my computer and re-uploading it to the server (which could take a considerable amount of time), I wanted to download the file straight from Google Drive to the server, this will download faster due to the connection of the server.

Unfortunately, a standard WGET does not work.

To do this, I went into Terminal for my cPanel server and downloaded pip:

Read More

Batch script to update WooCommerce product titles

I had a client who had named all of his 600+ products to uppercase and Google Shopping was not allowing the products to be indexed because of this.
To automatically rename the Woocommerce Product titles, I ran this script:

This will loop through each product and rename the titles to capitalised using php UCWORDS()

For example: MY PRODUCT will be renamed to My Product.

Read More

WordPress SMTP without any plugins

WordPress is a very good CMS, BUT! I hate plugin bloat. I’ve seen so many websites use a huge amount of plugins to cover every little feature, which contributes to speed issues and can cause problems down the track.

There are heaps of SMTP Plugins for WordPress available so that you can use AMAZON SES , SendGrid, MailGun, etc. The easiest way to set up SMTP is to add this snippet to your functions.php file, this will ensure that WordPress uses SMTP instead of the standard PHP Mail.

Add this to your functions.php file and configure how you need to. Then save it.

// USE SMTP
add_action( 'phpmailer_init', 'setup_phpmailer_init' );
function setup_phpmailer_init( PHPMailer $phpmailer ) {
    $phpmailer->Host = 'HOSTNAME'; // eg. email-smtp.us-west-2.amazonaws.com
    $phpmailer->Port = 587; // could be different
    $phpmailer->Username = 'ENTERUSERNAME'; // SMTP Username
    $phpmailer->Password = 'ENTERPASSWORD'; // SMTP Password
    $phpmailer->SMTPAuth = true; // Set to true if login is required
    $phpmailer->SMTPSecure = 'tls'; // enable if required, 'tls' is another possible value
    $phpmailer->IsSMTP();
}

Hope that helps!

Complete installation and set up tutorial for Sendy with Amazon SES

Sendy is an affordable alternative to using the likes of Mailchimp, Campaign Monitor and other cloud based email marketing tools. If you find that you are sending thousands of emails per month and are looking to reduce your spending on email marketing, Sendy is your answer. Sendy isn’t necessarily as aesthetically pleasing and easy to use as some of the cloud solutions, but it is a self hosted solution which requires a one time fee (currently $59 USD) – it then uses Amazon SES to send emails and currently Amazon SES charges $0.10 per 1000 emails. Cool Huh?

Watch the below video and learn how to set it up completely.


hacked website sending emails on cpanel server

Hacked website sending e-mails automatically on cPanel server

Last week, I noticed my dedicated server (exim) was sending huge amounts of e-mails. In cPanel > E-mail > Mail Queue Manager, there were over 6000 e-mails in the exim queue to be sent from a specific e-mail address of an account on my server.

I currently run a dedicated server that hosts about 250 web design clients, so keeping a constant eye on every account is impossible, though, I check the mail queue and server resource usage quite regularly to ensure that nothing fishy is going on.

Read More

Gravity Forms confirmation emails going to spam – FIXED

I don’t know about you, but I love Gravity Forms in WordPress, it’s such a useful plugin for creation of fast, on-the-fly forms. I use Gravity Forms in nearly every website I create. Despite how good it is, I’ve had some problems recently receiving gravity form e-mails to my e-mail.

What’s happening exactly? So, someone comes onto my website and wants to enquire for more information. They fill out a small enquiry form and voila! an email should be sent to me with their details so that I can contact them. Ideally, the contact form should be sending to my e-mail, but be from the person enquiring so that I can click reply to the e-mail and it responds back to them without having to open a new message and copy their e-mail address into it.

Read More

resize images fast in windows

How to resize multiple images FAST in Windows

Ever taken photos on your SLR camera or phone and they’re huge? Like – over 5 mb?

Have you ever then needed to send those images to your family, friend, boss or upload them onto facebook?

Surely you don’t want to spend all night uploading 50 images equaling 200mb? Take the shortcut and resize your images using in built Windows functionality.

Read More