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Work Journal

technical challenges we've resolved

  • How to make hyperlinks work when exporting InDesign to a PDF

    How to make hyperlinks work when exporting InDesign to a PDF If you've added hyperlinks to your InDesign document but they aren't working when you export to a PDF, here's the first thing you want to check. After going File > Export, it is essential that you choose the format as Adobe PDF  (Interactive)   I've been tripped up with this more than once, forgetting to change this setting after working on print projects
  • How to Merge Multiple CSVs into a Single File

    How to Merge Multiple CSVs into a Single File Here's an ultra-easy solution to the challenge of merging multiple CSV files into a single file. I'm on a Mac OSX and used Terminal or iTerm Move all the CSV files into the same folder Open Terminal or iTerm or your favourite command-line app cd path-to-the-csv-folder  cat *.csv > ../result.csv  This combines all your CSVs into result.csv In my case, I needed to combine around 140 CSVs and this method took seconds. The merged file will have multiple records of the headers from each of your CSVs. If you need to clean this up, open result.csv with your favourite text editor and use search and replace.  
  • Custom Aspect Videos with Elementor

    How to Insert Custom Aspect Ratio Videos with Elementor Video Widget At this time Elementor page builder for WordPress doesn't support custom aspect ratios for its video widget. Here's how to change that and insert videos of any aspect ratio - use the built-in Elementor Video widget and select your video   - choose the 1:1 aspect ratio under the style setting
  • Test Internet Explorer and Android on Mac OSX - For Free!

    Cross-browser testing on Mac OSX: Emulate Internet Explorer, Android and Window phones Here's a quick, free, and relatively easy way to test IE browsers and emulate Android and Windows phones on Mac OSX - sign up for a free Microsoft account - start using the free Microsoft Edge Remote Tools
  • Track WordPress Contact Form 7 (CF7) submission with GTM

    How to Track WordPress Contact Form 7 (CF7) form submission with Google Tag Manager (GTM) Now that 'on_sent_ok' and 'on_submit' have officially been removed from ContactForm7 (CF7), you need an alternate way to track when WordPress forms are submitted. From a marketing point-of-view, submitted forms are key events and here's how to use Google Tag Manager (GTM) to track submitted forms as events and goals in Google Analytics (GA).
  • Configure MX for a subdomain on ProtonMail

    How to Configure MX records for a subdomain on ProtonMail If you are configuring a subdomain to use ProtonMail, it works well though the ProtonMail instructions aren't clear.  Here's what you need to do.
  • Joomla error "1030 - Got error 28 from storage engine"

    Joomla error "1030 - Got error 28 from storage engine" If you get this Joomla 1030 error it's an almost sure sign that you've run out of storage space.  
  • Sublime shortcut to wrap selected text in a tag

    Sublime shortcut to wrap selected text in a tag This is a super-useful Sublime shortcut that's worth tattooing on your arm.  Ctr-Shift-W (Mac OSX)  or Alt-Shift-W (Windows)  
  • How to enable GA enhanced link attribution in GTM

    How to enable GA enhanced link attribution in GTM Enabling enhanced link attribution in Google Analytics will give you a clearer picture of which links on a given page are clicked. If you have are linking to another page, with links in the header and the footer, enhanced link attribution will track clicks of the header and footer links independently. Google Analytics doesn't give clear details of how to set this up, here's what you need to to to enable GA enhanced link attribution with Google Tag Manager (GTM) or the standard javascript snippet.
  • Optimising images and reducing file sizes

    Optimising images and reducing file sizes It's sometimes difficult to create fast loading web pages, while at the same time including large and full-screen images. Here's a super easy way to reduce your image sizes by 50% ... plus it's lossless
  • How to fix microdata or structured data errors in Joomla

    How to fix microdata or structured data errors in Joomla Microdata or Structured Data was introduced in Joomla 3.3 and you can test how Google sees any page by going to the Google Structured Data Testing Tool If you find errors in your test results, here are some ways to fix that.
  • Joomla error 500 - Unable to load renderer class

    Joomla error 500 - Unable to load renderer class If you get a  Joomla error 500 - Unable to load renderer class, the first thing you want to check your jdoc code in your template.  
  • Using system font stack for a website

    Using system font stack for a website This is an interesting idea that I'm seeing more often. Instead of requiring web visitors to download font files, you specify a font they already have and which matches their OS. It's fast because you aren't downloading font files, and the font will match the look and feel of their current OS. Mac users may see San Francisco or Helvetica, Windows users might see Segoe UI or Tahoma. It's easy to implement, here are two techniques
  • How to open winmail.dat files on Mac OSX

    How to open winmail.dat files on Mac OSX If you are on Mac OSX, you may occasionally receive winmail.dat email attachments from Windows users. Here's a surprisingly easy way to open them. 
  • CSS wildcard selectors with LESS

    How to use wildcard CSS selectors with LESS If you are using LESS and need to use a wildcard CSS selector to target all elements with a class name starting with col-md, the syntax is [class^="col-md"] { ...}   Here's a full working example
  • How to fix a missing Admin Toolbar at the top of a WordPress page

    How to fix a missing Admin Toolbar at the top of a WordPress page Working on an a client's WordPress site recently, and one of the tasks was to fix the missing Admin Toolbar.   The client had customised the theme and we could confirm the issue was theme related because if we temporarily changed the theme the missing admin toolbar would reappear  If this happens to you, the solution is easy enough:
  • How to add a CiviCRM extension to Joomla

    How to add a CiviCRM extension to Joomla As you probably know, CiviCRM comes bundled with some extensions, you can add these to your installation fromCiviCRM > Administer > Settings > Extensions, Select the Add New link, then click the download link opposite the extension you want to install. The CiviCRM Extensions page includes many extensions which aren't bundled with CIviCRM, to install these:
  • How to configure MailGun and Google Business Apps in CiviCRM

    How to configure MailGun and Google Business Apps in CiviCRM When configuring SMTP mail in CiiviCRM and you're using a secure port like 465, you need to prepend your hostname with ssl://, eg ssl://smtp.mailgun.org or ssl://smtp.gmail.com  
  • Warning JUser: :_load: Unable to load user with ID: 62

    Joomla Warning JUser: :_load: Unable to load user with ID: 62 If you see a Joomla warning JUser: :_load: Unable to load user with ID: 62 it's related to a user which originally created content on your site is no longer a Joomla use. This could have happened because the user was simply deleted, or as a result of a Joomla migration. The user ID is often 62, but it could be any other number, the underlying reason is the same, as is the solution.  
  • How to prevent duplicate URLs with sh404SEF

    How to prevent duplicate URLs with sh404SEF If you use sh404SEF and can't solve problems of duplicate URLs, start by going to Components > sh404SEF > SEF URLs, then under the duplicates header compare the Non-SEF urls. If you see different values for the Itemid parameter, then that's the source of your problem.
  • What is the 'Itemid' in a Joomla URL?

    What is the 'Itemid' in a Joomla URL? If you examine the non-SEF url of a typical page on your Joomla site you'll see the ItemId parameter, here's a typical example for one of the pages on our site: https://www.panchroma.ca/index.php?option=com_content&Itemid=143&id=13&lang=en&view=article  
  • JLIB_APPLICATION_ERROR_COMPONENT_NOT_LOADING error after upgrading to 3.6.0

    After upgrading from Joomla 3.5 to Joomla 3.6.0 I suddenly got a JLIB_APPLICATION_ERROR_COMPONENT_NOT_LOADING error on the back end of the site.   If started by clearing the site cache from System > Clear Cache but that didn't help I'm using a CDN so I cleared that cache but still no joy I double checked error logs but nothing there of any significance I confirmed that disk space wasn't an issue I also checked Extensions > Manage > Database to be sure everything was good there The above checklist usually solves this error but not this time.
  • How to Launch Sublime Text from Terminal or iTerm in OSX

    How to Launch Sublime Text from Terminal or iTerm in OSX I've been working a lot with Terminal and iTerm and Git with recent projects and I wanted a quick way to open folders in Sublime directly via terminal. There's a good walk through of the steps at http://is.gd/qMLsEP  
  • Customise a Joomla template based on article ID

    How to customise a Joomla template based on article ID Working on a custom Joomla template, I needed to change the page layout for a specific article and creating a new template for this one article didn't seem to be the right tool for the job. The solution was suprisingly easy.
  • 2013 - The Year of Responsive Web Design

    2013 -The Year of Responsive Web Design Some trends come and go. Others gather momentum and become stronger with time. I see 2013 as the year when different forces came together to make responsive web design the ideal choice for many business websites.
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