Alec Kinnear

Apple OS X shortcomings got you down? Read some Windows 10 blog posts to cheer up

The price of a working computer on the "free" Windows 10? Two hours out of your life and storing all of your files on Microsoft's servers.

A billion reasons never to buy IBM services

IBM just stole $1 billion from Canada. If this is how IBM treats staff and governments, how would IBM treat your small business?

Bad UX: How Medium’s comment system kills engagement

Medium should think less about page views and more about making it easy for its community to interact with each other's stories.

SoundCloud’s Path to profitability

Better quality streaming and with no ads, I'd sign up even faster. I'm waiting for that listener offer to show up in my SoundCloud account.

How to write an ideal service notification

Editor’s note: Service interruption notifications are the unloved sibling of newsletters and welcome emails. They just don’t get enough love — and for the most part are fairly terrible, anonymous, vague and menacing messages, often from a no-reply address. There is a better way.

While software is our main business now, we have some hosting clients for special services. Every once in a while of course there is either expected or unexpected downtime. We strive to let our clients know about these issues in advanced (planned) and in real time (unplanned). We don’t try the tricky move that many hosts do of just trying to hide downtime. Do not try to be anonymous. Do not use no-reply addresses. Keep your communication personable and open, informative and precise.

Why WP Rocket fails on high traffic sites and how to fix it

We are big users of WP Rocket (licensed through 2020). WP Rocket works great on our clients’ normal busy sites (up to 5 million visitors/month). We run one very high traffic network with up to 40 million visitors in one week or even a million visitors/hour. On this site, WP Rocket fails miserably. When new […]

WordPress Plugin Pricing

Is $75 too much money for a video plugin or too low or just right? There's a free FV Player Pro license for the best answer to that question.

Intranet.red of Patagonia paying with a fake credit card

Are Intranet.red using stolen cards or just making false claims?

How to set up a Mac securely on OS X 10.11 Sierra (El Capitan)

While post-Prism (2012), it's impossible to truly secure OS X, one can make a good effort by turning off iCloud & Sharing, adding Little Snitch.

WordPress 2017 Security Roundup: Shield, Sucuri, iThemes, WordFence

All WordPress security plugins are too complicated. Making certain sensible hosting setup obligatory would make sites more secure.

How Observer Status in Teamwork.com project management allows Foliovision to handle more projects

We didn't want senior staff visible to the client to prevent clients addressing all issues to senior staff or to always notify our full team.

Should you invest in Bitcoin

Cryptocurrency then dead. The only currencies who can withstand US pressure are the rouble and renmibi.

How to restore missing WordPress Featured Image Screen Option

The issue is not in any of Settings –> Media, in Appearance, in the Customizer or in wp-config. Here's the code to drop into functions.php.

Yoast SEO vs FV Simpler SEO review or How Joost de Valk undermines WordPress.org

Eventually WordPress will die under the weight of the carpet baggers like Yoast. Watch Joost de Valk beg, steal and sell out his users.

Akismet Alternatives: CleanTalk

Tired of comment spam? Not want to spend a fortune on Akismet for your network. Here comes CleanTalk to the rescue.

Moderating a busy WordPress Site with Thoughtful Comments

It’s been a commenting kind of last seven days since Disqus started adding ads or charging what are extortionate rates for continued ad-free existence ($99/month for sites with from 50K to 250K visitors!). First some lively conversation over at WP Tavern about Disqus, wpDisquz (also very expensive at $29/extension), Postmatic, Replyable and our own Thoughtful […]