Crooked River Counseling

Built for a local area mental health therapist, this website started with an interesting theme that uses a unique side scrolling format. The client supplied a pre-existing logo, and I modified the theme core files, graphics and CSS in a few ways to suit the business. The mountain background is a photograph that I took myself, and just happened to work nicely for this project. I edited it to tile seamlessly horizontally. You really have to see this site in action to appreciate it.

Crooked River Counseling provides therapy and counseling services to the Redmond and Central Oregon area.

Do you happen to be looking for web design in Bend? Contact me today!

For her  website, I custom coded a wordpress theme from my own bare bones in house template. She wanted a “fruits and vegetables” motif bordering the sides, which I put together and used as a full width background, to accommodate different monitor resolutions. Custom CSS styling throughout with Google Fonts integrated and custom layout boxes. A facebook like box that feeds her latest facebook posts back to the website, and an interactive embedded google map with directions round out this one page “business card” website.

Looking for webdesign in the Bend, Oregon area? Contact me today!

I now also offer affordable and reliable web hosting to Bend, Oregon and beyond.

What is the “Cache”?

The cache, or more specifically in this case the browser cache, is a function of all modern web browsers. A Web Browser is the program you open on your computer to get to the internet ( Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, Google Chrome.. ). In a nutshell the browser cache stores parts of websites such as code and images in a folder on your computer, so that when you visit the website the next time, the browser loads the things needed to display the website from your computer instead of downloading them again. This can and does speed up your overall internet experience. The problem is, when new content is added to a website, the browser often doesn’t know the content is new, and keeps displaying the cached content, and that’s why it seems that nothing is “updating”.

Ok, so what to do?

There are two ways to prevent your browser from loading the cached content and thus forcing it to download the fresh content. One is by going in to your browser settings and deleting your entire cache. Now this will work, but, I’m not going to focus on it because often it’s easy to also delete all your internet history and cookies etc as well, which means you have to re-log on to your favorite website etc., as well as re-download all the cached content you DO want to keep cached. A quicker, simpler and more to the point method is to do a “Force Refresh” aka “Force Reload” on the website you need to view the updated content on. This tells the web browser to ignore the cached content and go ahead and just re-download all the website data again, thus, showing you the new content and updating your cached content as well.

How to “Force Refresh” or “Force Reload” a website, in Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Internet Explorer.

1. Go to the website you want to see the new updated content on. You must be on the website in question, as this method only refreshes the cache for the webpage you are currently on.

2. According to what operating system you are using, press one of the following key combinations.

Windows: Ctrl+F5
Mac/Apple: Apple + R or command + R
Linux: F5

That’s it! Remember the keys to push for future reference. When in doubt if a website has been updated or not, push the keys and do the Force Refresh in order to be sure.

DNS Propagation is not browser content caching.

If you are reading this because you are working on a website and your changes aren’t showing up, you might simply be dealing with your browser cache, which is not what I’m talking about here. What browser caching does is store bits of websites like images and code locally on your computer, so that when you visit a website again, you load your local content and thus speed up your page load time. To learn how to clear your browser cache, go here.

DNS – The Switchboards of the internet.

Remember, well ok probably not, but have you ever seen a picture of a telephone switchboard operator? What these people did was take your call and manually plug you in to the right phone circuits so that your signal could be connected to the phone of the person you were trying to call. Of course, this soon because automated. Well, DNS or Domain Name Servers do basically the same thing. They are like switchboard operators for the internet. They take your request to load that picture of a cat on Reddit.com and say, “Ok, its that way!” and point you further down the internet towards the host server for Reddit (Actually, on a cloud CDN for Reddit, so the closest available cloud host) which then grumbles for a picosecond and sends the cat image back your way.

When changes are made to domains like a domain transfer, change in nameservers or assignment to a static IP address, it’s the job of the domain server to update with this fresh information, so that you get to the right destination. My problem was this was not happening. I called my ISP who will not be named, *cough*Qwest/CenturyLink*cough*, several times trying to resolve the issue. They were not much help and actually dropped my calls after long waits, twice. When I told them they had to flush / update their DNS server cache, they just ignored me and put me through the regular Joe dumbguy script. Thanks CenturyLink!

Luckily, I finally realized that you don’t have to use your assigned DNS servers with your ISP. You can specify static DNS addresses and go through whoever you wish.

Who should  I Use for DNS Servers?

My Namebench results

Good question. There has to be a lot of choices right? I found an open source free tool that took the guessing out of the equation. It’s called NameBench, and you can download it here. On some advice I read, I ran it with 5000 queries for a more accurate result. It took about an hour to run. Wouldn’t you know it, Google runs a DNS service, and they came out on top at 12.6% faster than my current ISP DNS server. Results may vary due to your location, especially in other countries, but Google is a pretty safe bet, if you want to skip this step. Go ahead and read up on Google’s DNS server here if you want.

Changing your settings.

Example router settings.

The required info is straightforward. Just 2 IP addresses. In the case of Google’s service, they are 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4. In my situation, I decided to update my router’s settings instead of on my computer. This way, I would not have to also update my laptop, or any other computers on my network. Either way should work though. On a PC, you would be assigning DNS servers in that same network settings are that you would assign a static or dynamic IP for your IP V4 TCP/IP properties area. For me, now back to my router, I found my router’s (a ZyXEL Q1000Z) appropriate settings under “Advanced Setup” then “WAN Settings”.  Your experience will vary, according to your router. Basically you want to find the setting that allow you to change your DNS type from dynamic to static, then enter the Google DNS server IP numbers, 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4. If you are new to mucking around in a router, you can often find the login by typing 192.168.0.1 or sometimes just “home” in to your browsers address bar. Determine your router’s exact make and model and look it up for more info.

Now, you should do a couple more steps to clear your local DNS cache on your computer. I’m not sure how essential this step is, but I did them and it’s easy. First, open a command prompt by going to “start” then typing “cmd” in the search bar. This opens a good old dos command prompt. Now type “ipconfig /flushdns”. No quotes. You should see a message, “Windows IP Configuration. Successfully Flushed the DNS Resolver Cache”. Good!

Clear your browser cache

Finally, simply clear your browser cache. I know I said it’s not related earlier, but now we want to clear out any locally stored DNS related information, which talk around the campfire says Firefox may store. Chrome apparently does not have this issue. You can apparently get a Firefox add on for this, or, just dump everything the old fashioned way by going to “Tools –> Clear Recent History –> Clear Now”.

Now punch in the URL of that stuck site and whammo, you should see it some up all freshened up with your most recent domain level changes.

Good luck!

But how often do you forget the name of that one perfect plugin? With thousands of plugins out there, it’s easy to waste time searching around just to remember what you used on that project 6 months ago. To help cut down this search time, I’ve been keeping a list on a piece of paper. Today, I noticed the paper was full and decided to just put them online as a blog post. That way, I’ll always know where they are, I can edit and add to it as time goes on,  and hopefully other people can benefit from the list as well.

The list of my favorite WordPress plugins is broken in to categories. The link either goes to the plugin author’s homepage, or the WordPress plugin repository. I recommend just using the in Dashboard “add plugin” and search to find the plugin and install. Just be careful to type it correctly, exactly as shown.

This list and post will be continuously updated as I find new and better plugins. I’m not saying this is a list of the best plugins, just one’s I know to have worked for me.

Sliders

Easing Slider – Takes images from direct input or from post categories. 10 images maximum (?!). Many formatting options. Image + link only.

Meteor Slides – Can support multiple slideshows, even on the same page. One universal size for all though. Image + link only.

Slide Deck 2 - This is a premium slider, though, they do offer a free version. I purchased the developer license, and it’s been WELL worth it. It does everything you can think of and has a simple interface that clients can use as well. All text slides, dynamic content  and imbedded video that stops playing when you go to the next slide. They even recently made the layout code responsive. It’s actively updated and the support is excellent.

Backup

WP Complete Backup – Does a “complete” backup of the database plus themes, plugins, settings, everything. I have NOT yet tested it to restore a site, but I assume that it works.

Backup Buddy – This is another plugin that’s very worth buying the developer license on. I’ve used it countless times since I purchased it. What it can do for you is restore, or move an entire wordpress installation, database and all in a few steps. you can download the single .zip backup file for local store, or even send it off to a cloud server. I must say, there have been some weird bug, and UI troubles, but it’s actively developed and getting better all the time. It’s never failed a full restore on me yet. One thing to note, you must create a new empty fresh database and clear your root install directory before doing a restore. Maybe someday they will have a single click restore, but no luck so far. Still, it’s a must have.

Forms

Contact Form 7 – The go to solution of most basic forms. Does drop downs, bullets, multiple forms, 2 recipients.

Contact Form 7 Honeypot – This is an additional plugin for Contact Form 7 which adds a not-rendered form field which if filled out flags the submission as spam. Works on 90% of spam, and no captcha needed.

LightBox

PrettyPhoto – PrettyPhoto is a JQuery driven lightbox implementation that also comes in wordpress plugin flavor. I’ve used many different lightbox clones and this one seems to have risen to the top. It has a few different styles to choose from right out of the box. It’s easy to modify via shortcodes and can accept inline html as well as iframes. It just works. Here’s the dev site.

Google Maps

Google Maps Made Simple – Add right in the editor via a TinyMCE  button and enter the address.

Simple Google Map -  (no S, not maps) Drop in as a shortcode or widget. Comes with ability to get directions when you click the marker. Uses Latitude and Longitude. No Google API needed. Only one map per page.  It’s slim on examples, check this out for code reference.

Other

emOba – An email obfuscator, meaning, it takes a standard email link and encodes it so spam bots can’t harvest it. Work great, but kind of messes up the type.

Testimonials Widget – A simple way to drop in simple text testimonials as a widget. Custom creation of each testimonial. Adjust fade time and duration. No user controls.

Category Posts Widget – Display posts title (link) and excerpt in a widget. Can only display from one category. Can specify how many posts to show.

PHP Execution – Lets you put raw PHP in the editor (html view) without it getting “cleansed”

Ajax Events Calendar – So good. Easy to use. Does it all.

Lock Out – Lets you show a custom “coming soon” page to anyone who is NOT logged in. Logged in users can see the whole site. Perfect for on domain development.