technology

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Zapier vs. WordPress Multisite

TL/DR: If you use WordPress Multisite, don’t activate the Zapier plugin for all sites. Activate it for the blog you want to connect to your zap.

I recently moved this site from a standalone WordPress install to a WordPress Multisite install. (TL/DR: WordPress Multisite allows you to host multiple websites with a single WordPress install.)

Just about everything worked fine… except for the Zapier plugin. I had just thought that reconnecting the Zap (the bit of integration code at Zapier) to the new blog was all that was needed, but no. I kept getting this error when I tried to connect Zapier to my blog:

Zapier/Wordpress connection error message
Continue reading “Zapier vs. WordPress Multisite”
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Apple: When is a service bundle worth it? The Apple One edition.

Apple’s new UK bundle options

So Apple announced a service bundle yesterday, packaging up services in an effort to upsell you on their expensive services. As someone who already uses an Apple family music plan and iCloud, none of these are interesting or at all price competitive.

Would I like to pay an extra £9 a month for Apple Arcade and Apple tv+ and News +? No. Would I take them for free at the prices I’m currently paying? No.

As usual though we got the breathless uncritical coverage from the UK media…

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Wondering where tiktok hides its cookie settings?

If you go to TikTok in a web browser, you get the option to ‘Accept’ their cookies or read their very exciting Cookie Policy. Click on ‘Cookies Policy’. Scroll almost to the bottom of the page, looking for a red button (it’s a big red button on mobile). This takes you to a page where you can ‘Opt Out’ of tracking from TicTok’s surprisingly short list of partners. Or you could just go straight here: https://www.tiktok.com/legal/cookie-settings?lang=en

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Why can’t I upload photos to Strava on iOS?

Strava has a feature that allows you to upload photos to either document your ride, help you remember where you were and what you were doing, what conditions were like, etc. But sometimes when you try and add photos you get this – a blank screen – but you can still select missing images…?

Missing Strava images

Are you using iCloud to store your photos?

If you are using iCloud to store photos, what’s (probably) happened is iOS has helpfully pushed all your images up to the cloud – so when Strava looks for them it doesn’t see any local thumbnails. If you go to the Photos app and tap on the images you want, iOS will download them again, and Strava will now be able to see the thumbnails.

TIP: if you use iOS’s ‘Low Power Mode’, then your recent images will stay on your phone for longer – or at least ’till you connect to a known Wi-Fi network.

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Apple: Screen Time tips for Parents – Screen Recording and iOS 12

If your child uses a device with iOS 12.x installed, you should know that a Screen Recording will capture you entering the device’s Screen Time password – if you enter it on an iOS 12 device.

Screen recording in iOS 12

Screen Time “helpfully” captures the Passcode.

Screen recording on iOS 13

No passcode capture.

Tips:

  1. Never enter your Screen Time password on their device if you can help it.
  2. Turn off Screen Recording in their Screen Time settings.
  3. Check to see if Screen Recording is ON before you enter your password – look for the red dot in the upper left corner of the screen.

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Apple: Screentime tips for Parents - Managing Music

Screentime is Apple’s parental control tool – in the usual Apple way a whole variety of tools are jammed together somewhat haphazardly, and when it works it’s great and when it doesn’t work it’s impossible to fix.

If you and your child are on different versions of iOS (e.g. if they are on iOS 12.x and you are on iOS13.x), then Screentime may not work as promised/predicted.

The ‘Content and Privacy Restrictions’ sections give you a set of tools for managing content and privacy (as you’d expect), along with a set of general device/account management tools.

If you use iOS 13 and your child uses iOS 12, you might think this setting on your device would control whether they could hear “explicit” or “clean” music – but it often doesn’t work. The settings aren’t always synced between devices.

To make sure your content settings are updated across devices, you now need to go to their device, enter Screen Time settings, enter your passcode, and change their Content Restrictions settings.

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Debugging WordPress Media imports

Importing files and posts into WordPress is sometimes a bit of a black art – there are lots of places where things might go wrong. Changing the upload_url_path value for your site might cause problems with WP export files – here’s how to fix it.

Cross-posted from edinburghwp.com

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Managing Amazon’s ‘interest-based’ ads

Advertisers love to use ‘interest-based ads’, as ‘interest-based ads’ sound a lot nicer than ‘personalised ads’ or ‘targeted ads’ or even ‘customer-profiling’.

But they’re all actually the same thing – despite the different words/terms/marketing.

Amazon’s warning users that it’s using ‘interest-based ads’ with Amazon Music – which is probably another reason not to use Amazon Music, but that’s another post.

Go to  amazon.co.uk/adprefs – or to amazon.com/adprefs (or both if you use both sites).

Turn ‘interest-based ads’ off.

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Managing your privacy online #7 – managing Google Chrome’s sync

If you have Chrome sync turned on, you might not be surprised to find out that Chrome syncs far more data about you and what you browse to its servers than you might expect. Go to https://chrome.google.com/sync?hl=en-GB to see what data Chrome’s uploaded for you.

To get rid of this, scroll down to the bottom of the page ’till you see this:

Hit ‘RESET SYNC’ to remove your data. You should probably still turn sync off though…

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Managing your privacy online #5 – Google’s Assistant is watching you – even if you don’t think you have an assistant!

I was naive. I thought that since I don’t use Google Assistant, I didn’t need to pay attention to how it used my data. WRONG.

If you go to the https://myaccount.google.com/yourdata/assistant page, you’re greeted by this:

Now look at the highlighted text:

A sting in the tail – there are other unexpected privacy settings here

Scroll down the page and you’ll find this:

You’ll probably want to turn them off.

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Managing your privacy online #4 – Google thinks you liked that thing – watch your endorsements!

People like to buy things that their peers like. Google wants to leverage this by using your reviews and comments to support Google advertising and search results.

If you’re not ok with that (and do you think you should decide what you promote, or are you happy to let Google do it…?) go to https://myaccount.google.com/shared-endorsements

Would you like to advertise something without being paid for it??

Turn that sucker off.

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