Posts

Fixing WordPress "WP_CONTENT_DIR" Theme Directory Does Not Exist Issue

If you are developing a site and have WordPress in a sub-folder managed as as Git submodule or just in a separate folder with a wp-content folder in the root directory one up from your WordPress install you might have encountered an issue where your themes and plugins aren’t found. You might get a message that looks like this, “twentyfourteen – The theme directory does not exist.” this is because there is a problem with how your paths have been defined in wp-config.php

Ladies And Gentlemen, I Present To You Bubble 2.0

For those who’ve been in the game long enough to remember, the original dot-com bubble burst only happened around 2000 and proceeded into 2001 you might notice some parallels to the lead-up to the great bubble burst; crazy valuations, way overpriced purchases, IPO’s and investment capital thrown around like confetti and what has been happening since late 2012. Facebook recently announced it had purchased cross-platform messaging app WhatsApp for $16 billion dollars. That’s right, sixteen billion dollars. At 400,000 (four hundred million) users, Facebook has paid roughly $40 per user which is an extremely steep price to pay for a service that charges users after a long period of time $1 per year (and apparently there are ways to get around that).

Free Startup Ideas

In the words of 50 Cent, “Get rich, or die tryin’” — I’ve decided to open source most of my startup ideas. I’ll still keep a few to myself, but I think I’ve reached a point in my life where I can now accept I’ll never be able to make all of my ideas a reality and maybe someone else can (if they’re good enough). These are generally just brief and sometimes random thoughts that haven’t been fleshed out or researched, but maybe you’ll find a gem in there or two. The repository will be updated quite frequently, so keep an eye on it.

Really Fixing The Australian Violent Drinking Problem

Unless you’ve been living underneath a rock lately then you would have heard the great debate over Australian alcohol and drug fuelled violence. NSW have recently imposed some tough legal changes, with any assault or greater perpetrated by drunken/drugged offenders getting a minimum 8 year sentence: it’s a start. Queensland are in the process of talking about what can be done. However, most politicians and other interest groups still just don’t get it. Most people think the alcohol and drugs are to blame and the accessibility of said items is also to blame, it’s only part of the problem. It’s like saying car manufacturers are responsible for drink driving…

Why XBOX Needs To Survive

If sources are to be believed, front-runner for next Microsoft CEO Stephen Elop who was Nokia CEO before the sale to Microsoft is apparently planning sweeping changes within Microsoft if elected. These anonymous sources claim to be familiar and knowledgable of Elop’s thinking and first-up on the chopping board is XBOX and Bing. You have to remember Elop whilst at Nokia was responsible for axing the Symbian operating system in 2010, which was a bit behind the times but was the original true mobile phone operating system before Apple came along with iOS.

Windows 8.1: Microsoft Missing The Point Once Again

I don’t understand how a company like Microsoft is consistently out of touch with its customers. For a while there it was looking like Microsoft were back on track releasing great products and repairing the damage to their credibility, brick by brick. But when they released Windows 8 they missed the mark and today they’ve officially announced a free upgrade for Windows 8 purchasers in the form of 8.1. While there are a couple of nice features in there for us desktop users, Microsoft have once again botched what could have been a triumphant comeback for the failed operating system.

Have Google Just Updated Their Search Algorithm, Again? (September 25th, 2013)

It looks like big things are a foot at Google. I run quite a few websites, a music blog and a few other smaller sites. Recently for one of my sites which posts information about upcoming albums I was getting around 600 visits a day, but as of the 25th of September, 2013 traffic to this particular site dropped dramatically by at least 90%. The site went from 600 visits a day to roughly 50 at present.

What Ever Happened To Twitter Music?

As it has turned out it seems people don’t actually really care all that much what their friends are listening to or what their favourite celebrities on Twitter are liking. This didn’t stop the media however frothing at the mouth when it was revealed Twitter were releasing a music product called Twitter Music. What seemed like a potentially great music product actually turned out to be a lacklustre one when it debuted. After purchasing We Are Hunted which was a pretty decent music discovery platform that showed you what was popular across the web, Twitter closed it down after purchasing it for an undisclosed sum believed to be in the tens of millions of dollars and then had the team implement parts of WAH into Twitter Music.

Mobile First Or GTFO

Up until recently I too, much like yourself was developing websites with desktop in mind first and then absolutely racking my brain getting it to work on smaller screens using media queries. You might have noticed that the approach of max-width in media queries and scaling a site down is a hackled approach to responsive development that doesn’t work properly and causes you so much grief you want to punch a hole in your keyboard.

Can The NSA Really Break Encryption?

Thanks to Edward Snowden and his trove of illegally obtained government document delights we have an insight into how the NSA works. That their main priority is spying on its own citizens all under the guise of “security” and “terrorism” and the recently leaked budget gives us insight into what areas the NSA is funnelling their money. Recently it has come out via Snowden comms that the NSA might have the capability to break various encryption schemes and even worked closely with companies developing these encryption algorithms to implement back doors.