Website Maintenance

Cache Issues

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We have client that was experiencing cache issues. My research revealed that there were no cache headers in place, and so the browser was left to decide for itself if it should refresh the page. No bueno!!

This site checks the cache headers for you:

Request Metrics – https://requestmetrics.com/resources/tools/http-cache-checker

Here’s another site that tells you some good stuff, too:

Redbot – https://redbot.org/

SSL certificate troubles

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Recently, I had trouble installing a 3rd party certificate, and found these commands for Linux that can help debug the supplied files. The commands are run from the command line, in the directory where the files are located.

openssl rsa -noout -modulus -in domain.com.key | openssl md5
openssl x509 -noout -modulus -in domain.com.crt | openssl md5
openssl rsa -in domain.com.key -check

It turned out that the files were OK, but I needed to open one of the files in the web hosting file manager editor, and copy/paste from there. Bizarre, but it worked.

Flushing DNS cache

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We recently had a customer who needed an update to DNS, and it was taking a very, very long time to propagate. While researching how to help fix it, I found these sites that may come in handy.

To see what’s going on with DNS propagation, use this tool: What Is My DNS

And if you ever need to check a particular DNS server’s entries, use this: Query a DNS Server

Plus a very handy page describing how to use nslookup: 10 Most Used nslookup Commands

Redirecting attachment pages in WordPress

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Spammers are a crafty bunch, using a variety of techniques to spread their unwanted junk. One way they do this is by submitting comments to the special pages WordPress creates for each image that has been uploaded. Spammers find these pages and submit spam. But there are ways to thwart their misdeeds!

7 Ways to Redirect WordPress Attachment Pages

Lately we’ve been using the Redirect Attachment Pages plugin, if the client does not have it available through an SEO plugin.

Validating fields in Gravity Forms

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Despite CAPTCHA, spammers have been submitting spam forms on a few of our client’s websites. The submissions usually have the same first and last name, and often contain a website address in the message. I was able to add a little code to the theme’s functions.php to prevent this type of thing.

add_filter( 'gform_validation_1', 'validate_contact_fields_1' );
function validate_contact_fields_1( $validation_result ) {
    $form = $validation_result['form'];
  
    // first and last name can't be the same
    if ( rgpost( 'input_1' ) == rgpost( 'input_2' ) ) {
  
        // set the form validation to false
        $validation_result['is_valid'] = false;
  
        //finding Field with ID of 1 and marking it as failed validation
        foreach( $form['fields'] as &$field ) {
  
            //NOTE: replace 1 with the field you would like to validate
            if ( $field->id == '1' ) {
                $field->failed_validation = true;
                $field->validation_message = 'First and Last Name can not be the same.';
                break;
            }
        }
  
    }
    // Message can't contain a URL
    $nourl_pattern = '(http|https)';
    if ( preg_match( $nourl_pattern, rgpost( 'input_4' ) ) ) {

		$validation_result['is_valid'] = false;
        foreach( $form['fields'] as &$field ) {
  
            if ( $field->id == '4' ) {
                $field->failed_validation = true;
                $field->validation_message = 'Message can not contain website addresses.';
                break;
            }
        }
    }
  
    //Assign modified $form object back to the validation result
    $validation_result['form'] = $form;
    return $validation_result;
  
}  // end function validate_contact_fields_1