How to migrate your parent theme customizer settings into your child theme

Switching to a child theme in WordPress can cause you to lose your customizer settings So you’ve just installed your child theme because you made some customizations to your WordPress theme files which you want to preserve, right? You head over to Appearance < Themes and activate your new child theme. From first appearance, your website might look normal but as you look closer you realize some of your theme colors are different, your background is missing, or some other… Read More

Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Check back in a minute. What the heck?

The first time I encountered Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Check back in a minute. I was a little scared. It’s never enjoyable to see your WordPress website suddenly go completely white on you while you’re trying to make an update. You wonder if your WP site is lost forever? Is it broken? Will it ever come out of this maintenance mode? The good news is, this message is not nearly as ominous as it looks and it can be… Read More

Error establishing a database connection WordPress solution

Error establishing a database in WordPress is a common problem. I’ve been using WordPress for more than 13 years now and I still love what it can do. Using this hugely popular CMS, it is relatively easy to throw up a good looking website in a matter of hours. But even though I consider myself a WordPress guru, it also sometimes drives me absolutely crazy. The error establishing a database connection WordPress problem is a good example of an issue… Read More

How to Fix Stuck WordPress Visual Editor and Text Editor

WordPress editor is stuck – September, 2020 update. Since I first published this a few years ago, thousands of people looking for help with a stuck text and visual editor on WordPress have visited this page. I have also assisted many people with this issue on their websites. While all my instructions below for solving this WordPress visual editor issue remained the same, I have added a step to make sure you have properly updated your WordPress theme. I also… Read More

Why you need to control your website domain and hosting accounts

So you’re building a brand new website for your business and you’ve purchased an all-inclusive package to get it done. Your eager web developer has promised to take care of EVERYTHING for you, from registering the domain and purchasing the hosting to installing the SSL certificate. While it’s great to let the web developer take care of most of the grunt work, you need to be involved in a few aspects yourself in order to ensure you retain control of… Read More

What you need to know about SEO

At least once in a week, I get a request to help someone with Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Rob, can you send more people to my website? Rob, I need more traffic. Rob, why is no one visiting my website? They want me to be a magician. I am not a magician. No web developer is. There are some basic measures you need to take for SEO. They are as follows: You need good, fresh content. In other words, update… Read More

How to fix Joomla error: failed to start application: error starting the session

I’m going to tell you how I fixed the failed to start application error for a client recently, but first, a quick word about Joomla. I don’t like Joomla and I never have. I always try to steer clients who are considering Joomla to WordPress or Drupal. Even Wix is a better option in my opinion. If you want to know more about my reasons for this, feel free to contact me. This particular error, however, can’t necessarily be blamed… Read More

Why you shouldn’t believe everything your website host says

I wish I could name names but companies are too “sue happy” these days so this will just be a general warning about website hosts. Last week, two clients sent me emails they received from website hosts warning them to take action. The first one looked like this: I immediately logged into his website host and found no evidence of his website reaching the resource limits recently or ever. Not even close in any category! I told him to ignore… Read More

MailChimp SPF & DKIM Explained

Not only do we help many of our clients with MailChimp, but we also use it ourselves here at Maneo Web. We love MailChimp for its ease-of-use, reliability, and affordability. There are other options out there but we have found MailChimp to be the best. MailChimp SPF & DKIM are often overlooked Did you know there is a very important setting in MailChimp that many people miss before they start sending out emails? This setting is often overlooked because most… Read More

Slow website? It may not have enough memory

In this fast paced impatient world, a slow website can kill your business. People don’t like to wait for pages to load. They want the information now. I have already written about the importance of choosing a good host for your website. I have also recommended the implementation of CloudFlare. But there is another factor which many people often overlook. Sometimes a slow website just needs some more memory. The default memory allocation for WordPress is 40 megabytes. Unless you… Read More