phil's blog

Credit where credit is due: PaulOB @ www.sitepoint.com

I've been in the computer industry for quite some time and I'll be the first to admit, I don't know everything. Email has always been a bit of a weak area of expertise and while I had heard about SPF, DKIM and DMARC records, I was oblivious to what they are and what they actually do.

By default, Drupal does a decent job of dealing with https, however the .htaccess settings for it, don't do a good job of forcing it. What I mean by this, is that sure, you can point to your site on either the http or https, but it won't automatically force it to https. If you don't have users for your site or you aren't running an ecommerce site, this isn't that big of a deal, but when you do need the https for every single visitor, Drupal doesn't like to force it.

I have a long involved method to install composer on a shared environment, but it is now outdated in favor of the PHP .phar binary method. Composer wasn't setup to use the phar extension when I originally wrote the old article but now that the .phar method is available, it is WAAYYY easier to install.

Rough instructions to get Ubercart products added to Google Merchant Center (Google Shopping) which will also work for Facebook Shopping with a few minor tweaks that are not outlined in this article. Instructions are obviously outlined for Ubercart, however the bulk of the instructions should work for Drupal Commerce with a few tweaks. Note for Drupal Commerce, see the very bottom of the page for specific instructions detailing some of the tweaks.

While this post might point someone in the right direction who isn't using Drupal, this is specifically designed to help folks using Drupal with Google Ads.

The Problem

When trying to use responsive Adsense ads, they only show up as a 303x80 size, regardless of the preceding container size.

The Windows Backup Image / Restore function is great when it works, but one of the most worthless pieces of junk software to come from Microsoft. For example, in Windows 10, they have moved the recovery partition (or at least one of the partitions) to the end of the drive. You would think that by now, MS would have some common sense and do the necessary steps required to create the backup to go onto another drive, but I digress, they just want your money.

I wanted a place to be able to copy a template of html tags and paste it into an existing site so I could check some of the more common formatting of site global tags.

Scroll to the bottom, copy the code and paste it into your site.

I've used Drupal for years and I've even posted issues or comments in the issue queue on Drupal.org. One thing that always alluded me was the ability to color link another node issue. I knew there was some sort of magic way to do it, but I had no idea how until someone updated my issue post with a link to the parent issue, over to the automagic colored link with title.

It's actually quite simple.

1) Figure out the issue number. This is usually the number in the URL, for example: https://www.drupal.org/node/2830239

The issue # is 2830239

I use cPanel (centos) with the new EasyApache 4 and a multi-php environment. I struggled with the absolutely horrible documentation offered by "GetComposer" for installing composer and had to muck my way through it. This post is to be read "as-is". I'm simply blogging it in case I end up moving servers or have to re-do something later. The info might be slightly incomplete due to problems I ran into after initially writing the post. I updated it as best as I could. Also, your system might be slightly different. This is for a hosting platform that you have full access to.