Author: jcianci12
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WordPress Plugin Development for Beginners: How a Plugin Actually Works
A follow-along guide that builds a working WordPress plugin from an empty folder. Learn where plugins live, how WordPress loads and runs them, the hooks system, and every term WordPress developers use. Then graduate to our advanced article, where a seasoned developer builds a real plugin.
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A Client-Side Image Resizer for WordPress: How a Seasoned Developer Builds a Plugin
WordPress kept rejecting our image uploads. The real server limit was 2 MB, but WordPress reported 32 MB. We built a plugin that reads the true limit and downsamples images in the browser before upload. This article shows how a seasoned developer builds a WordPress plugin, and the WP 6.8 internals we had to learn.
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Custom Zone Labels for the 4-Zone Wall Controller
Print custom zone labels for the 4-Zone Wall Controller. The front faceplate now fits a Clipsal 2000 Series clip-on surround. Free SVG template for Inkscape. Step-by-step guide.
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The missing episode from “The Middle” – “The Tape”
Frankie picks up a used Tony Robbins audiobook for 50 cents at the Frugal Hoosier. She mostly buys it because the cover says: “Change Your Life.” “At this point,” she says, “I’ll settle for changing Tuesday.” For the next week, Frankie listens to it on the drive to work. She starts making her bed. She…
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RDP Painfully Slow? Your NIC’s Power-Saving Features Are Probably the Culprit
RDP lag is almost always blamed on internet speed. But when ping is solid and bandwidth is idle, the real bottleneck is the NIC driver. Five PowerShell commands to disable Energy Efficient Ethernet, Interrupt Moderation, and other power-saving features that tank RDP responsiveness. No reboot required.
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Veeam Instant Recovery to Hyper-V: When the BCD Points to the Wrong Drive Letter
Restoring a physical server into a Hyper-V test VM sounds straightforward. Veeam Instant Recovery promises a running VM in minutes, not hours. For the most part, it delivers. Until the boot manager can’t find Windows. On July 7, 2026, I spun up a sandbox VM from a Veeam Agent backup of our production server. The…
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Authentik Stuck on “Server Is Starting”: Missing Postgres Container and a Readiness Check Lesson
Environment: Authentik, Docker Compose, PostgreSQL, Nginx Proxy Manager, Oracle Cloud VM Why This Matters Identity systems can fail in a way that looks deceptively simple from the browser. In this case, Authentik did not show a dramatic application error. It showed the familiar startup message: That page is easy to misread as a short boot…
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When Windows Network Diagnostics Removed a Hyper-V Switch Fabric
Automated network repair tools are useful on a normal desktop. On a Hyper-V host that runs the router for the site, they can be a lot more dangerous. On June 16, 2026, a TekOnline Hyper-V host lost almost all of its virtual networking after a Windows network diagnostics session. The pfSense VM was restored from…
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SSMS “Cannot Open User Default Database” — Why Your App Works But SSMS Doesn’t
You fire up your .NET application, it connects to SQL Server without a hitch. Queries run, data flows, everything’s fine. Then you open SQL Server Management Studio to run a quick ad-hoc query — and you’re greeted with: Cannot open user default database. Login failed. Same server. Same machine. Same Windows login. The app works;…
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How to Run Your ASP.NET MVC App from VS Code by Pressing F5 (Yes, Even the Old .NET Framework Ones)
I spend most of my day in Visual Studio Code. It is fast, it is light, and it does not chew through 6GB of RAM just sitting there. But there is one thing that always tripped me up — getting an older ASP.NET MVC project running with a single keystroke. Pressing F5 in VS Code…