Category: Fixing Stuff

We recently purchased a Shomi digital picture frame and were struggling with a bunch of the images showing as “image not support”.  And yes I found it funny they didn’t spell “supported” correctly.   Anyway to fix this problem you need to “re-save” every image that has location data on it. For example if you downloaded the image from facebook, or sent it from your cell phone its likely that the image has location data on it.

Luckily The fix for this is really easy, you just need to open the image and save a new copy. You don’t need to crop it or anything, you just need to save a new copy that does not have location data on it.  Once you have that, load this new image onto the digital picture frame and bask in the glory of your great picture (and that you solved the problem).

**If you have a lot of images that you need to “re-save” consult my previous post on how to automate batch saving images in photoshop (just don’t do the cropping portion of this post):

Ok so by default wordpress seems to have a lot of issues sending contact forms, and all notifications when its installed on an EC2 instance.  The guide below is a quick reference on how to setup wordpress to use Amazon’s SES (simple email solution).

1.) download the SES plugin: https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-ses/

2.) upload the files to your EC2 instance (or instances)

3.) login to wp admin and activate plugin config settings are “settings > wp ses”

4.) sender email must be validates in amazon SES prior to activating plugin
EC2 console > SES email sending service > verified senders > email addresses > verify a new email address

5.) create new IAM user and download access_key & secret key
EC2 console > IAM > users > create new > downlaod acces/secret keys > attach user policy > “amazon SES FUll Access”
*new “amazon ses full access” in order for plugin to work

open wp-config.php file and define any of the following that you want too:

// From mail (optionnal) must be an amazon SES validated email // hard coded email, leave empty or comment out to allow custom setting via panel define(‘WP_SES_FROM’,’me@….’);

// Return path for bounced emails (optionnal) // hard coded email, leave empty or comment out to allow custom setting via panel define(‘WP_SES_RETURNPATH’,’return@….’);

// ReplyTo (optionnal) – This will get the replies from the recipients. // hard coded email, or ‘headers’ for using the ‘replyto’ from the headers. // Leave empty or comment out to allow custom setting via panel define(‘WP_SES_REPLYTO’,’headers’);

// Hide list of verified emails (optionnal) define(‘WP_SES_HIDE_VERIFIED’,true);

// Hide SES Stats panel (optionnal) define(‘WP_SES_HIDE_STATS’,true);

This is a follow up post to my earlier one about  setting wordpress to server images from amazon s3

Again please excuse the lack of polish on this, its mainly meant for my reference later.  Also shout out to my buddy Cool Brian for coming through with this little tweak:

To fix the auto trader theme from showing local image urls we altered the following file in wp-content/themes/autotrader-parent/offer-views/side-left.php

// alter image URL to use S3 bucket
$temp = parse_url($attachment->guid);
$new_url = “http://sprintervans.s3.amazonaws.com”.$temp[‘path’];

$slider_images[] = array(
‘id’            => $attachment->ID,
‘title’         => apply_filters(‘the_title’, $attachment->post_title),
‘order’         => $attachment->menu_order,
‘img_full’      => $new_url
);

If you have been struggling to server your wordpress media/image files from Amazon S3 hopefully this basic explanation will help you out.  I apologize for the simplicity of this example, this post is mainly meant for my own use later so I have a record of how to set this up:

Download and manually install via FTP the following plugins

amazon web services plugin
amazon s3 cloudfront plugin

steps:
-install both plugins (upload manually, then activate in wp admin)
-create an IAM user on EC2, give user permissions of “AmazonS3FullAccess” (download the id Key and secret key, then add to wp-config.php)
-create an S3 bucket either through the AWS console, or select option in s3 plugin to create a new bucket
-check the first 3 options on the s3 plugin to
           -copy files to s3 as they are uploaded
           -point file urls to s3 once it has been copied to s3
           -remove uploaded file from local filesystem once uploaded to s3

Once completed any new media/images uploaded through the WP backend section will automatically be saved in your specified amazon S3 bucket

This is mainly just a reminder for myself on how to batch re-size images in photoshop. I don’t do this all that often so instead of struggeling every ~6 months when I need to do this I’m just going to write out the steps below:

1.) get all images you want to re-size into 1 folder

2.) open up photoshop and hit File > Scripts > Image Processor.

3.) select the folder with all images in it we made in step 1

4.) set the photo quality and hit the resize to fit option then input your W and H

5.) hit run and collect the images in the same folder as the origionals