7. Oct 2019 |

It is EU Code Week 5-20 October 2019

EU Code Week is a grassroots initiative which aims to bring coding and digital literacy to everybody in a fun and engaging way.

The last part of this EU Code Week aim is somewhat non-relatable. Because I just debugged my WP store like 6 hours (to make stock syncs faster) on Saturday and at the moment struggling with entry-level Python tasks for school. So, I can say this period of “fun and engaging” is very short in the learning curve 🙂 In my previous profession in the pharmaceutical industry it was called misleading communication and it was not allowed.

Or, I may be doing something wrong.

27. Sep 2019 |

Best cheap shared hosting – expert opinion

This title is for Google. I am just sharing my experience in hosting websites at an affordable price.

I have tried Dreamhost and Bluehost to save money for some of my voluntary projects (but did not save any). If possible, keep away from these despite them being heavily advertised.

For smaller projects, mainly in the past, I have used planet.ee service (provided by Zone). This is 10GB of space, 1 MySQL database (but you can actually fit multiple WP installations into one), free SSL certificate and much more. Absolutely fantastic thing for 11.88€ per year. Very snappy and simple to use.

Continue reading “Best cheap shared hosting – expert opinion”

27. Sep 2019 |

Start up idea 01

An idea that you can give me – through a secure channel so that I actually do not get access to those – your social media passwords (full access) for a specific time. And you need to pay for it.

Option one is cheaper but there is no way to get them back before right time. Unless you crack it with a supercomputer.

The second option is more expensive and if you want to get them back before the right time you need to pay penalty. Useful if you would like to lock yourself out from social media.

25. Sep 2019 |

Daytime or session studies – which one to prefer if you are a beginner (and you can choose)

Everyone I have spoken to would prefer daytime.

My initial idea was to start session studies. I did my MBA after work so I have previous experience with going to school and working at the same time. But you need to take the IT competency test (EUCIP test) as a part of the application process. This test is quite difficult if you are not a practitioner in this field already and I decided not to take it after getting to know more about the test.

In TalTech campus, end of September, friday evening, going home after 8 hours of coding Python.

Now

I am happy with daytime studies because it allows me to focus on school full-time without need to work. Thanks to my previous professional life I don’t have to worry about working at the moment. Though, I little bit think about an internship for summer already 🙂 Let’s see where it ends.

Everyone I have talked to would also prefer daytime studies but often it is simply not possible due to different (mainly finance and work-related) obligations.

 

19. Sep 2019 |

Why did I decide to learn IT?

Practical need for skills to accomplish everyday tasks.

Long story short. As I found myself more and more working with e-commerce solutions for my family business I more often felt absolutely lost and incompetent. And at the same time maintaining (and growing) 600 k€ revenue online business as a hobby. It is hobby because I personally do not earn 🙂

So I decided to learn how things should(!) be done. Hopefully this also simplifies the purchasing process of developing services.

Some examples of tasks

  • Use (and build?) custom API to get clients’ personal prices to WooCommerce (WC) store.
  • Automatically generate XML from json to sync stocks.
  • Generate customized csvs out of XML to speed up data updates.
  • Send orders from WC to business software.
  • Build simple php script for price calculations from XML to WC.
  • Combine multiple XMLs from different sources to lower the number of cron jobs.
  • Build regular backup system using command lines.
  • Etc.

I wrote these down just in case. Maybe I will find these funny simple tasks by the end of curriculum.

19. Sep 2019 |

My 3rd time in university. In TalTech this time.

Well. I though I should document this path somehow. So I will just take rough notes here.

I am MSc in pharmacy (graduated 2012) and MBA (graduated 2019), left my daily job after 6+ years to study tech at the Tallinn University of Technology (TalTech) on IT Systems Development program.

There are 500+ first-year students (daytime and session study combined) on this program. Though, I believe they are split between different curriculums and not all on the IT Systems Development program.

Continue reading “My 3rd time in university. In TalTech this time.”

5. Sep 2019 |

Command lines for WordPress backups

Instead of Duplicator you can always use shell.

Pets shared these instructions in Zone slack. I tested and these work differently in Zone and Veebimajutus.

Everything after # (included) is not part of command line but is comment!

In Zone

4 steps to create backup:

wpfolder is the directory where you have your WP installation. For example htdocs

cd wpfolder # move to folder where your WP installation is.
wp db export # create WP database dump.
cd .. # move one folder upwards.
tar czf veeb_2019-09-05.tar.gz wpfolder/ # pack the folder where you now have database dump and wp installation.

It is very important not to keep your database dump and backup publicly available. Please store these offline if possible.

5 steps to import backup

tar xzf veeb_2019-09-05.tar.gz # unpack your backup
cd wpfolder # move to folder where you have your wp files
nano wp-config.php # change db user, pass and host
wp db import databasefilename.sql # imports copy of database to dp defined in wp-config.
wp search-replace "https://oldname" "https://newname" # replace old URLs everywhere with new.

After import you need to log in to your wp-admin and update permalinks (even if you don’t plan to change anything). I suggest you try it before to understand how everything works.

For Veebimajutus you need to know this secret

It used to be sot that instead of wp you had to type wp-cli in command lines if you use Veebimajutus. But not anymore.

Instead of “localhost” in wp-config you need to have IP 127.0.0.1 because 🙂 You can not find this information anywhere.

Moving large files between servers

Instead of dowloading and uploading (in case you need to move huge amounts of files) you can use wget. I basically means you log in to your new server and move to the folder where you would like to have the file. An you type:

wget https://google.com/myhugefile.zip

This way you can transfer gigabytes of files within seconds between servers.