Latest Mystery: Tracking Down the Archive

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I installed The Events Calendar by Modern Tribe, Inc. on another site the other day so I could keep a community calendar of tech and business events. It seems like a pretty good WordPress plugin which is probably why it has over 700,000 installs.

Click for full size view …

It’s not perfect – the free version doesn’t handle recurring events and Gutenberg seems to break the CSS, at least on the theme that I’m using – but Gutenberg can be turned off for this plugin and it creates a very attractive calendar for the site. The events are stored as blog posts with their own specific post type so the plugin makes use of the existing tables within the database. I could write some SQL to copy events with new dates but it’s pretty much just as easy to go through the interface.

The sticking point came when I noticed that it was titling my main calendar page “Events Archive” which is not the title I want Google seeing when it looks at my site. The calendar page is auto-generated by the plugin so it’s not stored in the Pages section of the site and I couldn’t set the title manually.

After searching through Google and with a little bit of guesswork, I finally tracked the problem down to my Yoast SEO plugin. Yoast adds a new Events section under its Search Appearance >> Content Types settings for Event Tribe events and it was using the word Archive for the SEO Title of the generated page. Once I changed this, it fixed the problem on the site.

Troubleshooting MS-Access Error 31532 – Unable to export data.

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Microsoft Access can sometimes seem to have its own obstinate personality, throwing errors that persist no matter what you try. I wanted to share a recent troubleshooting experience to show some of the steps that you can take when a function is just not working as expected and the decision process involved in fixing it.

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Things I Learned About CiviCRM This Week

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I was introduced to CiviCRM a few years ago when a new customer needed a replacement for an old poorly designed database solution and needed it quickly. After getting quotes starting at $10,000 for systems supposedly designed for non-profits, I stumbled on CiviCRM which was free, open source and seemed to have a good community behind it.  The project became one of my notable success stories as I was able to discover a new product and learn enough about it to implement it in a short time.  I even managed some advanced customizing of the system.

The system has worked without any serious issues for the past few years and I hadn’t heard from the customer very often.   Then, last week, I got an e-mail stating they’d moved their offices, made some changes to their network and needed me to come in and get the software working again. Everything went smoothly for the first 10 minutes I was there. Then I realized that CiviCRM was running incredibly slow and its top menu had disappeared which pretty much makes it unusable for anyone who doesn’t want to type in a lot of complicated URLs.  Again, it had been quite a while since I’d touched CiviCRM or dealt with the specifics of their system so I ended having do do a bit of research to find out what was going on.

In the end, the solution came down to updating the civicrm.settings.php file with the new network information. Once that was done, the system worked great but I ended up taking the long way around to discover it. Along the way, I refreshed my knowledge of CiviCRM and learned a few new things as well. This was just as well as I was able to be even more confident that no other problems lurking in their system when I was done.

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Deploying MS-Access Table Design Changes to Remote Files

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A New Challenge for Access

I designed a Microsoft Access database for one of my clients and it’s split into two files – a front-end file with all the forms, reports and code and a back-end file with the tables. That’s pretty standard.

During the development process, I needed to make adjustments to the table design – new indexes, fields need to be added and removed, relationships changed. That’s usually no problem if I have remote access to the client’s system and can login and make the changes. In this case, I don’t. Even to deploy a new program version, I have to send it to the client and let them unpack the files to their desired locations.

It’s not the ideal situation but it’s what I have to work with. When it comes to making design changes in the back-end tables, I could try to guide the client rep through the process but I’m not risking that. I’d rather have a routine that will automate it and ensure that everything is done as painlessly as possible.

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New Video Series – Microsoft Access: The Nickel Tour

My new series of YouTube videos is an introduction to Microsoft Access for absolute beginners who have never used Access before. If you are in the position of needing to learn Access fast or are curious about what you can do with Microsoft’s desktop database software, this series will provide you with a great introduction to organization of data into related tables, creating user-friendly data entry forms and designing reports to present your data as needed.

The idea behind this series is to demonstrate Microsoft Access by showing the design of a new database application from start to finish. This includes the occasional mistakes and bugs that happen from time to time and need to be resolved. In these videos, you’ll get to see the thought process behind the design of an order entry application and learn about the different questions that need to be asked when planning a new solution that will be used by other people.

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Unboxing the Unitek IDE / SATA to USB 3.0 Drive Adapter

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I hoped it would be a simple fix when the customer asked me to look at her Windows 7 machine this week. I don’t really do PC repair anymore but I have one or two old customers I’ll help out when needed. I figured it was just some Windows settings that needed adjustment but after struggling with the machine for about an hour, I realized that it really needed a wipe and reload of the system. The repair shop I referred the customer to discovered hard drive issues I’d suspected but couldn’t confirm with CHKDSK. They gave her a fantastic rate on a hard drive upgrade and Windows reinstall and returned her old hard drive to her for recovery of whatever data she needed.

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Unboxing the ASUS Chromebook

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This past weekend, I finally decided to spring for a Chromebook. I’ve been thinking more and more about a Windows replacement machine, at least for basic tasks. I also wanted an inexpensive solution that would extend the life of my current laptop. I often don’t need the full machine out on the road and the smaller profile of the Chromebook makes an attractive alternative.

The Specs

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Helping Users Work With Subforms in Microsoft Access

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Creating an Access application for other people means anticipating how the users are going to interact with your program. Without clear direction from the program or you, users can be easily confused by even simple things like the order in which data is to be entered.

One of the basic tools in Access is the subform which allows for the input of records related to a master record. A classic example is a database which stores customer orders and where each order might have multiple items (i.e. order lines) associated with it.

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How to Perform a Basic MySQL Installation in Windows

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One of the nice features of MySQL as a database software is its noinstall option in which you download the files themselves and perform a manual installation that takes just under a gigabyte of space on your drive.  If you’re a developer or a student, this means you can quickly create a new self-contained instance wherever you need it and then blow it away if you need to without cluttering up your registry.

This does mean working on the command line so you’ll want to have a certain comfort level with that.  You will also need to be working with Administrative privileges.

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How to Programmatically Relink Tables in Microsoft Access / VBA

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Several years ago, I designed a Microsoft Access application called JobSearch Plus for managing job leads during an employment search.  It was a split application, meaning that the tables were stored in one Access file, the back-end, and everything else was in the front-end file with table links to the other one.

JobSearch Plus was also meant for distribution and I had no idea where any of the users were going to store the files on their computers.  Access uses absolute file paths to specify the source database for a linked table. This meant I needed some way to determine if the back-end existed and what it’s file path was.

On it’s own, relinking Access tables in VBA is just a few lines of code.

 Dim dbCurr As Database
 Dim tdfTableLink As TableDef
 
 For Each tdfTableLink In dbCurr.TableDefs
   tdfTableLink.Connect = ";DATABASE=" & (Insert new file path)
   tdfTableLink.RefreshLink
 End If

This is fine if you know exactly where the new file is but my program could be anywhere on the user’s computer so I had to do some more engineering.  Also, since this was going out over the Internet to who knows how many strangers with my name on it, it had to work right … always.  This is where the fun of actual software development comes in.

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