Reviews Archives - News47ell

March 8, 2018 at 9:55 pmMarch 8, 2018 at 9:55 pm

AirDroid Review: How to Sync Android Notifications with Mac

Sometimes my Android phone is a bit far from my reach and I have received an “important” SMS that I need to access in 30 seconds¹. Instead of having to go grab my phone from the other room, unlock it, open the SMS app, read the code, memories and then type it on my MacBook. I have found another, much easier way to do all of this right from my MacBook using an app called AirDroid that allows me to Sync Android Notifications with Mac as well as having full access to my Android device.

Meaning that as soon as that SMS is received on my Android phone, I will get a notification on my MacBook. I can copy part of it like the TFA code or reply to it if it’s a person I’m talking with.

February 14, 2018 at 11:47 pmFebruary 20, 2018 at 11:47 pm

Slack Notifications by dorzki WordPress Plugin Review

by Ahmad Al Maaz

These days, our phones are in our pockets all the time. Yes, phones as in multiple ones, is it just me?
Back to the main subject, most of the time you have your phone with you and you are out of the house doing your job and all you can think about is your precious WordPress site and what’s happening with it. Again, it’s not just me, right?

When I am out, I like to always know whenever a new plugin, theme or core update is available. Whether someone managed to log in to my account, edited something without my permission or when an article is published on schedule.

You can push all of these notifications easily to your phone and as a bonus, they can all be pushed to your Slack channel, which is what I do.

Let’s dive into this Slack Notifications by dorzki WordPress Plugin Review and learn How to integrate Slack with WordPress.

June 28, 2017 at 11:14 amMarch 7, 2018 at 11:14 am

Keyy Review: Best Clef Alternative

by Ahmad Al Maaz

I still remember the excitement that I felt when I found out about Clef, the no-longer-available two-factor authentication app that helped me get rid of the password that I use to login to News47ell’s admin dashboard. It was magical, but sadly, the excitement didn’t last for too long. Clef shut down and the team moved to join Twilio to work on Authy.

I was left with the same old, boring login method for my site.

Today, I get to be excited again thanks to the great people over at UpdraftPlus because they released their promised app they claim is going to be the heir of Clef.

Keyy two factor authentication, a brand new WordPress plugin, iOS & Android app by the developers of the popular WordPress backup plugin UpdraftPlus, is going to bring back the good old days of not having to enter that hard to remember password¹every time I want to login to my admin dashboard.

So go ahead and read my Keyy Review: Best Clef Alternative and kiss your WordPress login password goodbye

February 22, 2017 at 8:01 pmAugust 9, 2017 at 8:01 pm

Refind Discovery Tool. No 140 Characters Needed!

by Ahmad Al Maaz

There’s a new site with a rapidly growing community called Refind that caught my attention quickly. It’s become a site that I visit all the time even without entering its domain name in my address bar.

April 19, 2016 at 8:21 pmAugust 16, 2016 at 8:21 pm

How to move WordPress media library to new host

by Ahmad Al Maaz

I’ve recently talked about how I moved this site to Lightning Base. In the process of moving, I was worried about one thing only: How am I going to move WordPress media library to new host?

I’ve always been interested in trying the free migration offer from hosting companies but when I stop for a moment to think about the requirements, I quickly cancel the idea from my head because it involves giving my site credentials to a stranger so they can access my site.

One popular way to move WordPress media library to new host is by using the official WordPress Importer Plugin but it has a tiny issue for XML files with a lot of media files. It simply doesn’t work.
Taking a look at the reviews, you will see that many people get frustrated when they try to use the plugin to import their media files because when you try, the request gets timed out due to the amount of text that the server needs to go through, parse and process.

A lot of people suggest splitting the XML into multiple files, but even that didn’t work. I got duplicate media files and I had to start from the beginning.

I did a bit of research and came across a great WordPress plugin that does only one thing. It imports your media files.

June 12, 2015 at 8:20 pmMay 2, 2016 at 8:20 pm

Tap Hosting Review: A Modern Free WordPress Hosting

by Ahmad Al Maaz

Looking for free WordPress hosting on Google is a bit dangerous and scary. Most of the time you end up in websites that offer a service that is too good to be true. Trying them could lead to bad things or you won’t even be able to try because you will be bombarded with ads, pop-ups and “click here” in order to sign up but it doesn’t actually work.

When you happen to find one that is true, it looks ugly, horrible UI and it’s so confusing for people who just want to start a website.

May 23, 2015 at 8:00 pmMay 2, 2016 at 8:00 pm

Microsoft OneNote Publisher WordPress Plugin Review

by Ahmad Al Maaz

This might sound weird, but I’m writing this article in OneNote to test out the newly released Microsoft OneNote Publisher WordPress Plugin, which allow you to import your notes to WordPress and then publish them.

I want to see if my format will still look the same, and if it’s easy to use, and If it actually work.

Let’s see how it will go

May 2, 2015 at 8:11 pmFebruary 10, 2018 at 8:11 pm

CleanMyMac 3 Review: Powerful Cleaning Tools for Mac

by Ahmad Al Maaz

As an app reviewer, I tend to try new apps every single day. One app after another and at the end of the day, I end up with two things:

A good app that turns into a review
GBs of files that take up memory

In order to clean this mess, I can go into each app to look for a clear cache option or simply delete it. However, even that leaves a lot of unwanted files in my Mac that accumulate quickly and take up a lot of memory.

I always turn to my trusted app CleanMyMac. It helps me free up space on my Mac, uninstall apps and even boost up its speed with only one click.

Dive into this CleanMyMac 3 Review to learn all about this powerful app.

April 16, 2015 at 10:19 amApril 4, 2017 at 10:19 am

Incapsula Review: Block Semalt and Protect WordPress Login Page

by Ahmad Al Maaz

I’ve been a CloudFlare user since 11/11/13, the reason why I chose them as my CDN provider was because of all the positive reviews that I kept reading about them.

What CloudFlare supposed to do is to protect your site from malicious attacks and make it faster by caching it’s content, but I honestly didn’t see any changes what so ever, but I kept it installed because they do have one great thing that I use which is their DNS management, it’s really easy to use and control, but other than that, CloudFlare felt like just a service that my traffic go through with no purpose.

March 30, 2015 at 5:45 pmMay 31, 2017 at 5:45 pm

Swiftype Review: WordPress Search Plugin

by Ahmad Al Maaz

A lot of people agree on one thing when it comes to the built-in search in WordPress, they all say that it sucks!.

Here’s what Yoast has to say about it:

WordPress default search kinda sucks. It sorts the results by date, newest first and interface wise. It doesn’t have any of the cool things we’re used to when we search in (for instance) Google.

I agree with him. Yoast goes on to talk about how to customize WordPress search by doing a bit of coding and installing a couple of plugins.

But, what if I told you that you can do everything is his article with one plugin?
Yes, only one plugin. One service. Endless options.