[00:00:09.220] - Gordon
Hello.
[00:00:09.500] - Taylor
Hello.
[00:00:09.820] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.
[00:00:11.570] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:00:13.450] - Gordon
And welcome to "This Week with Taylor and Gordon," a weekly podcast and vidcast where we talk about things that have affected our businesses over the last seven days. And how's your last seven days been?
[00:00:25.120] - Taylor
It's been good.
[00:00:26.680] - Gordon
Excellent. I've been rebuilding my computer systems again.
[00:00:34.280] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:00:34.860] - Gordon
Just getting them all back up and running. And in fact, that's what I'd like to talk about today. Can I start?
[00:00:40.010] - Taylor
Go for it.
[00:00:41.120] - Gordon
So what I do when I have new equipment; I bought a brand new computer, I bought a brand new monitor. So this is going to replace my main machine. So what happens to my main machine? Well, the previous main machine gets moved down the line. So I have two computers in my office for many reasons. One is originally that it was used by other people, and more commonly now, it's used for tasks that I don't want to bog my main machine down in. So things like capturing video from tapes, for example, that's one of the things it does. And it also manages all of the scans that we do that go up to Evernote, which I'll talk about again, because I don't think I've spoken about that for a long time, and it's worth coming back to in a future episode. So it gets tasks that are given to it, and it goes and does it, and it doesn't bog down my main machine. So what happens is, when my main machine gets replaced, the machine that was there gets moved down the line. Now, that's not quite as simple as it sounds, because what you have to do is you have to migrate all the data from your current new machine to the new, new machine so that all the data gets sent across. Now, I quite like reinstalling applications because sometimes you end up with a lot of rubbish in the library files, and you end up with parts of programs that you've tried and used, or you don't use anymore and you've taken off the system. And so it's much nicer to have a machine that's got just the data, all the files, and then reinstall the applications. That's the ideal way of doing it. So you do that, and then you use the new machine. But sometimes settings don't come across, or profile files, or little config files, these things that you're used to. And you start using the programs on the new machine and you go, "Oh, no wait, I've lost all of my settings for Photoshop," or "I've lost all this, I've lost all my actions," whatever it is. So I always have my older machine, so what used to be the current machine, to the side of me, and that's powered up. And so whenever I get to that situation, I can either go and look and I can just put the settings in, or I can export a file and move it across, and I have it there for...
[00:03:26.340] - Computer
Time for a five minute break.
[00:03:27.930] - Gordon
Made me jump that did. That's Taylor's computer telling him to have a five minute break, which means that he has to move and stretch. So everybody, here we go, five minute break. Not a five minute break, but just have a stretch. There we go. So yes, I leave it there, and I leave it there for maybe a week or two because it's really important that I don't get rid of what's on that machine until I know I've got everything. Now, normally, not on this occasion, normally, I have an up to date backup of it on time machine, which means if I do mess up, I can at least go back to the time machine and get the files that I need. But it's been a couple of weeks now since I've had my new machine. So the machine that used to be my main machine, I'm pretty confident I've got most of what I need from it. So this machine is now being reformatted. It's having a new operating system put on. So it's as if it was a brand new machine out of the box. It then gets moved down the line. So the machine that was my secondary machine now is going to be moved on. And my old main machine now becomes my secondary machine. So the way I do that is I migrate all the data onto what used to be the main machine, check it's all working, make sure everything's done. And again, that takes another week or two just to make sure I've got everything. So it's about a month for me to move a machine down the line. But the way I do it means that hopefully I don't miss anything. So I'm actually using my new machines in day to day activities just to see if there's anything that I'm missing, at least I have the opportunity to get it back before I repurpose the machine. This then leaves what used to be my secondary machine as a spare machine. So what do I do with that? Well, normally, once it's got everything off it and I'm happy that I've got everything, that machine gets reformatted, it gets a new operating system put on it, and then I sell it.
[00:05:39.450] - Taylor
Nice.
[00:05:39.920] - Gordon
So I get a little bit of money back that goes towards the purchase of my new machine that I'm now using as my main machine. It's not normally a lot of money, but it's something that I do because the machines that I use are still good machines. They might be probably about six or seven years old by the time it stops being a secondary machine. And so it's an older machine, but it's still good enough for those people who want to just browse the internet and do emails. That's fine. It's good enough... I mean, it's been capturing video on Final Cut Pro, so it's good enough for video capture and editing. Might be a little bit slow for editing some of the newer formats. I wouldn't expect to be able to do 4K on it, for example. But it's still got life in it. And there are people who want to have a Mac, an iMac in particular, and they just can't afford a new Mac, or they just don't want one of the new Macs, and they want one of the older ones because they prefer them. So there is a market out there for that. So it's going to be put on the market. So if you're looking for an older iMac, then I will post on our This Week With Facebook group a link to where it's being sold, and you can go and buy it. And the nice thing is that I do like to keep the original boxes for things. So I do have the original box for it, so it will be packaged up properly and I'll make sure that it's got the operating system on and it's all ready to go, basically. So if you've got equipment that you're moving down the line, always look to see what you can do with the machines at the end of the line and see if there's anything you can do to maybe give it away, sell it, give it to friends or family, give it another life. Don't just throw it in landfill because they normally have a bit of life left in them and someone is going to be appreciative of that. Talking of new machines, I've just bought some new headphones.
[00:07:54.190] - Taylor
Oh, yeah?
[00:07:54.640] - Gordon
Yeah, I bought some new Bose Quiet Comfort 45s, which is the model number. I had the 25s. You bought the 35s. And then 45s came out, and that's what I've just bought. And the only reason I did that is because of Camel Camel. And it's worth mentioning that here. Camel Camel is a website that will track prices of Amazon products. So all you do is you put the URL in and you tell it what price you're looking for, and it will email you if the price ever comes down to that price.
[00:08:27.480] - Taylor
That's very clever.
[00:08:27.810] - Gordon
And so normally, these headphones are £319 for the Quiet Comfort 45s, but I have seen them on sale for £249 in the past. So I put my target as £245, and I got an email just yesterday, in fact, and it came through. £189! Which is well below my target.
[00:08:50.560] - Taylor
That's very good.
[00:08:50.850] - Gordon
And it's such a good price I ordered them there and then, and they arrived today. So I've got new headphones. So it might be that I'll put my Quiet Comfort 25s online as well. They need new ear cups, which you can get third party ones for because they're splitting a bit. But apart from that, they're perfectly fine and they're very very good. They've got noise cancelling in them. So there you go, something else that I'll try and put on the Facebook group. That's it. What are you going to talk about?
[00:09:16.870] - Taylor
So this week I was refactoring some codes, so I did some custom work for another agency, for their client, and it was to do with Fluent Forms. And their client came back, probably about six months later, and said they wanted a change; because of the way the market was they wanted to add more brands of boilers. So it was a boiler quote form thing. And they wanted to add more brands of boilers. And the current system, or the way that I'd built it didn't allow for that. So they said, "Is it possible to update it so that it can accept different brands?"
[00:09:57.560] - Gordon
And allow the customer to put those brands in?
[00:10:00.640] - Taylor
Yeah, exactly. And so the way that I'd built it didn't allow for it exactly. But because of the way that I'd built it, it didn't take too much to extend it and add that functionality, which is quite nice. And while I was at it, I refactored my code so that it was a bit better. One of the things was changing from using an Ajax function to using a "REST API" and then using "Fetch," which is a much better way of handling data from the front end to the back end, and sending that back to the front end. So yeah, it was a bit of refactoring. It's horrible looking at my previous code because you obviously get better as time goes on. So looking at my old code, I thought, "Wow, I didn't write this very well." So I refactored a bit of it. And then also, I have been working on a new snippet for Snippet Club. So one of Kyle's clients is Yoast. He was the founder of "Yoast SEO." And on his blog, he has an 'Upcoming Gigs' section. And it's a two by two grid with the first item being a call to action where it says, "Would you like me to speak at your event? Get in contact." And then it has the next three upcoming gigs that he has. Now, this is all static. It was created, you just have to manually update it when they become old. And I thought what would be a nice way would be creating a post type and using posts to do it. And you could obviously set a date so that when it's in the past, it automatically updates to show the next upcoming gig. But the hardest part was inserting static content into essentially a dynamic loop. And I managed to find a solution or create a solution that would allow you to hook in using the Generate Press hooks, which is one of the biggest and really nice functionalities of Generate Press. And you can essentially hook in either before or after the query loop. So this is really useful to be able to add content at the beginning or the end, like a call to action, or say you don't have enough posts, so you only have an odd number, you could insert a static thing just to make it even. And it was a really nice solution that can be used in a lot of different ways. I'm currently exploring how we could use similar code to insert ads throughout your loop. So you could say, "add an ad every third post," which would be quite nice. And yeah, it would just insert it for you dynamically without you having to do anything.
[00:12:59.140] - Gordon
Well, that's really cool. It is something that's quite good to do because having any sort of manual system is fine as long as you remember to do it. But it's so much easier and better if it's automated. So yeah, I like the idea of that. I'm sure there'll be other uses for it as well, because I'm guessing you could have any static content in there, couldn't you? So it doesn't have to be an ad. It doesn't have to be a "I'm speaking at next." It could be, trying to think of something that it else it could be. It could be something unrelated. It could be an image, right?
[00:13:39.430] - Taylor
Yeah, you could put whatever you wanted in there. Another example is, for example, if you put it at the end of your blog post grid, you could have essentially a button that says "View All Posts" that takes you then to the archive page, and in that way, if you've got a grid layout, it is seamless integrated with the grid.
[00:14:04.510] - Gordon
And I wonder if you could have the inserted content be dynamic as well. So you could pull from a different feed, for example, and every fourth post that's shown could be from a different feed. So you could have a feed with photos in it that are going to break up your article list, that sort of thing.
[00:14:27.570] - Taylor
Yeah, you could essentially put whatever you want in there. And because of the way the hook system works, you could insert two different items before your content, three items just by hooking in another element with the GP hooks.
[00:14:42.400] - Gordon
Right, this needs a name, I think. We need to give it a really nice name as to what this is, because it's difficult to explain, but really easy to understand once you...
[00:14:52.530] - Taylor
"Adding static content to the Generate Press Query loop" is what I settled on.
[00:14:57.510] - Gordon
Snappy. Yeah, I like it.
[00:14:59.900] - Taylor
Yeah. Well, it will help with SEO for people searching for static content and query loop in the same sentence.
[00:15:07.070] - Gordon
I agree. Very good.
[00:15:09.330] - Taylor
And again, it is hard because it's very niche, but something that if you know, if you understand what it does, it can be very useful and used in a lot of different ways.
[00:15:21.860] - Gordon
So it's a snippet for Snippet Club.
[00:15:24.030] - Taylor
Tutorial, yes.
[00:15:24.890] - Gordon
Do you want to just go over again how people can get that?
[00:15:32.360] - Taylor
So for members, you can just go to the "Tutorials" page, and it should be one of them near the top. If not, you can search by the tag or the name.
[00:15:42.210] - Gordon
Depending on when you watch this; it'll be near the top now, but a few months down.
[00:15:46.740] - Taylor
Yeah. So if it's not, you can just do a search for static content and it should come up. If you're not a member, you can subscribe and then you'll be able to get access to it.
[00:15:57.240] - Gordon
Very good. And we'll put the link for that in the show notes. And on the web page. There'll be probably, I don't know which side it is. Is it this side? I'm going to guess. I can't remember now. Is it this side? Yeah, I think it's this side. So just around here somewhere on the web page, there'll be a link that you can click on to go straight there.
[00:16:19.520] - Taylor
Wonderful.
[00:16:19.980] - Gordon
Anything else you want to say?
[00:16:21.520] - Taylor
No, that's everything.
[00:16:23.000] - Gordon
So, thank you for joining us. As always, please like, share, and subscribe. We are on Facebook and on YouTube.
[00:16:31.040] - Taylor
You can also go to our website thisweekwith.co.uk to find all of our past episodes and anything we may have spoken about.
[00:16:37.370] - Gordon
If you have any comments, please leave them below, if you are on Facebook or on YouTube. If you're on the website, then you can click through to one of those two and leave your comments there. We should put actually some sort of system to allow people to comment on our website. That's something we'll consider. Oh, fly. Something we'll consider for the future. So until next week, 1pm on Friday, my name's Gordon, I'm from Drayson Design.
[00:17:02.520] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The...
[00:17:05.660] - Gordon
[sneezes] Perfect timing.
[00:17:06.630] - Gordon
I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:17:08.450] - Gordon
I was trying so hard to stop myself sneezing before we finished. Let's do that one last time. My name's Gordon, I'm from Drayson Design.
[00:17:14.920] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:17:17.120] - Gordon
Goodbye.
[00:17:18.420] - Taylor
Bye.
