Markus Raab - himarkus.com

Die besten deutschen Podcasts um deinen Horizont zu erweitern

Was ist ein Podcast und braucht man so etwas überhaupt? Viele Jahre habe ich Podcasts auf Englisch gehört. Die deutschen Podcasts bzw. deutschsprachigen Podcasts waren qualitativ einfach nicht sehr hochwertig. Meiner Meinung nach hat sich das in den letzten Jahren massiv geändert. Es gibt mittlerweile ein tolle Auswahl an deutschen Podcasts. Abhängig von den Themenfeldern macht es Sinn zwischen internationalen Podcasts und deutschsprachigen Podcasts zu wählen. Podcasts in der eigenen...

August 20, 2020Read more...

language learning to understand the world

Language learning to better understand the world

At some point in my life, I want to be able to communicate in at least 4 languages. Even though I currently do not put emphasis on learning languages I know that the time will come again. A few months ago I learned some phrases in Indonesian. It once again showed me how important it is to be able to communicate without technology. Google Translate and some other offline translator...

May 5, 2020Read more...

The best cheap or free email solutions for your domain in 2020 (Cloudways)

When I switched from DreamHost to Cloudways I was thrilled to get such an amazing performance and additional features like backup/restore or a staging system for a lower price. Of course, there must be a catch. Cloudways does not come with its own email hosting. That means no email address with my personal domain. It is time to look for very affordable or free alternatives. Luckily, both exist – cheap...

May 4, 2020Read more...

The book Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki is a good read before you start a business

Start a business and start cooperating instead of working for a business

I come from a working-class family and grew up in a very small village of a country I sometimes perceive a bit conservative. My wife is from Russia and comes from a small city - as they call it - with a population of 1.2 million people. Her dad is a businessman. Coming from a different culture and a very different family makes our brains wired quite differently when it...

April 23, 2020Read more...

Migrate WordPress website from DreamHost to Cloudways

Moving from DreamHost to Cloudways is not that difficult - if everything works out smoothly. The migration part itself is not challenging, however, there are some things to consider if you want to perform the full migration inclusive all the necessary steps to run the site securely, i.e. SSL certificate, HTTPs. DreamHost also comes with a free email service that is not included in Cloudways. If you use email by...

April 23, 2020Read more...

Limiting beliefs others taught me at first and I proved wrong at last

Recently, I thought of all the languages I studied in life and came across in my travels. It made me think of the first contact with a foreign language in school. My memories to language learning are not the best. Now, I realized that this is partly because of limiting beliefs others put on me at first. Speaking another language or even several languages was one of the many things...

April 19, 2020Read more...

Trick spam bots with Honeypot for Contact Form 7

As soon as you offer a contact form, e.g. with the very popular Contact Form 7, you will find a lot of spam in your inbox. Most of those messages do not come from actual people but from so-called spam bots. There are several methods to avoid or reduce the number of such spam messages. All of those methods work differently and it might even make sense to combine them.

April 16, 2020Read more...

Quick fix for Divi: Stretched featured image on a mobile screen

Quick fix for the image ratio of a blog post's featured image on a mobile screen in the Divi theme. If you follow the guidelines and add a featured image to your post at the recommended size 960 x 440 pixels it looks good on your computer browser and on your mobile screen on your Smartphone. However, if you show all blog posts of a category (simply added on the...

April 13, 2020Read more...

Why did I register for himarkus.com?

The website you are on right now was the first site I created in many years. Back in the old days, I used WordPress already. I also used Joomla, Magento, Typo3, and dinosaurs like Macromedia Dreamweaver and Microsoft FrontPage to work on websites. I remember how I designed a layout myself in Adobe Photoshop and sliced it into little pieces to put it together again and build a website. Do...

April 12, 2020Read more...

The WHY of my favorite WordPress plugins

There are over 50,000 WordPress plugins out there. It is really difficult to find a plugin stack that works well for you. Some plugins are not compatible with the latest version of WordPress. Some plugins do redundant jobs or interfere with each other. Some plugins are hard on your webserver. This article gives an overview of plugins I work with regularly including their purpose.

April 11, 2020Read more...

Basics about .htaccess in WordPress

The .htaccess file (hypertext access) lets you manage the configuration of your web server. Even a small change in this file can break and take down an entire website. Therefore it is always recommended to take a backup before touching the .htaccess file. The best way is to just use an FTP client like Filezilla and download the file to your local computer before even opening it.

April 11, 2020Read more...

Show a single button on a fixed position on every page and post

There are cases in which it is quite useful to show a button (or any other element) on one fixed position on the screen. No matter if you want to do this temporarily to permanently, you for sure do not want to touch every single page and post on your website. The solution is quite simple by adding the button to the global footer or header and simply reposition it...

April 10, 2020Read more...

Get rid of spam emails in Contact Form 7 by integrating Google reCAPTCHA v3

Contact Form 7 is the most popular contact form for WordPress. Unfortunately, the contact form is not only used by people to get in contact. I would even say it is most often used by bots to simply spam. There are several ways to avoid spam emails in WordPress. In the following article, we will have a look at how Contact Form 7 uses Google reCAPTCHA to reduce the number...

April 8, 2020Read more...

How to set up a child theme in Divi 4.x?

A child theme in WordPress is pretty much always useful if you plan to make changes to the code of a theme. Without a child theme changes to your theme files will be overwritten at the next theme update. If you break something by extending your theme troubleshooting will be easier with a child theme as well as the code is separated from the original parent theme. This article explains...

March 29, 2020Read more...

Have you ever heard of “The Mom Test”?

There are two ways to sell your product or service. Either there is a market available and you study that market, or you create a market. Usually, this comes with extensive market research. "The Mom Test" points out two essential things. First, avoid working on a project that did not run through any validation by the market. Second, do your market research but do not get lost in it.

February 29, 2020Read more...

How to set up a remote-friendly culture in your organization?

Remote work is on the rise. All the numbers go up and show the continuous rise of employed people who work remotely. Statistics throw out quite different numbers but the message is clear. Remote work came to stay. There are just too many advantages in the remote workforce and everything it brings with it, it simply cannot be ignored. While employers get access to more talents and save tons of...

February 29, 2020Read more...