Author: Trevor Ayers

Top 5 WordPress Plugins

While I appreciate Joomla and Drupal as well as some of the Niche CMS such as Magento and some on the Windows side WordPress remains my go-to CMS for flexibility and potential. For this reason, I find myself using many WordPress plugins. Through this experience I have found dozens of favorite WordPress plugins. Some have niche use and others can really apply to almost ANY install. For this list of top 5 WordPress plugins I will concentrate on the WordPress plugins that can be used on most any Wordpress install with great benefit.

Top 5 WordPress Plugins

1) WordPress SEO… Read More

December 27, 2015

Synology / Tech Tips

Create Public Link on Synology NAS

This is a quick walk through on how to create a public link on Synology NAS. Your NAS must be running DSM 5 + for this tutorial to work. If you’re more into videos, you can find my walk through on how to share public links on Synology NAS here.

The reason for this video is not because it’s not an intuitive process, but the links generated in the platform will not work off network. Therefore, to create a public link on Synology NAS there are a couple additional, simple steps.

Create Public Link on Synology NAS

1. … Read More

November 11, 2015

Email / Google Apps / Tech Tips

How To Add Free Domain Emails Using Google Apps

As many of you are aware, you can use Google Apps to handle your domain and business emails. This allows an almost-infinite possibility of domains to all have the full functions of a Gmail account. For example, I could use an @trevorayers.com email address and manage it via Google Apps. This is a quick walk through on how to add free domain emails using Google Apps. This process also works for @gmail.com address to consolidate accounts, but there’s never a charge with these.

Please note that you will need to maintain a Google Apps account for your business with … Read More

October 4, 2015

AweSEM Advice / BingAds / Blog / Google Analytics / Google Tag Manager

How To Track Conversions in BingAds Using Google Tag Manager

Google Tag Manager is great. Out of the box, it lets you track site engagement that would have required manually tagging on-page elements in your code in the past. This site engagement can be configured to trigger events and then these events can trigger goals. These goals can then easily be imported into Google AdWords from Google Analytics. However, BingAds does not link to Analytics and even with UTM auto-tagging enabled you will need to configure your BingAds conversion tag to fire in addition to your Google Analytics goals.

BingAds conversion tags by default can be configured to fire on … Read More

September 27, 2015

AweSEM Advice / Google Analytics / Google Tag Manager

Track Email Clicks in Google Tag Manager V2

I’ve covered how to track mailto: clicks as events in Google Tag Manager before. Well, Google has updated their entire Google Tag Manager interface and with has come many changes. Without diving into the specifics of the changes, I’m going to show you how to track email clicks in Google Tag Manager V2. We will set these up to trigger events for Google Analytics. These events will instantly be visible in Google Analytics; you can also set these events to track as goals in Google Analytics.

The benefit of tracking email clicks as conversions is you can know the … Read More

July 25, 2015

AweSEM Advice / BingAds / Google Analytics

Why Aren’t All My BingAds Clicks Showing in Analytics with UTM Auto Tagging?

There is nothing more frustrating than Web analytics data discrepancies. Particularly with paid ad referrals because you do not want to test in real time and cost yourself a click. No matter the spend. If you’ve been running search campaigns on BingAds you may find yourself asking why aren’t all my BingAds clicks showing in Analytics with UTM auto tagging.

First, I commend BingAds for UTM auto tagging as manually tagging each destination URL was a huge pain point with the platform. Not tracking the visits was foolish even when firing the conversion code at the BingAds platform. However, … Read More

July 3, 2015

AweSEM Advice / Blog / Google Analytics

Top 5 Google Analytics Filters

As we all know, Google Analytics is a great Web Analytics and best of all it’s free. I’ve explained the basic necessities of Google Analytics before and you’ll note that there are some filters within that. Google Analytics filters can enhance your tracking and clean your data. There are many filters that are specific to a certain account, but these top 5 Google Analytics filters can benefit any Google Analytics install.

Adding Google Analytics Filters

In case you don’t have any filters you can find them very easily. Log in to your Google Analytics account > Admin tab > Filters… Read More

June 21, 2015

Tech Tips / Wordpress

Change WordPress Password in Database

There are many reasons to change WordPress password in database. The most obvious reason for you to change your WordPress password in the database is because you’ve forgotten it and standard recovery methods do not work.

Fortunately, it’s an easy task to change your WordPress password in the database.

What You Need to Change WordPress Password in Database

cPanel or Plesk credentials
If multiple databases in your hosting account you will need to know the database of your specific site, which can be found in your wp_config file

How to Change WordPress Password in Database

1. Log in to … Read More

May 29, 2015

Blog / Steam / Tech Tips

Failed to Start Game with Shared Content Please Update These Games First Steam Error

We all love games and we all love Steam. Every once in a while, we receive errors that drive us crazy such as the Failed to start game with shared content. Please update these games first:

This stupid “failed to start game with shared content. Please update these games first:” error can happen for any number of games. Often times, you’ll find this associated with the Call of Duty series. I most recently had this happen with Advanced Warfare.

The fix that works for me every time is to verify the integrity of the game cache:

How to Fix

April 30, 2015

iTunes / Kodi / Tech Tips / XBMC

How to Play iTunes Library in Kodi

This is a quick walk through on how to play your iTunes library in Kodi. This works for Kodi and XBMC the same. I have a video here for how to play iTunes in Kodi if you’d rather reference that. There are many benefits to this, but primarily it’s to control you iTunes library from your central hub, Kodi.