18
Oct 12

Case study: Nieuwszoetermeer.nl

In ‘case studies’ I will every now and then write about a specific site, it’s purpose and what you might learn from this. This could be own work or if I see fit some other pages on the web.

The purpose of NieuwsZoetermeer ( translated: News (from) Zoetermeer ) is to bring all sorts of local news to one page. In my former city local news is scattered around some local paper publications ( with horrible sites ) and ‘amateur’ sites bringing their own local news.

Besides there is no good source for information about the political situation. Like everywhere the traditional media is outside of elections not really interested. For a person who is not bound to one single party this would mean surfing across 10 sites already, just to see if there is local news.

In this post I will explain more about the techniques used behind this site and why.

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04
Oct 12

WP Cron – A more reliable execution of scheduled posts and scripts

WordPress features and ‘pseudo’ cron function which loads at a certain interval when people visit your site. The Cron function is modeled after the linux/unix cron function which runs on most servers and check regularly for scheduled jobs to do.

The problem with the WordPress Cron is when nobody for a while visits your site. Or if you have a lot of heavy scheduled work to do this will slow down the user experience of your site.

There is a solution.

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