Tutorials

Silicon Dales provide IT & software consultancy and management to clients in the United States, Europe and the rest of the world.

In this category we share knowledge of various systems, in the form of tutorials and how-to guides. The list of subcategories below provides more specific areas of interest, or you can dive straight in to see the most recently updated items in the list below that.

Take a tutorial, and add a comment. If you like something you see, or you found it useful, share a link to it on social media or your site.

PHP (or WordPress) City / Locations to use for North American (USA) Timezones

If you’re ever setting the PHP or WordPress timezone for a site in the USA, and you’d like to make sure you pick a city to match their timezone (and importantly include / not include Daylight Saving Time (DST)) then this is the tutorial for you! PHP Has America / City – But which to …

Have you ever wanted to drop a UPS order tracking code link into your website (for orders) or email to customers, to allow them to “click here to track your order” and were wondering how to format this link? Well, wonder no more with a simple tutorial describing how to make exactly that! Sample Code …

This is a question we are asked by people on a regular basis: “Why is my website slow?” The answer provided here, since 2012, is generally speaking in a WordPress context – because we are WP specialists – but a lot of the rules will apply to really any website, particularly one which runs on …

Ever checked your website speed using GTmetrix, Pingdom, PageSpeed or Yslow… or any of the other many and various latest and greatest speed checking tools? ***2021 update: take a look at Lighthouse Well, if you have, you might have come across a request to “leverage browser caching…” or similar. What does “Leverage Browser Caching” actually …

Below are the minimum requirements for WooCommerce and (by extension) WordPress. Some are taken from WooCommerce, some from WordPress, and also, some, we are adding as recommendations. It should be apparent, below, which is which! Before getting started, if you’re here to assess a WooCommerce host, then you may be interested to check out our …

As accredited WooCommerce Expert developers, Silicon Dales offers a full WooCommerce optimization service to medium and larger Woo stores, but what do we actually do? Well, not everything in our toolbox is filed under “easy fix” but there’s a whole host of great ways you can get started on the road to a faster online store, by following the steps in this guide.

The AMP-wp team posted this content over here, at the official website, and it may well be of interest to anyone running AMP WordPress sites – certainly it’s something that our clients running AMP sites have asked for. We have our own approach, which we may tutorialize here, if you would like an alternative method. …

Clients often ask for our recommendation when buying web hosting for WordPress websites. Here, developer Robin Scott gives guidance on choosing the right home for your WP site. The order and post, below, was amended on 2 August 2022. The below will be updated in future as recommendations are updated. Best Hosts for WordPress Here’s …

UPDATE: 8-4-2022 Since writing this article back in 2018, the team at Digital Darts in Australia have developed a very handy Shopify app that does all the heavy lifting for you when it comes to international stores and hreflang tag implementation. You can read about the Multi‑Store Hreflang Tags app here, and install the app …

Depending on where you live in the world, “couponing” is popular. In the USA, using a coupon to purchase a product or service is a normal way of shopping. Elsewhere around the world they may be known as promotional codes or discount codes. Wherever you are, they are a very popular way of reducing costs …

Tutorials

PHP (or WordPress) City / Locations to use for North American (USA) Timezones

Sample Code – Adding UPS Tracking Code to Links

Why Is My Website Slow?

How To: Leverage Browser Caching for Images, CSS and JS

Minimum Requirements for WooCommerce

Complete WooCommerce Speed Optimization Guide

How to add Push Notifications to your AMP website

WordPress Hosting – Best hosts for your website

International Shopify Stores – How to implement hreflang tags across multiple store locations

Using coupons on your e-commerce store – more than just discounts