The Intel Arc A310 in the HP Proliant MicroServer Gen 8

Posted by in Reviews > Hardware

The somewhat popular HP MicroServer series has been an excellent starting point for all sorts of home lab experimentation. They are particularly well suited for acting as a media server (using Plex, Jellyfin, or others). While CPU transcoding will suffice for a steam or two, it will heavily tax the CPU. Hence, the popularity of GPU transcoding (NVENC and QuickSync).

Thanks to HP’s design decisions, the MicroSever Gen 8 does not enable the iGPU present on many Intel CPUs. What makes this an unfortunate decision is the MicroServer Gen 8 uses the LGA1155 socket—the consumer oriented socket where most of the CPUs, including the Xeons, have integrated graphics. Instead, a Matrox G200EH handles basic VGA duties. Which is a shame, the iGPU in the Ivybridge generation CPUs is not only more powerful, it also has QuickSync for transcoding acceleration. While this is disappointing, the MicroServer Gen 8 does have a PCIe x16 slot (PCIe 2.0).

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Breadcrumb NavXT 7.3.0

Posted by in WordPress > Plugins

Holy revamped block Batman! Introduced originally in 6.3.0, the Breadcrumb Trail block has been rewritten in 7.3.0 to have feature parity with the Breadcrumb NavXT widget. This includes the ability to set the breadcrumb output order, output format, and whether or not the breadcrumbs are linked. Additionally, basic styling support via the editor was added.

On the bugfix front, the settings export/import function was updated to fix issues with handling boolean settings. Previously, if a boolean had a default value of ‘true’ it’s value would get lost in the export/import process. The recently introduced $outer_template parameter for the bcn_display() functions now actually works (it accidentally was dropped). display_json_ld() now produces unescaped Unicode JSON, which is easier to read (and given JSON is supposed to be Unicode text, escaping Unicode didn’t make sense). Lastly, a couple of data sanity checks are performed to reduce PHP warnings and errors when 3rd party code breaks the WordPress API.

-John Havlik

Breadcrumb NavXT Premium Extensions 2024 Update Sweep

Posted by in Announcements

Due to some changes in Breadcrumb NavXT 7.3, an update to all of the premium extensions is required before updating to Breadcrumb NavXT 7.3. A selection of premium extensions have already been updated and had separate release announcements (as additional features or bugs were fixed in them). This announcement covers the rest of the premium extensions.

Users with valid and activated license keys should receive an update notification within the WordPress dashboard and be able to use the update mechanism to update (just like with any plugin in the WordPress.org repository). If you run into any issues, please open a support ticket.

-John Havlik

Breadcrumb NavXT Attributes 1.5

Posted by in Announcements

Introducing Breadcrumb NavXT Attributes 1.5. This version adds support for taxonomy archives. Previously, Breadcrumb NavXT Attributes focused solely on individual posts. However, WordPress does allow for archives that select against multiple terms/taxonomies, and Breadcrumb NavXT Attributes now supports this. Additionally, this version adds support for Breadcrumb NavXT 7.3.

Users with valid and activated license keys should receive an update notification within the WordPress dashboard and be able to use the update mechanism to update (just like with any plugin in the WordPress.org repository). If you run into any issues, please open a support ticket.

-John Havlik

Fixing the ‘Subscribe to continue reading’ Message on Posts

Posted by in Guides

If your posts are presenting the above message to users that are not logged in (can test in a private browser window), there is an easy fix. In the post editor, look for the “Access” metabox within the editor sidebar. Make sure to change the value to “Everyone” from what it is currently set to and update your post. Now your post should be visible to everyone.

I ran into this feature accidentally, the previous post on this site ended up having the access set to “Anyone subscribed” instead of “Everyone”. This went unnoticed by me for several weeks until I ended up visiting while not logged in and noticed the ‘Subscribe to continue reading’ message. Of course, the Access metabox was minimized so it wasn’t immediately clear what was amiss.

Additional Thoughts

While the access feature is neat (if you want to use the various Jetpack features for managing subscribers), it somewhat clashes with the existing Visibility field for posts (which WordPress has had for nearly ever). It would be nice if this feature integrated as additional Visibility options (where it really belongs). Additionally, it would be good if, as with the visibility modes (private/password protected), there was an indication in the front-end that the post is not accessible to everyone while logged in (to help avoid surprises).

-John Havlik