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Monday, February 12, 2018

[SOLVED] - Flush/DNS Cache in Ubuntu 14.04, 15.04 & Others


I tried various solutions and fixes available to clean my system's DNS cache but nothing worked for me, due to which I was unable to access a particular website. But at the same time, when I turned on my VPN and tired to access that website, I was able to do so. This clearly meant that there was a problem with my DNS cache. Eventually I tried this simple fix and then was able to access that website. So here's the solution:

1. First you need to find the IP address of your website. To do that open your terminal by pressing CTRL+ALT+T and enter the following command:

 ping example.com  

You should be getting the following result, as shown in the image below:


Make note of the value that I have underlined and circled using the color red; that's your website's IP address. In my case I pinged google.com and got the IP as 172.217.160.14.

2. Now enter the following command in your terminal.

 sudo gedit /etc/hosts  

This will open your system's host file. In this file, look for an entry with the IP as  127.0.0.1 or 127.0.1.1 or something similar to that, but make sure the IP is starting with 127. Now, just below this entry, enter the IP address you got after pinging your website. In my case since I'd pinged google.com I will enter the value in my host file as:

 172.217.160.14  google.com  

Finally save the file and close it. And now you should be able to access your website. Finally after a period of 12 or 24 hours do not forget to remove the above entry from your host file, as it will no longer be required.

[SOLVED] - Remove Background Music/Noise Using Audacity




I tried various solutions available in YouTube to remove the background music in my audio file, but none of the solutions quite worked for me. So, after some trial and error, I have arrived at this solution which has worked for me. You can give it a try.

Tuesday, February 6, 2018

List of all Thunkable Apps in Google Play Store

If you would like to view the list of all the apps made using Thunkable in Google Play Store, please check the following link: http://bit.ly/2BHewYX.

Monday, February 5, 2018

[SOLVED]-Restrict Access to BuddyPress & bbPress Pages Without Using Any Plugins

If you would like to restrict access to specific page(s) of your Buddypress/bbPress site such as Groups, Forum or Member page from non-logged-in/guest users without using any plugins then use the solution below.

First, I recommend, you make use of this wonderful plugin called Code Snippets. Please read the description provided in its plugin page to know about its numerous benefit compared to pasting codes in your theme's 'function.php' file or 'bp-custom.php' file.

>> Solution 1: Restrict Access to all BuddyPress & bbPress pages


The code below will redirect all non-logged-in/guest users to your site's Registration page whenever they try to access a Buddypress/bbPress page such as Group, Forum, Member Page, Profile page etc

 /**  
 * Redirect buddypress and bbpress pages to registration page
 */  
 function bp_redirect_pages()
 {  
   //if not logged in and on a bp page except registration or activation
   if( !is_user_logged_in() &&
     ( ( !bp_is_blog_page() && !bp_is_activation_page() && !bp_is_register_page() ) || is_bbpress() ) 
   )  
   {  
     wp_redirect( home_url( '/register/' ) );
     exit();  
   }  
 }  
 add_action( 'template_redirect', 'bp_redirect_pages' );

What the code above does is, it first checks whether a user trying to access a bp-page is logged in or not AND whether that bp-page is a BuddyPress blog page or a BuddyPress activation page, Profile page etc or NOT (! represents NOT in PHP), and if it is not any of the aforementioned BuddyPress pages, it will then redirect the guest user to your site's registration page.

You can replace 'register' with the slug of any page you would like the user to be redirected to. Suppose, you would like a non-logged-in/guest user to be redirected to your login page then replace 'register' with 'login'.

>> Solution 2: Restrict Access to Only Member's Directory & profile page


This was the solution I required for my site and sharing the same with you all below.

 /**  
 * Redirect non-logged-in/guest user to registration page while trying to access Member's directory or BP-Profile page  
 */  
 function bp_redirect_pages()  
 {  
  // Gets the URL for the page the user is trying to access
  $url = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];
  // Breaks down the above URL into its parts and "news"
  $explode_url = explode("/", $url);
  //if not logged in and on a bp page except registration or activation
  if( !is_user_logged_in() &&
       ( bp_is_members_component() || bp_is_user() || in_array("members", $explode_url) )
       )
  {
      wp_redirect( home_url( '/register/' ) );
      exit();
  }  
 }  
 add_action( 'template_redirect', 'bp_redirect_pages' );

In the above code, what we’re saying is that:

 - If a user is not logged in;
 - && (equivalent to AND) one of a number of types of pages are being loaded viz. 'bp_is_members_component()', 'bp_is_user()' etc
- Then redirect to the registration page

The three things to note in the Solution 2 are:

1. $url defines a variable that saves the url the user is trying to access;

2. $explode_url is an array variable that contains a break down of the above url parts, so “bbc.co.uk/news/” would be broken down into “bbc.co.uk” and “news”;

3. And in the last portion, where I use in_array() I set some new criteria for what pages to block.

Here are the basics to this argument so you can decide what will work for you:
in_array("members", $explode_url) checks for “members” in $explode_url. So, let’s say I’m accessing a site http://gulfnepal.com and want to view http://gulfnepal.com/members/1 Because “members” is in the URL, the function will block access to this page for non-logged-in users and redirect them to the registration page.

In short, whatever is between the first set of quotation marks in the in_array("xxxx", $explode_url) argument will be tested against $explode_url, and if found the page will be blocked. In the second, I’m preventing non-logged in users accessing pages that include “members”. You can check your own site and see what terms would work best. Also, a variation of this method can be used to restrict access to categories of pages. Look at in_category( array( xx, xx ) ) argument.

Please go through the following two articles that I referred to while building the above solutions. You can come up with more solutions as per your requirement from them:

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