Comment on How to Update WordPress Themes by SEO Dave.

Stallion Responsive WordPress Theme I wonder if it’s related to accessing an external server, to check if there’s an update it checks a file on this site to see what the current version is etc… If security settings are set high might cause an issue.

A quick fix would be to remove the check completely and update manually. Easy to do.

Edit the file function.php within the /stallion-seo-theme/ folder and delete the last line of code:

<?php require 'plugins/update.php'; $example_update_checker = new ThemeUpdateChecker('stallion-seo-theme','http://www.stallion-theme.com/updates/themes/stallion-seo-theme/info.json'); ?>

After removing the above you won’t know if there’s an update available so keep an eye on the mailing list. Also when you update if the same issue reoccurs (probably will as same code used) remove that line again from the updated file.

Might be worth updating to Stallion 6.2 first to see if there’s corrupt files in the current install.

I’ll have to have a look at the Yoast Google Analytics plugin see if there’s any features worth adding to Stallion’s Google Analytics code.

I’ve a couple of almost identical virtual private servers and have one a little overloaded, keeps crashing during peaks of traffic. As a WordPress theme developer it’s a good situation to be in because if I screwup on a code feature and upload it to 30+ WordPress sites on the server it will cause more crashes. That being said plan to get another server to spread sites out more.

I know how much webmasters like to squeeze as much out of their hosting/servers, so I’ve made as much of Stallion as possible in a modular way. The concept is if you don’t use a feature WordPress shouldn’t even load the code required to run the feature.

For example all the ad networks (AdSense, Chitka etc…) if they are disabled on the main Stallion options page none of the ad code is ever loaded (just the Stallion options page for that ad network). AdSense for example has several template files to generate the code, when disabled none of it is loaded (note how the AdSense widgets aren’t available when AdSense is turned off, same for Chitka widgets and Clickbank widgets). Many of the other widgets can be disabled via the options pages, when disabled the code for those widgets isn’t loaded. When setting options the idea is if you don’t use something (like the 125px by 125px banner ads) disable it so the code isn’t loaded wasting server resources.

I’ve even added database queries and memory usage within the footer area for admins to see so they have an idea how their setup is impacting the server. If you add a new plugin and you find it adds a couple of hundred database queries it’s a poorly optimized plugin and ideally wouldn’t be used.

David