If you buy ebooks for Amazon’s Kindle, you’ll have realized that they come with copy protection called Digital Rights Management (DRM).

Unfortunately, the Kindle format is not compatible with all other ebook reading devices, so you’ll run into trouble if you want to use a tool like Calibre to convert your purchased books into a format compatible with your reading device unless that device happens to be a Kindle, in which case you’re good.

The solution is to use two plugins for Calibre as detailed in this excellent guide. Since I’m on a Mac, I could not get an older version of Kindle to work on Catalina, so I installed a virtualized Windows 8 and I was able to set up everything without a glitch.

Notes

• If Calibre gives you an error like `ERROR: Unhandled exception: InvalidPlugin:The plugin in C:\\Users\\Me\\Downloads\\DeDRM_tools_6.6.1.zip’ is invalid. It does not contain a top-level __init__.py file`, you’re trying to load the full archive folder into Calibre. Instead you need to open up the .zip file you downloaded and drill down a couple of levels. Using this example the file you want is C:\Users\Me\Downloads\DeDRM_tools_6.6.1.zip\DeDRM_calibre_plugin\DeDRM_plugin.zip.
• If you’re trying to de-DRM Amazon’s newer .kfx files, you’ll also need to install the KFX conversion plugin(link is external).

I recently started getting a lot of spam comments on one of my sites, so I tried different techniques to stop that as the manual labor of doing it myself was getting exhausting.

Here’s what I tried:

• Akismet – I install it on every site but it wasn’t enough to stop spam on this site
• Project Honeypot – Ended up not implementing it as it was too cumbersome
• CleanTalk Anti-Spam – Did not pick up the vast majority of spam comments
• Anti-Spam – Did not do the job either
• Removed the URL field in the comment form – Didn’t help

Finally, I ended up installing the hCaptcha plugin and putting up a captcha for comment forms. I did this against my wishes as I hate captchas with a passion, and even that didn’t prevent the spam commenters.

Next, I installed Comment Blacklist Manager and AntiSpam Bee. I also installed WordFence in the hope that it would stop the spammers from even accessing the website. Too many requests from spammers to submit comments can slow down your website and affect performance too. I’m still monitoring the effects of these last two actions.

If anyone knows a better, automated solution that doesn’t involve captchas let me know in the comments below.

Every now and then, I have the need to transfer emails from one account to another. I mostly use Gmail, but sometimes I have to deal with other systems, such as a recent case involving my dad’s email, where he was using another system and wanted to move to Gmail.

Such moves typically involve thousands of emails, so the easiest way for me to do it is to load up the two or more accounts in an email client, then drag and drop emails between them. Before I do so, I typically make sure that everything is backed up.

See my other posts on backups:

• How to backup Gmail accounts on Synology
• How to backup Gmail on Mac
• How to backup Gmail with Gmvault

I’ve tried out several clients and found that Mail on Mac and Outlook on Windows work best for this use case. I’d originally tried using Thunderbird but last time round I ran into a problem where if you select more than a 100 or so emails it never completes the transfer, so it was taking me ages and was very unreliable.

Thought I’d put this out there in case anyone runs into this use case and problem.

When you buy products online, especially from Chinese websites like Aliexpress or Gearbest, you might be a bit doubtful of whether the products they sell are original.

This is especially the case for small electronic goods like camera batteries. The best way to determine whether a good is fake or not is to do the following.

First, before buying, closely inspect the wording of the seller’s description. Sometimes they will write the model number in the title and use the wording “original”, but in the finer print details further down below they will not include the brand or the words “genuine” and “original”. This would usually mean it’s not an original item.

After buying, closely inspect the packaging and item and compare it to the originals. If that seems to be the same (any differences should make you seriously doubt the authenticity of the product), you can check the weight of the product. This is usually a clear giveaway. For example, I have some original Sony and Canon camera batteries, and the fake ones I bought are just a few grames lighter, while all the originals are exactly the same weight.

Looking for a new theme for your WordPress website or getting started with WordPress? There are thousands of themes out there and your website creation journey can get stalled right there as you search and search for the right theme, possibly making some bad choices.

I’ve been in the WP space for more than ten years now so I’ve seen it all.

Here’s what I consider the best themes for 2023:

• Astra
• GeneratePress
• OceanWP

I would pair these with a page builder, and the number one choice right now is Elementor.

If you can’t decide between the three themes above, consider the following:

• OceanWP has the most design options and flexibility, although the others come close.
• Astra and GeneratePress focus more on being lightweight and speed optimized.
• Astra has integrations that the others don’t yet offer, for example, LifterLMS and LearnDash.
• GeneratePress has the best public support forum so if you’re a beginner building your first site this could be an important consideration.

In the end, you won’t go wrong with any of those three themes.

Learning how to build themes

If you’re interested in WordPress theme development, Chris Coyier has an excellent resource post on the topic.