Frequently Asked Questions:

This site brings together all of the video content on the Derek Molloy YouTube channel and structures it so that you can follow the videos as lessons. It also integrates associated documentation, datasheets and tools to allow you to get the best from the video series. It also has a blog to allow me to post new videos, articles and useful information that may not be in video form.

I try to answer as many questions as possible; however, I am receiving many, many questions and queries every day, so it is becoming difficult for me to respond. Please post questions to the website and YouTube channel where it is very often the case that other readers and viewers will answer your queries.

This website is a custom WordPress installation on a hosted service (currently Register365). I am using the Avada theme from ThemeFusion (requires a paid license), which has been heavily customized using custom graphics, fonts, PHP code, plugins, and my own photographs. I highly recommend that if you are building a public WordPress site that you purchase a professional theme (e.g., from themeforest) as they greatly enhance the features available in WordPress and help your website to provide support for mobile/tablet devices — saving you hundreds of hours of custom development.

If you plan on customizing a professional theme, make sure that you research the topic of child themes. I only edit the child theme, which allows me to upgrade the parent theme without losing any customization. Upgrades of the professional themes are required quite regularly and are often necessary in order to remain compatible with the latest version of WordPress.

Some of the important WordPress plugins used on this site are: Crayon Syntax Highlighter, Easy Table, Fusion Core, Google Plus Badge Widget, WP GitHub Tools, Amazon Link, YouTube Channel, Redux  Framework, WP-SpamShield, and Advanced Code Editor.

One of the most difficult aspects to configure on this website is caching. I have optimized this website using script minification, html minification, page caching, object caching, database caching, browser caching and I am currently experimenting with content delivery networks (CDNs). My advice on this topic is to test, test, and test again after you have set up caching. Everything looked fine on my computer, but external viewers were not seeing comment updates etc. The Tor browser is a great way of getting an external geographical view on your website. If you notice any strange update problems with this website then please let me know via the About Author page.

The photographs are edited and optimized using Adobe Photoshop, and all illustrations (including circuit diagrams) are created using Adobe Illustrator.

Now to answer the question… Hard work!

There is a full description on the privacy and cookie policy page.

I publish all of my source code on GitHub using different repositories that are all linked from the page: github.com/derekmolloy. Once you have the correct repository name you can install the code on your BeagleBone (Linux or any embedded Linux device) using the following commands:

This will place the source code for my book on your device.

The traffic on this website has increased significantly over the past two years to now serve pages to thousands of visitors each day. While this is great news, unfortunately it also has a cost implication. To this end, the website earns a small amount of money daily from product advertisement, and when visitors follow an Amazon link and purchase a product. This income helps support the hosting cost of this website, and any extra income will be invested in further upgrading the hosting package (it is still slower than I would like) and supporting the development of additional content.

I’m sorry about that. I simply can’t respond to all of the questions I receive through comments, e-mails, YouTube comments etc. as my full-time role in DCU keeps me very busy and I have four young children to keep busy at home! I am hoping that if you post a question here that others may have the answer to your questions and I will try to attend to as many questions as I can over time, while still spending time creating new videos and new content.

The amount of spam to the website has increased to 300+ messages per day and while I was using filters to remove ‘product oriented’ spam, I was finding it difficult to manage the number of messages. I am currently trialing a different plugin that prevents robotic postings. If you are having difficulties in submitting a message then please let me know — you can use the e-mail form on the About page, or use one of the social media links at the top of the page.

Yes, please do. There is nothing academics like more than citations. The general citation format for a video is:

For content that references my book, please use:

 Molloy, D. (2014). Exploring BeagleBone: Tools and Techniques for Building with Embedded Linux. New York: Wiley, 978-1118935125, 568pp.

BibTeX Citation:

Alternatively, for my YouTube video on setting up Eclipse C/C++ for the Beaglebone at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFv_-ykLppo  you would use:

 

Where possible I have added and/or edited subtitles/captions to the videos. You will see this with the CC flag in YouTube. I  had not realized how useful subtitles were until recently, so I am trying to add captions to all of my new videos. They should help people who have hearing difficulties and thanks to the magic of YouTube they can be automatically translated into a language of your choice.

Yes, no problem. I would appreciate it if you could attribute the work to me and reference this website and my full title – Dr. Derek Molloy, School of Electronic Engineering, Dublin City University, Ireland.

It is a Dublin accent and I am originally from Swords, Co. Dublin, Ireland.

Yes, I do indeed. It is a feature of the Dublin accent – so much so that there is a joke, which is better said out loud with a Dublin accent – “What is three threes?” and the answer is: “a small forest”.

The main tool I use to bring everything together is Adobe Premiere. It allows me to place audio and video clips and deals within transitions. For audio recording, I use Audacity and I finish the audio editing in Premiere. For screencast recording I use Camtasia. Whenever I use the tablet I use SmoothDraw and sometimes Photoshop as the main environment.

For recording hardware, I use a Zoom H1 recorder for the audio and a Wacom Bamboo tablet for the capture of handwriting. Finally, most videos were created using a Sony camcorder, but I have also used a DSLR camera.