A WordPress Thanksgiving

In this issue: A WordPress Thanksgiving, the latest posts on WebTNG, and some useful links from around the web.

The roots of all goodness lie in the soil of appreciation for goodness

Dalai Lama

Recently Published

GetWid Blocks Review – By reader request I took a look at the GetWid Gutenberg Addon.
Walk-Through and Review of 301 Redirects Pro – This is an AppSumo freebee.
Top Ten EditorPlus Features – I spent a lot of time testing EditorPlus and how it completes Gutenberg core blocks.
Black Friday 2020 And The Top Value Deals – I picked some offerings from the long list of Black Friday deals that I think are a good value.

In the United States, Thanksgiving comes before Black Friday, but you wouldn’t know it by looking online. A lot of people are caught up in the sales mania, myself included. I’d like to suggest, however, that we also take the time to celebrate a WordPress Thanksgiving. At thanksgiving time we pause to take stock of what has happened during the year and what we have to be thankful for. It is also a time to express appreciation.

This isn’t a normal year and many of our activities have been overshadowed by the pandemic, but that makes it even more important to appreciate what we have.

I’m thankful for the core developers and the WordPress.org volunteers who gave us another year of WordPress. I appreciate the plugin developers who gave us free plugins that make running a site easier and safer. I am thankful for the people who took the extra time to answer my questions and help me understand how something works or troubleshoot a problem I was having. Thank you to the helpful people I’ve interacted with online who have shared user experiences, personal assessments, answered questions, and created tutorials. Thank you to those people who have been friendly, told jokes, shared stories, and camaraderie. I very much appreciate all of the people who have taken the time to say thank you to me for the videos, tutorials, and walk-throughs I’ve created.

Thank you for signing up for and reading my newsletters.

Please take a few minutes, look and see what free themes or plugins you are using and, if you haven’t done so already, go leave a review. Also, please think back over the year and remember anyone who has gone out of their way to help you, and say thank you. If you already thanked them, maybe just say hi, because recognizing them as a person is a gift.

Stay safe this Thanksgiving, take care of yourself, and spend time with friends and family.

From Around the Web

Bruce Clay SEO Guide – This is a multistep guide to SEO topics. Each step is short, clear, and easy to act on. It is free and I’m learning a lot from it.
Sridhar Katakam’s WPDevDesign – This site is the best resource, other than the official Oxygen site, for information and tutorials about Oxygen.
Beaver Junction by David Waumsley – This is a labor of love project and is very cool. It offers a new kind of addon extension for Beaver Builder. Instead of an advanced version of any of the core modules, the project adds some CSS and maybe JavaScript to existing core modules to achieve the same thing. This keeps everything mean and lean and brings users a bit closer to the code.

Deals

What’s Up Next?

I used Toolset to create the content template for Posts on WebTNG.com. I plan to try and replace that using Kadence Pro Elements. I’ll share what I learn.

Still on the list, Meta Box Views is plugin that is part of the Meta Box suite. With it you can use Twig to create content templates. If I like it then I’ll add it to the Custom Post Types and page builder series.

Thank you for reading. I’d like to hear what you have to say about the newsletter content and what you are excited about. Feel free to comment or send me an email through the contact form.

David McCan
November 25, 2020

Hey David,

I enjoyed reading your WordPress Thanksgiving, some really substantial thoughts in the general Black Friday mania, much appreciated!
And I am looking forward to what’s up next. Disappointed with what I am reading about the gotchas with Toolset Blocks (Jeez, what a terrible support ticket notice!), I am eager to learn about your experiences when trying to use Kadence Pro Elements for creating custom templates. Or about creating a custom blog page / a custom portfolio with ACF blocks (by https://www.advancedcustomfields.com/, not the homonymous Gutenberg block plugin) and Custom Post Types UI. Thanks a lot, keep up the great work!

David McCan says:

November 26, 2020 at 9:00 pm

Thank Chris, and thanks for letting me know you are interested in these topics. ACF Blocks do look pretty good and I want to try those out.

David McCan says:

November 27, 2020 at 9:30 am

I assume you’ve seen the series on Custom Post Types and Page Builders? It has a post about ACF and Custom Post Type UI.

https://www.webtng.com/category/cpts-and-page-builders/

- Chris says:
  
  November 27, 2020 at 12:09 pm
  
  Thank you, David, for your reply. Your tutorials here have helped me a LOT to quickly come to terms with the new block editor and Kadence Blocks. Now I am really eager to learn building custom post types for a blog, a company news page, and a portfolio.
  
  I came across your post about ACF and CPT UI yesterday but haven’t started working through it yet and don’t know at the moment whether building a custom blog page, a custom news section, or a custom portfolio entry is “just” analogous to creating an author’s page as in your example, or whether the differences are so big that it would need a separate traetment to get this done as a beginner. Your hint above seems to point to the former.
  
  And it’s not yet clear to me where the blocks by advancedcustomfields would come in when tackling such a task, but guessed they would as I am using the new block editor and Kadence Blocks. I better start digging into your author’s page tutorial and will sure know more after that. 🙂
  
  - David McCan says:
    
    November 27, 2020 at 1:26 pm
    
    Hi Chris,
    
    Usually you wouldn’t need a Custom Post Type for a blog, as the built it Posts is designed for that. You would want a Custom Post Type when you have additional fields. In most of the posts in the series I create a Custom Post Type for a Books section … for book reviews. Let me know if you have any questions.
    
    Best,
    
    David