The WordPress Fire Drill Remember when you were in school and there would be the occasional fire drill? When the alarm went off, everyone would line up and file outside while the Fire Department watched. Those fire drills served a purpose: to make sure that we knew what to do in the case of an …
The WordPress Fire Drill – Three Tasks 100% of Us Waste Time On Read More
Introduction In this post I want to look at some gotchas when using Gutenberg, the new WordPress block editor. The demonstration is very visual and I’m not going to try to capture it all in screenshots. I recommend watching the video for that. Here I’ll review and summarize the issues. To illustrate the issues, …
In this post I want to look at a cool plugin for Elementor. It is part of the Crocoblock Suite. It’s the JetSearch plugin that gives you a nice Ajax search widget. Default WordPress Search Option I have here a test site that is using the Astra Pro theme. The home page was created …
In this post I want to look at a new backup and migration plugin called WPVivid. In the past, to move a website from development to live, or back from live to development, I’ve used BackupBuddy, UpDraft Plus, and All in One WP Migration. UpDraft Plus and All in One WP Migration both work well, …
In this post I want to compare widgets from three popular addon packages for Elementor: Essential Addons for Elementor, Power Pack for Elementor, and Ultimate Addons for Elementor. If you add the Pro version to free Elementor, you have more than 50 widgets. Why do we need more? Widgets add functionality and design in a …
Every time I work on a site I am reminded by the absurdity of the default admin menu shortcuts. For example, the main links back to the dashboard from the front-end are Dashboard, Themes, Widgets, and Menus. While those links are nice, I go to the Plugins admin page much more often. In this post, …
Toolbar Extras – Make the Admin Toolbar Work for You Read More
Last updated 1/1/2020 Some page builders are better than others. It is not just a matter of quality because once you get to the top tier, it is also a matter of what you need, want, and value. In the post I am going to look at the 11 popular options, compare them across a …
Introduction The Themify Post Type Builder (PTB) is a plugin for creating Custom Post Types (CPTs) and their display templates. It is easy to work with and has some advanced features. In this post, I want to do an overview of the features so that you can get a sense of whether it would fit …
Themify Post Type Builder – The Easy Option for Custom Post Types and Templates Read More
In the video accompanying this post I take a look at the Userback feedback platform, do a walk-through, and show you some ways that you can integrate it into your WordPress website. I found that though Userback is straightforward and simple, it is pretty powerful, but easy to use. Userback allows users to draw on, annotate, …
Userback and WordPress – Ways to Use this Feedback Platform Read More
In this article I’m going to take a look at the Crocoblock Suite, especially in relation to dynamic data and creating theme templates. Video Here is a video walk-though of the using JetEngine and JetThemeCore for working with dynamic data. I also use the JetSearch and JetSmartFilters plugins for search and filter pages. The process …
Crocoblock Suite for Elementor: Custom Post Types & Templates – JetEngine & JetThemeCore Read More
In this post, I want to look at a free plugin for WordPress that helps to make your website more accessible for people with disabilities. Website accessibility is important because these days we are living our lives more and more online and we want everyone to be able to participate and use our website. …
One Click Accessibility Plugin – Easily Add Accessibility Options to Your Site Read More
Updated and expanded 1/16/2020 In this article I want to look at WordPress Custom Post Types (CPTs) and the display of dynamic data. WordPress has had internal support for Custom Post Types since version 3.0, but does not have a built-in way to create them or to display CPT content on the front-end. For a …
Custom Post Types and Displaying Dynamic Content – Review of the Options Read More
When I’m putting a new site together, I start with a set of colors, the “brand colors.” Sometimes this is a color swatch and other times it is a list of color hex codes in notepad. Then, as I move through the sections of the theme Customizer, I copy and paste the color codes from …
Managing Brand Colors – Central Color Palette Plugin Read More
In case you haven’t noticed, the zombie apocalypse is well underway. Unattended WordPress websites have been taken over by malicious actors who control botnet gangs that suck the life from their visitors and other blogs. Zombie sites are used for denial of service attacks on other sites, show unwanted advertisements, and attempt to drop virus …
In this article I want to look at the Chrome developer tools and some of the ways they can be used for development and for troubleshooting. These tools have been expanded slowly over time and many people may not be familiar with them. The developer tools can be a big help when it comes to creating web …
In this article I want to look at WordPress staging and merging using BlogVault. Staging is important in the process of developing websites. It allows a developer to make changes without putting the production site in jeopardy and without interrupting service, but if you’re making changes on a staging site while the production site is …