For the past couple of years, we have been hearing about how hard it is to break into the WordPress theme and plugin markets. I think there will be a large shakeup with WordPress 5.0. Plugins especially will have to scramble to be compatible and take advantage of Gutenberg. Some will be slow with updates, …
We are all familiar with FOMO marketing – playing on the consumer’s Fear Of Missing Out to quickly move them to purchase. This might be your standard sale – “buy now or wait until next year to get a good price,” or it might be the even more effective “one time only special.” When you …
A few weeks ago I was thinking to myself that WordPress comments were really a black hole. So I was surprised and intrigued when I received an email from Thrive Themes telling me about their new Thrive Comments plugin. I went over to their website to check it out. In this post I want to …
When Posts Are Not Enough WordPress core supports custom fields and custom post types, but there is no admin UI for managing them and they are not output for display automatically. Typically you would need to create PHP theme templates in order to display them on the frontend. Toolset is a suite of plugins that …
Everyone doing web development or training up in web technologies needs a local test server. You know that testing on a live site is risky. Building websites or evaluating themes and plugins? Yes, you need one too. Are you interested in WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, or PHP? If so, and you are running Windows, then you need …
Best WAMP Server for Local WordPress – Laragon is Easy Read More
Having a good backup option for your WordPress site is essential. It helps you recover in the event there is a problem with an update, a user error, or a site hack. I think that we should have backup options built into WordPress core, but for now, we need to use a plugin. This post …
Last updated September 1, 2017. When I was learning to program, I was taught that 80% of the project can be implemented with 20% of the effort. To realize the additional 20% of the features would take 80% of the effort. This is one version of the 80-20 rule. The Pareto principle, as it is …
Last updated August 26, 2017 I recently discovered the WP Builds podcasts. Nathan Wrigley and David Waumsley, the hosts, have interviewed some great guests with a focus on topics relevant to site builders and WordPress professionals. The discussions are informal, entertaining, and you get a good feel for the people and an inside view of their world …
I have been involved in website hosting since 1995. I’ve worked for organizations and companies who hosted their own sites. I’ve had clients with Virtual Private Servers (VPS) for site hosting. I’ve used shared hosting for personal websites, the websites of family members, and for a small non-profit. From that experience, here are a few …
WordPress and Drupal are two very popular content management systems that are often compared. The common conclusion to most comparisons is that WordPress is good for blogs or small sites and Drupal is better for big or complicated sites. I believe that conclusion is shallow and that a deeper understanding of the differences is helpful …
Last updated February 26, 2018 I’ve tried out hundreds of themes, and my experience is “don’t fight the theme.” If you find you are struggling with a theme then it is likely because you chose the wrong theme for the job, or YOU are not flexible enough. Huh? Yes, I don’t know how many times …
Last Updated June 4, 2019 ThemeIsle, a WordPress theme shop that started in 2012 and offers a number of highly rated themes and plugins. Their themes are sold individually in either an annual subscription or an unlimited lifetime option. They used to have a “club membership” model that gave access to all of their themes …
Last updated June 2, 2018 Why Add A Featured Image? If you are writing a product review or a post targeting something specific, then an image of your topic makes perfect sense and finding the right image is pretty straightforward. However, there are many times that the topic is more conceptual and you want the …
Searching for Public Domain Images – List of Best Websites Read More
I spent the weekend testing out page builders, to find one that meets my needs. In the course of testing, I remembered a few things that I had forgotten and I came to a conclusion about the future of WordPress that I would like to share. No, this is not a review post. I may …
I Have Seen the Future of WordPress and It Is Not What you Think Read More
Taking PHP Seriously is a very interesting post that talks about why some large companies are using PHP, some of the shortcoming of the language, and how to use 3rd party tools to overcome those shortcomings. A very interesting read.
In my mind, PHP 7 and free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates are game changers. PHP 7 is significantly faster and Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates lower the bar for small and medium sized sites for using SSL. I recently moved some sites to SiteGround because they offer both of these new technologies for free through cPanel …