I haven’t worked with an abundance of other people’s themes so I’m in no way an expert. I’d say I’ve played with somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 premium, paid themes built by other people. It doesn’t give me a huge range of experience to see all that can possibly go wrong… but I’ve seen a fair amount!
Recommended WordPress Plugins
This is a big old list of my preferred WordPress plugins, what I use them for, and why I like them. Hope you enjoy and find it useful!
Preventing Damage from Hacking, Spam, and Malware on WordPress
I started this as a comment reply to someone operating an e-commerce site, who indicated they were quite frightened of something happening to their site. This was in response to an overall topic where someone posted for help with a compromised WordPress site.
Releasing Functions and Shortcodes mu-plugin for WordPress Developers
So I am releasing a plugin for WordPress. It’s pretty simple and contains helpers, functions, and shortcodes I typically use in WordPress installations. Some useful stuff like phone numbers (which can change, and are a total pain in the butt when they do change). It’s honestly just been very helpful for me to be able to quickly clone this into my WordPress installs, so I figured if it helps someone else… why not. Download Plugin Why mu-plugin I figure a downloadable mu-plugin is probably better than something I put in the WordPress plugin repository itself — at least until I […]
WordPress Content Syndication with FeedWordPress
I was looking for a way to easily move posts from one WordPress installation (hub) to another (spoke), without migrating or moving sites. The export, hub, or sending site is a private “author’s hub” where all posts are written. Import, spoke, or receiving sites are the actual blogs where the content goes public. The hub site needed to retain a copy of the post. Note: There are no SEO concerns here regarding duplicate content, because the sending site is private.
WordPress Plugins I Like
Tools Jetpack I’m putting this here because Jetpack does so many things. In particular, I like Sharing, Enhanced Distribution, Monitor, and Widget Visibility. A lot of other stuff is nice — like automatic verification of sites for Pinterest, Bing, and Google Webmaster Tools. Enabling Jetpack and this service on websites makes it ridiculously easy to verify these things. Subscriptions are also nice — and when I have multiple authors, Spelling and Grammar always helps!
Gravity Forms
I really, really like Gravity Forms. It’s powerful and offers a ton of functionality. I’ve developed with Gravity about a year and a half, using it for tons of different things: simple forms, complex forms, credit card payments, user registration.
Introduction to WordPress Posting (Without Strong Technological Background)
This post assumes knowledge of logging in, navigating to the post section, getting into the editing screen on a post, and basic familiarity with the editing screen. If you need more basic information than this post provides, see the Simple WP Guide. It walks you through the very basics and is a great way to get started. If you know all of that already, this guide should help you bring your WordPress posting skills to the next level. If you’re looking to go even further, there are a number of side-notes in this post. Use them as opportunities to search […]
Use WordPress Admin Themes to Differentiate Local and Live Environments
Quick post because I am a busy, busy, tired person but good things are totally happening (yay!). Use WordPress admin themes to differentiate your local development and live environments. Though I always run a local development environment, I frequently need to look on the live website to make sure the settings are the same or check different things, etc.