Monthly Archives: June 2021

8 Excellent Text Editors for Windows, macOS, and Linux (2021)

[ad_1] When it comes to programming, nothing is arguably more heated than a debate about text editors. At times, the arguments border on fanaticism to the point that choosing the right editor almost confirms your status among your peers. While in actuality it may not be that dramatic, selecting the right option from the plethora of text editors available is important. You have to consider your needs, the project, your current ability, and much more. As such, this post is going to look at a number of different text editors. Throughout we’ll offer advice on which one may be more suitable. First, let’s talk more about why a dedicated text editor is necessary. Why You’d Need a Dedicated Text Editor In a nutshell, your choice of text editor is important enough to warrant some serious research. Among the YouTube channels and Reddit forums, you may come across some severe fanaticism for one particular editor. While most is hyperbole and dramatics, there is sound reasoning for getting your choice right: As time goes on, you get used to a particular editor and the way it works. This will speed up your work compared to a newbie to the editor. One editor may offer a different ‘feel’ that suits you over another. This is obviously going to be subjective, hence the arguments. Some editors offer functionality that can assist your workflow with a particular language or framework. As such, you’ll want to consider the makeup of your perfect text editor carefully. Getting the wrong blend of features and functionality could even set you back. What You Should Look For In a Text Editor When it comes to the exact features you should seek out, most of it is largely subjective. However, there is a list of considerations you should keep in mind: Can you export projects from one editor and import it into another? Do the keyboard bindings make sense, especially if you’re coming from an editor such as Vim, which has an idiosyncratic approach to editing? How well supported is the text editor, in case of issues? If there’s no active support, an open-source editor is going to be marginally more suitable. Is the workflow logical to you, in as much as setting up projects and working daily using the editor? There are many more considerations you can make, but these are going to help you narrow down your options. One thing’s for certain, you should choose a text editor based on your own needs, rather than go with forum opinions. 8 Excellent Text Editors for Windows, macOS, and Linux Let’s take a look at the eight text editors we’ll feature. Here’s a quick summary of each one: Vim. This text editor has a reputation for a vertical learning curve. However, it’s actually intuitive to use. Atom. An open-source functional editor that has lots of ‘hackability’. Sublime Text. The ‘old man’ of premium text editors has been around for years, yet still delivers. Notepad++. Windows users will appreciate this flexible upgrade to Notepad, that can also scale with your ability. Visual Studio Code. A Microsoft product that has captured over half of the text editing market share. Intellij IDEA. A full-fledged Integrated Development Environment (IDE). There are actually a number of spin-offs available from the developers. BBEdit. This is a great first text editor that also has a bunch of excellent premium functionality. Nova. The developers are known for their previous Mac-only editor Coda – and for the popular Untitled Goose Game cult classic! Without further ado, let’s take a look! 1. Vim First off, let’s deal with the sorcerer’s text editor. Vim comes with a reputation. It’s known as power editor, mainly because of…well, everything about it. It’s a terminal-based text editor that uses idiosyncratic key bindings to navigate and populate your files. There’s no Graphical Use Interface (GUI), and your hands practically have to stay on the keyboard for the entire time. It’s open-source and pre-packaged with macOS and Linux machines. As such, it’s become an editor of choice for sysadmins and general IT techs. Even so, it’s actually intuitive, and the built-in vimtutor takes about an hour to complete. We’d suggest that Vim isn’t necessarily suitable for a coding beginner, because you have to learn Vim as well as your language of choice. However, if you have the stomach, getting to grips with Vim is going to make you more efficient and knowledgeable in the long run. 2. Atom Next, Atom is a text editor that once got a lot of love, but has fallen out of favor with developers. However, it’s still capable and worth installing – perhaps as your primary editor. It’s based on the Electron framework, and was developed by the GitHub team prior to the Microsoft acquisition. As such, it can lag a little compared to other native text editors. Atom looks like many other text editors, although there are some nice touches throughout. There’s a built-in terminal for running programs, and GitHub integration as standard: It may be a touch slow, but Atom is a worthwhile editor for both those new to coding and long-time programmers. We haven’t even touched on its extensibility through ‘packages’, which makes Atom a text editor that can be adapted to any project or language. 3. Sublime Text You’ll likely have seen Sublime Text in the past, or even heard of it. However, you may not have used it. This is a shame because it’s a fantastic minimalist text editor that can stick with you from your very first “Hello, World!” line, to large-scale professional projects. At a base level its simply a text editor. However, it offers much more that the competition have adapted. For example, the Command Palette can be found in Atom and Jetbrains products, and the Goto Anything feature has Vim-like functionality: Overall, Sublime Text is a great text editor, and what’s more the licensing is flexible. While the trial version is unrestricted, if you stick with Sublime Text you should pay the

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B2BKing Review 2021 – A WooCommerce Wholesale and B2B Extension

[ad_1] WooCommerce is highly flexible, so flexible that you can even mold them to Wholesale business requirements. Custom coding or a myriad of plugins might let you do that.  However, there are very few reliable single solutions for business owners to rely upon. For ventures thinking to digitize their B2B and B2C sales process, B2BKing is a great solution. It is known for its comprehensive feature list and reliability.  In this B2BKing review, we will evaluate the abilities of the B2BKing Plugin and assess it as a whole for you. B2BKing Plugin – An Overview This plugin is an extension that works for WooCommerce stores. It can enable all types of online ventures with B2B and B2C capabilities from entrepreneurs to middle-sized businesses and enterprises.  Businesses can add (and control access rights of) B2B users, B2C users, and logged out users. There are abilities like conversations, offers, dynamic rules, groups, customers, etc., that allow B2B sellers to handle requests, serve resellers/customers, and run their business efficiently. The developers of the plugin have integrated 137+ (!) features and components into the B2BKing. For instance it is WPML-supported and, therefore, will work well for your multilingual store too. With more than 14,000+ installs and 5+ ratings at present, many users deem it to be very useful for their store.  But is it worth the hype or attention? Should B2B and B2C eCommerce businesses consider deploying the B2BKing Plugin for their WooCommerce stores? Let us take a look! Assessing Features of B2BKing Plugin One of the fastest-growing plugins in the Envato marketplace, B2BKing is a feature-rich wholesale solution. But are its features all beneficial for your business? In this section, we will discuss its features and their value for your B2B plus B2C e-commerce business. Article Continues Below Create Groups Highlight: Control the facilities/visibility for various B2B and non-B2B users in different ways through group creation.  In B2BKing, your store users are categorized in 3 ways through groups. You can enter into the business groups section and create various business groups.  Users can be assigned to each of these groups and given shipping, payment, and dynamic (through rule-creation) rights. Besides this, B2C users are the ones who are not added to any of the business groups, and logged-out users (guest users) are the ones who are using your store without signing in. Through B2BKing, you can control shipping and payment methods for these two types of users too. Initiate Conversations Highlight: Let your resellers (or your own business) communicate needs faster through messaging. By posting messages through Conversations features in the B2BKing plugin, your administrator(s) and B2B users can broadcast their requirements. Others can see the conversation and respond to them to improve their B2B relationships.  Negotiation, discussion, and fulfillment of urgent requests become easy this way. Offers for specific users Highlight: Special deals or offers (different pricing for a product or a product bundle) for a few business users/groups. Article Continues Below There are times when B2B ventures want to specify different prices for specific users/groups or sell product bundles to a few users/groups. This can be done through Offers if you are using the B2BKing plugin.  Administrators can create offers. As per the set visibility, business users can see them in their dashboards. Purchase Lists for demand-specification  Highlight: Create or let users create B2B shopping lists to enable one-click re-ordering/purchase. Purchase lists can be created as per demand/sales using the B2BKing plugin. For example, if your resellers repeatedly buy a few products (or a bundle), it is better to add them to the purchase lists. Even the number of lists per product can also be specified. Here is one demo purchase list: It is also possible to enable or disable your purchase lists for different B2B buyers. Items, products, and bundles can be directly added to the cart from purchase lists in one click. Users can also create purchase lists by adding their cart (current condition at that instance) as a purchase list. Bulk Ordering Highlight: Allow fast custom bulk orders in your B2B e-commerce store. B2B businesses have multiple resellers, and for the same reason, a bulk ordering facility is super-crucial for such an e-commerce store. With the B2BKing plugin, you can easily enable this functionality in your online B2B shop.  Article Continues Below Your customers will be able to fill the bulk order form, specifying product names and quantity. This will help in faster order fulfillment. Adding Visibility Restrictions for Guests Highlight: Show/hide your products, their pricing, or the whole shop for logged-out users. Using the B2BKing WooCommerce Plugin, one can easily restrict the visibility of their shop for guests. You may just hide the pricing of your products, enable login, force login, or add a ‘get a quote’ form instead of pricing. This feature can improve the prospect subscription rate without affecting your store’ssearch-engine visibility/ranking adversely. Set Dynamic Rules Highlight: Create discount, pricing, visibility, users, and tax-related rules for your store. Dynamic Rules is amongst the most powerful feature of this WooCommerce plugin.  Discounting (fixed price or percentage), free shipping, order amount limit, tax rules, hidden price, minimum order quantity, order quantity limit, and tax exemption related conditions can be created through dynamic rules. Later, you may use these custom rules for the groups, conversations, offers, and other such capabilities of B2BKing. Handling Taxes and Tax Exemption B2B and B2C e-commerce stores can display pricing of products without or with taxes (GST, VAT) to their direct/reseller buyers. Other than the above, B2BKing also let B2B and B2C businesses: Create subaccounts to allow multiple people from your organization to make purchases or purchase requests; Enable custom fields in the B2B registration forms to get extra information as per your venture’s need; Request quotes and communicate through messages to finalize deals or for negotiation; Use the customer panel to view, group, and manage; Email notifications and offline gateway enablement; Controlling the payment and shipping methods for different users; Enable manual approval for each registration or B2B registrations; Separate login

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My Journey From Freelancer To Product Maker

[ad_1] Like many others in our industry, my WordPress journey started a while ago. I built my first website using GeoCities when I was 14 years old, 21 years ago (boy am I getting old). At the time I was obsessed with skateboarding, the website was for friends I used to hang out and ride around with from school. I remember how excited I felt when I could see that my website was online and I would literally show it to everyone I could, even though looking back at it now it was extremely brightly coloured and scrappy! Back then, with my family’s 56k connection, whenever I connected to the internet it would take over the landline, so I was only allowed to go online for an hour per day. So I spent the days fiddling with Front Page, just waiting for my 1 hour to upload the code and share the updates with my MIRC friends (kinda like a Stone Age version of Slack). That’s about the time I also picked up a guitar for the first time…. Music, business and websites To start I borrowed a super cheap electric guitar from a friend to learn how to play, and impress a girl I liked. After playing all evening, I felt so inspired that the guitar ended up next to me while I slept in bed. It was love at first chord. Because I was so obsessed, I couldn’t stop practicing and quickly I became pretty good (for a kid). So much so that I formed a band with some friends and started performing wherever we could. For the next decade, I focused on becoming the best rock musician I could. I didn’t want to just play the guitar in a band that was performing at local events and school, I wanted us to go places and started treating it as a business. I began studying business by reading every book I could, which led me to take courses and become a certified business and digital consultant. During my studies, I learned WordPress and the entire Adobe suite. This was my first introduction to WordPress and it made me love designing and developing websites even more than I already did. I had fun during this time, but they were some tough years and despite all of my efforts, my band wasn’t doing very well. After everything I had put into it, I thought I’d have my own episode on MTV Cribs already! We decided the band needed a change. We rebranded, wrote new stuff, this time in English to maximise our reach, and did an online launch using everything I learned. Within a month of the launch, my local band from a small town in Israel was signed to release an album worldwide through a British label. We were stoked! We decided to drop everything, come to the UK and start touring Europe. And so we did! Starting from scratch, we began building our audience at small venues and pubs, while really pumping things up online, using WordPress to build our website and promote! We went from playing to sometimes less than 10 people to hundreds, then thousands. Playing with some of the artists we grew up listening to. It was pretty amazing, but I was still broke surprisingly! Luckily though, from my efforts in promoting the band using our website and designs on social media, my work began to get noticed and I started to attract clients. With little to no money in my bank account, I started freelancing out the back of our tour van and built clients websites while touring Europe. Free McDonalds WiFi became my best friend and no matter where we went, there was always one nearby. While I drew in more clients and started generating revenue for myself, unfortunately my band ended up splitting up. It was unavoidable and in the end, it was the best thing that could have happened to me (even though it was devastating at the time). I then thought, “you know what, I’m going to start taking this freelancing thing seriously.” I started building my own business, using my rediscovered passion for the web and WordPress in particular. As I got deeper into building websites, I began to insert myself more into the WordPress community, which filled the void of being “the band guy”. As my time now wasn’t being taken up by touring, I employed my first designer and this is where my agency took off. We managed to pull in 6 figures within the first year, and we kept growing! Within a few years, my agency grew to 12 employees. As I acquired more clients, I realized there was something holding me back. From Agency To Product Maker As we began dealing with more and more clients day-to-day, it became blindingly apparent that we simply did not have the correct tools to deal with the volume efficiently. So, I went on the hunt for a platform or tool that could help organize and deal with client requests quickly and easily. We already had a ticketing system in place, while using emails, phone calls and face to face meetings, but it was just all a mess. There are solutions to the problems of project management BUT I struggled to find a purely dedicated platform that was for a web design agency. I arranged a meeting with my team and we decided, let’s just build our own solution. We had the designers and developers to make it happen, so…we did! We developed a simple WordPress plugin that we could use to take requests from our clients across all of their websites, and after it was implemented, it worked like a dream. Being the person I am though, I didn’t stop there. I thought, “other people should be using this” and that’s where my product, Atarim, was born. I reached out to the WordPress community wherever I could and got a bunch of beta testers to try it

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Chrome Canary Adds Flag for Disabling FLoC Testing – WordPress Tavern

[ad_1] Google’s controversial Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) experiment now has a feature flag within Chrome Canary (the nightly build of Chrome for developers) that allows users to opt out. In January 2020, Google announced its plans to discontinue support for third-party cookies in Chrome within two years. The first bits and pieces of the company’s Privacy Sandbox initiative started landing in Chrome in December 2020 with an initial flag to disable it. FLoC, Google’s proposed replacement for third-party cookies, began testing as a developer origin trial in Chrome at the end of March 2021. In Canary, users can navigate to chrome://flags/#privacy-sandbox-settings-2 to find the Privacy Sandbox Settings 2 flag. Relaunch Canary to save the changes. This will unlock the box that allows users to either reset their FLoC group or opt out of FLoC entirely. The new setting is available under chrome://settings/privacySandbox: If the setting remains enabled, which is the default, Chrome will group users into cohorts based on recent browsing activity and then advertisers select ads for the entire group. Browsing activity for the individual is “kept private on your device,” but Chrome certainly has access that information by way of mediating the cohorts. Google notes that the trial is currently only active in some regions. Users can also opt out of Privacy Sandbox trials on the same page. Current trials include the following: Advertisers and publishers can use FLoC Advertisers and publishers can study the effectiveness of ads in a way that does not track you across sites Google has not specified how users would opt out of FLoC if the experiment is successful and moves forward. Organizations and site owners who are currently on the fence about it may go either way depending on how easy it is for Chrome users to opt out themselves. “Instead of comparing FLoC to its predecessor, third party cookies, I feel it’s actually more like the Facebook Pixel – mostly in the sense that it’s controlled by a single surveillance capital company,” WordPress core contributor Roy Tanck commented on the trac ticket for the discussion. “FLoC may not be quite as nefarious, but I feel it should be something website owners consciously opt into. “WordPress has always advocated for a free and open web, and FLoC appears to actively harm that goal. I think WordPress should take a stand against this, and do it now.” A few others have chimed in on the ticket recently as other open source projects have started blocking FLoC by default. Plugin developer David McCan’s comment referenced analytics data published in early May suggesting that US users choose to opt out of tracking 96 percent of the time following the changes in iOS 14.5. “There is no doubt that coming down on the side of user privacy vs user tracking is the right thing to do,” McCan said. “Which headline would we rather see? ‘By default millions of WordPress websites are allowing users to be tracked’ or ‘WordPress takes steps to block user tracking making millions of websites around the world safe to visit?’ “We already have a policy that opt-in by default tracking’ is not allowed in plugins hosted by WordPress. This is because we recognize the responsibility and benefit of protecting user privacy.” During a live marketing event Google hosted at the end of last week, Jerry Dischler, vice president and general manager of Ads, addressed the recent privacy concerns surrounding FLoC. “We’ll be using these [Privacy Sandbox] APIs for our own ads and measurement products just like everyone else, and we will not build any backdoors for ourselves,” Dischler said. Dischler also reaffirmed Google’s commitment to moving away from third-party cookies. “Third-party cookies and other proposed identifiers that some in the industry are advocating for do not meet the rising expectations consumers have when it comes to privacy,” he said. “They will not stand up to rapidly evolving regulatory restrictions; they simply cannot be relied on in the long term.” Google bears the burden of reassuring advertisers that effective advertising is still possible as the company moves beyond tracking cookies. It is aiming to future-proof advertisers’ measurement of campaign performance with what it claims are “privacy-safe solutions.” The company is pushing hard for advertisers to adopt these new techniques, promising more actionable first-party conversion data. Although consumer expectations have changed, FLoC may not be the answer to the need for a privacy-preserving advertising model. So far it looks like Google will have an uphill battle to gain more broad support from browsers, advertisers, and consumers. Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link

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InMotion Hosting Review 2021: Is This a Good Host for WordPress?

[ad_1] At first glance, InMotion Hosting has everything you’d expect from one of the leading web hosting companies on the market. There are entry-level plans, there are WordPress-specific plans (more on those later), and there are also highly scalable setups that can grow with you over time. In this InMotion Hosting review, we look at how good those hosting solutions really are and whether you should use them for your next WordPress website. Here’s what we’re going to cover: What is InMotion Hosting and what type of hosting it offers? InMotion Hosting is a US-based hosting company that started as a small project back in 2001. This means that it’s been in the hosting business for a whole 20 years. What’s even more impressive is that it’s an entirely employee-owned company. This is a breath of fresh air compared to the corpo-structured hosting giants that we’re all used to. The company is headquartered in Virginia Beach, VA, offers US-based customer service, a really generous 90-day money-back guarantee, and secure data centers in the US. What’s also worth pointing out is that the company is making moves to commit to an eco-friendly and sustainable operations model. They’re the first-ever green data center in Los Angeles, reducing their overall carbon output by more than 2,000 tons per year. Let’s look at the different types of web hosting that InMotion Hosting offers: Shared hosting This is InMotion Hosting’s entry-level offering for web hosting. It’s a good choice for users who need a reliable hosting platform for a small website (or a handful of websites). To make the setup easier, InMotion Hosting gives you access to one-click installers for over 400 web applications and website engines (such as WordPress, Joomla). There’s also unmetered bandwidth and enough SSD disk space for a standard website. Those of us who enjoy getting stuff for free – which we all do(!) – will be happy to know that InMotion Hosting throws in a free SSL, free email address, and even a free domain name (on the second-to-cheapest plan). 👉 Go to InMotion Hosting’s shared hosting plans. WordPress hosting WordPress hosting has been getting more and more popular, so no wonder InMotion Hosting has an offering like that in their portfolio as well. Structure-wise, it’s a similar setup to their entry-level hosting, but it’s more optimized to run WordPress, plus it also offers a couple of WordPress-specific features and helpers. For starters, it is what’s called a “managed hosting” setup, which means that some of the everyday hosting maintenance tasks are handled by the InMotion Hosting platform itself. The server hardware/software stack has been put together to better cater to the WordPress platform. It runs on NGINX, PHP8, has WP-CLI, Imagemagick, and a free CDN included. The server is configured with regular security scans for malware and other potential issues. InMotion Hosting will also handle automatic security patches for you, plus you can set all updates to happen automatically. More on WordPress hosting later in this InMotion Hosting review. 👉 Go to InMotion Hosting’s WordPress hosting plans. Advanced hosting InMotion Hosting offers a couple of hosting setups that can be called “advanced hosting” – even though InMotion Hosting doesn’t use this label themselves. These are all hosting plans that are above the entry level and are commonly used by more seasoned users. Such users know what the specific server requirements of their project are and how to then set that server up. This is: VPS hosting. InMotion Hosting offers both managed VPS hosting and unmanaged cloud VPS. The former runs on Linux, it’s powered by UltraStack, and lets you launch and scale your project easily. The latter works as a cluster of self-managed cloud servers. Dedicated server hosting. Here, again, InMotion Hosting has both managed dedicated servers in the catalog as well as unmanaged setups (called “bare metal,” which does sound cool, I give them that). As you’d expect, the managed setups handle a lot of the everyday server work for you. The bare metal setups are exactly what it says on the tin – you get the bare metal server computer. But wait, there’s more! InMotion Hosting also offers specialized WordPress setups: WordPress VPS hosting and managed dedicated WordPress hosting. Most new websites won’t need this level of power, but it’s nice to see that InMotion Hosting is ready for any scale of website. Which one is right for you? As you can see, InMotion Hosting offers a lot when it comes to their hosting portfolio. There’s something here for everybody and every scale of web project. But how to choose which one you need? It’s quite simple actually: If your project calls for an advanced hosting setup, then you probably already know that it’s the case. If you consider yourself a casual WordPress user, get one of their WordPress hosting plans. If you want to launch a new website that won’t be running on WordPress, get one of their shared hosting plans. 🌱 Okay, that’s all fine, but are those hosting setups any good? Let’s find out next: Features and pricing ⚠️ For the purpose of this InMotion Hosting review, we’re looking into the WordPress hosting plans offered by InMotion. Chances are that if you’re planning to launch a new website, you’ll run it on WordPress. First things first, here’s the current snapshot of the pricing page: A couple of things that we need to point out right out the gate: The per-month prices you’re looking at are on a three-year contract. Meaning, you’ll get them if you buy your hosting setup for three years upfront. As you can see in the screenshot above, InMotion Hosting also has two-year and one-year contracts as well as month-to-month plans. Here’s a breakdown of the prices based on contract length: One more thing that’s not immediately apparent with any web host is the renewal prices. Long story short, the prices you see above are InMotion Hosting’s “welcome offer.” This means that you get that price when you first sign

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The Best Service Marketplace Theme In 2021?

[ad_1] Want to build a task marketplace like TaskRabbit, Airtasker, or Thumbtack?  Great idea! In just a decade since its inception, TaskRabbit has empowered 148,000 individuals to grow their income and skills. Airtasker creates over 1.4 million tasks each year. And Thumbtack is doing its own thing to help local professionals find work. ExpertHive is a clean, modern WordPress theme that wants to make it easy for you to launch your own on-demand task marketplace – one that offers a similar experience and functionality as these task sites.  The theme’s developers claim that it’s already packed with all the features needed to build an on-demand services marketplace, so you won’t have to buy anything else to get your site going. This made us curious to try it out ourselves. Is ExpertHive as complete as its creators say? Does it deliver a marketplace with all the necessary bells and whistles? Can it really help me build a site like TaskRabbit?   We’ll be answering these questions and more in this comprehensive ExpertHive Review. ExpertHive On-Demand Services Marketplace Theme Review ExpertHive is a lightweight yet feature-rich WordPress theme for building a two-sided services marketplace. It allows you to create a site where buyers can post their job requests and sellers can list their services. The theme is powered by HivePress, the multipurpose directory plugin that’s already used by 3,000+ active WordPress sites.  Key features include: Requests & Offers to facilitate customers in posting their requests and enabling experts to list services they offer. Commissions & Payouts for setting up a default commission rate and a payout threshold for taskers and experts.  Messages & Reviews to help customers communicate with taskers and leave reviews about their services. Custom Fields & Categories that make it easy to customize the marketplace to your liking. WooCommerce integration to help you process payments.  And more. Besides, you can use any of the premium or free add-ons available for HivePress to expand your marketplace’s functionality.  Article Continues Below Unlike other themes, ExpertHive saves you the need to download expensive third-party extensions or plugins. You can combine different HivePress extensions to create a niche marketplace with unique functionality.  ExpertHive costs $79 for a lifetime single-site license. The purchase also includes 12 months of premium support, automatic updates, and a 30-day money-back guarantee. For the sake of this review, we purchased ExpertHive so that we can give you a full scope of what it’s capable of.Easy Installation and Handy Plugins  ExpertHive installs the same way as any other premium WordPress theme. You simply go to your WordPress dashboard, select Appearance > Themes, click Add New > Upload Theme, and then select the ZIP file. Once installed and activated, ExpertHive will suggest installing some plugins, such as HivePress Blocks and HivePress Messages. We installed all of them, as they’re meant to complement the site-building process.  And to further simplify things, ExpertHive developers have recorded a screencast about how to import its demo content. Although it’s possible to start designing your marketplace from scratch, we actually recommend using pre-made content so that your site starts off looking exactly like the live ExpertHive demo. ExpertHive suggests using the free one-click demo import plugin for importing demo data. After installing it, navigate to Appearance > Import Demo Data and then click the Import Demo Data button, as seen in the screenshot below. Site Customizations Being a modern theme, ExpertHive is fully compatible with the WordPress block editor and customizer. Know what that means? It means you can tweak everything using drag-and-drop and the familiar WordPress blocks. Also, whatever you edit will reflect on the front-end of the site.  With the WordPress customizer, you can switch fonts, change the main colors, background images, customize menus, and so on. Additionally, ExpertHive allows you to build your own layouts depending on the page functionality and purpose. You can do this by adding a new page from your WordPress backend. The theme offers the following blocks by default: Article Continues Below Listings Listing categories User registration form Vendors Vendor search form Requests Requests search form Listing tags Reviews ExpertHive also offers shortcodes for those using the Classic TinyMCE editor. These give you more control over your site’s design. If you’re a more advanced user, you can customize ExpertHive directly from the CSS. Marketplace Features Although ExpertHive’s site customization features are great, it’s the marketplace features and monetization capabilities that make it truly stand out. For example, ExpertHive and HivePress plugins combine to offer you: Listings Allow any registered users to list their services and feature specific listings on your homepage, as well as add, edit, or remove the existing listing categories. Paid Listings With the Paid Listings extension, you can create and sell various listing packages with different options so experts can pick the best option for listing their services. Vendors Manage individual expert profiles, including adding new custom fields and search filters (such as location). Requests Allow customers to create their own requests with extra details like budget, due date, and time range. It’s also possible to add custom fields and search filters in the same way as for listings or vendors. Messages Let buyers and experts communicate with each other. Tags Allow experts to create category-based tags to make it easier for buyers to find relevant listings. Favorites Enable customers to compile a list of their favorite listings so that they’re encouraged to come back and order services from the same taskers Article Continues Below Testimonials Display testimonials from experts to grow trust in your marketplace. WooCommerce ExpertHive is integrated with WooCommerce for processing payments and managing orders, so you can use any of the payment gateways available for WooCommerce. There are also more free and premium ExpertHive extensions, but these nine should be enough for incorporating key marketplace functionalities into your website. Commissions & Payouts One of ExpertHive’s best features is that it allows you to apply a default commission rate. You can set one overall commission rate for all experts or offer a slightly higher commission to taskers

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Accessible-Colors.com • WPShout

[ad_1] At a recent (virtual) Fort Collins WordPress meetup, someone shared this little site which I’ve never encountered before: Accessible-Colors.com. As you might guess from the name, it’s a simple little site/tool to tell you if the contrast between two colors you’re using in a design is in line with the WCAG 2.0 standard for contrast. If you color’s don’t quite work, it’ll give you a way to make them work by modifying one or the other of them. In that way, it’s just flexible enough. It doesn’t do more than two colors, and it doesn’t give more than two recommendations. But that’s really all I think it needs to. I’m sure there are lots of other ways to tell if colors conform to WCAG standards, but I love how simple and quick this one is. Definitely worth a bookmark 🤓 Visit accessible-colors.com → [ad_2] Source link

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Hallway Chats Joins The HeroPress Family

[ad_1] As any parent or pet owner knows, quiet doesn’t always equal inactivity. And the same is true here at HeroPress. Investing in a sustainable framework While we haven’t said much over the last few months, we’ve been working with the initial feedback we received to expand HeroPress in the most manageable and sustainable way. Because really, if it’s not manageable and sustainable, what’s even the point? This quest prompted a lot of additional research and active listening, all of which lead the fine folks behind the Hallway Chats podcast to start a conversation with us. Hallway Chats found us We were considering a podcast, but had moved it down the build list. Tara Claeys and Liam Dempsey, while loving the work they’ve done with Hallway Chats, found life was moving then in different directions, as it does for us all. And as Hallway Chats approached its 150th episode, the decision was made to pass the torch, or microphone as it were. We’re thrilled to be able to build on their legacy and continue to grow Hallway Chats through out the community, and we’re grateful to Tara and Liam that they’ve entrusted it into our care. Embrace opportunities that are the right fit A few shifts and changes are inevitable, but the spirit of Hallway Chats will always stand. After all, why change something that so ideally meshes with our own goals? Listen to the 150th Episode of Hallway Chats where Tara, Liam, Topher, and I talk even more about the direction we’re all heading. Related [ad_2] Source link

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WordCamp Europe 2021 Online Schedule Announced – WordPress Tavern

[ad_1] Mark your calendars for the next major WordPress event coming up at the beginning of next week. WordCamp Europe is just five days away and will run from June 7-9. In July 2020, organizers announced that in-person events would not resume until 2022. At that time, attendees were deeply disappointed but resigned to the necessity of online events due to the pandemic. One of the advantages of scheduling a virtual event so far in advance is that organizers have been able to eliminate a great deal of uncertainty for attendees and their travel arrangements as well as have more time to create a better online experience. This is one of the few times in WordCamp Europe history where all attendees will be joining virtually, on equal footing from wherever they are in the world. WCEU 2021 organizers have announced the speaker lineup and schedule for the upcoming three days of 30-minute sessions, 10-minute lightning talks, workshops, discussion panels, and interviews. Two tracks will run simultaneously. The schedule includes some big-picture topics like full-site editing and the future of WordPress themes, as well as more technical topics such as how to quickly build custom blocks, setting up a WooCommerce data hub, headless WordPress, and accessing APIs using OAuth on the Federated Web. At the close of day 3, WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg will join the event for a virtual chat. Business owners, project managers, designers, and other professionals will all find topics related to their work and interests. The schedule has a built-in favoriting tool so attendees can mark the sessions they plan to attend and then print or email to themselves for a personalized schedule. Every hour or so there will be 10-minute breaks so attendees will have time to talk with others and socialize. WCEU organizers are planning to host virtual networking rooms where attendees can meet sponsors and take part in product demos. Registration is free and attendees will receive online goodiebags. Tickets are still available but organizers expect it to be another “sell out” year. Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link

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10 Top Free and Premium CDNs for WordPress

[ad_1] Speed is a practical necessity for all websites. While there are lots of ways you can do this, and Content Delivery Network (CDN) is ideal for getting your site to load fast regardless of where the end user is located. Though, as this list of free and premium CDNs will show, there’s overwhelming choice. Though, you don’t have to bog yourself down with decision paralysis. There are a few top solutions to suit a variety of needs. What’s more, because WordPress is popular, integrating a CDN is a piece of cake. This means you can concentrate on what a solution will offer, rather than how you’ll implement it. As such, this article will look at some of the popular free and premium CDNs for WordPress. Before this, let’s fill in the blanks when it comes to how a CDN can help you. What a Content Delivery Network (CDN) Is In a nutshell, a CDN is a network of servers across the globe. The goal is to take your site, distribute it across those servers, and call on it when a local user accesses your site. For example, if you’re a site owner in the US, you’re often going to use a server located in the country. Users close in a relative sense to that server won’t see any issues. Though, for an end user in Australia, the time it takes to get your site from one server to the other will cause lag. In fact, this is a big aspect in testing your site speed with tools such as Pingdom or GTmetrix: A CDN chooses the most relevant server (read: the closest) for the end user, and serves that. It’s the same site for all practical purposes, but offers a dramatic difference to your visitors. As such, they’re vital for a high-performing website that runs fast almost anywhere on the planet. The Perks of Both Free and Premium CDNs for Your Site and Its Users The general benefit of using free or premium CDNs is speed. Though, if you drill down further, there are specific reasons why a fast site is better than a slow one: In short, search engines prefer fast sites. Google considers speed to be an important factor, and uses it in part to determine a site’s PageRank calculation. A site that loads quickly improves the user’s experience, which is crucial for optimizing conversion rates. After all, even a two-second loading time can hammer your bounce rate. There’s also a bandwidth saving for your host too. Because a CDN uses its own servers, your host won’t be responsible for allocating resources. As such, you can better use your host’s resources, and farm out others to your CDN. 10 Top Free and Premium CDNs for WordPress Over the next few sections, we’ll discuss ten of the best free and premium CDNs on the market. We’ll talk about the general features of each solution, along with their pros and cons. Of course, we’ll also tell you the cost of each one. Here’s a summary of our inclusions: StackPath. An enterprise-level solution that comes with similar-sized pricing. Amazon CloudFront. It integrates with AWS, so will be suitable if you use that service. CDN77. This is the only CDN that can work from space! It’s another service that best suits huge networks. Cloudflare. The perennial choice of users with low budgets, Cloudflare is great regardless of whether you’re on the free or premium tier. CDN.net. The pricing is better than other large CDNs, but offers less in the way of features and functionality. jsDelivr. This servers your JavaScript dependencies from a network of servers. Site Accelerator. Automattic’s own solution is an image and file CDN that’s ideal if you’re a Jetpack user. KeyCDN. Good pricing and solid features means KeyCDN is a top-tier solution for all users. Swarmify. A video CDN that works great alongside other full-featured CDNs. BelugaCDN. This budget CDN is an outlier pic if you’re looking for a long-term and cheap CDN. While you might have heard of some solutions here, others could be new. As such, we encourage you to jump around the post and check out whatever CDNs appeal to you. Let’s begin! 1. StackPath First on our list of free and premium CDNs is a solution you may not know in its current guise. StackPath is a rebranded and enhanced MaxCDN – a product we’ve covered on the blog before. Regardless of its name, it’s an industry-standard CDN, trusted by millions of users. StackPath offers high-performance and better security, along with a bunch of other features and specifications: A direct connection to the StackPath network – great for high-traffic applications. The ability to serve Secure Sockets Layers (SSL) certificates from StackPath’s servers, rather than from your ‘origins’. You’re able to set custom rules for your setup, to make sure StackPath works for your needs. StackPath also offers in-depth support across a variety of channels. In the past, we’ve shown how MaxCDN and WordPress integrates, and it will be a similar case for StackPath too. Though, it’s worth noting that we couldn’t find any pricing on StackPath’s website. This often indicates that you’ll need a substantial budget to afford its service. As such, this could be a deal-breaker for you. Try StackPath 2. Amazon CloudFront Amazon (of course) are an integral part of online shopping for millions of users. What’s more, there are various ‘wings’ of the brand, and you can find services such as audiobooks, and cloud computing too. Amazon’s CloudFront is their take on a CDN that’s worth investigating. CloudFront is one part of the whole Amazon Web Services (AWS) offering. As such, your AWS resource allocation includes millions of ‘function invocations’ for the platform. As you’d expect, you’re in good hands with CloudFront. Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, Slack, and more all use the CDN to deliver content across the globe. This is down to a robust, enterprise-level set of features and functionality: There’s deep integration with the whole AWS network of

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