[ad_1] If you’re using Chrome and Spotify on macOS and the Play/Pause buttons on your keyboard are not working when using Spotify, there’s a simple fix for this. Spotify Play/Pause Buttons on macOS First, navigate to chrome://flags/#hardware-media-key-handling in Chrome. Next, set the option for Hardware Media Key Handling as Disabled. Lastly, when prompted to restart Chrome, go ahead and do so and the keys should work. [ad_2] Source link
Continue readingMonthly Archives: August 2021
Does It Really Make Your Site Faster?
[ad_1] WP Engine is one of the very first companies to start offering tailor-made hosting for WordPress websites. They’re also one of the most popular such services online today. In this WP Engine review, we tell you if their product is actually any good! Here’s what we’re going to cover: What WP Engine is and how it’s different from classic hosting 🤔 WP Engine is what we like to call “managed WordPress hosting.” Although there’s no rock-solid definition of the term, the way most people understand it is web hosting that either houses/allows only WordPress websites or is at least specially optimized to run WordPress websites. What those optimizations are in practice changes from company to company, and there’s no official list of features that a hosting platform needs to have in order to be allowed to call itself WordPress hosting. So that’s “WordPress hosting,” but what is “managed WordPress hosting?” The managed part means that the user doesn’t have to deal with any server-level tasks on their own but instead gets that handled by the hosting company itself. In simple terms, when you’re on managed hosting, your main responsibility is to take care of your website’s content and not worry about any technical aspects under the hood. What’s WP Engine’s part in all this? WP Engine is the most well-known WordPress hosting provider on the market. As of this writing, the company serves 150,000+ customers worldwide, and it’s also one of the best-reviewed hosting companies in the WordPress space. In a recent survey, users rated it at 8.69 / 10 overall (data). So, is WP Engine really that good? Let’s examine it up close in the next sections of this WP Engine review: WP Engine review: features and pricing ⚙️💵 You probably already know that WP Engine is not the cheapest host out there. I’m guessing that’s why you’re here – to see if the high price tag is worth it. With that, we want to highlight a couple of elements of the WP Engine pricing model that are easy to overlook. But let’s start from the top. Here are the main plans that you can choose from: As you can see, getting onto the WP Engine bandwagon is from $25 a month when paid annually (billed at $300 for the whole year). This is not a small amount, considering that you can get a setup that’s similar – on paper – for a third of this. However, there’s a lot that’s going on under the hood: Even if you go for the entry-level plan that allows just one website, you can still take full advantage of WP Engine’s multi-environment setup with a Production, Staging, and Development version of your site. You get access to 35+ premium WordPress themes by StudioPress, including the popular Genesis Framework. You also get built-in integration with Local – a tool for local WordPress development originally built by Flywheel (another host that WP Engine acquired). There are automatic updates for WordPress core. There’s a functional site migration solution available for free. There are some useful pro-level tools that we’ll talk about later on in this WP Engine review. Apart from that, the list of extras available across different price points with WP Engine is quite impressive. Even the entry-level plan gives you access to all of the following: PHP 7.4 support. Transferable sites – an option for developers to create websites for clients without making those websites count against the developer’s site limits. Evercache – a proprietary front-end cache by WP Engine. LargeFS – Large Files System to let you store and transfer large amounts of data. Global CDN provided to WP Engine by MaxCDN. Page Performance – performance analysis and improvement tool. Automated and manual backup features, plus one-click restore. Automated SSL certificates. SSH gateway – access to command-line tools for the pros. Git version control. On higher tiers, you also get perks such as 24/7 phone support, WordPress multisite, or even the option to include geographically customized content via WP Engine’s GeoTarget feature. In the end, while WP Engine is not the cheapest WordPress host on the market, it might just be the one that gives you the most bang for your buck – especially once you start doing the math on all the additional stuff you’d need to run your site. For instance, if you’ve been planning on using the Genesis Framework anyway (a popular option), plus you want access to staging sites for development, then WP Engine might just be the budget-conscious choice after all. How easy to use is WP Engine? 👐 Upon signing up and logging in to your account for the first time, you’ll be able to get a WordPress website spun up right away. There’s an Add site button in the top right corner. When you click it, it triggers a pop-up form that lets you install a new instance of WordPress in a really simplified manner (no need to deal with any database settings or anything like that): Right up front, it’s also quite apparent that WP Engine is a professional-level tool when it comes to WordPress hosting. For instance, you are encouraged to set up three environments for your site – Production, Staging, and Development – instead of just a single one. This helps greatly if you have a team of people working on the site and gradually rolling out changes. The idea is that you can work on building new elements of your site on Development, then roll them out to Staging for testing, and then move everything to Production for the world to see. WP Engine lets you create a new environment very easily just by clicking a single button and then providing some parameters of the environment. No matter if you’re creating your initial instance of Production or a new Staging environment, the process looks the same. You get to choose from a couple of options: As you can see in the image above, you can: create a fresh instance
Continue readingReal Test Data + The Best Settings in 2021
[ad_1] Considering using WP Rocket to speed up your WordPress site? When it comes to WordPress performance plugins, WP Rocket is one of the best-known options. And that’s for a good reason – it’s a really great tool for speeding up your site. We ran a test for this review and we found that it cut our site’s fully loaded times by 44-61%, which is pretty impressive and important when you consider that page load times affect everything from SEO to bounce rates, conversion rates, user experience, and more. But is it the right plugin for your site and your unique situation? Well, that’s one of the questions that we’re going to answer in our WP Rocket review. Here’s everything that we’re going to cover: Let’s get started! WP Rocket Review: What Does It Do? We don’t want to spend too long here because you can find all of this on the WP Rocket site, but the quick version is that WP Rocket is a full-service WordPress performance plugin. It aims to offer pretty much everything you need to create a quick-loading WordPress site in one simple package. The “core” feature is page caching. But WP Rocket is a lot more than just another page caching plugin. It also handles: Browser caching. Gzip compression. Code optimization (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript) – you get a lot of different options here including minification, combination, and more. Media optimization – speed up your images and videos. Database cleaning. CDN integration. Various minor performance tweaks – e.g. adjusting the Heartbeat API and disabling embeds. It’s also highly configurable and you’ll get lots of advanced options to control exactly how your caching functions, including a flexible cache preload option. WP Rocket also includes some unique features that you won’t find in other WordPress performance plugins, which I think is one area where it differentiates itself. One of the most interesting features is its new Remove Unused CSS option, which lets you scan your site and remove unnecessary CSS on a page-by-page basis. In my testing, I’ve regularly seen reductions of ~80-250 KB in page size (depending on your theme/plugins) just from this feature alone. It also includes other features to automatically inline critical CSS and delay loading JavaScript. Overall, the WP Rocket team is always pushing things forward with new and unique features to speed up your site, which is one of the best things about the plugin. WP Rocket Review: Testing the Performance Now, let’s run some performance tests to see just how much WP Rocket can speed up a WordPress site. After all, this is the most meaningful question in our WP Rocket review. To assess this, I set up a realistic WordPress site powered by the Astra theme and one of its Elementor demo sites. This is a full website, just like the website you might be installing WP Rocket on. My website is hosted on a droplet from DigitalOcean, which is pretty speedy hosting just by itself. If you’re hosting on cheap shared hosting, you’ll probably see even better improvements than this test. To collect the data, I’ll use WebPageTest to run tests in two scenarios: Desktop – Chrome browser with a throttled FIOS connection speed (a decent but not fast connection). Mobile – a simulated Moto G4 device with a throttled 4G connection to simulate someone browsing while not connected to WIFI. I’ll configure WebPageTest to run nine separate tests and take the median value. Then, I’ll test before WP Rocket and after installing/configuring WP Rocket using the recommended settings from our tutorial below. Desktop Test LCP Fully Loaded Size HTTP Requests NO WP Rocket 1.252 s 1.443 s 907 KB 52 🚀 With WP Rocket 0.652 s 0.568 s 657 KB 18 ⬇️ Decrease ⬇️ 48% ⬇️ 61% ⬇️ 250 KB ⬇️ 34 LCP = Largest Contentful Paint, one of Google’s new Core Web Vitals metrics Mobile Test LCP Fully Loaded Size HTTP Requests NO WP Rocket 3.907 s 5.327 s 861 KB 49 🚀 With WP Rocket 0.890 s 3.010 s 610 KB 15 ⬇️ Decrease ⬇️ 77% ⬇️ 44% ⬇️ 251 KB ⬇️ 34 WP Rocket Review: Performance Conclusions The numbers pretty much speak for themselves in the example above: Desktop LCP decreased by 48%. Desktop fully loaded time decreased by 61%. Mobile LCP decreased by 77%. Mobile fully loaded time decreased by 44%. Beyond the huge improvement to page load times, you can see a big reduction in the size of the page, a lot of which comes from the new remove unused CSS and delay JavaScript loading features. Most other WordPress performance plugins won’t be able to achieve such a big reduction in page size because they don’t have these features. Basically, WP Rocket can make your site load a lot faster. So now, let’s talk about the other stuff, like how you can configure WP Rocket for optimal results and whether WP Rocket offers good value from a pricing perspective. Best WP Rocket Settings: How to Configure WP Rocket Now that I’ve shown you the performance data from our WP Rocket review, let’s take a deeper look at the features and go over the optimal WP Rocket settings to achieve the benefits from above. This section will accomplish two things: You’ll learn how WP Rocket works and all the different features it offers. If you do decide to purchase WP Rocket, you can follow this tutorial to configure it on your site. WP Rocket Automatically Activates Core Features First off, as soon as you activate WP Rocket, it will automatically activate some core features. These include: Page caching Browser caching GZIP compression Cross-origin support for web fonts Auto-detection to work with popular plugins (like WooCommerce) However, to get the most from WP Rocket, you’ll want to further configure its settings, which you can access by going to Settings → WP Rocket. Let’s go through each tab in the WP Rocket settings… Cache The Cache tab gives you more control over how page caching
Continue readingA Discussion With Gutenberg Project Lead Matías Ventura on the Barrier to Entry – WP Tavern
[ad_1] Last week, I published an opinion piece on the barrier to entry in the modern WordPress era. The article followed a tweet and post by Chris Wiegman that stated the current learning curve was extremely high, regardless of past experience. Members of the community responded with a flurry of articles, podcasts, and videos. Because modern WordPress is primarily centered on Gutenberg, I reached out to the project’s lead, Matías Ventura. The goal was to bring some balance to the discussion. Unfortunately, he could not get back to me until a few days after the story was published. However, given his unique insight and perspective on the project, his views should be shared. In our discussion, we covered the topic of the barrier to entry from multiple viewpoints. Depending on where a specific developer, designer, or user steps onto the ramp, each will have a different experience. Why Are We Having the Same Discussions? The block editor shipped with WordPress 5.0 in December 2018. We are closing in on three years, but it often feels like we are having the same discussions. One has to wonder why we have not yet moved beyond that point. “I think this is a case of the size of the WordPress community, its diversity of perspectives, and the fact that we do still have a lot of work to do to continue to make things accessible,” said Ventura. “I’ve seen people that start with no prior WP knowledge get flying super quickly.” He recounted one story of a popular block library that launched last year. The creators were designers but did not recognize themselves as developers. However, the APIs allowed them to build an entire plugin that would not have been possible with their previous skillset. “To me, this was a triumph of the block APIs that are available for builders,” said Ventura. “But this is just one person’s perspective. It doesn’t invalidate PHP developers expressing frustration at the complexities of modern front-end tools.” Theme Creation and New Onramps On the theme creation front, we were in agreement. There are new ways (and more on the way) for non-developers to ease into visually building various parts of a website without needing the entire weight of theme development knowledge. Ventura began his WordPress journey with theme development after first being exposed to Flash in the early 2000s. He recalled downloading a bunch of PHP files and thought he could execute by opening them. It is safe to say that he has learned a lot since then. “Being able to edit pieces of a theme is a crucial aspect of democratizing access to code,” he said. “I think we are going to be seeing a lot of people get started by diving into how templates work. Or by playing with the Query block, which used to be a hidden piece unless you knew a bit of PHP already.” He mentioned that, in some ways, this aspect of the block editor allowed solo creators or small teams to build unique projects, pointing to Aino as an example. “I’m seeing a ton of designers for whom contributing to WordPress was difficult or a gated experience,” he said. “There’s a lot of developer entitlement when we say things used to be easy. They were not easy for a large chunk of the population that might have been excellent contributors if there were more avenues to contribute.” Patterns may be the first official stepping stone, one avenue among many that WordPress could facilitate in the future. Ventura envisions a possible .ORG-hosted visual theme builder that would allow users to create and publish without ever touching code. We are likely years from seeing such a project come to fruition, but lofty goals can lead to innovative ideas that we have yet to think of. Building Block Plugins Block plugins are a different beast than themes. The barrier is undoubtedly higher, but how big is this hurdle for traditional WordPress developers? “Going from contributing a pattern to building a block is a big leap right now,” said Ventura. “While there are folks that can learn it quickly, it’s still a big barrier for people. I think there are several layers to this: documentation could be an order of magnitude better in both organization and presentation. I hope we can do a lot more there.” He is also curious about tools for building blocks, such as a blend of BlockBook and CodePen. He mulled over the possibility of blocks used for creating other blocks, a scenario in which developers might only need to write HTML with the tool interpreting features like Rich Text fields. At the very least, he believes we are barely scratching the surface of what the block-building experience could be. “The biggest challenge is that there’s a tendency in PHP trained folks to neglect a bit the implications on the UX if it means the developer experience is simpler,” he said. “I think this is most visible in the shortcode/forms approach to UX as opposed to direct manipulation, which is hard to codify from a PHP set of APIs.” WordPress/Gutenberg Contribution and the Bus Factor Outside of building themes or plugins, the third and arguably the highest level of participating in the WordPress development ecosystem is direct contributions to the block system. Is contributing to core harder today than it was just a few years ago? “I think this is a good point, but I think it partially misses that contributing to WP internals like WP_Query was also very difficult,” he said. “We just got used to it. We have received more contributions to Gutenberg from people than what I have seen in Trac in my years there.” Ventura did admit that GitHub could be a factor in the amount of contribution, which many developers tend to favor over Trac. While building an editor is a difficult task and requires certain levels of expertise, other parts of the system, such as the component library or smaller packages, might offer
Continue readingNew Boilerplate Speeds Up Building “Nearly Headless” WordPress Themes – WP Tavern
[ad_1] Alex Standiford, a WordPress developer at AffiliateWP, has released a boilerplate for what he is calling a “nearly headless” WordPress theme. It uses Underpin ,Nicholas, and AlpineJS to provide an app-like experience for a website while providing the flexibility for rendering specific pages using PHP instead of Javascript. In a post titled “Headless WordPress is Overrated: A Case for The Nearly-Headless Web App,” Standiford describes a few of the drawbacks of going fully headless. One problem with fully-headless WordPress is routing. Behind the scenes, WordPress has a lot of logic built-in to handle routing, and with a headless approach you have to build something to handle that on the front end. Ultimately, you’re re-inventing the wheel, and it takes a lot of extra time to build. Another problem with headless WordPress quickly becomes apparent the moment you try to use most WordPress plugins. The ugly truth is that you usually have to re-invent a lot of things just to get the plugin working properly. Standiford’s nearly headless system is a product of his rethinking headless WordPress. He wanted to preserve the app-like feel as well as all of WordPress’ built in capabilities and those available through the plugin system. The Nearly Headless WordPress theme uses AlpineJS for rendering, which Standiford says is light, easy-to-understand, and “plays exceptionally nice with PHP server-side rendering.” It is loaded around HTML template tags that source post content using WordPress’ REST API. The system uses session storage to keep things speedy and minimize the number of REST API calls. Standiford’s WP Dev Academy learning site and his agency, DesignFrame Solutions, are both using beta versions of the nearly headless system. Since the time those sites were developed, Standiford has completely rewritten the system and made significant improvements based on what from what he learned from earlier versions. He has a live demo of the current version available at nearly-headless.dev. .@DFS_Web’s website redesign will make it possible to visit any page without an internet connection shortly after the first page is loaded. This makes this site FAST even if your internet connection is slow. pic.twitter.com/keOxyMU8cq — Alex Standiford (@AlexStandiford) December 9, 2020 The nearly headless approach is comparable to a traditional headless approach in terms of performance, thanks to Standiford’s Nicholas library, which includes client-side caching and a routing layer as the application support for the theme. “Nicholas will load content via REST, much like how a headless site does,” Standiford said. “In these cases, the load times are very similar to what you’d see on a headless site. In fact, they behave, and fundamentally work in the same manner. The key is Nicholas also stores the data in session storage after the page is visited, and any time that page is loaded thereafter, it is loaded instantly.” How far can the boilerplate take you? Developers who use it should be ready to extend or replace the basic templates it includes to load WordPress. It doesn’t enqueue any CSS. Key functionality is broken into separate dependencies so users can stay up to date as the project evolves. “For all intents and purposes, the boilerplate is a blank slate,” Standiford said. “You can think of the boilerplate as _s for the nearly headless approach. All of the dependencies, scripts, and items needed to run the engine are included in the boilerplate. All of the dependencies are packaged up in Composer or Node, so your theme can be updated as the system improves without re-writing your entire theme.” Standiford has some major improvements planned for the future of the boilerplate. It is currently compatible with the block editor and many plugins but requires a compatibility mode. “The big up-front improvement is going to be removing the need for compatibility mode on as many pages as possible,” Standiford said. “Many block libraries, forms plugins, and other things have specific scripts that they expect are loaded on the page that the app has no way to know about, and because of this, some plugins won’t work without turning on compatibility mode. It is possible to make these work, but I would benefit from help from plugin developers to help me understand what styles/scripts need to be included when the app runs.” Standiford said he sees an opportunity to create npm packages that integrate other plugins, and ensure they work as expected. “Yoast and other SEO plugins for example set the SEO information in the head of each page, and right now that doesn’t happen without writing another piece of middleware,” he said. “It’s not too difficult to add it, but it’s one of those things that could be packaged up and included instead of manually being written for every theme that uses this approach.” Another item on the Nearly Headless WordPress theme boilerplate roadmap is improvements to how dependencies are compiled to better avoid plugin and theme conflicts. Standiford thinks this would make it easier to distribute themes built using this method on the WordPress.org directory, or even to sell them commercially. He has also been experimenting with automatically caching all the content on a page when it loads, without bogging down the browser or overloading the server with requests. The result would be instantaneous page loads with reduced server loads. The Boilerplate for Nearly Headless WordPress Themes is available on GitHub and Standiford is also creating a course that will help developers build sites using this nearly headless paradigm. He anticipates it will be released in November 2021. Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link
Continue readingA Second Look at ElmaStudio’s Aino Theme and Companion Block Plugin – WP Tavern
[ad_1] I am about a month away from my second anniversary writing for WP Tavern. There has been one project that I have followed since the beginning of this journey. In some ways, we are learning the ropes and growing in this block-based WordPress era together. In 2019, just before taking on this role, one of the first story notes I jotted down was some thoughts on ElmaStudio’s Aino Blocks plugin. However, it was not until nearly a year later when the team took the project out of beta testing, and I followed up with a review of the flagship Aino theme and plugin. Perhaps it is fortuitous that the team recently released version 2.0 of its theme at just about the same time I started taking stock of my time at the Tavern. Maybe this is fate’s way of telling me that we should always have a yearly update on Aino — sound like a good idea? It also did not hurt that Matías Ventura, the Gutenberg project lead, name-dropped their work in a conversation we had last week. “It fills me with joy when I see initiatives like [Aino] built by just a couple folks,” he said. “Apart from the user aspects of our work, it’s what makes it all worth it.” This was part of a more in-depth discussion related to the barriers to entry in the modern WordPress era. We agreed that one of the easier onramps was theme creation and site design, a focus area for Aino. It was time to dive back into the project. I had not looked into it deeply enough since my last review a year ago. Admittedly, at the time, I had mixed feelings about it. I initially thought the plugin launched too late. It seemed to be yet another block library after larger companies beat them to the punch. Ellen Bauer, who co-owns the company alongside Manuel Esposito, encouraged me to check back in as they continued building. They were merely setting the stage for their vision. “We wanted to release the Aino blocks and theme on WordPress.org since they are stable to use right now,” she wrote in the comments. “But the actual work is just starting for us, since we are now creating block patterns for our system, and I think it is only then that users will see why we built the theme and blocks in a certain way.” A Year Later One of multiple feature patterns from the Aino theme. The ElmaStudio team is taking that leap that most theme companies will inevitably need to take. They announced that Aino 2.0 ditched its classic garb and moved to 100% blocks earlier this month. For this particular theme, the move was not as monumental as it would be for others with more intricate layouts. Aino itself was always a minimal design, more of an open canvas for blocks than anything. It is the sort of theme meant to get out of the way and allow the user to create individual pages from the ground up. That may have been its downside a year ago. The team had built a plugin for easing users into the page-building process, but its single block pattern did not provide much of a starting point. Its Grid block is a powerful tool but also feels like it is catered more toward designers/developers. Its options may be too advanced to some end-users depending on their familiarity with CSS terminology. Today, this looks much different. The Aino theme comes with — count ’em — 42 block patterns. It is also where this project shines. I may have mentioned something about this being the route to go last year: The company’s best bet is to focus on building patterns. Its first pattern shows some promise. I am holding out hope for more interesting work to come. The team took that dev-friendly base of the Grid block and built a system of easy-to-use layouts on top of it. Users merely need to click to insert and customize. Aino’s Grid block used in a portfolio pattern. Because Aino’s patterns are built upon this grid foundation, the design studio’s layouts are fine-tuned for each screen size. Unless other theme authors build on top of the same plugin or a similar grid-based block, they are left with stock WordPress/Gutenberg. This provides limited options for responsively designing more complex layouts. This should be a focal point of the WordPress 5.9 release cycle, but it could be a while before we have something as powerful as the various grid blocks available via plugins. ElmaStudio’s groundwork in the previous two years is bearing fruit, at least in terms of what the team can create. With the foundational elements in place, nothing should stop them from building the next 42 patterns and more. A team pattern from the Aino theme (also built on the Grid block). I am still lukewarm about most of the blocks in the plugin, think the Hero and Testimonial blocks should just be patterns, and the [Aino] Buttons block should be an options extension for the one in core. The Grid layout is the feature that all the best things about the Aino project hinge on. The Aino theme itself seems unimpressive on its own, at least at first glance. However, the project is not whole until it is coupled with the Aino Blocks plugin. The theme needs some design work on its default spacing. For example, paragraphs that follow a wide or full-aligned block have no gap above them. Blockquote text butts against the side of the left border. Trivial bugs like these are easy fixes. Sometimes, it is not evident that there is an issue until a Gutenberg plugin update, which often leaves theme authors chasing changes. Such is the life of a designer living on the bleeding edge, supporting the latest features via a block theme. I am happy I once again had the opportunity to dive back into the Aino project. A year
Continue reading5 Top Tools to Help You Manage Multiple Sites from Single Dashboard
[ad_1] It’s normal to run multiple WordPress websites as a modern site owner. The best place for visibility is on the internet, which means each business or blog will often have its own site. Though, running all of these sites could be a hassle and an administrative nightmare. As such, you’ll need a tool to manage multiple sites from a central location. The great news is that there are lots of services to make running multiple WordPress websites a breeze. The time you save can go back into running your business, rather than your site – and you could save some money too. In this post, we’ll look at a few solutions to help you manage multiple sites from a central WordPress dashboard. By the end, you’ll be able to find a service that fits your needs and say “Goodbye” to your old method of multiple site management. 5 Top Tools to Help You Manage Multiple Sites from Single Dashboard We’re going to look at five different ways to manage multiple sites from one dashboard. While some integrate with the WordPress dashboard, others have a custom solution. Here’s the list we’ll look at: MainWP. This runs from WordPress, and balances budget, functionality, and complexity within its features and functionality. ManageWP. The tool is a mainstay of WordPress site management, and comes with a unique pricing model. InfiniteWP. While the free tier is light on features, the premium solution will appeal to developers. Glow. This newcomer is going to become a front-runner for managing multiple sites, given its feature set and price. WP Remote. If you have the budget, and run a lot of sites, WP Remote could fit the bill. The list isn’t in any order, so feel free to jump around to look at a tool that appeals to you. Though, we recommend reading the whole list at some point, if only to compare your chosen solution to the rest. 1. MainWP First up, MainWP is a free, open-source tool for WordPress websites, with a lot of powerful features in the box. It offers great flexibility when looking to manage multiple sites and keep them secure. The MainWP dashboard features an intuitive interface that takes the hassle out of managing plugins, themes, and other aspects of your site. For example, it checks the update status of your themes and plugin, and sends you a summary notification. Though, it can do more than notify you of updates. MainWP’s one-click access to your network of sites makes it a breeze to administrate sites. A big time-saver is that you don’t have to type in individual URLs. Instead, there’s a direct link to each admin panel, which means you’re in an instant position to start managing the site. Once you’ve configured each site’s login credentials from the dashboard, you won’t need to remember them. On the whole, MainWP offers a stellar experience for WordPress users who want to manage multiple sites. What’s more, you can extend the platform using a number of free and premium extensions. Pricing MainWP’s core services are available on a free tier for unlimited sites. Though, there’s also MainWP Pro – a premium version (around $20 per month) that includes a number of otherwise inaccessible extensions. This includes functionality such as Wordfence and Yoast SEO integration, staging functionality, and advanced reporting. 💲Don’t forget to use our MainWP Coupon to get 15% OFF. 2. ManageWP Our next tool to manage multiple sites is ManageWP – one of the popular and best services for the task. It lets you access all of your sites through a single dashboard, and makes carrying out site admin a straightforward process. As you’d expect, the service is a snap to use. You’re able to perform almost all common routine tasks for your site through ManageWP. For example, you’re able to carry out basic updates to plugins and themes. Though, you can also add content to a site, create backups, and even start a new WordPress site. No matter what the task is, ManageWP features an intuitive, user-focused interface. It lets you jump in and begin regardless of your technical expertise. In addition, ManageWP offers premium-quality customer support. It’s available 24/7, highly knowledgeable, and on hand to help you solve any issues. Pricing The pricing model for ManageWP is unique. While, it offers core features for free, the service takes a modular approach. In other words, you can upgrade your experience on a per-extension basis. For example, you’re able to white-label your site, add backup functionality, and more, all for $1–2 per site, per month. This keeps the cost down for a handful of sites, but could see prices scale. Though, ManageWP also offers bundles of add-ons and extensions to help keep costs down for large-scale management projects. 3. InfiniteWP Next, InfiniteWP is a powerful tool to help you manage multiple sites without wasting time, effort, and money. You can manage all of your sites from a single intuitive and powerful admin panel, without the need to remember your admin credentials. Because it focuses on agencies, developers, and freelancers, it’s almost unique in the niche. InfiniteWP offers a global overview of your sites from a centralized admin panel. Its one-click update feature makes it easy to update site elements across your entire network of websites. What’s more, it includes a free backup and restore service – something not all solutions offer. Compared to the competition, InfiniteWP is light on core features. In fact, the free edition gives you little more than one-click admin access and updates. This isn’t enough to compete with other free solutions, although the premium upgrade is great quality. Pricing At the base level, you’re able to install InfiniteWP for free. Though, as we said, this only gives you one-click admin access, one-click updates, and backup functionality. If you decide to upgrade, you unlock more of InfiniteWP’s features. There are a number of premium features to choose from, including a lot of reporting and monitoring tools. One feature we like for developers is the
Continue readingThe Block Editor’s Main Competitor Turns Up the Heat
[ad_1] Now that WordPress is a full-featured Content Management System (CMS), it needs more tools to help create stellar websites. The native Block Editor is a step in the right direction, but in this Elementor review, we’ll showcase the clear leading competitor to the platform’s creative vision. On the surface, Elementor is another in a long line of page builder plugins with increased scope over what WordPress offers out of the box. On close inspection, it’s almost a framework in itself. You could conceive a website and content using the functionality available, without breaking into WordPress’ toolset. For this Elementor review, we’ll look at how to use the page builder to develop layouts. What’s more, we’ll try and compare it to the Block Editor, and judge its future within the WordPress ecosystem. Elementor Review: Introducing the Page Builder Unless you’re super-new to WordPress, you’ll have heard of Elementor. After all, we’ve featured it on the blog many times over the years. It’s a page builder plugin at heart that has rocketed to become the most successful WordPress plugin of all time. It provides you with a strong and robust set of customization options to help take a literal blank page and turn it into a site matching your exact requirements. Digging deeper into what’s on offer, there are many strings to Elementor’s bow: Editing. You have a full suite of tools to help construct layouts, starting with the drag-and-drop live editor. There are a few cool User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) inclusions too, such as the Navigator and Finder. Design. Apart from the extensive layout options, you can also work with typography and colors as you would with a high-powered graphic design tool. Along with basic customization, you have almost limitless scope for adding interactive, dynamic animations, micro-elements, and much more. Marketing. Elementor includes a few different aspects to market your site. For instance, there’s a built-in form builder; a bunch of widgets to help you add a Call To Action (CTA), pricing tables, social media icons, testimonials, and more; counters; and much more besides. Element Builders. We’ve mentioned the form builder, but there’s also a comprehensive pop-up builder, WooCommerce builder, and theme builder too. The general goal of Elementor is to give you almost zero reason to go searching for another creative plugin on your site. The development team look to add all the practical features you need to build and launch your website. We’ll have more to say on each of these aspects later. For now, let’s discuss Elementor’s place within WordPress. How Elementor Fits Into the Rest of the WordPress Ecosystem Before Elementor was released, page builder plugins were functional and solid. The likes of Beaver Builder (see our review) ruled the roost, and the flexibility of that plugin is still evident today. Though, once Elementor arrived, it changed the game. There were more options to change every aspect of your site, and also so-called ‘front-end editing’ that showed how your site would look. The big talking point at the time centered around how adaptable the editor is when building layouts. You can be almost pinpoint accurate when it comes to implementing the ‘box model’ on your site. It’s a graphic designer’s (and front end developer’s) dream: Though, as Elementor has evolved, it’s gained more ground in areas outside of editing. For example, form plugins can’t rest easy – Elementor’s built-in form builder does away with the need for a third-party plugin. Other WooCommerce themes will sweat too, as Elementor lets you create a fully-functional store with its toolkit. In fact, almost no niche is safe when it comes to Elementor’s offerings. Because of this, the user base has shot up. It helps that there’s a huge community initiative too – almost as vibrant as WordPress itself. It’s understandable that WordPress’ top brass are hot under the collar. The Elementor team has come under fire due to misleading ads that undermine the WordPress project. Given that the Block Editor is front and center when it comes to WordPress’ key selling points, a solution such as Elementor bundled with its own blank starter theme is trouble. On the whole, the next phase of WordPress will be a fight between Elementor and the Block Editor. This is good for competition, although it could mean huge fallout in the near future. Elementor’s Competitors (And How It Stacks Up) As we’ve touched on, there are a few competitors chasing Elementor right now. The Block Editor is (of course) the primary target because it’s a native way of building a layout within WordPress. Right now, the Block Editor can’t touch the breadth and depth of Elementor’s functionality. Though, the core development team are all hand on deck to try and bring Full-Site Editing (FSE) to the masses sooner rather than later. When this happens, expect fireworks between leading WordPress figures and Elementor. There are also other page builders vying for attention – the most notable being Beaver Builder: This is another solution we’ve talked about before on the blog, and it has a different aesthetic and goals to Elementor. You could argue that Beaver Builder is more focused on building layouts, rather than becoming a framework within WordPress. Though, it’s fair to say there are hardcore fans of Beaver Builder as much as there are Elementor. The previous ThemeForest darling in the WPBakery Page Builder is falling behind as a go-to solution as well. Even a cursory glance at ThemeForest’s marketplace will show you that Elementor is mentioned just as much as the previous Visual Composer. There are a bunch of other page builders on the market, such as the Divi Builder, and even full themes such as Avada. Though, it appears as though there are two camps – plugins that lock you in using shortcodes and custom infrastructures, and those such as Elementor that don’t. The public is voting for no lock in, and it will be interesting to see what the likes of Divi, Avada, and even
Continue readingThe Road Toward Deeper Responsive Block Design – WP Tavern
[ad_1] Gutenberg project lead Matías Ventura announced the Preliminary Road to 5.9 on the Make Core blog earlier today. He covered several big picture items, including several sub-points for each. He also linked to a GitHub issue with specific tasks and tickets that need work. The post covers notes on block patterns, navigation menus, the theme.json interface (global styles), design tools, and editing flows for block themes. There is a lot of information to take in and enough areas to cover various interests. The most exciting focus of 5.9 might just be going deeper into responsive design at the block level, whether this is under-the-hood code or block options available via the UI. “One of the biggest points of friction for pattern and theme builders are the lack of responsive tools available at a block level,” wrote Ventura. “This needs to be solved in a way that doesn’t disproportionally increase interface complexity.” Intrinsic Web Design With Blocks Mobile design patterns shared by Ventura. It is easy to become disgruntled at the slow progress toward responsive block options over the last few years. I am not entirely unhappy with it because I want the team to be methodical and approach this in a future-proof way, at least to the extent that it can. Far too often, what we have seen with requests and even third-party plugins is the use of viewport-based media queries for controlling how blocks respond to different devices (e.g., desktop, tablet, and mobile). While such controls can sometimes be the right tool for the job, they are not always the correct path for component-based design. Media queries tend to favor holistic design methodologies. However, component-based design is the modern face of the web. Blocks are just another component, and because developers or even users can place them anywhere in the overall design, we must approach how they respond to their surroundings more so than the browser viewport. “The block model is a good case to apply some intrinsic design principles, since a block can occupy a place in many different layouts and containers, for which prescriptive media queries that don’t take context into account are inflexible,” wrote Ventura. A simple example to look at is the core WordPress Columns block. We could easily add media query options for when each inner Column block breaks. However, how should the typography respond for three columns vs. four and at different widths? That is a function of the container’s size rather than the viewport. And, how do such media queries work when Columns are nested within another Column? This becomes a more complex problem to solve if you are putting layout controls into the hands of users. Pushing the fast-forward button on responsive block options might feel good at the moment, but it could also create legacy baggage that will be hard to drop when a better solution rolls around. Even something as seemingly simple as a basic website header can become complex when designing for user input. For theme designers, there is no way to know how many characters are in the site title, for example, or how many items are in the nav menu. The block system can complicate that further by allowing end-users to drop in other unknowns. “Each block area should be intrinsically responsive allowing blocks to compose together, wrap, stack, and organize themselves to fit the different spaces and screens,” wrote Ventura. “For this to work well, container blocks need to absorb more layout controls.” He also mentioned container queries as a possible expansion point when they are fully supported by browsers in the future. Chrome Canary currently has a support flag to enable the feature. Container queries are a bit of a Holy Grail for designers. As web designer Ethan Marcotte wrote four years ago: Maybe I’ll start here: in the last few years, my design work has focused much more on patterns, and less on “pages.” Instead of treating a responsive design as a holistic, unified thing, where every part of the layout changes and adapts at the same rate, it’s more helpful to break a responsive layout down into smaller, reusable bits of design, including things like “masthead,” “footer,” “image caption,” and so on. In other words, my design process involves looking at a responsive design as a network of small layout systems. Each of those components are basically little responsive designs themselves, with their own sets of breakpoints. Sound familiar? Yes, the WordPress block system is built on that same foundation of small layout components. Anything that WordPress does today at the UI level needs to account for the container queries of the future. Or, at least make use of existing tools that could replicate the feature in some ways, such as the min(), max(), and clamp() CSS functions. The trouble is figuring out which features should be exposed as block options vs. being handled under the hood. The development team must strike a balance between the user experience and flexibility for designers. Some things should “just work” out of the box, and others should be configurable on a case-by-case basis. This should be one of the more interesting, complex, frustrating, and rewarding problems to solve in the WordPress 5.9 cycle. For those looking for a challenge, it might be the perfect entry point. Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link
Continue readingWordPress Learning Curve in 2021 • WPShout
[ad_1] There’s been some worthwhile discussion of the WordPress learning curve lately. My “main link” here is the article from Courtney Robertson. Though I’d also point to the one of the topic from Justin Tadlock at WP Tavern. I thought Courtney’s summary rang true: While the block editor experience has improved the content creation and even website assembly side of this process, it can be said that the learning curve for developing with code for WordPress via plugins or themes has become more complex. This is especially true when planning training materials, and retraining developers who began without these extra layers of complexity. I feel like the amount of JavaScript, not to mention the need to be kind of good at both React/JS & PHP has changed the dynamics of WordPress deveopment from when I started learning around 2007. And though I’m not sure much could be done to avoid it, I don’t envy those starting out today. But I do think its possible. Mostly it just requires two things: more people sharing what they’re learning, and being patient while you’re learning. Image credit: Patrick Mize Visit courtneyengle.com → [ad_2] Source link
Continue reading