[ad_1] Like most years, I spent this U.S. Independence Day cooped up with my furry friends. I closed all the windows, shuttered the blinds, switched on a couple of fans for white noise, and clicked the television on. My cats and I relaxed. It is my job to keep them calm while my — usually drunken — compatriots burn hundreds of dollars away in the night sky. It is my ritual, and I enjoy it. For this holiday, we re-watched Season 1 of Star Trek: Lower Decks, and I learned how to build a block plugin. This was not my first attempt. When the block editor launched nearly three years ago, I tinkered with a few block type ideas. However, I never got far. Documentation was sparse, and I had almost no experience with JavaScript beyond building trivial bells and whistles for front-end design. Leaving my day job as a developer to write for WP Tavern also meant limited time to learn block development. And, my free time for the last couple of years has been filled with other projects. Lately, I have had the urge to jump back in and start building things for fun once again. My extended sabbatical from development work gave me time to pursue other interests while allowing my well of creativeness a chance to refill. The break did me some good. With time to kill yesterday afternoon, I dove right in. After a couple of hours of reading docs, studying other developers’ code, and breaking things, I had a functional block for a breadcrumbs list. Custom block registered and ready to insert. Marcus Kazmierczak’s Copyright Block plugin helped me get over one of the initial humps. It was helpful to see real-world, non-example code written in vanilla JavaScript to get to the meat of how the system worked. My overall thoughts on building custom block types? It was easier than I thought it would be. Documentation is, at the same time, both overwhelming and limiting. It is tough to find the correct answer if you do not even know what you are looking for. The barrier to entry is much higher than when I built my first plugin in 2007. The Block Type API makes some things stupidly simple but complicates others. Successfully inserting my first block type into the editor canvas was gratifying. I don’t think that feeling ever goes away as a developer. Successful insertion and rendering of my first block plugin. I am excited about the potential for blocks, such as a breadcrumbs list, when the site editor launches. Many similar features do not make sense in the post editor. However, when users can make direct edits to their templates, it will open a world of possibilities. Learning Curve I know enough JavaScript to be a danger to myself and others. Having spent almost the entirety of my professional career in the WordPress realm has meant focusing on PHP. But, programming is programming. Once you have a strong understanding of one language, it not an impossible leap to piddle around enough to create a functional script in another. Most of the same foundational concepts are there. The hurdle is often with learning some new syntax. However, the biggest obstacle with “modern” JavaScript is setting up the build tools, bundlers, and more. It can be a tall order to even type out that first line of code. Sure, some of the documentation has vanilla JavaScript examples, but when you get into anything more complex than the basics, it is not so vanilla anymore. You will need a way to bundle JavaScript and transform JSX syntax. That means tools like webpack and Babel. WordPress has its own script for cutting through most of the complexity, but I recommend Laravel Mix. It is simple enough for even the least-savvy JavaScript programmers among us and has thorough documentation. It is a script made for folks who want to worry less about tooling and more about actually writing code. Block building is also a different kind of leap. Whether it was custom template tags, shortcodes, widgets, or hooks, traditional WordPress development has meant building those in a PHP environment. I suspect that most plugin developers have tons of features that they can bring to the masses via the block editor. They will often rely on server-side rendering. WordPress has a ServerSideRender component for actually handling this. One of the handiest features of registering block types is the block “supports” system. Want a background color option? Just one line of code will do. Want the user to access the font-size control? That is a single line too. With little effort, I extended my breadcrumbs block to include a ton of styling options for users. And, they adapt to the site’s active theme. Testing various combination of block-supported styling options. The list of block-supported features offers an array of standardized options at pretty much no development cost. Even the Customize API, previously the most advanced tool for building form fields, did not come this close. Building custom inspector controls was straightforward once I got the hang of how the block edit piece of the puzzle worked. For now, I have a simple toggle option for enabling/disabling a feature. Often, the hardest part is just finding what you are looking for. WordPress has a massive library of components to choose from. At this point, I have a basic block on the client (editor) side. Most of the complexity is handled on the server via PHP. If I could build this in an afternoon while attending to nervous cats, it should not be a stretch for more plugin authors to hop aboard this train. There are thousands of shortcodes and widgets that developers can convert to blocks with minimal code. I am not ready to release my breadcrumbs block into the wild just yet. There is still some fine-tuning left to do and a few advanced features to implement. Also, a breadcrumbs list is primarily needed in a site
Continue readingTag Archives: plugin
Best WordPress Download Manager Plugin? (2021)
[ad_1] If you offer file downloads on your WordPress website, you’re probably searching for an efficient way to manage, track, and control access to those files. Although WordPress makes it simple to add downloadable files to your pages/posts, it doesn’t give you enough features to properly manage your assets. Fortunately, dedicated download manager plugins exist to help you better organize and monitor the downloads. WP File Download is a powerful download manager plugin that offers drag-and-drop file management functionality. You can use it to upload files and categorize them for easy access from within your WordPress CMS. Great, but how does it work? In this WP File Download review, we’ll take a closer look at the plugin and discuss how to utilize its different features. Overall, I enjoyed using this plugin and found the user interface easy to navigate, as the download manager is integrated into the WordPress dashboard. Let’s dig in! WP File Download Review: A Quick Look at the Features WP File Download is a one-stop solution to organize and manage all your files. It lets you: Upload new files and delete existing ones Import files you uploaded via FTP Tag files for organization Drag and drop files from one place to another Restrict file access Search files by the date they were created View version history Download files remotely As a download manager, WP File Download allows you to: Access download statistics, including data for custom date ranges Receive email alerts when certain files are downloaded Add download buttons to your front-end content Additionally, WP File Download offers third-party builder integrations. You can integrate it with Elementor, Divi Builder, Themify Builder, and more. Article Continues Below Hands-On with WP File Download Now that you have an idea of WP File Download’s features, let’s go hands-on with the plugin. WP File Download Set Up First, install the plugin by going to your WordPress dashboard and choosing Plugins → Add New. Now upload the plugin’s zip file and click Install Now. Once you install and activate WP File Download, it will ensure the plugin is compatible with your server configuration. Next, you’ll be choosing a theme from a choice of four: Next, you’ll get options to customize the theme according to your preferences. You can make some tweaks like changing the color of your download link or skip this part and proceed ahead. WP File Download Settings Before we look at the plugin’s interface, let’s go through its settings. First, open settings by going to your WordPress dashboard and click WP File Download → Configuration. Doing so will redirect you to the Main Settings tab where you can modify various settings. This includes controlling what types of files could be accessed with the frontend viewer, tracking user downloads, and more. Other settings include: Search and Upload: This setting allows you to configure the search option to make it easier to locate files. You can also use it to generate the upload file shortcode. Themes: If you want to replace or modify your existing theme, use this setting option. Email Notification: Here, you can choose to receive email alerts when a new file is downloaded or added. Next, I’ll show you how the different features of WP File Download work. Managing Files in WP File Download To manage your files, you must add them to WP File Download. Article Continues Below First, click the big New button to make a new category. WP File Manager lets you create different categories so that it’s easy to retrieve files in the future. You can put files in different categories depending on your project. Click the Select Files button to upload new files or drag a set of files straight from the desktop to WP File Download’s interface. Once the files are uploaded, you’ll see them in the interface, along with some additional information (like date added). From this point onwards, organizing your files is as simple as drag and drop: The plugin also allows you to bulk manipulate files like on a desktop. Use Ctrl + click or click Select All, then drag all the files together or use the bulk options to move your files. Editing a File WP File Download gives files their own settings. You’ll see them in the collapsible sidebar on the right. The settings let you: Change the title Add a file description Modify the published status Change the file type View download statistics Assign file to multiple categories Upload new version of the file And more Editing a Category As for files, the plugin lets you edit more detailed settings for each individual category. You can: Change the category’s order Modify the visibility Use a shortcode to show the category on the front-end File Search in WP File Download Finding files is super easy with this plugin. You can search for files by their names and choose whether to search all categories or just a specific one: Offering the Download Option for Files Coming over to the exciting stuff, WP File Download makes it easy to display a download option for files on your website. Just grab the shortcode of any file and place it on any page to allow your visitors to download that file on their PC. Article Continues Below You can also make categories available for download. This can be done by generating the shortcode for an entire category and inserting it on a webpage. In this case, users will be able to download multiple files as a zip from that category. If you’re on WordPress 5.0 and have access to the Gutenberg block editor, things are much easier. With WP File Download, you get two blocks, one for individual files and the other is categories of files. ‘ Insert these blocks and voila, you’ve created downloads without leaving the editor. Using the Classic WordPress editor? No problem. WP File Download also offers buttons in that editor to make inserting file downloads just as simple: How Downloads Look at The Front-End After
Continue readingAdd Editor-Only Notes via the Markdown Comment Block WordPress Plugin – WP Tavern
[ad_1] Rich Tabor, the Senior Product Manager of WordPress Experience at GoDaddy, tweeted that he had an idea for a new block at the end of last week. Shortly after, the Markdown Comment Block plugin appeared on WordPress.org. The plugin is a one-off block. It allows users to enter notes directly into the post editor that will not appear on the front end of the site. Tabor said he came up with the idea when working on an article for building single-block plugins. There are few things I love more than simple plugins with a tight focus, performing a single function. Markdown Comment Block lands in this category. The plugin creates a new block that works nearly the same as a typical Paragraph block: Adding inline comments to a post. Users can change the text color, but they will not have access to the typical Rich Text controls. Those should be unnecessary anyway. As someone who does long-form writing almost exclusively in Markdown, the block’s use of the double percent-sign syntax for comments intrigued me. Technically, the Markdown spec does not support any sort of special characters for them. It handles HTML comments. However, those appear in the source code on the front end when the document is rendered. I have only seen the %% mark to denote comments in the Inspire Writer app for Windows. Tabor said he had seen the same in Ulysses. The feature also exists in the Iceberg editor for WordPress, which Tabor created alongside Jeffrey Carandang. The plugin also introduces the %% keyboard shortcut. Typing it directly in the editor will create a new Markdown Comment block. My primary use case for the plugin would be leaving notes for my later self. However, it could also be handy in users’ publishing flows. The block adds a “Resolve” button to the toolbar. Clicking it deletes the comment. Clicking the “Resolve” button will delete the block. The block itself will not likely offer a robust enough feature set for complex workflows. However, pairing it with a plugin like Post Descriptions could round out the experience for larger teams of writers and copyeditors. The Post Descriptions plugin allows users to add notes on the post level. These notes appear on the post-management screen, letting other team members know when to check an article. However, it may be hard to provide the full context of what issues need to be resolved before publishing. Markdown Comment Block adds an inline comments system, letting team members pass in-text notes. Theme developers should appreciate that the block uses CSS custom properties too, which makes it easy to overwrite its default style rules. In moments, I was able to make it match my theme: Custom color, font, and line-height styles. The –markdown-comment-font-size, –markdown-comment-line-height, and –markdown-comment-color variables are available for theme developers who want to add in support. The one complaint I had about the block is its title: “Comment.” It is easy to confuse it with the six other comment-related blocks already in the WordPress block list. And, there will only be more in upcoming versions. Giving it a title of “Markdown Comment” would better distinguish it from others. Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link
Continue readingIs It the Best WordPress Membership Plugin?
[ad_1] Considering using MemberMouse to create your own WordPress membership website? MemberMouse is a popular option known for its advanced features, but it has some very real pros and cons, so it’s not the right solution for everyone. In our hands-on MemberMouse review, we’ll help you understand MemberMouse’s advantages and limitations so that you can decide if it’s the right plugin for your needs. There’s a lot to cover, so let’s dig in! MemberMouse Review: A Quick Look at The Features To kick off our MemberMouse review, I want to quickly run over the various features that MemberMouse gives you access to. I won’t spend too long here because you can find all this on the MemberMouse website (and I’ll go hands-on with these features in the next section). But I think it’s useful to start here so that you know what MemberMouse does. To manage members, you can create unlimited free or paid membership levels or bundles (add-on levels). You’ll be able to easily manage your members and automatically assign members to certain WordPress roles as needed. Members can also manage their own memberships from the front-end, including support for prorated upgrades/downgrades. To restrict content, you get all the flexible options you’d expect from a membership plugin. You can: Restrict individual pieces of content (or parts of content) or bulk restrict content (like restricting all the posts in a certain category). Drip and schedule content to make it available at different times. To monetize your site, you can: Sell one-off or recurring memberships that give people varying levels of access. Sell products, such as an eBook. Use coupons and other discounting strategies. Offer payment plans for high-ticket items/memberships. Use one-click upsells (or downsells) to create smart funnels. Other useful features include: Custom notification emails (send to admins or users). SmartTags (shortcodes) to display dynamic content. Auto-lock shared accounts to prevent sharing. Finally, you also get a very detailed reporting and analytics area that helps you track engagement, churn rate, lifetime value, your most effective products/channels/payment gateways, and more. That’s just a brief look at the features – keep reading the full hands-on section of our MemberMouse review to see it in action. Hands-On With MemberMouse Now, let’s go hands-on with MemberMouse and I’ll show you what it’s like to use, as well as my thoughts on the features. For reference, I’m using the MemberMouse Advanced plan on my test site. Basic Setup Once you activate the MemberMouse plugin, you’ll get two new menu areas in your WordPress dashboard: MemberMouse – this is where you manage most settings, including your members. Reporting Suite – with the Advanced plan or up, this is where you can view detailed reports on your membership site. MemberMouse will also automatically create all the core pages that it needs. For example, it will create pages where people can purchase memberships, manage their accounts, reset their passwords, etc. There’s no setup wizard beyond that, which I think would be useful for helping people to get up and running. But you do get a bunch of training videos if you go to the main MemberMouse area: Creating Membership Levels To create a membership level, you go to MemberMouse → Product Settings. MemberMouse calls everything a “product”, whether you’re selling one-off or recurring membership access or an actual product (like an eBook). When you create a new product, you’ll get a popup where you can: Enter the price. Add a free or paid trial period. Set up a recurring subscription on a custom schedule. Require shipping (for physical products). You can also set up commission details if you’re offering an affiliate program (more on that later). Once you create your product, you can go to the Membership Levels tab to link it to a membership level. This opens another popup where you can: Assign members of this level a certain user role. Make it free or paid. If paid, you can associate it with the product that you created. Add expiration details. Customize the welcome email. Assign it to bundles. Choose entire WordPress categories to automatically protect for this level. You’ll get a similar interface when creating a bundle. A bundle acts like an “add-on”. Each member can only have one membership level at a time, but they can add unlimited bundles to their account. You can learn more about bundles here and the bundle creating interface looks a lot like adding a membership level, except that you can assign people who purchase a bundle to one of your existing membership levels: Restricting Content You already saw one option for restricting content in the previous section of our MemberMouse review- you can restrict access to entire categories when you create a membership level (or bundle). For more control, you’ll also get a MemberMouse Options area when editing an individual piece of content that lets you grant access to just that content based on a user’s membership level or bundle. This also lets you set up content dripping by only granting access on a certain day: To easily see your content dripping schedule, you can go to Product Settings → Drip Content Schedule: You can also partially restrict content using a shortcode. This is called a SmartTag – more on them later. Setting Up Payments and Checkouts MemberMouse supports the following payment gateways: Stripe Braintree Authorize.net PayPal ClickBank Coinbase You can set these up from MemberMouse → Payment Settings: If you go to the Checkout Settings area, you can also customize the checkout process, including adding your own custom fields to collect additional information from your customers: Setting Up Emails and Notifications One neat feature in MemberMouse is the ability to set up your own custom emails that are triggered by certain actions. You can do this by going to Developer Tools → Push Notifications and you can send these to yourself (for admin) or to your users). You can see the long list of event triggers in the screenshot below: Creating Coupons MemberMouse includes a built-in coupon
Continue readingCheckout X Review – Increase WooCommerce Sales With This Plugin
[ad_1] Checkout X is a Software as a Service (SaaS) platform which promises to help you improve sales on your WordPress WooCommerce store. It’s a bold claim that many others have made in the past, and no doubt one that many more will continue to make in the future. So what makes Checkout X so unique? Is it a worthwhile tool for improving your WooCommerce sales? There was only one way to find out. We recently installed it on one of our sites to test out. You’ll discover exactly what we thought in this in-depth Checkout X Review. Checkout X Review Right out of the box, there are two clear things to love about the Checkout X WooCommerce tool. The first is the price tag, or rather, the lack of one. The second is its unique approach. Checkout X Pricing The company offers a completely free version of their service with no strings attached that is perfect for new start-ups and gradually growing stores. This gives you access to all of Checkout X’s standard features (more of which later), plus the ability to generate up to €1,000 in upsells without paying a penny. For larger stores that generate more than €1,000 per month, the €39 Unlimited Plan may be better suited. This allows for unlimited upsells with a 5% per upsell charge applied after your first free €1,000. Article Continues Below Finally, the platinum plan for eCommerce stores generating more than €25,000 only charges a 2.5% upsell fee after the first €1,000. Both of the latter two plans also include some useful extra features, including access to live chat support and the removal of the Checkout X branding, the latter of which can be essential for maintaining a professional appearance. A Software as a Service Approach The other thing we like about Checkout X is that it does things differently. Many tools that promise to improve your store come in WooCommerce plugins which place an extra burden on your web hosting server. While a single plugin may not do too much damage, running an extensive library of heavy-duty plugins can slow down your website performance. One of the big advantages of Checkout X is that although you do have to install a plugin, it’s very lightweight and is only used to connect your site to the software, with all of the hard work being done on Checkout X’s servers. Naturally, this means you get all of the advantages of a powerful upselling tool with none of the drain on your resources. How to Use Checkout X Further adding to the platform’s appeal is just how easy it is to use. From the homepage, head straight to the sign-up page and register for an account. In our experience, this took less than a minute and couldn’t be more straightforward. Article Continues Below Once you’re in, hit “Next Step” and then choose whether you want to connect the platform to a WooCommerce site or a Shopify store. Naturally, being all about WordPress here at WPlift, we went with the WooCommerce option. This is just as well as Checkout X no longer works on Shopify sites due to a change in Shopify’s Terms and Conditions. Connecting Checkout X to Your WooCommerce Store On the next screen, enter the domain name of your WooCommerce store and click “Connect Checkout X.” You’ll need to approve access so that the tool can do what it needs to do, after which you’re ready to start putting it to work on your store. Setup Wizard The tool continues to impress by offering a simple four-step setup wizard to take the hard work out of using it. The four steps involve. 1. Install the Plugin This is no more difficult than clicking the “Open WordPress to Install the Plugin” link, which takes you directly to the Checkout X page on the WordPress plugins directory. Install it as you would any other plugin, and when you’re done, return to the wizard and click “Verify Installation.” 2. Add in Shipping Rates Next, use the simple tool to add your shipping rates and set up any shipping conditions you need. For example, you may choose different rates for international shipping, offer discounts or free shipping for orders over €100, or whatever works for you and your business. Article Continues Below 3. Add Payment Methods The third set-up option lets you choose from a list of different payment methods. All of the usual suspects are here, including Stripe, Klarna, PayPal, card payments, cash on delivery, and more, meaning you’re well set up for however you prefer to accept payments. 4. Preview and Publish Finally, when you’re happy with everything, you can preview and publish your Checkout X checkout experience and be ready to use it. Customizing Your Checkout X Checkout We think it’s a little confusing that Checkout X doesn’t include the checkout customization tab in their initial four-step set-up wizard. It would certainly make sense to include it just before publish and preview. Still, it’s not exactly hard to find and can be used to tweak the look and feel of your checkout experience so that it better reflects your brand. This tab lets you not only change the colors and add a logo but also add links to your privacy policy, T&Cs,[1] and other essentials. How Checkout X Improves Your WooCommerce Sales With the setup process out of the way, it’s time to explore the actual benefits of using Checkout X. On the whole, there are four main ways that CheckoutX helps to boost your WooCommerce sales. These include: 1. Abandoned Cart Recovery Adding some kind of abandoned cart tool to your website is a tried-and-trusted way of getting customers to come back, complete purchases, and boost your revenues. So it’s nice to see that Checkout X includes this as an option, saving you the hassle of installing an additional abandoned cart plugin. Using this tab lets you create the message you want to send to those who abandon their
Continue readingLearnDash Review 2021: The Best WordPress LMS Plugin?
[ad_1] Considering using LearnDash to create online course content with WordPress? LearnDash is a popular WordPress LMS plugin that works for both serious academic institutions, solo course creators, and everyone in between. It can help you create unlimited courses, add unlimited lessons and topics, quiz your learners, require assignments, etc. It also includes built-in features to charge one-time or recurring access fees, as well as advanced features like content dripping, course prerequisites, and more. Overall, it’s definitely one of the top options when it comes to WordPress LMS plugins. And in our hands-on LearnDash review, we’re going to take a detailed look to help you decide whether this plugin is right for you. Here’s how we’ll break up our LearnDash review: Thoughts on the types of users who can benefit from LearnDash A hands-on look at how LearnDash works Seven pros and two cons of LearnDash FAQs about LearnDash Final thoughts Let’s dig in… Who Is LearnDash For? LearnDash is a pretty flexible plugin that can benefit both academic institutions as well as businesses, solo creators, and more. On the academic front, LearnDash supports SCORM and Tin Can API (xAPI) for heavy-duty implementations. The ProPanel feature is also well-suited to academic institutions, as it offers quick assignment management, emailing features, and more detailed learner information/analytics. However, LearnDash can also be quite effective for more small-scale uses, too. For example, if you’re a solo course creator, LearnDash can help you create and deliver free or paid course content to your members, which makes it a great solution for monetizing your site with online courses. It can also be useful to businesses that want to provide training to employees. You can use LearnDash to set up employee onboarding or certification and track your employees’ progress to make sure they’ve completed all the relevant education materials. All in all, you have a lot of different ways to use LearnDash, which is why it’s one of the top WordPress LMS plugins. How LearnDash Works In this section, I’ll give you a general overview of what it’s like to create course content with LearnDash. Then, in the next section, I’ll single out some specific pros and cons. Basic Setup When you first activate LearnDash, it launches a “bootcamp” guide to show you all the actions you need to take to set up LearnDash. Each step includes a video and text article, and you can mark them as complete as you go through them: Overall, I think this is really convenient as it helps you make sure you’re not missing anything important. Creating a Course Your first step is to add a course. Each course can include unlimited lessons, topics, quizzes, assignments, etc. When you create a course, you’ll see the native WordPress block editor (for the course listing page content), as well as tabs across the top to configure additional options: Using the Course Builder The course builder is one of the most useful features in LearnDash as it lets you set up the structure of your lessons, topics, quizzes, and more using a simple drag-and-drop interface. Lessons are the main knowledge block, and then you can subdivide lessons into topics. You can use the buttons to add new lessons, topics, and quizzes and then drag-and-drop things to rearrange them as needed: Adding Lessons/Topic Content Once you’ve added the high-level structure of your course using the builder, you can open the editors for individual lessons/topics to add the content for those units. When you add a lesson/topic, you can add the content using the regular WordPress block editor. You’ll also get a useful Associated Content box in the sidebar to let you see how this unit matches up to other topics: In the Settings tab, you can also add a dedicated video that users must watch to complete the lesson, as well as configure other features like: Lesson materials (e.g. a PDF checklist) Assignments Lesson timers Adding a Quiz To add a quiz, you’ll get a dedicated quiz builder that works a lot like the course builder. You can add different questions and use drag-and-drop to change their order: If you go to the Settings tab, you can configure more advanced options like the passing score, retakes, question order randomization, a quiz certificate, quiz timer, and more. Setting Up Course Access Once you’ve added and organized your course content, the next step is to control access to your course, which you can do from the course’s settings. You have five options: Open – anyone can access the course. It’s public on your site. Free – the course is free, but people need to register and enroll for it. Buy Now – people pay a one-time fee for access. Recurring – people pay a recurring fee for access. Closed – you must manually add learners (or use a separate payment/membership plugin). You can also set up other restrictions, such as course prerequisites and access expirations: And that’s a general high-level look at what it’s like to create a course with LearnDash. Of course, I didn’t cover nearly every feature, because there are a lot of small options. But you should have a good idea of how it works. LearnDash Pros and Cons – 7 Pros and 2 Cons Now, let’s dig into some of the specific things that LearnDash does well…and some of its weak points. LearnDash Pros 1. User-Friendly Drag-and-Drop Builder I showed you the course builder in the tutorial, but it’s worth highlighting again because it’s such a useful feature. When you have a lot of lessons, topics, and quizzes, it can be hard to visualize how everything fits together and the progression that your students will follow as they move through the course. Having the course builder interface not only makes it easy to see how everything fits, but it also lets you easily make changes using drag-and-drop. It also just generally speeds up your course building because you can easily open the editors for all the course’s content from one spot.
Continue readingWooCommerce Advanced Product Labels Plugin Review/Tutorial (2021)
[ad_1] Have a WooCommerce store and wish to stand out from other merchants selling online? Try adding product labels. Product labels are a great way to showcase important details about your product, display special offers, and highlight ongoing sales in your store. And if you brighten them up with eye-catching colors and interesting graphics, they’ll look pretty dang appealing to anyone who visits your store. Today, we’re going to explore the capabilities of a plugin that makes it simple to add and manage product labels. Its name? Advanced Product Labels. WooCommerce Advanced Product Labels is a powerful WordPress plugin by BeRocket offering a range of attractive templates, label content options, advanced styling, and more. It’s designed to help you improve conversions by making products dynamic, engaging, and noticeable. It’s hard to describe the label effect with just text, so you can check out the plugin in action here and here to see what I mean. These are live examples of what Advanced Product Labels helps you create. The plugin has almost 30,000 installs and has been on the market since 4 years. In our hands-on WooCommerce Advanced Product Labels review, I’ll give you a detailed look at how this plugin works and how you can use it to add labels to your products. WooCommerce Advanced Product Labels Review: The Feature List In a nutshell, BeRocket Advanced Product Labels is a product personalization, and enhancement tool specifically built for WooCommerce and WordPress. It helps you create product labels that stand out on your site with features like: Article Continues Below 50+ ready-to-use templates, including customizable CSS templates, discount timer templates, and image templates Various content types and product conditions Label style options like font color and custom label borders Opacity & Gradient modification and shadow effect The tool also lets you choose the type of label you want to add to your products. For example, you can select the “In title” label to place the label to the right or left side of the product title. As BeRocket Advanced Product Label is a WooCommerce-specific tool, it plays nicely with the core WooCommerce installation. All you have to do is install it on your WordPress WooCommerce site, permit it to access your WooCommerce functionality via the WordPress API, and you’re good to go. Hands-On with BeRocket Advanced Product Labels Now, let’s dive in, and I’ll show you how the different features of WooCommerce Advanced Product Labels work. 1. Creating a New Label To get started, you open up your WordPress dashboard and click BeRocket → Advanced Labels. Your next step is to add a label. To do so, click the Add Label button beside the Advanced Labels heading at the top of your screen. BeRocket will now redirect you to an area where you’ll find tools to create a new custom label from scratch. First, you’ll enter a title for your label. You could write “Sale” or “Bestseller” depending on how you wish to promote your items. Then, you can choose from the 17 conditions available for your product label. At this point, you can decide if you want to mix conditions using “AND” or “OR” operators. When creating a Sale label for my product, I selected On Sale as the first condition and Page ID as the second condition. Then I used the AND operator to form a relation between the two. Next, go to Advanced Label Settings and pick a template you want to use for your label. As you do that, BeRocket will give you options to hide the label on mobile, tablet, and/or desktop. Check the box for the device you don’t want the label to appear on. You also get to select from 8 content types for the label: Article Continues Below Depending on the option you choose, the plugin will modify the text, background image, and image title of the label. Once done, click Save to create your new label. 2. Modifying a Label’s Style Not content with the existing style of your label? No problem – you can tweak it through the Style tab in Advanced Labels Settings. Let me show you how it’s done. First, I’ll create a new label, this time to showcase stock status. Then, I’ll click the Style tab and select a new background color. There’s a lot of options to play with. You can modify the font size, width, height, border radius, border width, and more for your label. Two options that stood out to me are Opacity and Shadow effects. Used correctly, these two effects can draw attention to your best deals. 3. Changing a Label’s Position Another neat option in the Advanced Product Labels tab is Position. This setting allows you to decide between keeping the label in its current position, putting it on the image, or placing it in the product title. Based on the option type of position you choose, BeRocket will let you adjust the label for the positions left, right, and center. You can also adjust the padding and margin of the label and rotate it as a part of an A/B test to see if a uniquely positioned label improves your conversions. 4. Using Tooltip BeRocket Advanced Product Labels also lets you create a tooltip. Also known as a hint or info tip, a tooltip is a graphical UI element that displays a text box containing information about an element when a user hovers over it. You can create a tooltip for any label to inform visitors about its function or convey what a particular abbreviation stands for. BeRocket allows you to enter the content you want to display and upload a custom tooltip image. Article Continues Below The plugin also lets you decide whether you want the tooltip to appear or close after a delay, whether it should have a dark, light, or translucent style, and more. Further, you can adjust the tooltip for positions top, bottom, left, and right. Place it wherever you think your visitors are most likely to
Continue readingExtendify Adopts EditorsKit, Increasing Its Block Plugin Collection – WordPress Tavern
[ad_1] Extendify has been scooping up some successful block-related plugins in recent months. It acquired the Redux Framework in November 2020 and followed it up with a purchase of Editor Plus and Gutenberg Hub in December. Its latest pickup? EditorsKit. This ownership change was an adoption rather than an acquisition. The company is compensating Jeffrey Carandang, EditorsKit’s creator, for helping during the transition. “The main motivation was to ensure that EditorsKit has a good home,” said Extendify co-founder Chris Lubkert. “Jeffrey had taken a full-time role with 10up, and the plugin hasn’t seen any updates in 9 months. So we are both excited about Extendify building on what Jeffrey has built and continuing to serve the user base.” EditorsKit is a playground of extensions on top of the existing blocks. From visibility logic to text formatting to extra block options, it has a little bit of everything. Carandang has often launched features long before something similar has landed in WordPress. It has grown to over 20,000 active installs since he first submitted it to the plugin directory. Taking on a new role with 10up as a web engineer left him little time to devote to the plugin. “My time was occupied by my full-time work and adjusting through my shifts, personal stuff, and with what’s happening in the world due to lockdowns; and the covid virus,” he wrote in his own farewell post. “I hate to admit it but I think I’ve neglected my role in the EditorsKit plugin/community that I’ve built for the past couple of years. With this, my sincere apology to the plugin users and the whole community.” Changes to EditorsKit When a plugin changes owners, users sometimes must brace themselves for changes. Right now, EditorsKit is the same plugin it has always been. However, the Extendify team has introduced some additions. The first is a part of what will eventually be a commercial aspect of the plugin: the Extendify Library. The team added this feature to both the Redux and Editor Plus plugins earlier this year. EditorsKit users will see a new “Library” button at the top of the editor. Once they click it, it opens an overlay for importing patterns and templates from Extendify’s collection. Popup library for importing Extendify patterns and templates. The amount of imports allowed is limited to three without signing up. “EditorsKit users have access to the same library of patterns and templates and can import three patterns and/or templates,” said Lubkert. “Anyone who signs up for the beta program will then receive unlimited imports during the beta period. We expect this to continue for a few more weeks.” Essentially, the commercial aspect of EditorsKit, Editor Plus, and Redux will be a shared library from the Extendify team. Users of any one of the plugins can continue using their preferred plugin with the option of importing patterns and templates. Lubkert said they still have no plans of rolling all of the plugins into one “super plugin,” keeping them each as a separate project. “It makes sense for us to invest our energy into a single library and creating the best experience possible for our users,” he said. The second change the team has implemented is making the EditorsKit Typography add-on a free download. The plugin allows users to select from a list of hand-picked Google Fonts and use them anywhere. It also has a customizable set of default font combinations. It makes sense to drop the commercial aspect of this add-on. WordPress is already starting to provide theme authors with the tools for typography options at the block level. EditorsKit Typography may be the better of the two right now, but the average user will not need it as the core platform continues to improve. ShareABlock and Other Projects The handover includes Carandang’s related sites. ShareABlock, CopyGlphys, and CopyGradients are all tools for helping WordPress users build on top of the block system. The Extendify team plans on keeping them alive. Carandang launched ShareABlock in December 2019. Essentially, it was a block patterns directory. Only, block patterns were merely an idea in the bowels of the Gutenberg GitHub repository at the time. The upcoming pattern directory, expected to officially open next month, was not even a blip on most people’s radar. ShareABlock homepage with downloadable “patterns.” ShareABlock has had time to mature. Its designs are more modern than the current offering from the pattern directory. The downside is the reliance on EditorsKit to import them via a JSON file instead of copy-paste block HTML code. With a few tweaks, it could be a serious contender as an alternative directory. If the WordPress development team follows through with a ticket I opened for allowing third-party vendors to hook into the system, it would be easy to do. “In general, we don’t see ourselves competing with the pattern directory (or anything else in core Gutenberg),” said Lubkert. “We’d like to solve unmet needs for the community and do so in a way that is complementary to core.” The team already has the patterns in place. Hooking in its existing library would be more of a value-add. The official directory is limited to what can be done with core block options. Extendify would have the wiggle room for adding designs built with its more robust EditorsKit and Editor Plus toolsets. Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link
Continue readingIs It OK To Provide WordPress Admin Credentials to Plugin Support Staff? – WordPress Tavern
[ad_1] No. Nada. Nah. Nope. That’s a negative. Under no circumstances. My mama didn’t raise no fool. Heck naw. Not on your life. And, the other thousands of ways to tell anyone asking for site credentials to bugger off, even plugin support staff of a “trusted” WordPress development company. That is my way of saying that I do not trust anyone. Neither should you. However, there are cases where it is necessary to provide admin permissions to a plugin’s support staff. Today’s installment of the Ask the Bartender series comes courtesy of a reader named Niko. Because the entire text is over 1,000 words, I will simply link to the transcript via a .txt file for those who want to read it in full. Here in the post, I will stick to the vital bits. Or at least the parts that I want to address. One of Niko’s Facebook group members kicked the discussion off. ‘Is it okay to send FTP details for a plugin developer to troubleshoot the issue we are having with WooCommerce. We have already provided WordPress Admin credentials.’ This is pretty normal practice in the WordPress world, right? Plugin developers helping out on issues, and if they can’t replicate an issue, they need the access so they can check if it is a plugin issue or a server issue and fix things? Over the years, I have seen this become more of a common practice. However, it is not a practice that I recommend from either the user or developer end. Any site owner should ask whether they trust the person to whom they are giving credentials. If the answer to that question is no, you have the answer to the first question. In over a decade of running a theme and plugin shop, I never needed admin or FTP access to deal with a support question. It did not matter if it was a large and complex plugin or a small one. Because I was the sole person at the company, I also personally answered hundreds of thousands of support questions over the years. Still, not once did I log into a user’s site to help them. That always seemed like a liability issue for me, but I also used such scenarios as teaching moments about trust and security. Users sometimes provided credentials to me without me asking. Often they posted them in plain text in forums, email, or Slack (also, you should never do that). If on-site code needed changing, my users performed the task themselves or installed a bug-free version of the theme/plugin I handed over. If they did not know how to perform a task via the admin, FTP, or otherwise, I took the time to teach them. Yes, that required more energy on both ends, but I believe we were the better for it. More than once, those moments led some users down the path of becoming developers themselves, or it was at least a tiny stepping stone for them. I remain friends with many of them today and am proud that they started with my little solo WordPress shop. Some cases were rougher than others. Many times, I would replicate their setup (plugins, theme, etc.) on my machine. The majority of the time, this led me to the solution — I was using __doing_it_wrong() long before WordPress introduced the idea. In the long run, I was able to pass countless bug fixes upstream to other developers. I made a lot of developer friends this way too. I have no doubts that the road I traveled was the longer of the two. There were times when I spent an hour, two, or even more addressing one user’s needs. Popping into some of their WordPress admins would have been a quicker course. However, my theme and plugin users never needed to worry about whether they trusted me enough to provide that level of access. Plus, I had no chance of accidentally breaking their site by making custom changes. Are there times when a plugin’s support staff really needs access? Probably. The original question was regarding WooCommerce. It is one of the most technically advanced plugins in existence for WordPress. Replicating a user’s setup off-site for it is trickier than most others. There may be rare times when you need to provide some access, but you should never trust anyone. The second part of Niko’s question revolves around the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and user data. It is a vital part of dealing with those times when you decide to hand over the keys to your website. Alright so here comes the issue after we think about GDPR. If this developer happens to be outside the EU, then you would need to anonymize customer data and make an NDA agreement with that exact dev or company that is behind the plugin so they can come around and fix things. I will preface this with the usual I am not a lawyer. However, protecting user data is always a legal and ethical priority on any site you run, regardless of what jurisdiction you fall under. In those — again, rare — cases where you need to provide access to your WordPress admin, there are steps you could take to better protect your site and its data. Regardless of the trustworthiness of a developer or a support staff member, there is always one rule of thumb when dealing with website security: trust no one and trust nothing. The first step should always be having a backup system in place. On the off chance that the support staff breaks something, you will want to revert the site back to its previous state. Never provide complete admin-level access. I recommend installing and activating a role and capability management plugin. This will allow you to create a custom role for support help and limit the areas of the site they have access to. You would then create a user account for them with this
Continue readingToolbelt Tidies WordPress Plugin and Theme Admin Notifications – WordPress Tavern
[ad_1] It’s a tale as old as, well, WordPress. Ben Gillbanks noticed a conversation where someone thought that admin notices were getting out of hand. Enter another developer’s attempt to address this problem. With a few code additions to his Toolbelt plugin, he had a working solution to stop the madness: the Tidy Notifications module. Despite the early promise of the WP Notify project last year, it still feels like we are no closer to addressing the overuse of the current admin notice system in WordPress. In reality, it is not so much a system as a hook that developers can use for literally anything. It is the Wild West of the WordPress admin. No rules. No order. And no proper API for standardizing how notices work. WP Notify still exists on GitHub and continues to move along at its own pace, but there is no guarantee that it will ever land in the core platform. Sometimes, the best thing a developer can do is solve the existing problem and hope that WordPress follows along down the road with a better solution. I am already tidying admin notifications with Toolbelt on my development install. My primary use case is to hide the non-dismissible notice from the Gutenberg plugin that I have a Full Site Editing theme installed — is there not a guideline against such notices? I did not suddenly forget that I was using such a theme between the 999th and 1,000th time the reminder appeared on every admin screen of my installation. Notifications expand when clicking on the bell icon in the toolbar. The Tidy Notifications system in Toolbelt neatly tucks all admin notices under a bell icon in the admin toolbar. It also displays the number of notifications. It makes the WordPress admin so clutter-free that I do not know how I have lived without it before. I cannot imagine going back. The only problem with Toolbelt’s solution is that there is no way to distinguish between essential notices and those that should be tucked away. WordPress letting you know that your post was successfully updated is an important notice that should not be hidden. However, a plugin author drumming up five-star reviews, yeah, that should not be front and center. Having two systems would be beneficial. The existing admin_notices hook in WordPress should be used for letting users know the outcome of their actions or actions that they should take. The post editor, which does not use page reloads or make the hook available, has replaced this with the snackbar popup system. These necessary notices have their place. However, WordPress has no built-in system for non-essential notices. This leaves plugin and theme authors with two options: bundle an entirely custom notification apparatus with each extension or just use the admin_notices hook. The latter is the more efficient use of developer resources. Of course, we have had this conversation before. Just shy of a year ago, I wrote a post titled Are Plugin Authors to Blame for the Poor Admin Notices Experience? In the comments, WordPress project lead Matt Mullenweg posited that the solution to unwanted notifications is not to build an inbox, comparing WordPress to cell phones. He said that app store guidelines were likely more impactful to user happiness. In general, I agree with that concept. Setting down a few directory UI and UX rules would not hurt. Given the more recent push to loosen guidelines for the theme directory, that does not seem to be in the cards. Admin notices were not one of the guardrails, the safety net of “must-haves” from the Themes Team. The admin notice spam WordPress users see today most commonly comes from plugins and not themes. Why? It is not because theme authors care more about user happiness levels. It is because the theme review guidelines over the years have been strict. Anything too flamboyant gets the hammer. The WordPress Themes Team even has a custom guideline-friendly, drop-in class that themers can use. The plugin and theme directories have taken far different stances on admin notices, and it shows. When the Themes Team moves to minimal checks, there may not be anything to stop themers from competing for the most obnoxious admin notice award. Game on, plugin authors. “Unwanted” notifications may even be the wrong terminology. Often, they are “unwanted right now.” Sometimes, folks might want to read a message — just later. I am still holding out hope that we will have a notifications/messages inbox in WordPress one day. One that is entirely controlled by the user. Until then, I may just stick with the Tidy Notifications module in Toolbelt. There are many other handy components in it too. Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link
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