[ad_1] Marketing consultant Bridget Willard announced the first commercial content pack for her Launch With Words project. Last week, she released a set of 12 blog posts for roofing contractors, but there are more on the way for industry-specific content. In January, alongside Ronald Huereca of MediaRon, Willard launched the Launch With Words plugin. The initial project supported a single “starter pack” of draft blog posts to prompt website owners to publish something new each month to build their brand. The plugin itself is primarily an importer. For the developer crowd, Huereca has a post that covers the technical details of the project. It is well worth a read to see how he approached building the plugin. The idea was unique. Willard had written starter content for both the default Twenty Nineteen and Twenty Twenty WordPress themes. She then asked why no one was doing the same for post content. Thus, a new product was born. The roofing content pack carries a price tag of $497. Companies can publish the posts directly on their sites or customize the content for their locale. The imported content is a set of 12 blog posts specific to the roofing industry, each set as a draft that users can publish on their own schedule. Each is around 500+ words and includes headings, links, and quotes. Preview of a daft post. “So many roofing contractors don’t address the frequently asked questions from property owners,” said Willard. “These blog posts address 12. Having content that is turnkey ready allows them to have more content to share on social media as well as helping their SEO efforts.” She has been writing about the construction industry for over 20 years, so this was an easy jumping-in point. The challenge was creating this first pack while also publishing two new books and wrangling client work. With things settling down a bit, she thinks monthly pack releases are a more realistic target. Future Content and Starter Packs Willard is already working on a new content pack that focuses on general contractors, which she may split into two products between residential and commercial. She plans to have at least one ready by the end of the month. The long-term goal is to hire other writers to cover industries where she has less knowledge. First, she needs a few more sales to bring others on board. She may also create some industry-specific blogging prompts similar to the starter pack that is available for free. These would also come at a lower price point of around $97. “The starter pack (blog prompts) aren’t mutually exclusive with the premium packs,” said Willard. “They can be used together. Ideally, they should be used together. Because the content packs are JSON files, and the posts are imported as drafts, they can be written (prompts) or localized (premium) and scheduled. It’s the best of both worlds.” Writing, Writing, and More Writing “Writing is the way I can teach and solidify my legacy,” said Willard. “It’s super important for me to create a life worth living. Sadly, I found this out after a mental health emergency in February of 2020.” Her most recent book is The Only Online Marketing Book You Need for Your Nonprofit, co-authored by Warren Laine-Naida. Adrian Tobey, the founder of Groundhogg.io, also contributed an extra chapter. “You can’t create unless you consume,” said Willard when asked how she kept up her pace and the creative juices flowing. “I prioritize reading fiction and nonfiction, watching documentaries, taking walks in my neighborhood, going to a museum or a park alone to think and reflect and spend time with my friends laughing and playing card games. “The best thing for a writer to do is to write. Don’t worry about whether other people already talked about your subject. Don’t worry about what people will say. This is why we love WordPress. Start publishing.” Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link
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From eCommerce Integration to Location-Based Controls, Block Visibility Pro Expands Upon Its Free Version – WP Tavern
[ad_1] It has been several months since I last dived into Nick Diego’s Block Visibility plugin, and it is now one year since the initial release. Recently moved on from his past job into the WordPress product space, he has been building one of the best context-based plugins for showing or hiding content. In January, Diego touted some of the ideas he had for a yet-to-be-released Block Visibility Pro. He was already fulfilling user needs, but there was so much left to be explored. “As Block Visibility grows, there will be advanced and/or niche functionality that will be useful for certain users,” he said at the time. “Think integrations with other third-party plugins. There will always be a free version of the plugin but some of these additional features will ultimately be provided by a premium (paid) add-on called Block Visibility Pro.” Diego quietly released the pro add-on in June, which does not take away from the free version. Everything in it is a pure value-add and helps specific sets of users. Last week, he released Block Visibility Pro 1.1.0, and I managed to get a test copy to play around with. In short, I am more impressed than I was when I first covered the free version in January. Pro Additions Early versions of the free plugin had visibility controls for all visitors, user roles, and start-and-stop dates. Since then, Diego has beefed up the options to include screen size, logged-in status, and user accounts. It also integrates with Advanced Custom Fields and WP Fusion. That is more than many other content-visibility solutions will offer before needing to upgrade to a commercial or pro version. The current pro version includes conditional controls for the following: Location (Query and Post) Time-based and day of week WooCommerce Easy Digital Downloads Browser and Device URL Path Referral Source The Location controls are what I have found myself tinkering with the most. They are handy at the moment but will offer more power when used in conjunction with WordPress’s upcoming site editor. Location, query-based visibility controls. The Location controls are essentially query-based visibility options. Users can choose to show or hide blocks based on post type, taxonomy, and more. Everything from individual post attributes to the archive type is available. Users can also create multiple rule sets, combining various location-based options. For shop owners, the WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads integrations are extensive. Users can display blocks based on shopping cart content, customer metrics, and product metrics. This could come in handy for promotions, coupons, and similar features. One of my favorite features, which is also included in the free version, is a popup option for selecting which visibility settings should appear in the sidebar. Toggling visibility controls in the Visibility tab. This feature reduces the footprint of the plugin’s Visibility tab in the block sidebar panel while giving users control over which options they would like to use. It looks similar to a current proposal for the Gutenberg plugin that would allow users to toggle specific controls: Proposal for toggling block typography controls. The differences between the two are in the location of the “ellipsis” button to open the popup. The Gutenberg proposal has it at the top of the tab. Block Visibility adds it as a control within its Visibility tab. However, the concept is the same, and the plugin provides a real-world test of how the feature could work. Thus far, I am happy with the result. It allows me to hide options that I would rarely use. I am eager for something similar to eventually work its way into core WordPress. From Developer to Developer If I am being honest, I am a bit envious of the work Diego has done. Many do not know this, but I also built a similar solution to Block Visibility in 2019. It was before I joined the staff here at WP Tavern. Before seeing that project mature, I handed it over as part of a larger IP sale. I point this out because I understand the complexities of building a solution that works from a technical standpoint while also being user-friendly. It is not easy, but Block Visibility seems to hit the right balance. And I do not say this often, but Diego’s work far exceeds anything I had built or even had in the pipeline. It is on another level, so a part of me is glad that he and I are not competing in this space. At the same time, I wish I could go back and implement some of these ideas on my former project. Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link
Continue readingFull Page Patterns Are Still the Missing Piece of Block WordPress Theme Development – WP Tavern
[ad_1] It was the early days of the Gutenberg project. Many on the Theme Review Team and those in design circles were trying to wrap their heads around this new concept called blocks. In particular, we wanted to know how it could be applied to theme development. There were many discussions on the pros and cons of the early editor. Overall, there was a bit of cautious excitement in the air, our optimism tempered by a buggy version of alpha-level software. The block system could potentially solve one of the biggest hurdles of theme development: inserting default/demo content for a full page into the editor. I cannot remember who initially explained the idea, but it was a lightbulb moment for many at the time. The general concept was pre-building a custom homepage or any page design that users could choose visually. It would all be done through a standardized block system, and we would no longer need to rely on piecemeal theme options, third-party plugins, or attempt to work around the review team’s “do not create content” guideline. No one really knew how this would work in practice, but we understood the theory of how it would make the life of a theme developer much simpler. In October 2019, Automattic developer Jorge Bernal opened a ticket titled Starter Page Templates. His team was working on a template selector for mobile apps, and the WordPress.com Editing Toolkit already had the feature. The goal was to bring it to the core platform, allowing third-party theme designs to build on top of it. Starter page templates idea initially shared in the ticket. Because the term “template” is overused in the WordPress space, I will refer to these as “page patterns.” This naming convention was coined by Noah Allen, a software engineer for Automattic, in the ticket. It makes sense because we are actually talking about a page’s content rather than the wrapping template. The Genesis Blocks plugin is one of the best ways to understand the page pattern concept. It has a Layouts button at the top of the editor that, when clicked, creates an overlay of designs to choose from. Selecting a full-page layout from Genesis Blocks. These designs are split between sections and layouts. Sections are the same thing as patterns in core WordPress: small, reusable pieces of starter content. Layouts are full-page starting points for users to create various types of pages. The StudioPress/Genesis team was not the first to market this concept. However, they have created a well-rounded user experience on top of the WordPress editor. You will find similar experiences via GoDaddy’s onboarding process for its managed hosting service. The Redux Framework allows much the same, and Editor Plus offers templates and patterns from the Extendify library. That initial excitement has waned a bit. It felt like that early promise was a dream that would never be a reality. Theme authors, especially in the commercial space, have long offered home-brewed solutions for the one-click insertion of full-page content. Whether via a ThemeForest project or a popular theme on WordPress.org, there are endless examples of everyone solving the same problem. One might even argue that these custom inserters are so ingrained into theme agency systems that anything WordPress offers at this point will not appeal to those who have already brought their solutions to market. Where the core platform has failed to meet user demands, our development community has stepped up. Some of you may be thinking that the current block patterns system works for this. Yes, and no. Theme authors could shoehorn full-page designs into it, but the user experience is lacking compared to third-party solutions. Patterns today are one of the best theming tools available, but they fall short of what is needed to see this thing through. The foundation of this feature exists via the Patterns API. From the theme author’s perspective, they merely need a method for flagging a pattern as a full-page layout, separate from the others. However, the UI and UX flow need an overhaul. The flyout panel for the current inserter does not cut it, especially on large screens. A fullscreen overlay has become the de facto standard among other systems. Users should also have another option between selecting from an existing page pattern or starting empty upon creation. “I think this would be so useful to have in the core,” wrote Ana Segota of Anariel Design in a recent comment on the ticket. “I created 2 FSE themes so far and also our latest premium theme is made with block patterns and this is exactly what I thought and talked with few people about. It would be great when a user opens a new page, to chose design/page patterns however we called it and it starts editing it right away. Most of the users just want to add a page, choose a layout and start adding their content.” Of course, this is not a revelation to the average theme author who works with end-users daily. Inserting or importing entire page designs into WordPress is one of the most common requests. WordPress is almost there with its current patterns system. We just need to take it to the next level. Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link
Continue readingTermly Acquires GDPR/CCPA Cookie Consent Banner, Turns Free Plugin Into a Commercial SaaS Product – WP Tavern
[ad_1] Company A sells its plugin. Company B picks it up and moves forward with an overhauled version that looks and feels much different than the original. Users are outraged by the changes. It seems to be a repeating theme in 2021, almost as a rule rather than an exception. Last month, Termly announced its acquisition of the GDPR/CCPA Cookie Consent Banner plugin. The plugin was a simple tool for adding and styling a consent banner for the front end. It is now a SaaS (Software as a Service) product that requires a Termly account to operate. According to the team’s blog post, such changes were necessary. “Termly’s products, including the cookie consent management platform, are designed to cover the EU GDPR, the ePrivacy Directive, UK GDPR, and the CCPA. These laws require more than just a cookie consent banner to be compliant. Termly can help you build a privacy policy, create a Data Subject Access Request form, and comply with other privacy law requirements.” In the past couple of weeks, users have taken to the WordPress.org review system, handing out 21 of the plugin’s 29 total one-star ratings. The project has over 200,000 users, so more should be expected if the general consensus is that this was a poor move by the company. One of the complaints from users is the commercialization of the plugin. In the past, it was completely free to use. While there is still a free tier, users are limited to a mere 100 monthly unique visitors on a single domain. After hitting that limit, the banner will stop collecting consent records. The next level up costs $15 per month if paid annually. New pricing options for the Termly service. As Pattaya Web Services pointed out via Twitter, “GDPR/CCPA Cookie Consent Banner for #Wordpress has been purchased by #Termly and will now cost most website owners $180 per year.” Termly must get a return on its investment. The company has developers to pay, and they have families to feed. But, I suspect the average user will not warm up to the so-limiting-that-it-is-free-in-name-only introduction level. Having to pay for features that have been free for years will not sit well with many. Of course, there is always the option of using the old version, but Termly has no plans of maintaining it or ensuring that it meets compliance. The only alternative for small site owners who cannot afford to pay is to opt for another solution. “I guess GDPR Cookie Consent banner, now operated by @Termly_io didn’t learn anything from [the] fiasco with WP User Avatar plugin reported by @wptavern earlier this year,” wrote user Gennady Kurushin on Twitter. I believe they did. There are differences, and Termly’s handling of this showed a willingness to be transparent. And, I cannot stress this enough: the new plugin is not an entirely different one unrelated to its core purpose. It was overhauled and turned into a SaaS product. At the end of the day, it is still a cookie consent management plugin — just different and costs a lot more for most users. Unlike Dark Mode and ProfilePress, Termly did not make the changes in the dead of night. At least the company was upfront about everything. The team included an announcement in a point release two weeks before sending out the overhauled version. It disabled automatic updates so that users would not accidentally upgrade without being aware of what was coming. It even published a public blog post detailing what was happening. Prior notice of upcoming changes in 3.0 and disabled auto-updates. If anything, Termly took just about all the necessary steps it could have taken to prepare its user base. If a “right” way existed for a complete and utter makeover of a plugin, the company did as much. That level of honesty is a bit more than we have seen in the past. The changes may still leave a bitter taste in the mouths of many users, but Termly should at least get a few points for making them in the light of day. The result may be the same: fundamental changes in how the plugin operates, but users had a chance to ditch it or continue using the old version before anything went into effect. For some users, it may not be much, but that’s worth something. I won’t be breaking out my pitchfork today, but I do not use the plugin. As more and more users upgrade to 3.0+ and realize they are essentially on the line for $180 per year, the reviews could get ugly. Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link
Continue readingOpen Survey for WordPress Theme Authors on JSON Files and Block Themes – WP Tavern
[ad_1] WordPress 5.8 introduced an opt-in system for themes to configure block settings, styles, templates, and more. It is done through a new theme.json file that authors can put at the root of their theme folders. Anne McCarthy, the lead of the FSE Outreach Program, announced a survey earlier today to get feedback from developers on this feature. “Since this new mechanism is an early step towards a comprehensive style system for the future of WordPress, it’s important to hear from everyone who is currently using theme.json to learn more about how folks are using this tool and what might make sense to include in Core going forward,” she wrote in the announcement. The survey is open to all theme authors who have used theme.json, giving them a chance to put in some early feedback and help steer the ship going forward. Because I have worked extensively with this system over the past few months, I had a few things to say. Plus, I just like participating in WordPress-related surveys. I also decided it would be an opportunity to share some of my unfiltered thoughts from a development perspective on the current state of theme.json. What follows are my responses to the survey’s questions — well, the tidied-up version. Note: This is a developer-centric post that might not universally appeal to all of our readers. I have attempted to explain some things in user-friendly terminology, but some prerequisite knowledge of theme development may be necessary. Experience The first question of the survey is pretty cut-and-dry. It asks what your experience is with building block themes or using theme.json. It provides four choices (and an “other” option): I have built and launched block themes. I have experimented with building block themes. I have explored using theme.json with a classic theme. I have used a block theme, but I have not built one yet. I chose the first option because I have already built two block themes for family and friends. These were simple personal sites that I already maintain for free — honestly, I need to start charging. I am also working on a theme that I hope to release publicly. How It Started and How It’s Going The second question asks how one got started with block themes and theme.json. The choices are between forking an existing theme, using the Empty Theme, or starting from scratch. Again, this is one of those things where I have experimented with each direction, but I cannot remember the exact starting point. The bulk of my work has come from forking a theme that I last worked on in 2019. I plan to release this as a new theme for free at some point. I am mostly waiting on the following: Navigation block development to settle down The Post Author block to be split into smaller blocks A robust set of comment-related blocks Post Featured Image block to have a size option I think I could realistically release a use-at-your-own-risk beta version of my theme today if those items were addressed. Templates and Template Parts The survey asked which templates and template parts themers always include in their block-based themes. There was a freeform comment field — steps upon soapbox… I have a love/hate relationship with block templates at the moment. The static nature of HTML templates reminds me of simpler times when theme development was less complicated. However, this also presents a problem in a dynamic system. I cannot remember the last time I have built a traditional, PHP-based theme with more than one top-level template: index.php. The dynamic pieces have always been the guts of the thing, which are template parts. With PHP, it is easy to set some variable or use a function call to contextually load the templates parts necessary for whichever page a visitor is currently viewing on a site. The block template system does not work like that. It essentially forces developers into breaking the Don’t Repeat Yourself (DRY) principle. For example, if a designer wanted to display a different header template part for pages and posts, they would only need to create a header-page.php or header-post.php template in traditional themes. However, because the block template system is different, they must now create two top-level templates, single.html (post) and page.html, to accomplish the same thing. This is a “bad thing” because theme authors must duplicate all the other code in each of the top-level templates. There is no way to contextually load different template parts. To answer the question: I am using almost all of the possible top-level templates out of necessity. I also answered the second part of the question and listed my most commonly used template parts (broken down by hierarchy): Header Content– Loop– Sidebar Footer The content-*.html and loop-*.html template parts are those with the most variations. Defining Colors The next section of the survey asks how theme authors define their color palette slugs in theme.json. Believe it or not, naming colors may be the most controversial topic in the theming world in years. The only two things generally agreed upon are “background” and “foreground” colors. Morten Rand-Hendriksen opened a ticket in 2018 for standardizing a theme color naming scheme. It was not the first discussion and has not been the last. The problem it was meant to address was the slugs for colors in the system, which is how themes define their palettes. Once a user makes use of a preset color, the slug is hardcoded into their content. Switch to another theme with different slugs, and the old colors disappear and do not automatically change to the new theme’s colors. I use semantic names that follow something that closely resembles the Tailwind CSS framework’s shading system. Instead of red-medium (descriptive), I would use primary-500 (semantic), for example. A semantic approach would allow theme authors to define a set of colors that are updated each time a user switches themes. Of course, there are other schools of thought, and even everyone who prefers
Continue readingPublishPress Adopts Organize Series Plugin – WP Tavern
[ad_1] PublishPress, makers of the PublishPress and PublishPress Blocks plugins, have adopted the Organize Series plugin from Darren Ethier. Organize Series is a 15-year-old plugin for organizing and displaying posts in a series, useful for novel writers, educators, magazine sites, and anyone breaking their longer content up into a series. image credit: PublishPress PublishPress is also adopting seven extensions for the plugin that add features like custom post type support, shortcodes, the ability to add a post to multiple series, bulk publishing, and more. Ethier, who works as an engineer at Automattic, said he began losing interest in maintaining the plugin and knew it was time to search for a new owner. “Most of you have noticed that I haven’t been actively contributing to Organize Series or it’s extensions for some time now and it’s been bugging me,” he said. “I’ve been gradually losing interest in maintaining the plugin as I’ve expanded my developer horizons and as a result, I’ve struggled with making the time to work on it.” Ethier connected with PublishPress by describing his situation in a post on the Post Status community and agreed to transfer his plugin and extensions in exchange for a donation to a charity. “Darren asked us to make a charitable donation as part of the handover,” PublishPress founder Steve Burge said. “We chose the American Journalism Project. Over 2,100 communities in the U.S. have lost their local newspaper since 2004. The AJP is trying to reverse that trend. It is a non-profit that is investing in local news. Their goal is to help grow newsrooms that hold the powerful accountable, combat disinformation, and deepen civic participation.” Burge assured current users that the free version of Organize Series will remain free on WordPress.org with all of its current features and some improvements. The company will also keep the extensions freely available on GitHub but Burge said they plan to release a commercial version with updated versions of the extensions. With the adoption of Organize Series, PublishPress now has nine plugins available in its niche collection of publishing extensions as part of its mission to “help WordPress publishers succeed.” In the near future, Organize Series’ website content will be transferred over and the company will be changing the plugin’s name to “PublishPress Series.” Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link
Continue readingA Curated List of RSS Feeds for Software Engineering Blogs – WP Tavern
[ad_1] In one of the most apropos uses of a .blog domain, Refined.blog is a new website that promotes personal blogging with a curated list of software engineering blogs. It’s a simple site with an index of blogs, their Hacker News scores, tags, and a link to each blog’s RSS feed. The search function is very fast and applies to all columns in the index (with the exception of the feed URL). Columns can be ordered alphabetically, by tag, or by HN points. “Experience is gold,” Refined.blog creator Musa Ünal wrote in the site’s introduction. “There are many different social media platforms on the internet but we need personal blogs again. It’s hard to find blogs so let’s create this blog list together!” It’s true – discovering new blogs isn’t easy. If you’re not following the right people on Twitter or don’t happen to be around when a person links to their posts on social media, then you are usually out of luck. Personal blogs are often not very well optimized for search and can get lost in the haystack. Google Search doesn’t provide a way to narrow results to personal blogs. The Wiby search engine is about the closest you can get for searching these types of websites, although it seems to be limited to older style pages that are based on one subject of interest. Wiby uses Microsoft Bing’s search results combined with Wiby.me results without sending your IP and user agent to Microsoft. Wiby’s about page explains the problem that sites like Refined.blog are aiming solve: In the early days of the web, pages were made primarily by hobbyists, academics, and computer savvy people about subjects they were personally interested in. Later on, the web became saturated with commercial pages that overcrowded everything else. All the personalized websites are hidden among a pile of commercial pages. Google isn’t great at finding them, its focus is on finding answers to technical questions, and it works well; but finding things you didn’t know you wanted to know, which was the real joy of web surfing, no longer happens. In addition, many pages today are created using bloated scripts that add slick cosmetic features in order to mask the lack of content available on them. Those pages contribute to the blandness of today’s web. The Wiby search engine is building a web of pages as it was in the earlier days of the internet. Refined.blog brings more exposure to some of these single-person curated websites. Its creator, Musa Ünal, is considering branching out from an index of software engineering blogs to separate indexes for different topics. “For example, I am big fan of history bloggers, but it’s very hard to find these kinds of blogs,” he said in response to a question on Hacker News. “If you know such of blogs, please contribute to the project. If we have enough bloggers listed, we can create subdomains like history.refined.blog or art.refined.blog.” Hacker News comments on the project range from people discovering RSS for the first time and looking for reader recommendations, to people returning to RSS to get their news after becoming jaded by news algorithms and social media platforms. Other commenters shared that they, too, maintain their own lists of curated blogs. Refined.blog used some existing Engineering and Security blog lists as sources for the index. “I love this,” one person commented on Hacker News. “I’m in the ultrarunning community and I love reading everyone’s blog posts/trip reports/race reports/adventures. But everyone stopped updating them over the past 5 years or so. Now that sort of thing is just an Instagram photo with a paragraph or two. The depth and character of those old blog posts have been lost. I wish in depth blog posts would come back, but in reality, I don’t think they are.” Another commenter echoes the sentiments of others who have given up on promoting their blogs in the age of social media: I’ve completely given up on promoting my stuff. It used to be very easy and straightforward. Like minded folks could find new stuff without a problem. Nowadays, there’s just way too much content, the vast majority of very low effort, and you get lost in the noise immediately. For example, I have an old blog post that got featured in podcasts, on dailyjs, HN, is linked to from MDN, etc. When I wrote it in 2014 I pretty much just submitted it to Reddit, that’s it. Nowadays I couldn’t recreate that exposure — or even a tiny fraction of it — if my life depended on it. Regardless of whether the site takes off or not, I think it’s important to catalog these attempts to restore the magic of that earlier era where websites offered a real window into people’s knowledge and interests. It may not look the same as many of us remember the old school “vintage” internet, but the blogosphere will continue to evolve as long as bloggers at heart keep experimenting with projects like this. So much of this style of writing has gone to email newsletters, but content that lives publicly on the web has a longer life cycle that can be rejuvenated through linked conversations. Writers can and should be able to embrace both methods of distribution. Refined.blog is hosted on GitHub and is open to feature suggestions and contributions. One person submitted an issue, suggesting the site add one or more OPML feed links so people can subscribe to all or some of the blogs at once. Ünal said he is working on making an OMPL export for selected blogs. If you’re looking to beef up your RSS reader with active software engineering blogs, Refined.blog might be a good place to search. There are no blogs referencing WordPress development yet, but the site does have several that focus on tooling, JavaScript, React, PHP, and other technologies that WordPress developers use. The index is specifically designated for personal blogs and company blogs are not permitted. Anyone can submit a blog for
Continue readingTeslaThemes Rebrands, Shifts Focus to Real Estate Market – WP Tavern
[ad_1] Earlier this month, TeslaThemes announced that it was rebranding to WPRealEstate. The company wanted to focus its efforts on a single niche in the theming market and cut back on the library of projects it was maintaining. In 2017, Imagely acquired TeslaThemes. The shop was created in 2013 and had grown its library to 68 themes. Last year, Imagely was acquired, and Nathan Singh was named CEO of the company. Eric Danzer, the founder and former CEO of Imagely, continued running TeslaThemes and its sister site ShowThemes since the acquisition. He is now ready to turn the page and jump into the next chapter of running a successful WordPress business. “I’ve decided that, as a business, we’ll do better focusing our energy on a specific niche rather than trying to be all things to all people,” he said. After several years of running a generic theme shop, the company ran into a brick wall that so many others in the industry I have talked to had hit. It is the realization that maintaining so many disparate projects puts an almost insurmountable burden on the development and support teams. “TeslaThemes has historically tried hard to serve a lot of small niches,” wrote Danzer in the announcement post. “We’ve had themes for real estate, recipes, musicians, eCommerce stores, photographers, event management, local business listings, and many other use cases. For each of those, we were embedding plugin-level functionality in each separate theme. That created a highly complicated product line that’s difficult to maintain and keep up to date.” The team had run into the Jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none problem. Tightening the focus would allow the company to focus on and become one of the best in a specific niche. Thus, the shift to real estate. “As I move on from Imagely, I wanted another big project to focus on,” Danzer added in a personal note. “I wanted it to be something I’m passionate about. I’m passionate about nearly every aspect of real estate. I own multiple rental properties, and I’m working toward a real estate license.” The company had already been doing well in the real estate market with its previous Realtor theme. It was one of its most popular options. “On the market side, the real estate market is large enough to sustain a great theme shop,” wrote Danzer. “Yet, it’s also a unique niche — real estate professionals have specific, challenging, hard-to-solve needs.” Existing TeslaThemes customers will continue receiving support and have access to any products purchased in the past. They will also be able to get the new real estate plugin and theme. The legacy themes, those created before the 2017 acquisition, are no longer under active development. The company replaced those in November 2020 with the Tesla Pro framework, which Danzer said his team plans to maintain and support for at least another year. WPRealEstate Plugin and Theme Map, search, and listings blocks in a theme demo. The team built the plugin on top of the block editor. They also created it alongside the RESO Web API, a modern standard for transporting data in the real estate world. While there is no public demo of the backend or even any editor screenshots, a peek under the hood reveals several custom blocks. The theme previews showcase map, search, and listings solutions. They also seem to blend the output with the Kadence Blocks plugin. Instead of launching multiple themes, the company will focus on building a single project with several design options out of the box. Users can import prebuilt content and data as part of the onboarding process. Danzer said that the new WPRealEstate theme is still a traditional, customizer-based theme. “We’ll start working on a new FSE theme almost immediately though. Between the work needed and waiting for FSE core functionality to mature, I don’t think we’d release that until sometime in 2022.” As far as I am aware, there are few, if any, robust block-based real estate solutions for WordPress at the moment. Custom post types and metadata serve as the foundation. However, a well-designed layer of blocks on top of that system could make it far easier for agents to build their sites. Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link
Continue readingTheme Creation Will Be Easier, But We Are Not There Yet – WP Tavern
[ad_1] “The way that themes have evolved within WordPress has made creating them easier,” wrote Tammie Lister in the opening line of her article titled Theme creation is now easier. “That feels like a bold statement, but it’s true.” It is not a stretch to say that many would be asking for this secret-sauce recipe of easy theme creation. If anything, WordPress theming is at its most complex stage in history. It is a weird mix of APIs and years upon years of legacy baggage. Jumping into traditional theme development today carries with it a high barrier to entry, especially if you want to build anything grander in scope than any of the default Twenty* themes. But Lister is talking about the WordPress of the future, a platform that will render its front-end output via blocks. The thing about blocks is that they put this veil over a lot of the messy legacy stuff, creating a new standard where anyone who wants to build a theme does not have to worry about a lot of the history that got us from Point A to Point B. That is a Good Thing. Standardization of the system was long overdue, but we are still in the process of making that final leap forward. It is a tough time to be a developer. It can also be an exciting new adventure if we stop thinking about themes from a traditional mindset. Lister made sure to point out the difference between theme “creation” and “development.” In almost two decades of WordPress, we have only ever had WordPress theme developers. Only those with the minimum knowledge of HTML, CSS, PHP, and [sometimes] JavaScript could build a theme. And, that is absolutely still true today. However, it will not be true tomorrow. The act of front-end design does not have to be an all-or-nothing affair. Creators can build custom patterns and soon be able to submit them to the official pattern directory. WordPress 5.8 launched the template editor, so anyone can dip their toes into the shallow end of the template-creation pool. Global styles, a feature yet to be released, carries with it the promise of customizing fonts, colors, backgrounds, borders, and much more. From a developer’s perspective, some of these features can seem limiting. We dive into code and see the world around us changing. Nothing is like the WordPress of old. There are moments when things are more complicated — sometimes by magnitudes. However, for people who have never written a line of code in their lives, there is something magical brewing. WordPress is lowering the barrier to entry to almost nothing for the “regular” folks. I remember how empowering it was to create my first personal blog design on top of WordPress. It was a fork of a theme by Tung Do, the former owner of the now-defunct WP Designer blog. I knew enough HTML and CSS to hack my way through most of it and just enough PHP to break my site several dozen times. It was a life-changing experience for me that played no small part in launching my career. However, I also think about all the people who never got to build their own site designs because they did not have the prerequisite knowledge, the available time, or ran into some other blocker that disallowed their entry into the experience. WordPress is positioned to change that with new tools, building a runway that allows more people to become a part of our collective design community. It is not only about building personal blog designs. It is about allowing anyone who wants to contribute to this open-source experiment, founded on the idea that we can share with our neighbors. The pattern directory, which is only a few days old, is an early example of that. As we continue removing barriers for non-developers, it opens an entire world of possibilities and, perhaps, allows some who did not previously have the privilege of contributing an opportunity to do so. Or, it could even be the launchpad of a new business for some. There is also a two-year-old ticket on starter page templates that is picking up steam. It is a sort of companion to block patterns, tackling entire pages instead of sections. The initial goal would be for themers to bundle these in their themes, but I envision a future where users can create and share these freely with their peers via WordPress.org. But, it is rough going for theme authors today — plugin developers too, but we’ll save that for another post. Traditional themes carry all the legacy baggage mentioned earlier, and some of the new block-related tools have added to the load. The current phase often breaks classic projects or forces developers into mixing compounds and waiting to see if the amalgamation explodes. And, the promised future of easy theming with blocks is still in its infancy. The moment developers get into anything slightly more “advanced” than a simple blog, there are hurdles and pitfalls aplenty. For example, if you want to use different image sizes and orientations in various sections of a front-page template, that is impossible with the Post Featured Image block. Or, maybe you have a theme user who wants to put a dynamic profile/account link for registered users on their own site. It is not happening without building a plugin or finding one to handle the job. It can also be a tough sell when four lines of PHP code worked just fine in the past. These are merely simple examples of an array of issues that theme authors deal with on a day-to-day basis. They are problem-solvers for the masses, but they do not yet have a robust enough set of tools. Foundationally, the block system can handle most problems and even provide better solutions in some cases, but not all of the necessary blocks or options are in place yet. As we continue solving these problems and adding the missing pieces, theme creation will
Continue readingWordCamp US Online Set for October 1, 2021, as Community Team Weighs Proposal for Returning to In-Person WordCamps – WP Tavern
[ad_1] WordCamp US will be held online this year on October 1, 2021. Organizers are planning a free, one-day event that will feature networking opportunities, speaker sessions, and workshops. Michelle Frechette, one of the organizers, said the team is planning on hosting a contributor day and will add more information to the event’s website over the next few weeks. In August, WCUS will send out the calls for speakers, sponsors, and volunteers. Planning for the 2020 virtual WCUS ended up as somewhat of a debacle after organizers decided to cancel due to pandemic stress and online event fatigue. The cancellation came after volunteers had already invested hundreds of hours of free time in planning the unfortunately timed event. Outbreaks in the US were worsening and political tensions were at an all-time high ahead of what went down as one of the most contentious presidential elections in US history. Bringing back WordPress’ flagship WordCamp as an online event was a necessity in 2021, as COVID-19 cases rise and ICU’s are filling up in US hot spot regions where vaccination rates are lower. The delta variant has thrown the world another curve ball in what has become one of the most stressful and traumatic 18 months in recent memory. Despite the continued public health crisis, the WordPress community is eager to restart in-person events. Rocio Valdivia published a proposal today, summarizing the Community Team’s discussions on how to establish a path for returning to in-person WordCamps. The proposal is based on using the current guidelines for meetups with a few additional guidelines pertinent to WordCamps. It uses the same decision-making flow chart that applies to green lighting in-person meetups: After these guidelines for meetups were announced in early July, in-person meetups have been held in six countries, including Russia, US, New Zealand, Uganda, Australia and the Netherlands. “Resetting expectations for WordCamps may be necessary, as the world has changed significantly,” Valdivia said in the proposal. “This is a great opportunity to rebuild the program by restarting locally, and then building back up to the levels we had in 2019.” WordCamps had mostly fallen into a fairly predictable format before the pandemic, but the Community Team is now keen on organizers experimenting with new formats and content. One example suggested in the proposal is delivering WordCamp content entirely online, followed by an in-person social gathering, for a more inclusive experience that makes it possible for those who cannot attend to participate in the educational aspects of the event. The Community Team is embracing the current hardships as an opportunity to improve WordCamps and rekindle the community spirit after such a lengthy absence from in-person events: Additionally, the normal WordCamp application process requires that there be an active local community in place. As the community has faced many changes this year, Deputies are thinking about how to handle this requirement. One possibility could be more flexibility with WordCamp applications, allowing communities that had a meetup pre-COVID to host a WordCamp, even if they weren’t as active in the last year, to help build excitement and restart community activity again. The proposal includes a list of more practical considerations, such as securing fully-refundable venues, providing individually-packaged food instead of buffets, and limiting capacity to provide for social distancing. It also notes that WordCamps taking place during this transitional period would need to be prepared to cover 100% of their expenses, as WordCamps are currently exempt from the 2021 Global Sponsorship Program. Inclusion in the Global Sponsorship Program will be reconsidered once WordPress returns to in-person camps in all regions. The Community Team is inviting feedback on the proposal, which is still under active discussion. If you have ideas that you think should be included in the guidelines or suggestions for this transition period for in-person WordCamps, leave a comment on the proposal. Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link
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