Tag Archives: wordpress

#6 – Cory Miller on the WordPress Mergers and Acquisitions Landscape – WP Tavern

[ad_1] So in 2016 or so I started to think, what does the future look like? It feels like one day somebody at all the hosting companies goes, I wonder how much this thing called WordPress, what kind of footprint is it in our customer base, in our stack and somebody came back and probably said 40%, 50% or something like that, I’m sure way back in the day. And it seemingly overnight a bunch of money and attention from particularly the hosting space turned to WordPress and rightfully so, I mean WordPress is a huge CMS and its footprint on the web is enormous. So around that time, I’m seeing all these players kind of come in and, big money, start to come in, and we’re talking about billion dollar companies or billion dollar valuation companies or companies with private equity in the billions coming into the space and really turning their attention, and I thought, my job as the leader is to fast forward the movie and see where we’re going and make sure, you mentioned in our pre-talk about Monopoly, the game Monopoly, and I thought, wow, we are definitely the David versus Goliath now. We’ve been bootstrapped from the beginning from 2008 on, and what does the future look like, and our toolset, the software we’re offering at the time, it was very utility, backup security, and maintenance. GoDaddy had bought Sucuri, ManageWP. Automattic was already kind of our competition from the beginning anyway, with Jetpack and at one point their backup service VaultPress. And so Jetpack is another behemoth out there. And, I just go, I think it’s time for us to figure this out, what’s the next step in a big way, and really that ultimately came down to being acquired. We had a partner in Liquid Web. So they were obviously the first people that had been partnered with him for like a year and really appreciated their leadership team. Eventually my friend, Chris Lema joined them and then my friend AJ Morris was the one that put us on the map for Liquid Web. And they were doing some, wanting to really do some big things and WordPress and long story short that just all worked out. But for us, it was like, at what point do you just need to pull up your stakes and tents and move on and see what you can get? And two reasons, one is financial, of course, but the other is my team. You know, we had about 25 people at that time and I want to make sure our team has a place to land and a great career, and that up until that point, it was either Matt Danner and I, and we had to leave for anybody to have upward mobility really well. When we joined a Liquid Web, at the time, they were like 600 people. So there was a lot of opportunity, career opportunity to move within the company. And they were also doing some great stuff. Now, maybe early in my worries, you know, Mark from Wordfence a great founder, co-founder over there told me, he said, great book called only the paranoid survive. I spent about 10 years in paranoia, like insecurity. But it was time it’s turned out to be everything Joe Oesterling and the C Suites team over at Liquid Web, everything they said to me, they have been to the letter of their word. I have really great respect for them. And so iThemes is under the leadership now of Matt Danner is killing it. There have been on the acquisition tear in the last year. [ad_2] Source link

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Emoji Toolbar Plugin Brings an Emoji Picker Back to the WordPress Editor – WP Tavern

[ad_1] Earlier today, theme.es released its Emoji Toolbar project to the plugin directory. It is a simple picker that integrates with the WordPress Rich Text toolbar, allowing users to insert emoji directly from the editor interface. After Nick Hamze pulled his Emoji Conbini plugin from WordPress.org last year, there has been an emoji-sized hole in my editor toolbox. The plugin was the perfect implementation for quickly plopping a quick smiley face or any of the other thousands of characters available. Unfortunately, his departure from the WordPress space meant losing one of my favorite block-related plugins — and several others that I enjoyed. It was also on par with 10up’s Insert Special Characters plugin, a solution for users missing a similar picker from the classic editor era. Emoji Toolbar is filling that void and is a solid alternative for those who need a solution. The difference between the two implementations is the location. Emoji Conbini added the picker button directly to the toolbar, and Emoji Toolbar adds it to the “more” dropdown. Clicking the Emoji button in the Rich Text toolbar. Placing the picker button inside of the dropdown makes it a little harder to find. It also requires an additional mouse click to insert emoji. What matters is that the implementation works, but I would love to see it as a top-level toolbar item. Using the plugin is a simple matter. When in a Rich Text field, which includes blocks like Paragraph, Heading, List, and more, the Emoji Toolbar appears in the block toolbar. After clicking it, the plugin creates a popup of the emoji picker. Emoji Toolbar popup picker. From that point, users merely need to click the emoji they want to insert into the post. The plugin bundles the Emoji Mart library, which has quickly become almost a standard for emoji pickers. The component is a Slack-like box that categorizes each of the characters, and it provides a field for searching for that perfect emoji. There is still at least one emoji inserter alternative. Instead of adding a picker to the block toolbar, Emoji Autocomplete Gutenberg allows users to type : and use keywords for inserting characters. For those who prefer to work from the keyboard, it is a quicker method. Emoji Toolbar shines over Emoji Autocomplete Gutenberg and the now-retired Emoji Conbini based on how it formats its output. It inserts the actual characters into the content, but the other plugins insert an <img> tag instead. That method results in output that is not forward-compatible with any changes in the future or alternative libraries. Users who also prefer to disable image output on the front end cannot do so. This is a non-issue with Emoji Toolbar — it plays well with other solutions. On the whole, the plugin is solid. It has well-written code and provides an easy-to-use picker for inserting emoji. Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link

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Is WordPress Development Really All That Hard To Get Into Today? – WP Tavern

[ad_1] Oh, how easily we forget the WordPress of 10, 15 years ago. We are spoiled. We are spoiled by the gluttony of documentation and tutorials, a wealth of knowledge created over more than a decade. We are spoiled by our own expertise, built-in our more vigorous youth, now sitting on our haunches as we have aged along with our beloved platform. We have grown to become the proverbial grumpy old men. “Back in my day, we didn’t need all these fancy tools to help us write code. We pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps and built everything from scratch.” I kid. Sort of. I count myself among the old-school developers who helped build the WordPress that so many are still nostalgic about — I think I have earned the right to joke about myself. They were “simpler” times but not really. Having been in the community as long as I have, I can remember the backlash each time a new feature landed. I recall the days when there really was non-existent documentation for pretty much everything. Lately, there has been a growing conversation around the difficulty of overcoming WordPress’s current barrier to entry for developers. This has been an ongoing discussion for a few years now, but the latest flare-up comes on the heels of a tweet by Chris Wiegman: The deeper I get with modern WP dev the more I understand why newer devs don’t like to work on it. This is not the same project as it was in the past. The learning curve is now extremely high regardless of past experience. I built my first block plugin in a few hours about a month ago. When writing on the experience, I said the barrier to entry was much higher than when I had built my first plugin in 2007. Having had the time to sit back and think about that, I am not sure it was a fair statement. We tend to view the past through rose-colored glasses while forgetting the real struggle. What I had wanted was to build the plugin in 30 minutes. Had everything been in PHP, that would have been an easy feat for me. Objectively, I am an expert (or close enough) in the language. However, my JavaScript knowledge is 10 years behind. It had been a while since I had been challenged in that way. That was a distressing experience for someone who had become comfortable in his own skills. I griped about the docs. But, let’s be honest. WordPress has never had the sort of deep documentation that could teach a budding developer everything. I know this because I have written at least a couple hundred tutorials in my career. Nearly every time, I dug into the project’s source code to make sense of it, which allowed me to teach other developers how to work with various features. And many other developers in the space did the same. In time, WordPress.org added more robust developer documentation, but this was not built overnight. It is a constantly evolving project. I also built my first block type with vanilla JavaScript. No build tools. No React docs open. Just plain ol’ JS code in my editor. I needed to crawl before I could walk, and getting that first iteration of the code into a workable state was necessary before I jumped into anything more complex. In the days after, I re-coded it all to use more modern JavaScript and compiled it with webpack. A week after that, I built a second block plugin with more advanced features. Was it hard? Definitely. Was the barrier to entry higher than when I first developed plugins? Probably. Truthfully, I did not struggle as much, but I am also at a different point in my life. At 37, I no longer have quite as much drive and likely less capacity for picking up new skills as quickly as in my late teens and early 20s. However, I have a strong foundation and enough experience to overcome some of the hurdles I encountered. Would a 20-year-old me struggle with this JavaScript landscape more than a strictly PHP-based WordPress? I doubt it. Both had huge learning curves for someone new. Someone’s first introduction to Subversion or Composer can be just as scary as their initial dive into webpack and npm. For a fresh mind, an open canvas that has yet to be painted with over a decade of doing things the “WordPress way,” I am unsure if the barrier to entry is so much higher. For us old-schoolers, our world has been flipped upside down. There is no denying that. The Gutenberg project, which is at the core of nearly every new WordPress feature, moves so fast that it is next to impossible to keep up with while also upping your skills. It is easy to get overwhelmed. When this happens to me, I usually take a step back and return when I have had a chance to rest my mind. Contributing to the WordPress ecosystem has always had one barrier or another. Whether it be the privilege of time, knowledge of PHP, or some other skill, the project has left some people out. That is changing in some ways. Some parts are now available to users that were never accessible before. This is easiest to see from the theming side of things. “I wish people would see that theme development is heading the opposite way,” tweeted Carolina Nymark. “The entry barrier for designers and new developers will be lower. When people get stuck saying, ‘But I can’t use my hooks in a block theme,’ it is because they are looking at what exists today, not ahead.” Having spent more time on the theming side of the block editor than plugin development, I agree wholeheartedly. Theme authors have been given a clean slate, or at least by the time block-based themes are supported in core WordPress, this will be true. While I could write ad nauseum on

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Automattic Releases Quadrat, a Block-Based Podcasting WordPress Theme – WP Tavern

[ad_1] A few weeks ago, Automattic released Quadrat on the WordPress.org theme directory. It is now the company’s fourth block theme. Like its predecessors, it is a child of Blockbase, a project that serves as a foundation for the work of Automattic’s Theme Team. After spending a couple of months diving deep into the world of block themes, I was beginning to feel a little burned out. When I wasn’t sleeping, eating, or doing yard work in my off-duty time, I was building or exploring one project or another. Soon, it all had become a blur. I knew I needed to take a small break, and I have not touched themes for a couple of weeks since, at least not outside of work. However, Quadrat appealed to the theme developer within me. I am not sure if it was the soothing color scheme or just seeing the work the professional designers had put into it, but it offered a pathway for easing myself back into the block theme world. Outside of the work by Anariel Design with Naledi and Clove, most block themes have felt more like proof of concepts or starting points. Quadrat can now be added to the list of those with some personality. It does not push any particular boundaries, but it is a well-designed blogging and podcasting theme. Mostly, I am just a fan of the color scheme — sometimes you just need something other than black, white, and gray to get yourself out of a funk. One of the other reasons I have been following the work of the Quadrat theme was because it was the first showcase of header patterns I had seen. Kjell Reigstad shared what this system would look like in June. The goal is to include the patterns shown in the video in core WordPress, so they are not currently included in the theme. However, there is still an open ticket for header patterns in Quadrat. The only real trouble I ran into with the theme is with fully aligned blocks in the content. There is an overflow issue in version 1.1.1 that creates a horizontal scrollbar. Horizontal scrollbar appears with full-width Cover block. Quadrat includes nine custom patterns. The focus for most is on podcasting, but some are general-purpose enough for other use cases, such as “Media and text with button”: Media and text with button pattern. The development team missed a prime opportunity with its podcast-related patterns. Instead of integrating with a podcasting solution, they are simple, static blocks from core WordPress. For example, the Latest Episodes pattern is a two-column layout that features Image, Heading, and Paragraph blocks. That is acceptable as a base pattern for users without a podcasting plugin. However, it may be practically useless for those with one enabled. Or, it creates unnecessary work because users must manually update their page content anytime they publish a new episode. Latest Episodes block pattern Given Automattic’s recent bet on Castos as part of a $756K pre-seed fundraising round, it would make sense to integrate with the podcasting company’s plugin, Seriously Simple Podcasting (SSP). If the development team wanted to take the Latest Episodes pattern to the next level, they would create it with the Query Loop block and display the latest podcast episodes from the plugin. For users without SSP installed, simply fall back to the current pattern. Or, offer both. Right now, it is little more than eye candy and not nearly as useful as it could be for real-world use cases. I often talk about the need for theme authors to elevate their game. Not only would such integration be beneficial to podcasters, but it would also showcase the power and flexibility of the block system. All of this is to say: If you are going to build a podcasting theme, build a podcasting theme. Quadrat appears to be one. However, when you peek behind the curtain, it is just a well-designed blogging theme. It has the potential to be so much more. Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link

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9 Best WordPress Hosting Options Compared (2021)

[ad_1] There are plenty of web hosts around to choose from, and new ones appear all the time. And although greater competition results in better services at lower prices, this abundance of choice compounds the problem of choosing the right host to fit your specific needs. The challenge is even greater for WordPress users, who need a provider that understands their particular requirements. To tackle this issue, we rounded up nine of the best-known WordPress hosts and took an in-depth look at each. These hosts offer something that most don’t: WordPress-specific hosting and everything that entails. Before we get into the reviews, we’ll first take a moment to discuss exactly why you should choose a web host with WordPress-specific experience. Then, we’ll dissect each host, with the main focus on support and security features, performance, and pricing. Best WordPress Hosting in 2021: Quick Summary We’re going to go much more in-depth in this post with our hands-on tests and experience-backed opinions. However, if you’re in a rush, we want to start things off by giving you a quick summary of our top picks. So – you can either use this simple summary table as a jumping-off point. Or, you can keep reading to learn exactly why we’ve chosen these hosts and see the test data. Rank Host Price from /mo. Highlights 1st 🥇 HostGator $5.95 ✔️ Affordable prices✔️ Fast load times for low-traffic✔️ Helpful support 2nd 🥈 Flywheel $15 ✔️ Useful managed features✔️ Fast load times for high-traffic✔️ Special tools for agencies 3rd 🥉 WP Engine $30 ✔️ Useful managed features✔️ Fast load times for high-traffic✔️ Expert WordPress support WordPress Hosting vs. Shared Hosting – The Key Differences You may have noticed that many web hosts offer general shared hosting plans and WordPress hosting plans. These are two very different things. To illustrate why, let’s walk through their differences one by one: When you get shared hosting, you’re paying for a set amount of space within a server. You have the freedom to install any content management system (CMS) you want, but performance will never be as good as say a dedicated server (i.e. one that is reserved for your use only). With WordPress-specific hosting, you’re usually paying for space within less crowded servers. Each of these servers is optimized to provide you with a better WordPress experience right out of the box. WordPress-specific hosting often includes security measures tailored for the CMS. WordPress-friendly hosts are more knowledgeable when it comes to the CMS, so they offer better support. Web hosts optimized for WordPress often offer better loading speeds. For example, their servers are tuned for WordPress and they often include optimizations such as server-level page caching for WordPress. Often, WordPress hosts also take care of backups for you, which is a huge load off your shoulders These days, there’s arguably no good reason for a WordPress user to opt for generic shared hosting. WordPress hosting plans usually start at competitive prices, so they’re the best choice – even if you’re on a tight budget. Our Methods for Choosing and Evaluating the Best WordPress Hosts Each of the web hosts we’ve chosen for this roundup are very well-known in the WordPress hosting industry, but we didn’t want to base our comparison on reputation alone. To be as thorough as possible, we went through the following process with all nine of them: We set up paid WordPress hosting accounts for each company. Some of these web hosts come with WordPress pre-installed, but for those that didn’t, we did it ourselves and used the host’s default configuration. We tested each website’s speed using WebPageTest for one-off tests and Load Focus for load testing. Load Focus enables us to test how fast a site loads under heavy stress by simulating multiple visitors within a period of time. Basically, how fast will your site load in a real-world situation where you have multiple visitors at the same time? Finally, we took a look at each of their plans to gauge if they represent good value for money. Knowing this, we can give you specific recommendations about which plans to pick for each web host. When we report the performance data, we’ll share five different metrics: TTFB – short for time to first byte, a general measure of hosting responsiveness. LCP – short for Largest Contentful Paint, part of Google’s new Core Web Vitals metrics and Page Experience update. Fully loaded time – the full loading time. Load Focus average response – the average response time in the Load Focus test. Load Focus 90th percentile – the 90th percentile time. That is, 90% of visits were faster than this time. Let’s check out how each WordPress host performed through our tests. The Nine Best WordPress Hosts for 2021 Ranked After concluding our testing, something became very clear – some providers performed considerably better than others. With that in mind, we decided to rank them below from best to worst, to help you make an informed decision. It’s worth mentioning, however, that our rankings are certainly not just based on raw performance – we also need to factor in price and features. In some situations, you might be better off choosing a host with slightly slower performance if you’re on a tight budget. For example, WP Engine is one of the top hosts on this list in terms of features and performance, but we only ranked it third because its pricing puts it out of reach for a lot of casual WordPress users, especially beginners. We’ll be sure to note these variables in our analysis – for example, HostGator can be a good option for low-traffic sites, but we don’t recommend it for high-traffic sites. With that in mind, let’s start with top nine hosting providers and work our way down! 1. HostGator HostGator is one of the best-known names when it comes to web hosting, but not one of the most highly regarded. In the past, the hosting service has experienced issues with site speed, but it has recently

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The Best WordPress SEO Plugin in 2021?

[ad_1] Trying to choose between Rank Math vs Yoast SEO as your WordPress site’s SEO plugin? In 2021, these are the two most popular SEO plugins and both are great tools that can help you set your site up for success in Google’s rankings. However, there are some notable differences between Yoast SEO and Rank Math, so you’ll want to understand what those are so that you can pick the best tool for your situation. In our hands-on Rank Math vs Yoast SEO comparison, we’ll dig into the important differences to help you decide. Quick Introductions – Popularity and Ratings To kick things off, let’s turn to the wisdom of the crowds and see how Rank Math and Yoast SEO compare when it comes to popularity and user reviews. This isn’t especially hands-on, but it does provide some useful context for why I said that both of these plugins can be excellent choices in their own rights. Yoast SEO is the big name in WordPress SEO. It’s been around forever (since 2010) and it’s become synonymous with “WordPress SEO” in a lot of people’s minds. It’s by far the most popular SEO plugin and it’s also just flat out one of the most popular WordPress plugins ever. Launched a few years ago in 2018, Rank Math is the comparative newcomer in the WordPress SEO space. However, it does come from a well-established WordPress company in MyThemeShop (our review), so the Rank Math team has plenty of experience to bring to bear. Since its launch, it’s quickly risen to become the second-most popular WordPress SEO plugin*. Here’s a table comparing the two plugins as of June 18, 2021: Metric Rank Math Yoast SEO Active sites 800,000+ 5,000,000+ Review Rating 4.9 4.8 Review Count 3,177+ 27,353+ Last 7 days download 349,847 2,333,715 *All In One SEO technically has more active sites than Rank Math, but Rank Math’s new download count is ~3X All In One SEO’s new download count (~349k vs ~111k), which is why I say Rank Math is more popular. Features With the introductions out of the way, let’s compare Rank Math vs Yoast SEO in terms of the features that they offer. To make this easier to scan, I’ll do this in table format. Here’s what the icons in the table mean: ✔️ – this feature is available in the free version of the plugin at WordPress.org. ✔️💰 – this feature is available, but only if you pay for the premium version (more on pricing later). ✔️✔️ – this feature is available in both plugins but one plugin does it notably better. E.g. both plugins support schema markup for rich snippets, but Rank Math’s feature is more advanced, so I would mark Rank Math with the double checkmark. ❌ – the feature doesn’t exist in either the free or premium versions. This is not a complete list of every single feature in each plugin – I just tried to pull out the features that most people will care about.  Feature Rank Math Yoast SEO Set SEO title ✔️ ✔️ Set SEO meta description ✔️ ✔️ SEO title/description templates ✔️ ✔️ Focus keyword analysis ✔️ ✔️ Multiple focus keywords ✔️ ✔️💰 Focus keyword suggestions ✔️ ✔️💰 Social media graph control ✔️ ✔️ Readability suggestions ✔️ ✔️ Sitewide schema markup ✔️ ✔️ Per-content schema markup ✔️✔️ ✔️ XML sitemaps ✔️ ✔️ Link counter ✔️ ✔️ Google Search Console integration ✔️ ✔️ Google Analytics integration ✔️ ❌ Basic WooCommerce SEO ✔️ ✔️ Advanced WooCommerce SEO ✔️💰 ✔️💰 Single-location local SEO ✔️ ✔️💰 Multi-location local SEO ✔️💰 ✔️💰 Internal link suggestions ✔️ ✔️💰 Redirect manager ✔️ ✔️💰 404 monitor ✔️ ❌ Advanced Video SEO ✔️💰 ✔️💰 Advanced Image SEO ✔️💰 ✔️💰 Keyword rank tracking ✔️💰 ❌ Breadcrumbs ✔️ ✔️ Role manager for SEO access ✔️ ✔️ SEO reports (white label) ✔️💰 ❌ Full Elementor integration ✔️ ✔️💰 As you can see, Rank Math is the pretty clear winner both in terms of the number of features that it offers and the number of features that it offers for free. In fact, in terms of features, I think the free version of Rank Math might even have more features than the core paid version of Yoast SEO. Of course, having more features doesn’t automatically mean a plugin is better – it depends on whether you actually find those features useful.  For example, if you just want a plugin to set SEO titles and meta descriptions and make some basic on-page optimizations, both are pretty much equal in that respect. Additionally, both plugins offer a modular approach to their features, which means you can disable any features that you don’t want to use. This helps you keep your site lightweight and simplify the interfaces. Speaking of interfaces, let’s talk about that next. Ease of Use/Interface Both Rank Math and Yoast SEO are pretty easy to use and beginner-friendly. If I had to pick, I would say that I slightly prefer the Rank Math interface because it’s a little more modern and provides slightly more useful suggestions, but I don’t think you’ll have issues with either. Both plugins work with both the classic TinyMCE editor and the newer default WordPress block editor. However, because the block editor is the default editor in 2021, that’s what I’ll focus on for this comparison. Let’s go through them… Rank Math Rank Math puts its settings in a sidebar panel that’s accessible from the top-right corner. The icon to open the settings also gives you a nice summary of your content’s optimization: Clicking that will expand the sidebar, divided into tabs. In the first tab, you can set the focus keyword(s) for your content and view the analysis. You can also get suggestions for keywords just by typing in the box: Rank Math’s analysis is a score out of 100, which gives you a detailed look at optimization. As I mentioned above, I also find its suggestions a little more useful and detailed than Yoast SEO, especially when it

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An Intuitive WordPress Page Builder

[ad_1] Are you wondering how Visual Composer performs? Visual Composer was amongst the first page-builders to be released into the market. It has been around for a long period of time. However, as years passed by, tons of changes and updates were made to this plugin to improve its functionality. Apart from that, other page builders came into the picture, creating some competition. Due to this, the Visual Composer plugin is updated on a regular basis. While the WPBakery page builder was known as Visual Composer, it is not the same product as the ReactJS-based Visual Composer. The WPBakery plugin and the ReactJS-based Visual Composer plugin are two different page builders developed by the same team. Not to mention, the Visual Composer page builder is not short-code-based.  In this post, we will take you through the different features that Visual Composer offers you. Let’s dig in. Drag-and-drop Editor Visual Composer comes with a drag-and-drop editor, making it easier to add various elements to your site pages. Not to mention, the drag-and-drop editor lets you customize your site from the front-end. It features real-time customization functionalities for updating a website whenever a change is made. The drag and drop editor has a side menu, which is intuitive and easy to use. It opens up easily, giving you access to elements, blocks, and templates. What’s more? The side menu also packs different customization settings and options that help you style various elements based on your personal preferences. Such options may vary from one element to another, depending on the functionality of the element. For instance, if you plan to edit a button, you can easily access padding options from the side menu. Article Continues Below Plus, this page builder offers you a quick action box for customizing and editing various elements. Some of the functionalities featured on the quick action box make it easier for you to edit, delete, and clone an element. Unlike the sidebar menu, the action box appears when you hover the mouse cursor over a certain element. Apart from that, the drag-and-drop editor is compatible with various WordPress themes. Elements Visual Composer comes with tons of elements that can transform your site completely. Examples of such elements include: Basic button Faq toggle Feature section Image gallery Image masonry Outline button Youtube player Vimeo player Image slider Instagram image As if that’s enough, Visual Composer has basic customization options for editing and styling all those elements. Such options let you align various elements in your site based on your preferences. There are three different alignment options; left, right, and middle. As if that is enough, you can change the shape of an element to suit your style. While some customization options might be used to edit all elements, some elements have unique customizations options. Moreover, Visual Composer has premium elements for extending a site’s functionality, taking it to the next level. These are some of the premium elements that Visual Composer offers you: Advanced custom fields Animated outline button Facebook comment Video popup WP forms Post slider It gets better. Visual Composer packs more than 15 WooCommerce elements, making it easier for you to add various functionalities to your eCommerce store. Whether you are planning to add a WooCommerce cart or list products in your eCommerce store, Visual Composer will help you achieve that. Templates Visual Composer packs more than 160-page templates that can be easily incorporated into your WordPress site to make it look elegant. Such pre-designed templates are suitable for websites that are in different niches. Some of the templates offered by this page builder might be ideal for photography sites, travel sites, online businesses, financial sites, digital developers, corporate sites, and other types of sites.     Instead of developing a whole WordPress site from scratch, you can use such templates to style up your WordPress pages. Furthermore, Visual Composer also offers you tons of pre-designed blocks that can style up different sections of your site. For instance, you can use a call-to-action block to create a stylish call-to-action section in your WordPress site, displaying various information. With more than 160 pre-designed blocks, Visual composer can help you style up your WordPress site quite easily. Theme Builder The theme builder has various functionalities and settings that help you customize various parts of your theme, such as footers, headers, and sidebars. The theme builder can be used to create a post header or a global header that will appear on all the pages. Well, you can either choose the per post type option or the sitewide option based on your preferences. Moreover, the theme builder layout settings offer you various functionalities for creating a 404 page, a post archive page, an author page, and a search page.  Visual Composer Hub As the name hints, cloud storage has a wide array of pre-designed blocks, templates, headers, sidebars, footers, and elements. In short, the Visual Composer hub is a storage space that lets you download various elements that can style up your site. What’s more, you ask? Visual Composer hub also gives you access to stock images, which can be used in different sections of your WordPress site. Such images can be downloaded directly to your site from Unsplash via the Visual Composer hub.   Pop up Builder Since Visual composer comes with a pop-up builder, you can create pop-ups on your site to boost your conversions and display various notification messages to your visitors. Apart from that, the pop-up builder is quite effective in building pop-ups from the front end of your website. With this builder, you can create page-specific pop-ups or site-wide popups, which have animation effects to improve the overall style of your site. Integrations Visual Composer integrates with multiple third-party apps, offering a wide array of functionalities that help you accomplish different things. Here are some of the third-party apps that Visual Composer integrates with: Contact Form Applications Contact form apps and plugins can create a form, which visitors can use to get in touch with you.

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My Life Before & After WordPress

[ad_1] Early Days I have always had a knack for technology. I still remember the summer of 2006 when I bought a PC for the first time. I would try to install Windows XP many times so to make Windows work smoothly but without any luck. It was those stubborn viruses, which would only be removed by running a virus scan, not a fresh Windows install, something I figured out later. Although, it took me another decade – right after my MBA in 2015 – to turn my curiosity for technology into a passion after I stumbled upon web technologies from the development perspective. It is when I started learning WordPress while still working in an administrative and support capacity at an organization in my hometown. Daydreaming Being an introvert in nature, the thought of working remotely providing value using technology with the freedom to choose my own work hours has always fascinated me. While becoming a digital nomad exploring nature felt like touching the sky. I knew it was quite possible after finding real stories online but I had no path to follow to turn my dream into a reality. The Challenge After spending tons of time online, figuring out the way was the easy step. Now that I look back during my initial days when I was getting started, the biggest challenge I have come to realize was to stay motivated as being all alone with the Imposter Syndrome – which I am sure every developer has faced during their careers – did take a toll on me. I think it is not easy to stay motivated when there aren’t immediate rewards for the hard work we do. Sometimes, weeks would go by for me to not do anything but try to stay motivated and don’t just give up. Humble Beginnings I could easily recall the evening of my last MBA exam day when I started exploring web technologies. Even just before that, I spent a good 2-3 months learning and then finding projects for web design on 99Designs until I realized that I am not very passionate about becoming a designer. I started learning HTML, CSS, basic JavaScript with jQuery but learning these technologies alone could only go so far without a clear path. I was looking for a tool that could help me build a website from scratch and for that, I explored many tools and technologies along the way including WordPress. While celebrating the 68th independence day of Pakistan online I came across this amazing article by Ahmad Awais (big props) which really helped me to make a definite decision to choose WordPress over other online publishing tools. After basic learning, I started right away working as a WordPress Power User, mostly delivering theme customizing projects for the clients in the local market while still working a day job. All the Way WordPress It took me another two years to finally choose WordPress as my full-time career. I moved to the capital and after many failed attempts at getting hired and desperate moments followed afterward, I finally received an offer letter from a digital agency, Centangle Interactive, where I joined as a Web Developer focused on the WordPress platform. I consider joining Centangle as one of the best decisions of my life as it helped me with my professional growth by becoming familiar with the whole WordPress ecosystem in a supportive environment. I was being valued for my opinions in the web projects I was involved with. I was also appreciated and encouraged for the open-source work I did for the company. During the pandemic last year, I joined a startup viz. UPTEK. The company provides web development services to its international clientele. I have been trusted with the opportunity to work on some of the premium freelancing platforms on behalf of the company. While apart from the developer role at the company, I am also involved in client communication and project management which has been an exciting journey for me so far with lots of learning almost every day. WordPress Community WordPress introduced me to the world of open-source software and the WordPress community itself. WordPress community connects WordPress enthusiasts via monthly Meetups, annual WordCamps, virtual collaborations like contributions to the WordPress project, and a whole lot more. The WordPress community made me a firm believer in the power of open-source software and an enthusiast who enjoys a great deal to contribute back to the WordPress community via writing, speaking, and helping organize meetups. Over the years, I have had the opportunity to write open-source software for the WordPress platform and feel humbled to contribute to the WordPress core. I have also had the privilege to speak as well as help organize the monthly WordPress Meetups and the annual WordCamp(s) for the Islamabad/Rawalpindi WordPress community. I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to help start the Elementor Community Islamabad Chapter – which organizes monthly Elementor Meetups. Yet that is not it, I have met some really humble people over the years, whom I proudly call my besties. I met these fine folks on a train on my way to WordCamp Karachi 2018 which was the very first WordCamp in Pakistan. It is all made possible by WordPress and its community and for that, I am forever grateful. Now fast forward to the present, I have been traveling and exploring every corner of the country almost every other month with my train buddies by fulfilling my dream of traveling. Takeaway If anything, one of the main takeaways, why I shared my story, is to stay persistent. I know it is hard to stay motivated and break into this industry. But if you are determined, then WordPress will surely reward you as It can’t be said in any better words than by the words of the very Chris Lema himself: “WordPress will change your life if you let it” So, if you are starting out then get yourself a clear path and just dive

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Full 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

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How to Link to a Page Section in WordPress Nav Menus

[ad_1] It’s pretty common in WordPress: wanting to link to a section of a page. I remember fondly my first time [stares wistfully into the middle distance]. This Quick Guide explains how to do that, and how to then add that link to a navigation menu. Need to link users to a specific heading within an article? Sometimes you might want your WordPress navigation menu items to link directly to a page section that sits in the middle of a larger page, rather than simply to the top of the page. For example: instead of creating a nav menu link to a Contact page, how do I create a menu link to the Contact section of my homepage? Being able to create WordPress menu links to page sections is especially important on one-page websites, or on multi-page sites that have long scrolling homepages or sales pages. Either of these types of website might have, for example, “How it Works,” “Demo,” “Testimonials,” and “Buy Now” sections all on the same page. To link to a page section, you’ll need to create a WordPress menu link to an anchor: a link embedded in your page content. Anchors are one of the web’s oldest technologies, and they still work great. Fortunately, assigning an anchor to a page section, and then linking to that anchor from your WordPress navigation menu, is not tricky at all. This quick tutorial video from Fred shows you how. if you’re a “visual learner.” And here’s a quick text summary if you’d rather learn how to link to a page section in WordPress without a video 😉 How To WordPress: Link to a section of page Give the item you want to link to an id attribute—for example, <h2 id=”target-element”>Section Title</h2>. This id attribute is the element’s HTML anchor. If you’ve got the Gutenberg/Block editor running, pictured at right is what it’ll look like. You’ll notice that this label is called “HTML anchor” in this interface. In the underlying HTML, it’ll look like an id. 🤓 In the Menu area in either wp-admin or the Customizer, create a new Custom Link to add to your navigation menu. Set the Custom Link to point to the page on which the content lives, plus the # character, plus the value of the element’s id attribute—for example, https://mysite.com/about-us#target-element. Save your changes to the menu, and test the link from a few pages to make sure it works. And that’s it! Creating WordPress menu links to page sections using anchors can be a very helpful way to orient your site’s visitors, so give it a try. [ad_2] Source link

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