Tag Archives: wordpress

5 of the Best Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Plugins For WordPress

[ad_1] No matter what your business entails, you’re almost guaranteed customers. The hope is that you have many of them, although loyal ones can be just as (if not more) profitable. As such, you need to make sure who they are, what they spend with you, and (in an ideal world) when they last engaged with you. Some of the best CRM plugins let you do this, and much more. We’ll get onto what a Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) is in detail, although it’s a database at its most basic. It can let you store contact information, record email conversations, and run reports on how ‘valuable’ your customers and clients are. In this post, we’ll give you a choice of CRMs, and explain what makes them worthy of your attention. Before this, let’s give you a clearer idea of what a CRM is, and does. What a Customer Relationship Manager Is A clue as to what a CRM does is in the name. In short, it helps you manage the relationship between you and your customers or clients. You store the information in a database, and you’ll access it through an app (often, it’s online). Jetpack CRM has a stellar dashboard that includes almost everything you need to manage clients. While a CRM focuses on the business relationship you have with your client, it can’t help you carry out conversations and negotiate prices. Instead, consider it a high-powered online ‘rolodex’, but with more functionality than you can achieve with a paper and pen. How a CRM Can Help You Earn More Money From Your Business We want to talk for a few minutes about your philosophy when using a CRM. Your first instinct might be to think about how a CRM will send money your way, and leverage those features. Though, if you define a CRM in a different way, you can achieve much more. For example, if you change “Customer” to “Client”, this gives you a subtle shift in how you might use a CRM. Each of your customers is a person. If they’re happy with your services, the chances of them spending money with you are higher. Given this, it’s a solid idea to look at the following features and functionality as important in your choice of CRM: Comprehensive reporting options, to help you figure out how clients engage with your company. In-depth contact management. This includes the fields you have available to record a client’s details, and also email integration in some cases. This lets you store conversations for your entire team. Speaking of integrations, you’ll want to be able to do this with a few platforms. For example, WordPress is almost a must, but think about your email marketing and accounting software too. A notification system, to help you reconnect with old clients in the future. There’s more to consider, but in most cases, this will be specific to your own requirements. As such, a CRM won’t offer a direct way to ‘win’ money from clients and customers (at least over the long term). Though, it does let you cultivate better business relationships with clients. In turn, this may lead to more income or at the least some visibility. 5 of the Best Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Plugins For WordPress It’s time to look at the best CRM plugins for WordPress, and we have five in this list. Each one as a dedicated fan base, and of course, each deserves a place on this list. Here are the solutions we’ll feature: HubSpot CRM. This is a leading solution. The WordPress plugin integrates with HubSpot’s own back end, rather than within WordPress itself. WP ERP. It’s a popular, free CRM plugin that offers lots of functionality for a WordPress-based CRM. GroundHogg. This tool does much more than just customer relationships, at a competitive price. FluentCRM. This is a WordPress-based CRM that provides lots of integrations with other WordPress tools and services. Jetpack CRM. It’s separate to the Jetpack plugin, and the former Zero BS CRM still packs a punch on features and price. The list isn’t in any order, but regardless, we encourage you to read all of the entries. If you have your eye on a particular CRM, see how it compares to the rest. It could be that there are features in the others you didn’t realize you needed. 1. HubSpot CRM Let’s kick things off with a bang. HubSpot is a mega-power, and it has reach in almost every area of sales and marketing. It’s logical that there’s also a robust CRM in its toolkit, and HubSpot CRM is a leading player in the game. Because HubSpot has a large range of tools under its belt, it integrates with other aspects of the platform. It also provides more features than just a CRM. For example, the WordPress plugin provides email marketing and automation tools, live chat functionality, and forms. There are also lots of integrations with native and third-party tools. Though, coming back to the CRM, here’s what’s on offer: You can create ‘pipelines’ for your sales funnels, and use it to best manage your customer relationships. There’s supreme contact management, as you’d expect. The CRM syncs with your site’s forms to help record interactions. Speaking of which, there’s also powerful reporting out of the box. This will let you see the best course of action to take with an individual client. There’s nothing to dislike about HubSpot CRM, and it’s a vital part of almost countless businesses. Though the plugin and its functionality is free, the premium pricing could be a deal-breaker. For $45 you get to remove the HubSpot branding, and work with up to 1,000 clients. After that, the prices get astronomical, so this is a plugin for businesses that want to operate on a small scale. Get Started with Hubspot 2. WP ERP Next up, WP ERP is a long-standing solution and one of the best CRM plugins available. The developers bill it as a “WordPress business manager”, with

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Worldwide WordPress Virtual 5K Set for October 1-30, 2021 – WP Tavern

[ad_1] Automattic is organizing its 2nd annual Worldwide WordPress 5K during the month of October this year. Registration for the race is free and participants will have the opportunity to donate to a charity of their choice, with Automattic matching donations up to $50,000. Just like the first Worldwide WP 5K that was held in 2015, the race will be virtual. Anyone is welcome to run, walk, bike, or swim the 5K any time between October 1-31. The requirements are fairly loose in that you can use any exercise app to track your run if you want. Participants are also encouraged to share a selfie, a screenshot of your route, and write a blog post that includes the #wwwp5k tag. Automattic will use the hashtag to include pictures on the official race site. Throughout the pandemic, much of the social running industry has gone online and virtual races have become more common. Although they don’t carry the same energy as in-person races, virtual races help friends keep setting fitness goals and encourage each other through online challenges. Joining in the Worldwide WordPress 5K is a great way to connect with friends around the world for an offline challenge that benefits your health. There is plenty of time to start training to reach a goal ahead of October and lots of resources available for running your first 5K. If all other motivations fail, maybe Wapuu can get you off the couch. The lack of in-person WordCamps has left some people hankering for new WordPress swag, and the 5K wapuu is ready to deliver. Participants can choose from a wide array of official gear, including hoodies, t-shirts, water bottles, tank tops, pins, socks, and more. Those who prefer not to run but still want to take part in the charitable event can give directly through the donation page. Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link

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Weekly WordPress News: Automattic Acquires Frontity

[ad_1] Hey, WordPress fans. We are checking in with your latest dose of weekly WordPress news. This week, Automattic acquired Frontity, an open-source React framework for WordPress-powered websites. The Frontity founders will apply their expertise to the Gutenberg project full-time. Beyond that, WordPress 5.8.1 release candidate is out and available for testing. This release features 41 bug fixes on Core, as well as 20 bug fixes for the Block Editor. We also have a lot of news, tutorials, and roundup posts for you. Let’s get to all of this week’s WordPress news… WORDPRESS NEWS AND ARTICLES TUTORIALS AND HOW-TOS RESOURCES [ad_2] Source link

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Astra Theme Review: Is It the Best WordPress Theme in 2021?

[ad_1] Considering using the Astra theme for your website? In our hands-on Astra theme review, we’ll help you decide whether it’s the right theme for your needs. Astra has the impressive distinction of being the most popular non-default WordPress theme ever. It was the first and only non-default theme to pass the one million active install count at WordPress.org and it’s done that with a perfect 5-star rating on ~5,000 user reviews. All that to say – a lot of people like Astra. And – spoiler alert – I’m one of those people, so this is going to be a generally positive Astra theme review, though I will highlight a few areas where other themes do things a little better. To help you understand why I, and so many other people, like Astra, I’ll divide this review into two parts. First, I’ll cover six areas where Astra stands out from the competition. These areas are: Lightweight performance Multipurpose design 150+ importable starter sites Detailed WordPress Customizer controls Compatibility with other WordPress plugins Powerful custom layouts feature for advanced users Then, I’ll give you a quick guide on what it’s like to create a site with Astra, go over the pricing, cover some FAQs, and give you my recommendations at the end. Let’s dig in! 🎩 Why Is the Astra Theme So Popular? Six Top Features I think there are six main reasons why the Astra theme has been so successful – let’s go through them… Lightweight Performance – You Can Create a Fast Website As your site’s foundation, your theme plays a big role in how quickly your site loads. One of Astra’s standout features is that it’s super lightweight. On a fresh install with just the theme, an Astra site is only 37 KB with 7 HTTP requests. Is it the fastest theme I’ve ever tested? Not quite. But it’s pretty dang close! For example, GeneratePress is only 26 KB with 7 HTTP requests, which technically beats out Astra. But I don’t think most people are going to notice the extra 11 KB 🤣 In the grand scheme of things, Astra is faster than 99% of WordPress themes and you can build incredibly quick-loading sites with Astra. Multipurpose – You Can Use It For Anything Astra is a true multipurpose theme, which means you can use it for literally any type of website. This includes: How is it so multipurpose? Well, its flexibility comes from the next three points that I’m going to talk about. Easy to Use – Demo Sites Make It Easier to Get Started To back up its multipurpose chops, Astra comes with 150+ importable demo sites built for a range of different use cases and niches. Organic Store You can browse all of the demo sites by clicking here, but here are some examples of specific demo sites to highlight Astra’s multipurpose nature: Travel Blogger & Influencer The demo sites themselves are built with your choice of four popular builders: Because all of the demo content uses a drag-and-drop builder, it’s super easy to customize everything to meet your needs. Flexible Options in the Customizer – You Can Adapt It To Your Needs Another reason why Astra is such a good multipurpose option is because of its incredibly detailed customization options, all of which are available through the native WordPress Customizer. There are two advantages to using the Customizer: It’s simple and code-free. You can make your changes using pre-built options – no tech knowledge needed. You get a real-time preview, so you can instantly see how your choices will affect the design of your site. In general, the Customizer gives you a ton of options when it comes to: Layouts Colors Typography Features Metadata Etc. I can’t show you every single option because there are a lot. But I do want to highlight a few of my favorites. First, there’s the drag-and-drop header/footer builder, which lets you create a custom header using a simple interface like this: You also get a ton of options for controlling other layouts. For example, you can configure different blog page layouts, adjust metadata, etc. You also get detailed global color and typography controls. This is really nice if you’re using a page builder because you can use Astra to control your global styles and just have the page builder inherit them.  That way, if you ever change your branding, the page builder will automatically update based on your global styles and you won’t need to edit each page individually: Compatible – It’s Compatible With Page Builders, WooCommerce, and LMS Plugins There are two types of compatibility here. First off, Astra works great with page builder plugins thanks to its global style rules and page-level controls. It makes a great option to pair with: Here are the page-level controls: Second, Astra has built-in compatibility options for some other popular plugins you might be using including: WooCommerce Easy Digital Downloads LifterLMS LearnDash For example, if you’re using LearnDash to create an online course, you’ll get access to built-in Astra customization options to control the layouts of your LearnDash course content. Powerful Custom Layouts Feature Finally, if you upgrade to Astra Pro, Astra has lots of advanced features to give you more control over your site. One of my favorites is Custom Layouts, which lets you create custom designs that you can “inject” into various parts of your site (kind of like hooks).  You can create the designs using the native editor or your favorite page builder and then insert them anywhere on your site using conditional rules. For example, you could design a CTA box that you want to display at the end of all your blog posts. Then, you could use Astra Layouts to automatically inject it on all blog posts (or maybe just a certain category of posts or posts from a certain author). Or, it’s also really handy for including ads. You can even target your layouts to specific user roles, devices, time/dates, etc. If you

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WordPress Translation Day 2021 Kicks Off September 1, Expanded to Month-Long Event – WP Tavern

[ad_1] WordPress Translation Day 2021 WordPress Translation Day kicked off today, and the event has been expanded to run from September 1-30 this year. WordPress Polyglots contributors from all over the world will be hosting mini-events throughout the month where they will be translating themes, plugins, apps, meta, docs, and other important projects. Events will also focus on recruitment, virtual training for new PTEs/GTEs, and general process improvements. In the past, the event has been a boon for the Polyglots contributor base. In 2020, the teams hosted more than 20 local events, resulting in more than 175,000 strings translated. French, Spanish, and Japanese-language locales logged the most translated strings during the first week last year. There are currently seven mini-events scheduled for 2021 in different locales throughout the month of September. From Portugal to Tehran to Jakarta, contributors are planning sprints to translate popular plugins and WordPress core. In Bengaluru, one of the largest IT hubs in India, organizers will be onboarding new translators, including high school students who are interested in contributing to WordPress. WordPress Translation Day will also include some global events during the second half of the month. These events will be hosted in English and contributors of all experience levels are welcome to attend: Friday, September 17th (time to be announced): Introduction to WordPress Translation Day Sunday, September 19th at 12:00 UTC: Panel on Polyglots Tools Tuesday, September 21st at 11:00 UTC: Panel on Open Source Translation Communities Thursday, September 30th (time to be announced): Closing Party – Why do you translate? Attendees will be able to participate live as the events are broadcasted on YouTube. The final session will recap the month’s events, highlight success stories, and will also include some activities and games. This year translators are extending their volunteer efforts to some newer projects, including working with the Training Team to translate video workshops hosted on learn.wordpress.org, translating Community team resources, translating the Block Patterns project, and translating the Pattern Directory itself. The global events combined with the local mini-events are essentially like a virtual Polyglots WordCamp held over the span of a month. Attendees will have opportunities to connect with other translators and team leaders and share their experiences contributing to WordPress. If you are new and thinking of joining the Polyglots team, check out the new Polyglots Training course on Learn WordPress.org to find out more about contributing. Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link

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Squarespace vs WordPress: A Comparison of 2 Site Publishing Giants

[ad_1] Building your website needs a stellar solution at the base. Squarespace vs WordPress is often a point of comparison for many users. In short, both platforms are user-focused, and easy to use. Even so, there’s a bit more you need to consider when weighing up both solutions. For example, price is often a prime consideration. It’s not something you should focus on too much though. Given this, we’ll compare Squarespace vs WordPress on a few different yet common aspects. By the end, you’ll have the information you need to make a decision. Introducing Both Platforms You’ll have heard of both Squarespace and WordPress even before reading this article. They are two of the most popular platforms for creating your website. Even so, they both have their differences. First, we’ll offer an introduction to each platform, before getting onto the comparison itself. Squarespace Squarespace will be familiar if you’ve watched educational or other learning videos on YouTube. It seems as though every channel is sponsored by Squarespace. What this shows is how well Squarespace promotes itself compared to WordPress – and for good reason. It’s an all-in-one website builder platform. In other words, it looks to offer everything you need to build a site out of the box. This is great news if you need to get up and running in a flash. You’re able to apply a template to your site to control its look, and add essential functionality such as contact forms, email marketing, and much more besides. The pricing is competitive too, and Squarespace offers a free trial to entice would-be converts. The whole package is tempting for both new and experienced users. WordPress Of course, WordPress should be familiar to you if you’re a regular WPKube reader. It’s the Content Management System (CMS) that has a 40 percent market share. It’s an open-source solution for publishing your website, and aims to give you the core functionality you need out of the box. In contrast to Squarespace, the idea is to extend the platform using selected themes and plugins. As such, WordPress isn’t as easy to get up and running with, but the power under your fingertips belies its modest visuals. How You Should Compare Squarespace vs WordPress Because your choice of site platform impacts almost every other decision you make, there are a few consideration to keep in mind. Here are some of the main ones: Does the platform let me take my site elsewhere? Am I able to build on top of the platform? What can I achieve with my chosen platform? How much does everything cost? The answers you find here will determine what you’ll need to look for in each solution. It could also bring up more question – always a good thing. Our advice is to test out each platform as much as you can. We’ll get onto pricing later, although both Squarespace and WordPress are available for free (which is an oversimplification). Once you’ve road tested both platforms, set your plans aside for a week or two, then come back. At this point, you can make a rational decision about which solution is best for you. Squarespace vs WordPress: A Comparison of 2 Site Publishing Giants Over the next few sections, we’ll look at Squarespace vs WordPress. We have four key areas that should tell you a lot about each platform: As we said, this won’t cover every question you have, but it’s a great starting point for your own research. As such, let’s tackle the UX of both platforms first. 1. Squarespace vs WordPress: Ease of Use The UX of any app or tool is vital for attracting users. Given this, it makes sense to take a look at this first. The good news is that both Squarespace and WordPress have a well-designed experience. This makes sense, given how popular both platforms are. Once you open a Squarespace account, you’re presented with a selection of templates. It’s clear what you should be doing, and it’s a productivity marker: Hovering over your chosen template lets you begin using it straight away: There’s a helpful Assistant to get you started, and it includes a checklist of essential ‘first site’ tasks: In contrast, WordPress has more of an ‘aged’ look, despite work over time on the CMS’ visuals: The main dashboard is full of screen elements to help you get an overview of your site. While it may look overwhelming, having all of the admin panels visible in a left-hand menu lets you navigate to pages in a snap. It’s a similar case with Squarespace, but it’s more of a singular page than a bunch of separate ones. Winner: We’d say Squarespace takes the point on this one, although WordPress is no slouch when it comes to UX. 2. Squarespace vs WordPress: Features and Functionality Neither platform is going to fail this comparison, although they both take a different approach to what’s included by default. Squarespace is an all-in-one builder. In other words, it’s a closed-source solution with an ecosystem to match. This is great for getting started and productive site management. In contrast, it’s poor if you want to take your site to another platform, or can’t find the functionality you need (more of which later). Even so, there’s plenty to get your teeth into. You’re able to create pages, design them using a stellar editor, and more: On the flip side, WordPress has the Block Editor. It’s under constant development, although we’d say that it’s not yet ready to tackle Full Site Editing (FSE). A cross-over aspect of Squarespace is that it offers much more by default than WordPress. For example, you have powerful email marketing, eCommerce, and analytics built into the platform: In fact, there’s so much here that we can’t do it justice. On the flip side, WordPress is lean. Out of the box, it lets you create posts and pages, edit them with the Block Editor, and not much more: While on the surface this might seem

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8 Best Options for Managed WordPress Hosting Compared (2021)

[ad_1] Do you really need managed WordPress hosting? Let’s face it: Running a WordPress blog or site is no easy game. You have to take care of all the content, marketing, site design, social media, and so forth. But before you do that, you have to make sure your WordPress site is running smoothly and your current WordPress hosting provider isn’t giving you any headaches or issues. Today, most of the web hosting companies out there focus on providing affordable solutions. It costs you less than $5 to get an account with a shared hosting provider. And that’s a great solution if you’re just getting started. But for a medium-sized or business site going for high-quality WordPress hosting is a better alternative. By quality hosting, I mean managed WordPress hosting, which is specifically created for WordPress users. Managed WordPress hosting can help you get a faster-loading site and it also takes a load off your shoulders by handling a lot of the basic maintenance and performance optimization tasks for you. Yes – it costs more than cheap shared hosting, but that extra expense is worth it for most WordPress users because you get a lot more value. In this article, I am going to provide some basic information on the eight most trusted and best WordPress managed hosting services, so you can make an educated decision about what’s best for you and your business. In a Hurry? Our Top Three Picks for Managed WordPress Hosting To get a detailed look at all eight hosts, you should keep reading the full article. But if you’re in a hurry, here are the top three hosting providers I recommend (& why): Name Loads Under Suitable for (visits/ month) Cost WPEngine 0.26s 25,000 $25 Flywheel 1s 5,000 $15 🥇 WP Engine — WP Engine is for those who want a bit of everything. They are perfect is for you if want to scale without compromising the quality of support or losing developer-friendly tools, all while not spending a fortune. Don’t forget to use our special WP Engine coupon “wpkube20” to get 20% off. From $30 per month for one site. 🥈 Flywheel — Flywheel is the kind of host you wouldn’t want to change. They are perfect for bloggers, agencies, and small businesses. Flywheel has a ton of unique features such as billing transfer, demo site, and blueprint (a tool that basically allows you to create sites with default theme & plugin configurations of your choice). WPKube is also hosted on Flywheel. From $15 per month for one site. Want to see some other options? Keep reading to learn more about the benefits of managed WordPress hosting and get more detail on our eight recommended hosts… What is Managed WordPress Hosting? Managed WordPress hosting is specifically designed and optimized for WordPress websites. In other words, it takes care of all the technical aspects of WordPress for you, allowing you to focus on creating and sharing great content. You don’t have to worry about site updates, site speed, up-time, or anything like that. Many hosting companies use their own CDN and server-level caching, so you don’t have to rely on cache plugins such as W3 Total Cache or WP Super Cache. This type of hosting is perfect for those who don’t have any technical skills or time to manage a server. The Pros of Managed Hosting for WordPress Security – The main aim of premium managed hosting is to provide bulletproof security. They have a very tight layer of security on their servers, so you don’t have to worry about hacking, DDoS attacks, malware, or other security issues. Expert Support – It wouldn’t be fair to say that shared hosting providers have poor support. In fact, most companies have excellent staff who are well-trained and possess a good knowledge of WordPress. But they can’t assist you with things like performance, site functionality, WordPress errors, etc. With managed hosting support, you will get expert WordPress assistance, always. Speed – Speed plays a significant role in site rankings and there a lot of things you can do to improve it like implementing a caching plugin, using a content delivery network such as StackPath, and reducing image sizes. Most of the managed hosting companies out there enable content caching at the server level, so you don’t have to rely on any external caching plugins. If you’re going with a normal plan, then you might need to use a content delivery network to improve site speed. Daily Backups – They take a daily backup of your site including content, data, themes, and plugins, which you can then download from the dashboard. This can save you some money, especially if you are using a paid backup or maintenance service such as VaultPress or BlogVault. They also create a restore point. In case something goes wrong, you can easily restore your site to a previously working version with just one click. Automatic Updates – They will automatically update your WordPress Core files to the latest version, as soon as an update is released. You don’t have to pay someone extra to update your site anymore—your managed hosting provider does it for you. No Downtime – No matter how much traffic your site gets, it will never go down. That means, if you hit the homepage of Hacker News or Reddit, your site will still be up and running without any issues. The Cons of Managed Hosting for WordPress Expensive – There is a huge difference in the price of managed and shared hosting. An average shared hosting plan will cost you a mere $3.95 while a managed hosting plan will set you back $30 on average, though we’ll share some budget options below. Limitations – Basically, any plugin that consumes heavy resources isn’t allowed. They also do not allow any cache plugins including W3 Total Cache and WP Super Cache. Here’s the full list of disallowed plugins shared by most managed hosts. No cPanel – If you are moving from

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Proposal for Adding Badges and Other ‘Learner Achievements’ to WordPress Profiles – WP Tavern

[ad_1] In December 2020, WordPress launched its new “Learn” platform with free courses, workshops, and lesson plans. Since then, the Training Team has continued adding more material. The latest proposal is an open discussion for the community on adding participatory badges for completing coursework. “I’d like to nail down what kind of thing we would like to see regarding recognising learner achievements on profiles,” wrote WordPress community manager Hugh Lashbrooke in the announcement earlier this month. The proposal, which now has a GitHub ticket, includes showing the following on a user’s WordPress.org profile page: A course’s completion in the activity stream. The user’s average grade from Learn WordPress. A new “Learning” tab for displaying completed courses with dates and the possibility of individual completed lessons, relevant grades, and other learning data. A new “Learner” badge for anyone who has completed one course. Currently, there are only two courses available. “That is changing as we develop new content,” wrote Lashbrooke in the post. “So my hope is that we will have these rewards in place now, and as content is created, the rewards will flow naturally.” One downside to the proposal may be publicly showing a user’s grades. “I’d be against showing the learner’s average grade publicly because it could lead to anxiety, stress, etc., and maybe even stop some people from participating in the courses,” wrote Stephen Cronin in the comments. “Eg: ‘What if I only get a C, will anyone take me seriously? Will it harm my chances of getting a job in the WP space?’ etc. Some people will thrive on that sort of competition, some people … not so much. And I feel like we should be as inclusive as possible.” Lashbrooke responded that showing grades could be an opt-in feature. However, I would question why it would be necessary to show grades at all. Bragging rights? Maybe. If we could somehow make it shareable via social media, it might be a fun way to get more people to participate. Several people in the comments were encouraged by the idea of social sharing. Adam Warner even proposed adding the Learn badges to the oEmbed WordPress block, making it easy for users to share their accomplishments on their sites. However, the first step should be to provide badges for completing a course. It is an easy win and could be automated. Most user profile badges are for direct contributions to the project, such as writing code or working on a team. However, at least some user-based participatory badges are available already. For example, there is a “Test Contributor” badge for providing feedback on calls for testing. One side advantage of a Learn achievement system could be for employers who are looking through an applicant’s history. It may help potential employees show off their competency in specific areas of the WordPress platform. Courtney Engle Robertson, Web Design and Developer Advocate at GoDaddy, questioned Matt Mullenweg during 2020’s State of the Word Q&A session on the role of the Learn platform as it pertains to the job market. Mullenweg said the first step is organizing the platform and making high-quality educational material available. However, he seemed open to the idea of having a self or administered certification down the line. It would allow people to show that they have completed or tested out of a course. “It wouldn’t be a perfect system, but it could be a nice way for people to learn more about WordPress,” he said. “And, hopefully, as they go through, since WordPress is open-source, improve the materials as we go through it, both from the point of view of making it more intuitive or easier to understand and also translating, as well. Because there is a huge demand for WordPress really all over the world now.” View the clip below from the State of the Word Q&A: “As someone who hires WordPress professionals, I would love to have a request in the job application to link up their WP profile so we can see competency through that learning platform,” commented Chris Badgett, the founder and CEO of LifterLMS, on the proposal. He also agreed with Mullenweg that people should be able to test out of a course. It would not make sense for those who have already acquired specific skills or knowledge to go through the motions of completing coursework they are already proficient in. “Creating quizzes or ‘post tests’ in the LMS with a standard minimum passing requirement to earn the achievement badge would help fulfill this,” he said. For now, some simple gamification via profile badges could boost participation and, perhaps, get more people involved in contributing to the Learn platform. This could also be the first step toward a WordPress certification system. Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link

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Using a Registry, Subscribers, and Services in WordPress

[ad_1] TL;DR: I find the using a registry, subscribers, and services very useful when building backend-centric plugins and utilities for WordPress. This post walks through how to do it. After working in with design patterns, object-oriented programming, and WordPress for years, common ways of solving problems are bound to arise. This is how we got object-oriented design patterns to begin with, so maybe this is a WordPress-centric variation of that. Though I’ve written about things such as registries in previous articles (and ones that are not that old even), it’s never a bad idea to revisit the same topic especially when there’s something to continue to add to the previous take. A Registry, Subscribers, and Services Everything described below is to be understood within the context of the WordPress plugin. That is, this isn’t meant to be read as a way to work with any other frameworks, languages, applications, or when using it with any other patterns. Remember that when reading this. Anyway, the general idea behind the combination of these object types if the following: The registry handles all of the subscribers, The subscribers listen for hooks within WordPress (those that exist or even custom hooks), The services do the actual work whenever the subscribe dispatches them. The purpose being there’s a single place to register the classes responsible for dispatching the work. That’s it. Further, this also makes it easy to keep things separate so that if you want to test your services in isolation, it’s much easier because they aren’t necessarily coupled tightly to WordPress. And if they are, then you can mock the data that needs to be passed into a given function and then evaluate the result. This isn’t an article about testing, though, so back to the actual classes. Registry By definition, the purpose of a registry is to keep track of things. When it comes to implementing this pattern in WordPress, the idea is that the registry can keep track of subscribers (which I’ll define later in this article). Photo by Denny Müller on Unsplash Further, the idea is that when the time comes, which will likely different for however your plugin is structured, all of the subscribers will be instantiates. To that point, though, you’re likely going to want to do it early in the WordPress lifecycle. That said, here’s an example of how to the code for registering the subscribers: private $subscribers = [ AssetSubscriber::class, // … DeletedUserSubscriber::class, ]; Next, here’s a function for instantiating the subscribers. public function run() { array_map( function ($subscriber) { (new $subscriber())->subscribe(); }, $this->subscribers ); } These blocks can be part of the same function or they can be separate depending on your needs. Subscribers As mentioned, subscribers are the way to: Listen for a certain hook in WordPress Dispatch a Service to do whatever work is intended for the given hook. So assume for a moment you want to do something whenever a user is deleted. You want to instantiate a service via the subscriber whenever this hook happens. Photo by Lee Campbell on Unsplash As an example: class DeletedUserSubscriber { public function subscribe() { (new DeletedUserService())->add(‘delete_user’); } } Note the subscriber is aware of the service (though it maintains no dependency on it as its simply an intermediary between WordPress and the service) and specifies the hook on the service that its instantiating. Services Finally, services are the objects who do all of the heavy lifting in a plugin. This means that if they need to read or write to the database, the file system, the network, process data, etc., it all happens within their context. Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash They may be aware of other classes, they may not be. They may implement an interface or an abstract class or not. That’s really beyond the scope of this post. But the point is that, using the hook from above as an example, if you want to do something when a user is deleted, you do it within the service. For example: class DeletedUserService { public function add(string $hook) { add_action($hook, [$this, ‘deletedUser’], 99, 1); } public function deletedUser(int $userId) { $user = get_userdata($userId); if (false === $user) { return; } // Do work with the user that’s being deleted. } } And that’s the end of it. Once the service runs, control will be returned to WordPress and the application will continue execution as normal. All Together Now Assuming you have a bootstrap file for your plugin, which most do as this is where the required plugin is defined, an autoloader is required, and instantiation of the plugin itself occurs. If you’re interesting in seeing a more complete solution that demonstrates how to use the above code in a practical setting, let me know on Twitter. That way, I’ll know to go ahead and draft up another article. 🙂 [ad_2] Source link

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WordPress Classic Editor Support Extended for at Least Another Year – WP Tavern

[ad_1] Last week, I reached out to several members of the core WordPress committers to see if we could get an official word on whether Classic Editor support would continue beyond the mere months it seemingly had left to live. I received a semi-official answer but was asked to hold off on publishing for a more detailed and nuanced response. Earlier today, WordPress executive director Josepha Haden Chomposy announced the official decision. It was just as expected. The WordPress project would continue supporting the Classic Editor plugin for a while longer. “At the time, we promised to support the plugin through 2021 and adjust if needed as the deadline got closer,” she wrote. “After discussing this with Matt [Mullenweg], it’s clear that continuing to support the plugin through 2022 is the right call for the project as well as the community.” As of now, classic users have a one-year extension. However, the plugin will not suddenly stop working on December 31, 2022. That is merely the current deadline for the “full support” phase. It should continue working well beyond whatever date is set for that support window to close. Designer Mark Root-Wiley reached out to WP Tavern via Twitter last week, but others had been asking the same question for a while. For some, they needed to know if they could continue supporting specific client needs. For others, it was a bludgeon to use in conversations for all editor-related things. Whatever the reason, before today, the last word had been from a Make Core post in November 2018. “The Classic Editor plugin will be officially supported until December 31, 2021,” wrote core contributor Gary Pendergast in that three-year-old announcement. It was a shock for many at the time, uncertain whether the new block system would meet their needs. While three years may have seemed like plenty of time to ditch the classic in favor of the modern WordPress editor, the current stats show that the project still has a few miles yet to go. Currently, there are over 5 million active installations of the Classic Editor plugin. I am still waiting for a more specific tally, but no one has provided an answer yet. At best, we think the counter turns over at 10+ million, so we can speculate on the floor and ceiling for possible usage. Active installs are not the entire picture either. For example, we have the plugin installed here at the Tavern for legacy reasons but do not use it in our day-to-day work. We can likely disable it altogether. WordPress has no telemetry system for tracking the usage of such features. While the install total will not always make the picture clear, the current number supports the push for continued maintenance. “I think it’s important to note that the plugin is not going anywhere,” said core committer Jonathan Desrosiers. “It will continue to be listed on the .ORG repository for the foreseeable future.” He pointed out that understanding the next phase of the Classic Editor plugin meant looking into the level of effort required to support it since 2018. The overwhelming majority of the changes in that nearly three-year timeframe have come down to keeping up with: Text changes. Adjustments to prevent warnings/errors and promote consistency across supported PHP versions. Changes to deprecated action/filter hook calls. “It’s been almost three whole years, and the plugin has largely required very little maintenance to continue functioning, and the bulk of maintenance has been to limit warnings and notices in debug logs,” he said. The goal of the Classic Editor plugin was to help ease the transition to the block editor. Thus far, there have been eight major WordPress releases since the switch in version 5.0. “There’s a theory called the diffusion of innovations that looks to explain how, why, and at what rate new technology spreads,” said Desrosiers. “It separates adopters into several groups based on when they are willing to take the jump: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards. I truly think that we have seen a good portion of the late majority beginning to move towards using the block editor. This can also be confirmed by the plugin’s install growth, which has been slowing and plateauing this year.” He had expected the previous deadline to mark the next stage of the Classic Editor plugin, called the “sunset” phase. It would be a time when the WordPress project moved from full support to encouraging late adopters to transition to the current editor to get the plugin’s numbers down. “The context I gave previously shows that, until now, that the level of effort needed to keep the plugin working on newer versions of WP has been pretty minimal,” said Desrosiers of the potential sunset phase. “I expect that pattern to continue thanks to backward compatibility. If any security issues or major problems are encountered, they’ll, of course, be fixed. Any incompatibilities with the plugin and newer versions of WP will be considered on a case by case basis, but little to no time will be put towards bug fixes.” However, this sunset phase will have to wait. We will not see it until at least the current support window closes on December 31, 2022. WordPress project leaders will need to reevaluate the plugin’s lifespan at that point. The other looming question would be whether core WordPress would move specific pieces of its system to the Classic Editor plugin, such as allowing custom post types to support the old editor or the meta box API. “There are no plans at this time to move any of the underlying ‘classic’ parts from core to the plugin,” said Desrosiers. “I’m sure that removing these parts will be evaluated at some point in the future, but when that will be is not clear.” Even when official Classic Editor support reaches a hard deadline, it does not mean such a traditional editing experience will cease to exist. Plugins like Disable Gutenberg have promised longer lifespans than the initial

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