WordPress News

If you use Easy Digital Downloads,…

Brian Krogsgard

September 30, 2016

If you use Easy Digital Downloads, then you might appreciate this new plugin from Scott Bolinger. Here's some of the data the plugin provides to the user: Revenue Sales Average revenue per customer Estimated yearly revenue Estimated monthly revenue Refunds…

Pagely is celebrating their seven year anniversary. Joshua…

Brian Krogsgard

September 30, 2016

Hosting

Pagely is celebrating their seven year anniversary. Joshua Strebel reflects on seven years of the managed WordPress hosting industry that his team started, and also looks into the future. WP101 is also celebrating a birthday -- a whopping eight years -- and Shawn Hesketh says…

Scaling for support can be especially…

Brian Krogsgard

September 30, 2016

Scaling for support can be especially tricky for small businesses and agencies. Matt Cromwell shares his formula on support, with one of the main takeaways being to collect data and know your capacity limits. Matt also shares a spreadsheet and…

Here’s an interesting peak into the…

Brian Krogsgard

September 30, 2016

Here's an interesting peak into the impact of Let's Encrypt on the SSL market. According to W3Techs, Let's Encrypt certificates are used by 3% of all websites. While the market is growing rapidly, other providers aren't feeling the hit quite yet.…

Nick Halsey from the WordPress Design…

Brian Krogsgard

September 30, 2016

Nick Halsey from the WordPress Design team did some user tests for the customizer theme experience. Just like every user test I've seen, it is enlightening to how much of a struggle our interfaces often are to end users, even when we're…

I’m going to have a much…

Brian Krogsgard

September 30, 2016

I'm going to have a much more complete review soon, but I've been testing Metorik -- a new and in beta WooCommerce analytics SaaS from Bryce Adams -- and it is absolutely amazing. It's the most promising WordPress tool I've…

When I was reading Pippin Williamson’s…

Brian Krogsgard

September 30, 2016

When I was reading Pippin Williamson's page builder post, I noticed his image modals were just really exceptional. It turns out it's an implementation of Magnific. It is so simple and elegant. It's one of the only truly nice modal…

The content in WordPress

Brian Krogsgard

September 30, 2016

One of Pippin Williamson's repeated concerns during his review of page builders was over data loss. He praised the plugins that, when deactivated, maintained HTML markup and content in the_content() so the site owner could still use their content without the…

Page builder plugins: the good, bad, and ugly

Brian Krogsgard

September 30, 2016

Pippin Williamson did a pretty epic, nearly 10,000 word review of thirteen WordPress page builder plugins. He didn't include page builders built into themes, but tested most of the popular plugins out there. I highly recommend you read it. Even…

A new life for WP Test

Brian Krogsgard

September 29, 2016

WP Test is a micro-site previously run by Michael Novotny, initially with the aim of providing theme unit test data for WordPress sites. It was one of the first efforts of its kind, and is still quite popular. It's home is WPTest.io,…

The art of being a self-employed web consultant — Draft podcast

Katie Richards

September 24, 2016

BusinessDraft

In this episode, Brian talks to Diane Kinney about web-based freelancing in the real world.

Carrie Dils and Diane Kinney are…

Brian Krogsgard

September 22, 2016

Business

Carrie Dils and Diane Kinney are working on a book devoting to making you become a better freelancer. Real World Freelancing covers, "client management, business strategies, processes & tools, marketing, mental health" and other subjects. You can signup to be notified…

Weston Ruter has come up with a…

Brian Krogsgard

September 22, 2016

Weston Ruter has come up with a snippet that can serve as a starting point for those writing WordPress plugins that want to "reset" the WordPress customizer. This "reset" means that when the customizer opens, only the section containing the controls…

How do you spot small visual…

Brian Krogsgard

September 22, 2016

How do you spot small visual differences on a site or theme? Kate Kligman shows how visual regression testing uses screenshot comparisons to automatically detect changes and report them back to you, using an app called Wraith. While the article shows…

Speaking of Pantheon, the folks there…

Brian Krogsgard

September 22, 2016

Speaking of Pantheon, the folks there have been working with Daniel Bachhuber on WP LCache. WP LCache is a new persistent object cache drop-in for WordPress. He answered my first question without me asking: "But why another object cache drop-in?"…

One step closer to a more…

Brian Krogsgard

September 22, 2016

One step closer to a more secure web: FlyWheel is offering "simple" SSL at no additional charge. In addition, Let's Encrypt support is coming to WP Engine and customers should see that in the next few weeks, if they haven't…