May the Force be with your WordPress.
Developing a new WordPress theme can often be difficult when it comes to having sample data to work with. There are websites that help with filler content, such as lipsum.org, but those services often just provide a single paragraph and it’s still difficult to get the full markup for ordered lists, unordered lists, blockquotes, and [...]
Logging in to WordPress would normally require an actual WordPress account. However, Samuel Wood (aka @Otto42), developed a few WordPress plugins to integrate the social service of your choice and login to WordPress with your Facebook, Twitter, or Google+ account. Login to WordPress with Facebook Beyond just logging in with Facebook, Simple Facebook Connect offers [...]
I started using WordPress at one of my last jobs and we encountered a number of big headaches when it came time to code management and deployment. I realized, WordPress is not naturally built for the enterprise. Whether it’s how the URLs are hardcoded into the database or how media files are attached and managed [...]
CodeGuard is a new WordPress backup and security service that feels like a user-focused VaultPress+Sucuri mashup. The backup aspect of it lets you manage a complete backup, all the nuts and bolts of an entire site. All the core WordPress files, the database — including the users, posts, tags, categories, and even custom post types. [...]
Brian, over at the StudioPress blog, just announced the release of Simple Social Icons. After quickly installing it to test it out, this plugin is a breeze to add social media icons to your sidebar. Nathan Rice, who is part of the StudioPress team, built this plugin. It uses beautiful CSS and rounded corners to [...]
Sites sometimes need to go into maintenance mode, for one reason or another. For example, this site, WP Force, will go into maintenance mode in the next couple of weeks, as I roll out the new design I’ve been working on. Instead of leaving your site half-baked for everyone to see, go into maintenance mode [...]
WooCommerce is an open-source e-commerce platform by WooThemes. It’s free and easy to use, however, there still may be other extensions you need, such as the ability to take credit cards. Here are some great plugins to help you take advantage of WooCommerce. WooCommerce Payment Gateway Extensions WooCommerce Shipping Extensions There are a number of [...]
Pinterest is a pretty sweet tool/app/website/service, whatever you want to call it. The Pinterest RSS Widget will let you easily hook up your pins to your WordPress site and share your pins with your visitors. You can add pins as thumbnails to posts or as a widget in the sidebar. If you’re on Pinterest, follow [...]
The Genesis framework, which powers WP Force, is a great framework and I highly recommend it to anyone. The default widgets that come with the framework are powerful, but I found this plugin that helped make the Featured Widget even more powerful.
I find it quite annoying when I have any number of images beyond 2, where I want to insert all of them, but not using the gallery shortcode. Faster Image Insert This plugin has a number of features that change how the default media manager handles attachments. No thickbox, using metabox with zero interface blocking, [...]
Want to help stop SOPA and PIPA? I do too. (What is SOPA/PIPA?) Here are 2 plugins you can install on your WordPress site to help stop SOPA and PIPA. Stop SOPA Ribbon WordPress Plugin This plugin will display a small ribbon top right, linking to Americancensorship.org, as a sign of support for anyone visiting [...]
Gravity Forms is a powerful plugin by Rocket Genius. But just like any plugin, there’s always something that someone will want to add, that isn’t in the core of the plugin. Gravity Forms Toolbar will give you access to any of the Gravity Forms actions that you need to perform on the site. Everything form [...]
The admin bar was a great introduction into WordPress with the WordPress 3.3 release. It can be an extremely useful tool while using the WordPress dashboard as it provides some shortcuts to commonly used actions/links. But as with any piece of software, there is never a one-size-fits-all. One person may want this link or that [...]
WordPress.com is sporting some snow on almost all of their blogs during the Christmas season, so why not add some to your self-hosted WordPress site? Here’s how. Download the wp-snow-effect plugin from wordpress.org, install it to your site, activate it, and you’re done! Here’s what it looks like:
Over the years of using WordPress, I’ve found that not all pages are created equally. I may want recent posts on the archives, but I may want the “subscribe” widget only shown on posts. Or some other variation if you’re using WordPress as a corporate site, you may have other specific needs to display X [...]
