plugin

Knowing What’s Missing in WordPress Functionality

Posted on by Mario

WORDPRESS’-MISSING-FUNCTIONALITY-(AND-HOW-TO-FIND-IT)_ywf

WordPress has become one of the most well-known website platforms in the world. Many people love this platform because of its flexibility, security and ranges of plugins that one can install to provide additional functionality. However, with many benefits that it offers, WordPress still lacks with many things. If you are a web developer, the information below can be beneficial for you. Here are a few requests for the missing functionality in WordPress; and some workarounds for the meantime.

Ability to Duplicate Posts

WordPress is equipped with completely redo settings to get the desired output which can be unnecessarily time consuming. This functionality on WordPress is limited to the use of a plugin: Duplicate Post.

With a duplicate post plugin, you can “clone” a post or “create a new draft”. The latter copies the post and opens it in a new window for editing. On the other hand, the former creates a new post entirely.

Moreover, you can also edit settings that let you do things like copying with this plugin:

  • Original date,
  • Original status (saved to draft, published, pending),
  • Original excerpt; original attachments,
  • Children of the original page,
  • Taxonomies/custom fields.

You are also able to work with custom post types in this plugin. Unfortunately, not all plugins are compatible and doesn’t necessarily call out these incompatibilities on the front end. As a result, it can cause worst scenario, such as complication from using this plugin can crash your website, so it is important for you to have a backup.

Bundle Settings and Plugins for New Installs

If you are planning to create multiple sites in WordPress, it would be particularly helpful to have some functionality that combines all the desired features into a file that could be uploaded to the site you’re building. If you work with clients in a similar industry, you will see that many WordPress websites have the same base features. However, installing /activating the launch list plugins one by one is tedious, so as a solution, you can install WordPress Install Profiles plugins. Once installed and activated, Go to Plugins > Bulk Install Profiles.

Furthermore, you can easily add or remove plugins from the list with a default list of plugins. Use the name on the plugin’s URL to add a new plugin, after that, give the list profile a name and download it to your computer.

You’ll need to have the WordPress Install Profiles plugin installed and activated on that site, then import the profile you want to install on another website. However, since this plugin hasn’t been updated in many years, there may be compatibility or security issues associated with its use.

SITE CACHING

Site caching supports your site to load faster by storing the website processes in an HTML file to be loaded as needed. That is why page loading is a major factor for ranking in technical SEO. To avoid any server calls, developers wish that WordPress had site caching.

Even though you cannot find site caching built into the platform, there are many plugins that can initiate this process, like W3 Total Cache and WP Super Cache. Actually, there are some WordPress hosting companies that offer site caching. However, many find that site caching offered through a web host is more efficient than these plugins, so if that’s an option, don’t install a caching plugin.

Built-In Form Builder

You can find a lot of form builder plugins, but since most businesses use forms anyway, why not add this functionality to the WordPress core code? Rather than waiting for this functionality missing in WordPress, try an all-purpose contact form plugin like Contact Form 7. With contact Form 7, you can manage multiple contact forms, and you can easily customize form and email content with simple markup. Besides, Contact Form 7 supports Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering, and other important security factors. Another benefit that you can get is the simplicity to set-up, flexible, as well as it offers customizable default messages, and easily-defined mail messages.

Improved Theming System

In terms of the theming system, WordPress still needs lots of improvement. There are still “sloppy code” and “disastrous mix of business and display logic”. In the current version, you can see that template hierarchy does not take plugins into account. As a result, the plugin has to override the template system, or create a workaround to provide a default template for displaying this custom post type if you have a plugin with a custom post type for movies.

The more complex the code base, there is a greater opportunity to improve code practices, eliminate short codes, and fix template hierarchy for a more efficient base theme.

Custom User Permissions

In general, WordPress serves its users with 5 roles:

  • Administrator
  • Editor
  • Author
  • Contributor
  • Writer

In terms of managing tasks, each of these roles has their own specific limits. Many developers suggest it, so that WordPress could allow users to set, specify, or limit what each individual user can do, especially for a multi-author/user site.

To overcome this functionality missing, you can use Advanced Access Manager plugin; which manages both frontend and backend access.

File Browsing Interface

Even though you can find various plugins available, you have to be careful in choosing the right plugin for your website, since certain plugins may cause your website to slow down. By having an error code, you can identify this, but when it does not, then you have to manually deactivate all files, and then reactivate them one by one in the admin area to determine what is causing the error. However, you have to use a File Transfer protocol (FTP) like Firezilla to backup all plugin files if the error does not allow access to the admin area.

Besides, developers can quickly fix issues without needing cPanel/FTP access since you can access files directly from WordPress.

Nowadays, WordPress is still the most powerful platform on its own. No wonder there are various plugins that have been developed to support the functionality missing in WordPress, even though many developers are still hoping that the issues will immediately get built-in solutions.

Bootstrap 4 Alpha 6 Major Components in Flexbox

Posted on by Mario

Bootstrap-4-Alpha-6

Alpha 6 has just launched and it becomes the biggest ships to date.  Hence, in this article we will describe its grid system and major components in flexbox. If you are web developers who are currently working on WordPress, this article is for you. Discover what’s new with Bootstrap 4 Alpha 6, here!

Embracing Flexbox
As bootstrap is now flexbox by default, you can control your grid system and core components and provide unparalleled flexibility. However, it may be dropping IE9 support yet brings significant improvements to component layout, alignment, and sizing.

If you have no idea about Flexbox, here are some benefits that you can have when applying Bootstrap 4:

  • No more HTML white space or broken table-style rendering
  • Auto margins for easy spacing
  • Automatic equal-width grid columns (e.g., two columns are automatically 50% wide)
  • Equal height and equal; width cards
  • Utility classes for easily changing display, direction, alignment, and more.
  • Justified navigation and button groups
  • Vertical and horizontal centering without hardcoding values with translate or margin

In fact, almost every component now takes advantage of flexbox. This is because less reliance on clearfix, more control over Dom, and visual order, and fewer bugs. Even, Carousels, a more complex component has used Flexbox in some areas.

Responsive Utilities and the Great Infix
Among so many advantages that Alpha 6 offered, they also made two important changes to their naming scheme.

  • First, we’ve dropped the –xs infix from our lowest (extra small) breakpoint. However, xs isn’t a responsive breakpoint just like sm, md, lg, and xl. This is because it doesn’t start applying styles at a min-width and up. It can be applied to everything as there’s no bounding @media query.
  • Second, to better articulate their property value pairings, we’ve renamed several classes. Instead of pull, we use float. You can start with the property name, instead of creating new names for the various flexbox properties.

Combine them together and you’ll get updated class, such as .col-6, .d-none, .float-right, .d-md-flex, .justify-content-end, and .text-lg-left. With these classes, you can have immense power and customization to folks building with Boothstrap.

More Grid Improvements
You will also have more grid improvements. By adding responsive auto sizing columns, more container padding options, and add any number of .col-* classes, the result will automatically be equal in width.

To remove gutters from grid rows and their columns, you can use the .no-gutters modifier.

Updated Navbar
If you find that the Alpha 5 navbar still needs more improvement, you’ll see that the Alpha 6 is done perfectly. The navbar has been rewritten and it provides better built-in responsive behaviors and improved layout customization.

Here are some of the lists of the updates:

  • The responsive navbar toggle, .navbar-toggler, has also been updated. The icon is once again a child element, .navbar-toggler-icon, for improved customization. It also includes easy modifiers for absolutely aligning it to the top right or top left.
  • Navbar navs no longer require the .nav base class. While it provided a starting point, these shared styles often got in the way of navbar behaviors. Now it’s just .navbar-nav and utilities for alignment.
  • Navbars are built with flexbox! Instead of floats, you’ll need flexbox and margin utilities.
  • The .navbar-toggleable classes are now applied to the .navbar instead of the .collapse within. This allows us to provide better responsive behavior with just one class change.

WordPress 4.4.1 Security Update and Maintenance Released

Posted on by Mario

WordPress Security Update Released Immediate Download Recommended

Here is good news for any web developer around the world, since a new version of security update has been released for WordPress version 4.4. Therefore you need to update your site immediately and develop it by yourself! This version is actually a security and maintenance release which fixes a flaw that could allow a site to be compromised by a cross-site scripting vulnerability which is a type of code injection where malicious content can pass from one site to another through bypassing the same origin policy.

Along with providing security update, WordPress also provides a few maintenance updates to its latest version, 4.4.1. This update contains the inclusion of diverse emoji sets. Another issue also arises that if the URL of a post was ever re-used, it would redirect to the wrong post. Here are several non-security bug fixes:

  • Emoji support has been updated to include all of the latest emoji characters, including the new diverse emoji
  • Some sites with older versions of OpenSSL installed were unable to communicate with other services provided through some plugins.
  • Removal of Rdio embed support, plugins failing to update after WordPress 4.4 is installed, and a handful of changes to responsive images.

In fact, in this update, WordPress 4.4.1 fixes 52 bugs that have occurred since release of version 4.4. With more than 10 million downloads, WordPress is the most popular CMS on the Web, but it’s also the most attacked. It’s not uncommon for malicious actors to exploit vulnerabilities in both WordPress itself and various plugins. WordPress websites are also reported as easily to attack on the fact that many administrators rarely set strong passwords for their accounts. Therefore, through this update, it is hoped that users can feel more satisfied. In fact, you can Download WordPress 4.4.1 or venture over to Dashboard Updates and simply click “Update Now.” Sites that support automatic background updates are already beginning to update to WordPress 4.4.1.