Knowing What’s Missing in WordPress Functionality

Posted on October 17, 2017 by Mario

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.

How to Create an Awesome Logo without Any Design Skills

Posted on May 9, 2017 by Mario

Making a perfect logo requires you a good design skill, but what if you don’t have any design skills but want to have a logo design? Don’t worry for now you can try many tools that can help you produce good logo design without even creating any design by yourself. So, whoever you are; web developer or mobile developer, you can create your own logo design.

But, first you need to know some basic design rules, such as below:

Use only 1 or 2 colors

Less color schemes will make people easier to remember your color signature. For example, in Youtube logo, red is the dominant color. Therefore, this color will come to your mind once you think about Youtube. In fact, this color has become Youtube’s icon. Besides, each color will deliver certain meanings. So, pick the right color will convey the right meaning to your users.

Use Simple Graphics

Simple graphics is used to make your logo’s design is easy to remember. Therefore, you better avoid using overly elaborate logo design. You can use 8 years old child as your parameter, if they are able to draw your logo easily, you have succeeded then.

Use Versatile graphics

Your logo not only will be displayed on website or social media account but also on your business cards and other formats. So, you have to ask yourself several questions, such as:

Will the logo work in horizontal and vertical formats?
Will it look good if it is in just 1 color?
Will it still be recognizable if it is scaled down like on a business card?

Now you have the basic knowledge to create logos. But, you still don’t have any skill to create logos, so how? Now, you can use logo makers and generators to help you finish the job. But, more importantly you don’t need to have any design skills. Besides, it only takes you less time compare to deal with hiring designers.

Here are some logo’s makers and generators that you can choose to help you creating logos:

#1 Tailor brands

It is one of the best logo generators we’ve tested because they actually design the logo for you. Instead of design a logo specifically for you, they use an algorithm that will choose and recommend a number of logos automatically based on the designs you actually like.

So, what you need to do is to scroll through an image library with hundreds of graphics. From the library, you choose an image you want as your logo. But what happened if you still cannot find the right logos after hundreds of graphics or font styles? Well, this tool will ask you few design questions to find out what type of design appeals to you. Based on your answers, Tailor Brands will suggest and create a logo they think will best match your design style.

So here is how the process works:

Insert your business name.
Describe your business in 1 sentence (think about how you want people to remember you).
Choose between the types of logos you like (you can choose more than 1 logo types):
Icon Based Logo – uses an easy to remember shape in the center of your logo design.
Name Based Logo – uses your company name as the key element of your logo design.
Initial Based Logo – uses your company initials as the main element of your logo design.
What type of font design you like – they show you a series of font styles and you can answer “yes or no”. Based on the type of font styles you say yesto, the algorithm will know what design styles you like.

Now, you can get your design less than a minute. Awesome!

#2 Squarespace

Squarespace is a super easy to use and they can offer you with a decent graphic library. This makes them not only an amazing website builder, but also a really good logo maker. In fact, Squarespace makes a good choice if you want to produce a high-resolution logo. However, as it is free, so you cannot expect the same result of graphic selection and customization like Tailor Brands.

How the process works:

Insert your business name.
Choose an image from the image library.
You can move the image to the top/bottom/left/right of your business name. You can even customize the image size using the built-in drag & drop tools.
You can customize the color and font style

#3 Graphic Springs

Graphic Springs is one of the best logo customization tools we’ve seen. The process of picking your logo is pretty straight forward with Graphic Springs;

Insert your business name
Pick a graphic as your logo

Then, you can move the logo graphic to the top, bottom, left or right of your business name. You can even resize the logo image using its drag &drop tools. Of course, you can change the color, font styling, and all the typical customizations you get with logo generators.

Powerful Combination of Fabulous CSS3 and jQuery

Posted on January 28, 2016 by Mario

Finding the right design tools for your special needs can be troublesome sometimes, and if you are currently in this kind of situation, why don’t you try to mix several design tools that may comply your needs, we recommend you to try the mix of CSS3 and jQuery. If you are web designers who wondering about the benefits of its combination, you can find it out on the article below. Here we are starting it by explaining their definitions first.

What is CSS3

CSS3 is the latest version after CSS2, the interface designing language that offers a multitude of new ways to create an impactful web design incorporating some of the best way and highly important changes. This software has made limitless possibilities to the world. When it is first launched, CSS versions were quite large, therefore this time it is divided into smaller including: lists module, box model, hyperlink presentation, text effect, background borders and etc. If you are interested in learning them, you can find some via CSS3 website designs tutorials. CSS3 can be used as web design resources as it introduces a wide array of effective and powerful tools.

What is jQuery

Another web design resource which is part of JavaScript framework is jQuery. jQuery is created to make easier the process of using JavaScript on your website. Moreover, it also has some syntactical shortcuts that make it cannot be replaced with JavaScript. In fact, it is more like an abstraction layer. It can be said that amongst all of JavaScript tools, jQuery is the most powerful and simplest web design because of its beautiful framework.

Benefits of CSS3 and jQuery Combination

jQuery and CSS3 have been built for the intention of creating websites that are suitable on different platform and browsers, so that website will be easier to load. Moreover, due to its independency and versatile features, both of them have become the most preferred scripts when it comes to website building.

Therefore, mixing the usage of both jQuery and CSS3 will provide you with extra benefits, such as listed below:

Ranking: To get a rank on various search engine platform that are highly advanced like Google, Yahoo etc., both layouts and good designs are important. The website will be readable, clear formatted and semantic. If these important factors are in place than all the content marketing or social strategies will work. Otherwise all the efforts will be drained down. Both these scripts can be read well, are compatible across a range of web browsers and often a top choice of good ranking.
Browsing Enhanced: Some of the features also enable to support offline browsing on your website. In fact, your website will act like an app even when offline. You readers will be able to read and browse on the go when offline and the cache feature ensure a faster and hassle free performance in such cases.
Platform Independency: Both the scripts offer very consistent and reliable platform independency feature and can be supported by all the major and latest releases of web browsers.
Cost Effective: The codes are reusable ad thus significantly decrease the cost of development and maintenance. The hybrid approach is quiet effective in today’s time.
Business Intelligence gets easier: It has become a lot easier, impactful and accurate with the release of latest versions. They can collate and make use of available data as well as track user’s movement.

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Knowing What’s Missing in WordPress Functionality

How to Create an Awesome Logo without Any Design Skills

Powerful Combination of Fabulous CSS3 and jQuery