How do I get started with theme design?
That's a common question we get from people who join OSTraining for the first time. They want to know about the skills they will need, and what kind of classes they should take.
Here's an overview of everything you need to get started with WordPress theme design.
The new Gutenberg editor is nearly here and the WordPress landscape is about to change in a big way.
Many plugins are themes are going to be impacted. In particular, people are curious how page-builder plugins such as Beaver Builder and Visual Composer will respond. The answer, looking at BoldGrid, another popular plugin in the same niche, is to do more. BoldGrid doesn't just build pages, it builds complete websites. It allows you to build an entire WordPress website without any code and in a ridiculously short amount of time.
BoldGrid provides layouts, themes, an SEO plugin and more. It also has developer-friendly tools such as Staging plugin and a Backup plugin. All-in-all, it offers far more than BoldGrid will ever offer. It's a website builder, rather than a page builder.
Today, we're delighted to say that the "Magento 2 Explained" book is here.
This step-by-step guide will get you up-and-running quickly with Magento 2.
Magento has a reputation for being a complex platform, but we've successfully explained similar software before with Drupal, Joomla and MySQL. This 300-page book is a fun and straightforward beginners guide to Magento 2.
Some people have scanned a few blog posts about the GDPR. Very few people have researched it deeply and really know what they're talking about. Beka Rice is firmly in the latter group.
Beka works for SkyVerge, which develops WooCommerce and Shopify plugins, plus Jilt, which helps stores to recover abandoned carts. I spoke with Beka on the day that the GDPR law launched.
When we scheduled this podcast, I planned to talk about the history of Magento. Jerry works for Nexcess, a hosting company that is famous for their Magento services. They've been there since Day 1. When the original Magento team were getting started, they needed hosting help with their first clients, and they called Nexcess. Nexcess even sponsored our Magento 2 Explained book!
But, just two days before this podcast, the news broke that Adobe was purchasing Magento. The Magento community was in shock.
In this episode, we try and digest the Adobe news. We talk about the history of Magento and try to figure out if that helps us understand what comes next for Magento.
WordPress is one of the simplest and versatile content management systems. Any beginner can quickly build a professional website with it.
It offers basic security out of the box to get you started. It also allows you to harden your site security.
In this post, you will learn 10 tips to easily enhance the security of your WordPress website even if you are a beginner.
So your WordPress website offers good content to your visitors. And it offers an amazing user-experience. And it's safe and secure!
But it all will be in vain if your site keeps suffering from downtime.
In this blog post, I will discuss possible reasons for WordPress downtime and ways to monitor incidents.
Gator Forms is our favorite WordPress forms plugin.
One of the reasons we like it so much is that it has a wide range of display options. Gator Forms doesn't require you to put your form inside a Post or a Page. You can show your forms in pop-ups, tabs, accordions, lightboxes and other effects.
In this guide, I'm going to show how you to create a form that automatically opens and closes for visitors.
Gator Forms is our favorite WordPress forms plugin.
One of the reasons we like it so much is that it has a wide range of pop-ups and buttons you can use to make your forms more visible.
Gator Forms doesn't require you to put your form inside a Post or a Page. You can show it around the outside of your site too.
Jen Kramer describes herself as a "Web Design Teacher" but that barely scratches the surface of what she does. She's a speaker, a teacher, a writer, a video trainer, and much more besides. Jen currently teaches web design at Harvard Extension School.
In this episode, I talk with Jen about teaching web design at Harvard and her upcoming videos for OSTraining. Jen is creating a video series and book on Bootstrap 4.
One very popular WordPress beginner question is "How do I create a contact form in WordPress?".
When you search for a contact form plugin in the WordPress directory, you get over 258 pages of entries returned.
So, the real question isn't so much "How do I create a contact form in WordPress?" but "Which plugin do I use?".
We have some recommendations for you:
Andrew is the founder and CTO of Concrete5, an open source CMS that's comparable to WordPress, Drupal, Joomla and others.
Concrete5 has been around for over a decade and has introduced some innovations that other projects still haven't managed to equal. For example, for a long time now, Concrete5 users have been able to click on any part of the site to edit items, right there on the page.
I talk with Andrew about what it's like to run a large project for many years. He describes the ups-and-downs, including a major release that broke backwards compatability and frustrated some community members. Andrew also talks how he found a second wind, 10 years into building his project!
Some websites make it really hard to contact them. The "Contact Us" page is hidden in the footer. The social media icons, if there any, lead to accounts where no-one ever replies.
Why not make it as easy as possible to contact you?!?
One good idea is to place a "Contact Us" in your menu. As soon as people click on it, they'll get a pop-up box with a contact form. Your visitors don't even need to visit a different page. That's as easy as it gets.
We've just seen the launch of the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) law in Europe.
If you need some general background on the GDPR itself, this podcast from a16z is a great introduction.
With the law in action, open source projects are finally talking more about how their getting ready for the new law. One thing most people can agree on is that compliance will not be easy and changes will be needed.
After looking into the approach of different projects, I can divide them into three different groups.
If you want to set up an online store, then Shopify is a great solution. It's one of the most popular eCommerce platforms in the world and has everything your store needs from products and variations to payments and shipping.
In this week's video release, Rod Martin shows you how to build a Shopify site in 1 hour. This 15 video class will help you get up-and-running with Shopify in just minutes.
This class adds to the eCommerce pathway, which now features classes on Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, Easy Digital Downloads, Ecwid, Hikashop and more.
Adobe has just purchased Magento for $1.68 billion.
This deal is not a big surprise. People were predicting it a couple years ago, when Magento started partnering with Adobe. Karen Baker, a figurehead in the Magneto Community, wrote that the community had been expecting something like this.
This also isn't the first time Magento has been sold. Back in 2011, Magento was sold to eBay. That deal is generally considered to be a failure, and eBay sold Magento in 2015. Hopefully, Adobe will turn out to be better owners of Magento than eBay.
Let's look at this deal from several angles ...
