One of our customers recently asked us how to set up a multilingual WordPress site to manually translate it. The Polylang plugin does just that.

In this tutorial, you will learn how to use the Polylang plugin to create a multilingual WordPress site from scratch.

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You write great content and want to build up an audience of people who read your blog regularly. In this situation, there's no better way to keep your audience up-to-date than by email.

Here's how you automatically notify users whenever you write a new post. We're going to use the free features of the PublishPress plugin.

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A few weeks ago, WPEngine purchased StudioPress. This was a major move in the WordPress space. This also seemed like a simple move. One of the biggest hosting companies was taking over biggest theme developer. More customers, more money, more growth.

But I'm part of a popular Slack channel for WordPress developers and I saw was confusion. WPEngine said they purchased StudioPress to become a "DXP". That was unexpected. Lots of the terminology used to describe the deal was new to the developers:

What is a DXP? A DXP appears inside a magic quadrant?!?

In this guide, I'll try and explain DXPs, magic quadrants, WCMs and more. What does this jargon mean? How do these phrases help explain WPEngine's acquisition of StudioPress, and other big moves made by open source companies?

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Over the last few months we've worked with more and more Drupal 8 sites. Those projects all had one thing in common ... they used the Drupal Paragraphs module.

Paragraphs is a very popular module for handling content in Drupal 8.

Paragraphs works in a similar way to content fields, but also provides a wide range of options for the design, layout and grouping of your content. 

If you want to learn Paragraphs, this is ultimate guide! Read, watch and follow along with all 10 parts of this tutorial. By the end, you'll be using Paragraphs for all your sites too!

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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.

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If you spend any time in the WordPress world, you've probably come across Zac Gordon. Zac is an enthusiastic and charming teacher who focuses on Javascript in WordPress. He borrowed the phrase "Learn Javascript Deeply" from Matt Mullenweg and he made it into his personal slogan.

For the last several years, Zac has produced video classes, online conferences, live talks, and podcasts that focus on teaching you how to use Javascript in WordPress.

I'm delighted to say we're working with Zac on a book, "React Explained". React is the library the WordPress team have chose for the new Gutenberg editor. They are not alone - both Drupal and Magento have also chosen React.

Zac is live-tweeting his writing progress at @zgordon on Twitter. You can also hear Zac talk about React on the OSTraining podcast.

In this extract from the book, Zac gives you a high-level overview of React and some key concepts.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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