Most CRM systems are too complex.
Platforms like Salesforce can be enormously complex and have a step learning curve. CiviCRM is a very popular open source CRM, but it's as complex as many proprietary solutions.
Some CiviCRM developers have now teamed up with the goal of creating a simpler CRM. They've released a WordPress plugin called UkuuPeople.
WordPress themes used to have specific focuses. You could find themes for restaurants, schools, corporate sites or for even more narrow niches.
However, in recent years we've seen a shift towards multipurpose themes, led in particular by authors at Themeforest.net. These multipurpose themes come with 1000's of features that enable them to cover a wide range of businesses and topics.
Some of the themes have so many features that I refer to them as a "Theme CMS". It's almost like installing a second CMS on top of WordPress.
JetPack is an official plugin from Automattic, the makers of WordPress.com.
JetPack offers tons of useful features, from security protection and comments to social sharing and improved photo galleries.
One of the most useful features is Statistics. Without leaving your site, and without creating additional accounts elsewhere, you can get really detailed information on your site's visitors.
Here's how you can use JetPack statistics ...
The official WordPress 4.3 is still a month away, but this release has already been far more high-profile that most.
Since the new admin design in December 2013, most WordPress releases have focused on iterative improvements.
However, this upcoming release will probably be remembered as a turning point. WordPress 4.3 makes it very clear the future of WordPress for non-technical users is the Customizer.
Adding social sharing buttons to your WordPress site is very easy with the AddThis Sharing Buttons plugin. It takes only a minute to install and setup.
In this tutorial we will show you how to use this plugin.
Google Fonts is a wonderful tool to help you customize your site. You can choose from about 700 different fonts to improve the design of your site.
Normally the process of adding Google Fonts to your site isn't easy, because you have to modify your theme's files. However, a plugin called Easy Google Fonts make it simply to add this feature to almost any theme.
GenerateWP.com is a wonderful tool for WordPress developers.
GenerateWP can automatically create code for your WordPress project. You can use GenerateWP to build post types, taxonomies, shortcodes, menus and much more.
Unlike many automatic code generators, GenerateWP produces high quality code that meets WordPress coding standards.
In the video below, Topher uses GenerateWP to create a custom content type called "Rooms", without needing to write a line of code.
This video is part of our 2-part series on building a Bed and Breakfast website with WordPress.
If so, you need the Redirection plugin for WordPress.
Redirection can manage 301 redirections, keep track of 404 errors, and tidy up any loose ends your site has with permalinks.
Here are 3 videos to get anyone started with the Redirection plugin:
When I was 15 the internet didn't exist as far as ordinary members of the public were concerned.
Devesh Sharma, on the other hand, was launching online business at the age of 15. Fast forward several years and Devesh is a full time bloggerr, based out of India, and running a popular WordPress resource site called WPKube.
Creating tables, especially ones that look nice, can be difficult for beginners.
This tutorial will show you how to easily create tables in WordPress. Plus, they'll look great!
Let's get started.
This week we've rolled out an update for the OSToolbar for WordPress.
If you haven't used it, OSToolbar allows you to provide our training videos to your clients.
OSToolbar is currently available for both WordPress and Joomla and we're considering a Drupal version.
For WordPress, users OSToolbar is a free plugin that you can install directly from the Plugins area of your clients' WordPress sites.
I've been asked to give a talk about building membership sites with WordPress.
Membership sites is a topic I could talk on for hours, but WordCamp sessions are short and attendees minutes want very practical, hands-on guide.
So, to keep things as simple as possible, I'm going to recommend one plugin and one payment gateway.
I recommend building your membership sites with Paid Memberships Pro and Stripe.
Wow. There was huge news this week that impacted both WordPress and e-commerce in general.
Automattic (the parent company of WordPress.com) purchased WooCommerce for over $30 million.
As Magento continues to struggle, there's room for a new dominant player in e-commerce and Matt Mullenwegg seems determined that WordPress will become the new king.
If you run a WordPress site, I hope you weren't on vacation over the last week.
The last part of April has been the strangest, busiest week anyone can remember in WordPress. Here's a quick recap:
One of the major features in WordPress 4.2 is emoji support.
The inclusion of emoji did not go down well with everyone. Here are some sample Twitter responses:
Even the WordPress 4.2 intro video doesn't seem to take emoji very seriously:
"Tell the world about your love for ice cream, kittens, or even jazz. All without using a single word."
There are over 37,000 plugins on WordPress.org.
That means it must be really easy to get your new plugin published on WordPress.org, right?
Wrong. It's not the most intuitive system. WordPress.org has some quirks you need to learn and hoops you'll need to jump through.
In these seven video, Topher gives you an overview of exactly what you need to do go publish your plugin on WordPress.org.
Last May I noticed an announcement from a friend of mine that his company, The Theme Foundry, had released a new WordPress theme, called Make. I didn't give it much thought at the time. Most of the sites I build have custom designs, and I usually start with something like Underscores, or no theme at all. Then last fall I decided to switch my own blog to WordPress, and needed a theme, and didn't have a design. I tried out Make, and quickly fell in love.
Before I get too far into this, I'd like to point out that Make has 2 URLs you should check out. The free version of Make is in the WordPress.org theme respository. There's also Make Plus at The Theme Foundry's web site. Make Plus is actually a plugin that greatly extends the Make theme, and costs $99. It adds lots of functionality and comes with support, which is great.
Recently I needed to accomplish a specific chore for my job. I needed to make a meta box in the WordPress admin.
The image below shows an example of a simple meta box. In WordPress, in the admin area, any box that holds a part of the User Interface is called a meta box.
Server side site caching has long been a passion of mine. The speed increase for the end user combined with the lowered server resource needs simply make it a no-brainer. You need to be caching your site on the server.
Until last week I’d only worked with free plugins for caching, and been pretty pleased with my favorite, WP Super Cache. Recently however, I’ve been seeing a lot of press about WP Rocket, a plugin that costs $39. It came out about a year ago, we wrote about it back then, and I’ve kept my eye on it to see if it gets any traction. I
In June of 2010 WordPress 3.0 introduced Custom Post Types, and thereby changed WordPress from a blog platform to a Content Management System.
The power and flexibility of Custom Post Types has played a strong role in getting WordPress to the place where it powers nearly 25% of the web.
I recently got to test drive DesktopServer from ServerPress, both the free and the premium version.
This app has a very nice interface for installing first XAMPP so you can have a local server environment, but then also for immediately installing WordPress inside it. It also does a wonderful job of managing your own computer’s hosts file, so you can invent domain names like www.my-cool-web-site.dev.
I’ve had some experience with Varying Vagrant Vagrants for local development environments, so I’m no stranger to the theory, but DesktopServer made everything much MUCH simpler. There’s a simple installer for both Windows and OS X, and a very simple interface for setting up WordPress right after that.
I first used BackupBuddy about 4 years ago. At the time I was using it as a migration tool because it had excellent built-in search and replace tools. Over the years I’ve kept my eye on the plugin and watched it grow from a rudimentary backup plugin to an extremely powerful tool that integrates with a variety of other plugins.
I’ve actually been using BackWPup on my own site for some months now, and it got me thinking that I should review other options, so I recently did tutorial series on both BackWPup and BackupBuddy.
In a previous post I wrote about how to send email with PHP using WordPress' wp_mail() function.
Before you send that email though, there are a variety of ways you can ensure the security of your content.
Let's take a look at some ways in which you can use WordPress functions to sanitize and protect your data.
Sometimes the process of assembling all the pieces of a WordPress post can be a little confusing. Part of that process is dealing with the image library, particularly the Featured Image.
To associate a featured image you have to click a link which brings up the Media Library. Then you click another to add media to the library. Then you browse your computer to find it.
Then you do more steps, and the process is longer than it needs to be.
PHP has a built-in function called mail() that allows you to send email. The advantage of mail() is that it’s very easy to use. The disadvantage is that it’s also very easy to use improperly, allowing spammers to send rafts of email through your site.
Because of this, there’ve been many wrappers and libraries written to help prevent that abuse. Most CMSs have their own built in methods, we’re going to take a look at WordPress’ in this post.
This week, one OSTraining member asked us whether it was possible to improve the login experience in WordPress.
The member wondered if they could make their login process easier to use in two ways:
Fortunately, there are 2 plugins that helps to achieve this customization in just a minute.
In this tutorial, I'll show you which plugins to use for this process.
It's Friday afternoon. 4:30pm. Suddenly your new email indicator lights up. A client you haven’t spoken to in months says:
"I've been getting reports that my site is running really slowly. Could you take a look?"
Ever been there? Ever spent a weekend reading through code you wrote, and then code you didn’t write, looking for what could possibly be slowing things down?
The Debug Bar plugin for WordPress can help developers analyze slow sites, as well as solving several other problems.
PHPMyAdmin is a database administration tool.
It allows you to explore your database, make backups and, if neccessary, make changes to your database tables or content.
Many hosting companies provide PHPMyAdmin as a pre-installed option, but many hosting companies and private servers do not.
So, if you need to use PHPMyAdmin with your site, and it's not currently available with your server, here's how to install it:
Stripe is a wonderful credit card processor.
Stripe was built specifically to be easy for developers, which then makes it quite easy to use for end users.
Here's a getting-started guide for using Stripe with your WordPress site.
Today we're releasing Breeze, a WordPress theme that's good-looking and really easy to use.
Breeze got its name because it's so speedy and lightweight that installing it is a "breeze".
We have had a Joomla version of Breeze for several years. We've now ported the design to WordPress.
Breeze will be the default theme we use in our training classes and our upcoming book, WordPress Explained.
