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This week’s round-up of WordPress news, views and reviews summarized in our daily email newsletter, The WhiP.
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Hell Yeah – Newsletter #237
Hell Yeah
(WordPress News)
“Oh hell yeah – with one key differentiator: we’ll clean the mess too.” That was Sucuri CEO Tony Perez’s response when asked if the security service was developing a comprehensive Cloudflare alternative. According to WP Tavern, Sucuri has been quietly beefing up its architecture to support an expansion into performance-related services that would go hand-in-hand with its WAF (Website Firewall) product.
WordPress celebrated its 12th birthday this week. Woo! To make the occasion, Torque takes a trip down memory lane.
The bbPress core team needs your feedback for this year’s 2015 bbPress Survey. It’s easy to fill out and will give the team valuable insights into how to build better forum software.
Get Dressed For Success
(Opinion)
“Today I proudly enjoy wearing bright pink dresses, makeup, and anything distinctly “femme” whenever I go to a WordCamp or go to a technology event because I enjoy dressing for me, and no longer feel the need to fit a geek mold to ‘become one of the boys.’” After starting out as a 14-year-old blogger tweaking themes, Lara Littlefield now runs Simmer, a recipe app built on WordPress. She tells her story – and argues her case for a more diverse core developer team – in this week’s HeroPress essay.
Have you ever wondered what it’s like for a sense-impaired or otherwise mentally or physically disabled person to browse your website?
Thinking of using Stripe for your startup? Ultimate Member was booted off the service with no warning, though it looks like the issue may have been resolved.
Flavorful Language
(Themes and Plugins)
“This isn’t your average update, it’s the foundation of our future product line.” Elegant Themes is spruiking Divi 2.4 and calling for beta testers.
“Despite various tall tales, urban legends, personal attacks, and flavorful language being bandied about, we’re all a group of regular ol’, standard-built humans trying to make sure WordPress users have really awesome stuff. Some of us have different model numbers and come with our own set of flaws, but that’s OK. We all have the same goal in mind.” The WordPress.org Theme Review team has been in the WP news a lot lately.Team member Justin Tadlock attempts to set the record straight.
Four weeks since the first WP REST API beta was released, the second beta is now available.
WordPress agency Reaktiv Studios has taken over developer Tom McFarlin’s Mayer theme. The theme is a premium option at WordPress.com
We Rebuilt This WordPress Site On Rock and Roll
(Tutorials, Tips and Tricks)
How to Rebuild Your WordPress Website Like a Pro (WPMU DEV).
20 Docs and Guides for Front-End Developers (No. 4) (SitePoint).
Marketing Automation for Easy Digital Downloads (Torque).
8 Ways To Speed Up Your Cloud-Hosted WordPress Site (Cloudways).
How to Add A Restaurant Reservation System in WordPress (WP Beginner).
Be-Bop-A-Lula
(Off-Topic, Random Stuff)
Beep. Bop. Boop. Here’s an incomplete list of words that are now startups.
Here’s a fun game if you need a distraction. Probably not a good idea if you’re colorblind or have a lot of work to get through today.
Those are all our links for today. We’ll be back next week with more tall tales and urban legends right after we beat Hoang’s high score in Kuku Kube (it was 38, BTW).
I Spy With My Little Eye – Newsletter #238
I Spy With My Little Eye
(WordPress News)
Provisions in the Patriot Act that allow the NSA to spy on you are up for renewal. If you like your privacy and don’t support the NSA’s mass surveillance of American citizens, you can join non-profit advocacy group Fight for the Future’s protest using the Internet Defense League Cat Signal plugin from WordPress.org. The plugin blocks access to Congress’ IP addresses and includes a dismissable notice to sites visitors asking them to urge Congress to sunset the Patriot Act.
Back in 2013 Automattic bought out Cloudup, a cloud-based solution for sharing videos, images, music, link and docs. Two years on, it doesn’t look like it will replace the WordPress media library anytime soon.
Torque talks to Ryan Singel, the CEO and co-founder of Contextly about how his experiences as a WordPress blogger led him to create a tool that makes it easy to keep your readers clicking through to your site.
Stupid Simple Money
(Opinion)
If you ever had to sit a WordPress exam, this is the infographic you would want secretly tattooed on your arm. Seriously, bookmark this one.
Passive income websites really are a waste of time, though as writer Brenda Barron points out there are ways you can earn money with WordPress if you want to put in the effort.
While we’re on this topic…“the opportunity to make stupid simple money is pretty large in the WordPress world.” Hold up, what? Developer Tom McFarlin explores the complexity of WordPress solutions.
Remember when HeroPress’s Kickstarter campaign to put together a video series on WordPress “heroes” failed? After releasing 10 rather inspirational written essays by regular folk, the site’s founder Topher DeRosia says he wants to stick with publishing essays for now.
Here’s a nice guide on how to identify and avoid problem clients.
And developer Morten Rand-Hendriksen has shared links from his talk about designing informational user experiences at WordCamp Miami.
Child’s Play
(Themes and Plugins)
WP Beginner checks out seven free admin themes and plugins that make WordPress not look like WordPress.
Here are a bunch of child themes for Obox’s site builder Layer that sure look pretty.
Walk the Line
(Tutorials, Tips and Tricks)
A Walkthrough on Conditional Tags in WordPress: 27 to 39 (tuts+).
How to Use Autoloading and a Plugin Container in WordPress Plugins(Smashing Magazine).
The Last Laugh
(Off-Topic, Random Stuff)
The history of LOL isn’t really funny at all. LOL.
Turn yourself into an open API with the Me API.
Lastly, here’s you to turn an old rotary phone into a mobile phone (I still prefer this mod that can turn a toaster into a game controller).
Those are our links for today. See you tomorrow right after we mod our toaster to keep out the spies.
Slip ‘n’ Sliders – Newsletter #239
A Brief History of WordPress
(WordPress News)
“Longer term, I think WooCommerce is something that I think provides a pretty good solution for people wanting to sell things online, so there’s no reason why WordPress.com users couldn’t have access to it in the future.” Matt Mullenweg drops hints but is also coy about what the recent WooThemes acquisition will mean for e-Commerce on WordPress.com on Wired’s Webmonkey podcast.
WordPress.com has launched Insights, an overhaul of its stats feature. You can now get a cool visualisation of your publishing trends, which looks even better when you post frequently (hint, hint).
Matt Mullenweg’s keynote speech at WordCamp Dallas back in 2008 is an historical artefact and needs to be preserved, says WP Tavern’s Jeff Chandler.
Sergej Müller, the developer who created Antispam Bee, is saying farewell to WordPress after nine years and nearly 3 million downloads of his plugins due to health reasons.
What is phpMyAdmin and what can you do with it, is the topic of discussion on this week’s KitchenSinkWP podcast.
And the folks on the WPwatercooler podcast want you to stop hacking WordPress core!
Slip ‘n’ Sliders
(Opinion)
In light of Automattic’s addition of 55 new people to its workforce (aka the WooThemes acquisition), Mario Peshev from DevriX writes about his experiences outsourcing and hiring remote talent.
“There is evidence to indicate that sliders (or rotators or carousels) are generally ineffective.” Is it time to ditch sliders? Some people would say yes.
Torque’s Brandon Yanofsky’s explains why WordCamp Miami was so awesome.
If you missed iThemes’ recent security summit, you can catch the five-session event videos here.
Cool as a Cucumber
(Themes and Plugins)
WordPress.com has made two cool blogging themes, Cyanotype and Satellite, available to download for free at WordPress.org
The Object Oriented Plugin of My Affection
(Tutorials, Tips and Tricks)
Creating WordPress Plugins in an Object Oriented Way (WPMU DEV).
Style Posts by Category on Your Main Blog Page (tuts+).
Validating Input via the WordPress Settings API (Tom McFarlin).
How to Hide a Post From Home Page in WordPress (WP Beginner).
The WordPress Plugin Boilerplate 101: How to Get Started (CodeInWP).
How to Easily Add Multilingual Support to WordPress (Envato Market blog).
I Know What I Know
(Off-Topic, Random Stuff)
How exactly do you scale a web development platform for 61 million users?Wix’s chief architect offers a peak at how to do it.
How well do you know CSS and JavaScript? Sit the Test and find out.
Those are all our links for today. See you tomorrow! We’re going to slip ‘n’ slide right on out of here…
Lazy Susan – Newsletter #240
Lazy Susan
(WordPress News)
WordCamp US is going to be held in rotating cities, kinda like the Olympics or WordCamp Europe. While WordCamp San Francisco hastraditionally been THE place to go each year for anyone who’s anyone in WordPress, US cities can now apply to host the big event.
Calls to include the new Menu Customizer feature plugin in WordPress 4.3 are getting a thumbs down. Sarah Gooding over at WP Tavern says the feature makes her feel claustrophobic, while Chris Lema from Crowd Favorite raises some valid points about young people and glasses and usability.
We’ve kicked off four weeks of giveaways at WPMU DEV!
Automattic has again opened up its wallet, this time buying WP Job manager from WooCommerce lead developer Mike Jolley.
BuddyPress 2.3 “Livio” is out and features the new BP Attachments API, the long-awaited foundation for media-related BuddyPress components and features.
Steven Gliebe, who runs HostingReviews.io and Churchthemes.com has launched Pro Plugin Directory, a commercial plugin directory. It’s kinda like the WordPress.org directory, but you have to, you know, actually pay for stuff.
“Make sure you use high-quality hosting for your website.” That’s Genesis developer Bill Erickson’s advice in his Q&A with CopyBlogger.
Bootstrap At All Costs?
(Opinion)
Why A Bootstrapper Raised Venture Capital, or why WooThemes co-founder Adii Pienaar took a U-turn on his semi-aggressive “bootstrap-at-all-costs” stance for his new-ish project Receiptful.
With music festival now in full swing in the US, here’s a cool infographic on the tech – including WordPress – that powers festival and musicianwebsites.
Aladdin is like Alfred for Mac, but for WordPress.
Obox Themes gives the Layers theme framework a thumbs up in its latest review.
Dedicated to the One I Love
(Themes and Plugins)
Nepal is a free, new theme dedicated to survivors of the recent earthquake in Nepal.
inSite is a service and plugin for WordPress that gives your website the ability to change itself using recipes that you create.
Export posts and pages as Word files and PDFs with the Aspose DOC Exporter.
Display All Image Sizes is a new, free plugin by the guys at WPShout that displays all image sizes in the media library.
Drop Bears Are Real
(Tutorials, Tips and Tricks)
How to Completely Customize the WordPress Login Page (WPMU DEV).
21 Best Social Media Monitoring Tools For WordPress Users (WP Beginner).
How to Get Started with Dropshipping (WooThemes).
Validation, Shipping and Scaling WordPress Products (Torque).
Validation and Sanitization in the WordPress Settings API (Tom McFarlin).
An Introduction to CSS Transitions & Animations (Elegant Themes).
How to Make WordPress Images Responsive (WebDesignerDepot).
WordPress’s Conditional Tags (WPShout).
Creating Custom Templates for BuddyPress (WebDevStudios).
The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About JavaScript!
(Off-Topic, Random Stuff)
JavaScript for cats. (It was going to happen sooner or later)
Slack isn’t just a tool for sharing cat gifs at work anymore – it’s now invading the bedroom.
If you’re looking for summer reading suggestions (or even winter ones), here are some well-known authors who blog at WordPress.com
Those are our links for today. We’ll be back tomorrow after we fix our glasses (seriously) and teach Didge (the office dog) how to code for Upfront.
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