Learning the ABC’s of WordPress Grammar

“Code is poetry” – the WordPress mantra that’s been read by probably every WordPress user on the planet. If you haven’t then maybe you’re on a different planet or probably using another Content Management System apart from WordPress.

It is kinda romantic if you really think about it. The challenge is, not everyone understands the code. We all know Shakespeare wrote great poetry, as did Edgar Allan Poe, Elizabeth Browning, Alfred Tennyson and so many other great poets and authors. But how many who belong to this current generation truly understand what the sonnets and the verses mean? How many can dissect and decode the true meaning behind the words and symbolisms these authors used? We can all give our opinions and interpretations about these works of literary art but unless we “decode” and study the context behind those words that have been so beautifully strung together, in accordance with generally accepted standards, we might create a mental image quite different from the author’s intent. These standards need to be the foundation from which these “works of art” can be evaluated and interpreted.

How does all that apply to our understanding of WordPress? A WordPress theme is actually a unique “work of art.” It is a combination of both the literary and the visual. It is quite easy to appreciate the visual product that results from the string of commands and codes that have been strung together by a WordPress author or designer. But the true beauty behind this visual delight is the code or language that brings it to life. Every line of code is a brush stroke that layers on top of each other to create the functional art we know as WordPress themes. Perhaps that is why some WordPress purists are so passionate about what they do. They are in fact modern-day technological artists who use code as their medium to express their art. Hence, to them, code is sacred. Code is poetry.

In order for us to understand and appreciate code we need to learn the language. We need to study its vocabulary and apply grammar rules that will help us interpret it. For many of us we still need to learn our ABC’s. Many of us are scared to touch code because we fear making mistakes. How many times have we messed up our websites because we took out a portion of a code without fully understanding why it was there in the first place?

The secret to learning a language fast is by immersion. One needs to be immersed in an environment where one is forced to communicate using whatever language is available. We will attempt to do that in the next few weeks. Our goal is to learn the language of WordPress and make it easily understood even by the most novice of beginners. Hopefully, we can help you, our readers, achieve a level of fluency or perhaps spur you on to start creating your own WordPress themes, your own works of art. If that sounds exciting to you, then make the journey yours as well. Stay tuned!

Best WordPress Plugins to Boost Your Business Site’s Performance

Most corporate websites are extensions of real-world businesses that want to create an online presence. In the real world, these companies most likely have real-time tools and metrics in place to determine how the business is doing at any given point. Reports and analysis are part and parcel of normal operations as is marketing campaigns and feedback. Does this apply to the company’s online presence?

The online address of a company serves as a virtual business card cum portfolio cum marketing tool which the company can use to expand their reach. It is not unusual for business owners to expect that the same measurables to be derived from their corporate website. The ability to track, measure, and analyze data extracted from online activities is one of the key things a business owner needs to be able to do to be able to asses the effectiveness of the corporate website.

Here are some of the best WordPress plugins and tools you can use to enhance the efficiency of as well as measure the viability your business website.

Site Security and Backup

iThemes Security (formerly Better WP Security)

iThemes Security (formerly Better WP Security) gives you over 30+ ways to secure and protect your WordPress site. On average, 30,000 new websites are hacked each day. WordPress sites can be an easy target for attacks because of plugin vulnerabilities, weak passwords and obsolete software. iThemes Security works to fix common holes, stop automated attacks and strengthen user credentials. This plugin hides common WordPress security vulnerabilities, preventing attackers from learning too much about your site and away from sensitive areas like your site’s login, admin, etc. iThemes Security works to protect it by blocking bad users and increasing the security of passwords and other vital information. This plugin monitors your site and reports changes to the filesystem and database that might indicate a compromise, works to detect bots and other attempts to search vulnerabilities, and makes regular backups of your WordPress database, allowing you to get back online quickly in the event of an attack.

WordPress Backup to Dropbox

WordPress Backup to Dropbox keeps your valuable WordPress website, its media and database backed up to Dropbox in minutes and on a regular basis. Simply choose a day, time and how often you wish your backup to be performed and just wait for your websites files and an SQL dump of its database to be dropped in your Dropbox account.

Wordfence Security

Wordfence Security is a free enterprise class security plugin that includes a firewall, anti-virus scanning, cellphone sign-in (two factor authentication), malicious URL scanning and live traffic including crawlers. Wordfence is the only WordPress security plugin that can verify and repair your core, theme and plugin files, even if you don’t have backups. Key features include: real-time blocking of known attackers, two factor authentication used by banks, government agencies and military world-wide for highest security authentication, includes a firewall to block common security threats like fake Googlebots, malicious scans from hackers and botnets, block entire malicious networks, etc.

Site Statistics and Analytics

Google Analyticator

Google Analyticator adds the necessary JavaScript code to enable Google Analytics logging on any WordPress blog. This eliminates the need to edit your template code to begin logging. Google Analyticator also includes several widgets for displaying Analytics data in the admin and on your blog. It supports Universal (analytics.js) and traditional analytics (ga.js), includes an admin dashboard widget that displays a graph of the last 30 days of visitors, a summary of site usage, the top pages, the top referrers, and the top searches, supports outbound link tracking of all links on the page, including links not managed by WordPress, and many other features to support Google Analytics on your site.

Google Analytics for WordPress

Google Analytics for WordPress plugin allows you to track your blog easily with lots of metadata, views per author & category, automatic tracking of outbound clicks and pageviews. This plugin uses the asynchronous Google Analytics tracking code, the fastest and most reliable tracking code Google Analytics offers. It features simple installation through integration with Google Analytics API where its as simple as authenticating and selecting the site you want to track. You can also easily connect your Google AdSense and Google Analytics accounts.

Site Content Management

Editorial Calendar

The Editorial Calendar plugin makes it possible to see all your posts and drag and drop them to manage your blog and gives you an overview of your blog and when each post will be published. You can drag and drop to move posts, edit posts right in the calendar, and manage your entire blog.

Zedity™ The Easiest Way To Create Your Content

Zedity™ is an innovative Editor to create your posts or pages amazingly easily, quickly and hassle-free with no technical skills required. It gives you total flexibility and unprecedented possibilities to create any desired design, as easily as if done on a piece of paper. Key features include: content in posts and pages that scale down accordingly to your responsive layout, additional content boxes (color box, document box, HTML5 box), audio and video embed capabilities, snap and alignment positioning, and so many other features.

WP Fastest Cache

WP Fastest Cache plugin creates static html files from your dynamic WordPress blog. Performance enhancement features include: Generating static html files from your dynamic WordPress blog, Minify HTML (decrease the size of page), Minify Css (decrease the size of CSS files), All cache files are deleted when a post or page is published, Enable/Disable cache option for mobile devices, Leverage browser caching which reduces page load times for repeat visitors, etc.

SEO

WordPress SEO by Yoast

WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin, designed and developed by WordPress Consultant Joost De Valk, is the most complete WordPress SEO plugin that exists today for WordPress.org users. It incorporates everything from a snippet preview and page analysis functionality that helps you optimize your pages content, images titles, meta descriptions and more to XML sitemaps, and loads of optimization options in between.

Top 5 BuddyPress Themes April 2014

BuddyPress ready themes enable you to create your own special social network centered around your website and content. This means that visitors can register as members and connect and network with other members who are part of your specific niche community. This is especially useful in creating and growing a social network where members share common interests. Here’s a rundown of the top 5 themes that have BuddyPress integrated into them.

WPLMS

WPLMS Premium WordPress Theme is a learning management solution for WordPress. It is designed to deliver and manage educational content for an online audience. WPLMS enables you to create and sell courses as single items, as subscriptions or as a combination of both. You can embed videos and other multimedia content into your courses, create your own question bank with multiple choice, single answer or essay type questions including quiz timers, timelines and auto submit with WPMLS’s built-in quiz and test capabilities. WPLMS includes an instructor dashboard allowing you to check submissions of students as well as your own course content. The theme also has a progress page for users to track progress and l badges and certificates earned and attained. This theme uses BuddyPress for collaboration and discussion with other learners.

Kleo

Kleo Premium WordPress Theme is a multipurpose theme designed to meet various requirements of most websites.This BuddyPress and bbPress ready theme gives you great flexibility to create a membership site with complete ease. Powered by the popular visual composer plugin, Kleo enables you to simply drag and drop elements into a single page. Kleo enables managing content according to membership level. The theme gives you the ability to restrict content according the type of membership one has. Kleo comes with key features such as an awesome option panel, shortcodes and templates for easy customization, 700+ Fontello icons, WPML ready, and so much more.

Xphoria

Xphoria Premium WordPress Theme showcases what BuddyPress and bbPress plugins are capable of doing. Xphoria gives you the ability to create display forums turning your site into a big social network exchange. Visitors can join groups, post messages, make connections and the like. Conversations are displayed in a neat tiled fashion showing the number of posts under each thumbnail. Groups are displayed on the homepage and may be viewed according to popularity, alphabetical order, activity or date created while each group has a separate page displaying member info and conversations. Essentially, a social network in a box, Xphoria can hel you build a social network for your company, school, sports team or niche community.

Plexus

Plexus Premium WordPress Theme is a multisite theme created especially for enabling your site to host a blog network within WordPress. This theme is fully integrated with BuddyPress and bbPress giving the social networking power fitting for a blog network. It comes with specific network settings that give you control over what blog admins can do with it. Aside from BuddyPress and bbPress full integration, the theme also includes: Visual Composer plugin for that drag and drop convenience in customization, Layer Slider plugin to create a responsive slider with hundreds of transitions, site wide widgets that display content across the blog networks, and so much more.

Klein

Klein Premium WordPress Theme is a powerful community theme that gives you the utmost power to maximize social networking. At the heart of this theme is the Gears core framework that enables you to integrate other plugins easily. This innovative WordPress theme was built to support BuddyPress, bbPress, and WooCommerce. It is ideal for a website that interacts with a lot of users. Members can create profiles, send messages, add connections, or simply share what’s happening. It also allows members to collaborate through forums or sell any products you require. Key features include: Visual Composer plugin for drag and drop layouts, paid membership pro features to manage subscription packages, supports Woocommerce to set up a vibrant private online ecosystem, etc. This theme works well with BuddyPress plugins such as Events Manage and Album Plus, extending the power of your site’s network.

Interesting WordPress Themes April 2013

Academy (Online Education)

Turn your website into a functioning e-learning solution with Academy Learning Management Theme from ThemeForest. This premium wordpress theme takes the elegant form of an ecommerce site and tweaks it to meet the needs of the e-learning market. Share, sell and promote your knowledge online effectively. This powerful theme includes features and functions to help you manage course offerings, rate their popularity, and publish subscription plans aimed to reach your target market. This theme includes a powerful options panel that allows you to create courses and lessons.This theme provides awesome features for creating online courses, such as extended user profiles, rating system, questions system, file attachments, embedding self-hosted media, tracking course progress, WooCommerce integration and more.

Responsive Knowledge Base & FAQ WordPress Theme

For the business or website that exists to help people make the most of their computing experience, Responsive Knowledge Base is the perfect theme to use. This premium WordPress theme was built for support providers as a first line response solution for clients seeking answers to their problems, technical or otherwise. This theme acts as a knowledge base or depository where visitors can search your site for solutions to their issues. Users can browse through Q and A pages, articles and similar material or do a live search (jQuery TypeAhead powered) to help them identify their problems and find solutions.

Rescue – Animal Shelter Theme with Petfinder Support

Animal lovers unite! Rescue Premium WordPress Theme is a theme built with a specific purpose – to get animals adopted. Outstanding pet-related WordPress themes are few and far between that’s why Rescue is a special theme pet lovers can find a home in. What makes it more unique is the built in Petfinder API support that allows you to easily sync your pets from your Petfinder profile to your WordPress install. Petfinder is an online, searchable database of animals who need homes. It is also a directory of more than 13,000 animal shelters and adoption organizations across the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

GymBoom (Fitness)

If you are in the fitness business or if you own a gym, a health club, or a wellness center, check out GymBoom, a responsive fitness theme with a built in dynamic calendar to manage training schedules for those serious health buffs and fitness addicts. This responsive theme also sports a unique diagonal slider created with the slider creation tool. It’s got useful shortcodes to post lists, highlight text, create multiple columns and more. You also get two homepage option styles: one with a slider and a page styles option. Gymboom includes a google map shortcode integrated in the widgetized footer section.

Building Blocks to WordPress Grammar

The primary reason we learn a language is to be able to communicate more effectively. When we travel to new places or visit countries we’ve never been to before we usually buy one of those 15-minute language translation mini books and stuff them into our pockets, ready to be pulled out at any opportune time. We try to familiarize ourselves with the local translation of useful terms and phrases such as “Hello”, “Good Morning”, “How much?”, “Where’s the restroom?”, and other basic words to get us by. At this point, the primary goal is to understand and be understood. Sentence structure and rules of grammar are not the need of the hour just yet. Learning what these common and necessary basic words and phrases mean is the starting point to building your vocabulary and practicing your communication skills.

Similarly, we can learn to speak the language of “WordPress” by first simplifying our goals. Our goal at the moment is to understand and be understood. The semantics and structures can come later on as we first familiarize ourselves with the language and build our basic vocabulary.

Here are some of the most common words and phrases that you will encounter often as you begin to learn how to speak “WordPress.”

Content Management System (CMS)

A Content Management System, or CMS, is software for facilitating the maintenance of content, but not design, on a web site. A blogging tool is an example of a Content Management System.

WordPress

WordPress is web software you can use to create a beautiful website or blog. It is a free and open source blogging tool and a content management system (CMS) based on PHP and MySQL. It has many features including a plug-in architecture and a template system.

WordPress installation

Setting up WordPress for the first time is is a very simple process and takes less than five minutes to complete. Many web hosts now offer tools to automatically install WordPress for you. There are several installation guides on WordPress.org to guide you through the process.

Hosting Provider

A hosting provider is a company or organization which provides, usually for a fee, infrastructure for making information accessible via the web. This involves the use of a web server (including web server software such as Apache), and may involve one or more related technologies, such as FTP, PHP, MySQL, and operating system software such as Linux or Unix.

Web Server

A web server is a computer containing software for, and connected to infrastructure for, hosting, or serving, web sites written inHTML. The most common web server software on the internet is Apache, which is frequently used in conjunction with PHP, Perl, and other scripting languages.

Domain Name

A domain name is a name used for identification purposes on the Internet. In WordPress a domain name usually identifies a server where WordPress is installed. To make this work, the Internet’s domain name system (DNS) maps the domain name to a server’s IP apress. For example, the domain name example.com maps to the IP apress 192.0.43.10. Many domain names can map to the same IP apress, allowing a single server to run many websites.

cPanel

cPanel is a popular web-based administration tool that many hosting providers provide to allow users to configure their own accounts using an easy-to-use interface.

Site

In the WordPress user interface, a site can simply be the website created by WordPress, or it can be a virtual website created as part of a network by the multisite feature. A site in a network is virtual in the sense that it does not have its own directory on the server, although it has its own URL and it might have its own domain name. In WordPress code the site is the website created by WordPress. If multisite is in use, then the site is the network website and each virtual website is known as a blog.

FTP

FTP, or File Transfer Protocol, is rather predictably, a client-server protocol for transferring files. It is one way to download files, and the most common way to upload files to a server. An FTP client is a program which can download files from, or upload files to, an FTP server. You may need to use an FTP client to upload your WordPress files to your web server, particularly if you use a hosting provider.

HTML

HTML, or Hypertext Markup Language, is the W3C standard language with which all web pages are built. It is the predecessor toXHTML, but HTML is often still used to describe either one. It is often used in conjunction with CSS and/or JavaScript.

CSS

CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets, is a W3C open standards programming language for specifying how a web page is presented. It allows web site designers to create formatting and layout for a web site independently of its content.

PHP

PHP is a recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor. It is a popular server-side scripting language designed specifically for integration with HTML, and is used (often in conjunction with MySQL) in Content Management Systems and other web applications. It is available on many platforms, including Windows, Unix/Linux and Mac OS X, and is open source software. WordPress is written using PHP and requires it for operation.

MySQL

MySQL is a popular open source SQL (Structured Query Language) database implementation, available for many platforms, including Windows, Unix/Linux and Mac OS X. WordPress requires a MySQL database to store all blog information, including posts, comments, metadata, and other information. WordPress also works with MySQL-compatible databases such as MariaDB and Percona Server.

XML

XML, or Extensible Markup Language, is written in Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) and essentially allows you to define your own markup language. XML is extremely useful in describing, sharing, and transmitting data across the Internet. Typically used in conjunction with HTML, XML defines data and HTML displays that data.

AJAX

AJAX is a technique that web pages use to have the server perform certain processing without reloading the web page. For example, when you approve a comment in a WordPress blog, WordPress uses AJAX to change the comment’s status, and you see the change without having to reload the Comments screen.

Script

Script is an automated series of instructions carried out in a specific order.

Theme

A theme is a collection of files that work together to produce a graphical interface with an underlying unifying design for a weblog. A theme modifies the way the weblog is displayed, without modifying the underlying software. Essentially, the WordPress theme system is a way to skin your weblog.

Template

In WordPress a template is a file that defines an area of the web pages generated by a theme. For example, there is typically a template for the header area at the top of the web pages, a template for the content, a template for the sidebars, and so on. The templates are like building blocks that make up the complete web page.

Frontend

The front end is what your visitors see and interact with when they come to your website, www.YourSite.com.

Backend

The back end is the area that authorized users can sign into to ap, remove and modify content on the website. This may also be referred to as “WordPress,” “admin” or “the administration area.”

Sitemap

A site map (or sitemap) is a list of pages of a web site accessible to crawlers or users. It can be either a document in any form used as a planning tool for Web design, or a Web page that lists the pages on a Web site, typically organized in hierarchical fashion.

Perhaps these words are already familiar to you but for those who are taking this WordPress journey with us, a lot of these terms will sound Greek. As you encounter these words over and over again and see how they work in real life situations, your understanding will gradually increase. Everything, like pieces of giant jigsaw puzzle, will eventually fall into place and reveal the bigger picture. In this situation, the sum of parts is greater than the whole. More next week!