Do WordPress Version Updates Scare You?

WordPress updates are always something to look forward to. The aggressive approach to improving and upgrading probably the most popular and widest used CMS platform on the internet has made way for more beautiful and easy to manage websites, filled with functions and features more appropriate for today’s internet user. It’s definitely Kubrick and beyond already.

Today, updating your WordPress version is much simpler. It is as easy as clicking a mouse, as it is conveniently done in the confines of your own back end admin panel. Once you see the “There is a new WordPress version available.” Simply click the download or update button and Voila! Update done. However, updates affect different websites in different ways. The possibility that it may break your site exists especially if a lot of customization and coding – plugins, widgets, scripts, and all – has been done to it. Now if you are really into testing and development and really want to push the limits of what abuse WordPress can take, that’s another story. But for the most part, the average WordPress website owner simply wants something that works and will not hinder his business.

There are many opportunities for providing web clients with straight out of the box websites using WordPress themes. This ecosystem has opened up avenues to many WordPress professionals, whether theme developers or service providers, to earn a decent living from it. For the most part, business owners, especially established ones, want to focus on growing their business rather than tinkering with their websites. They will pay professionals to do that and most of the time they want someone to maintain their websites for them. Updates and all.

But what if you are just an average WordPress user who has some but not a lot of WordPress know how? What if you fancy this latest WordPress theme or cool plugin everybody’s raving about and install it? Then suddenly, your website goes haywire because apparently it’s incompatible with the WordPress version you currently have installed.

Here are some tips and tools you can use to make sure you can restore, rebuild, and backup your site before you do any updates.

  • Backup your site before doing any major changes. UpdraftPlus is a quality WordPress plugin that simplifies backups (and restoration). You can backup into the cloud (Amazon S3 (or compatible), Dropbox, Google Drive, Rackspace Cloud, DreamObjects, FTP, SFTP, SCP, WebDAV and email) and restore with a single click. You can also assign separate schedules for files and database.
  • No time? Try automatic backup with BackWPup Free to save your complete installation including /wp-content/ and push them to an external Backup Service, like Dropbox, S3, FTP and many more, see list below. With a single backup .zip file you are able to easily restore an installation.
  • Take your time. Sometimes the Update Now message on your dashboard can be a little nagging and pressure you into clicking the update button right away. Take time to go through the version numbers, change logs, the new features, compatibility, and the feedback of the community. Don’t be too quick to pull the trigger as it might save you from a lot of headache later on.
  • Disable plugins manually if necessary as some of them might not be compatible with the version you are updating to. This will help you avoid messages or denied access to your site if ever. You can always manually restore these plugins one by one to make sure each one works properly.
  • You may also want to choose to disable update notifications just in case using plugins like Disable All WordPress Updates or No Update Nag. This might come in handy for webmasters to implement so as to avoid clients from updating their WordPress websites by mistake.

Updates don’t have to be scary as long as you can confidently and easily restore your site to its former state before the update. Make sure these backup measures are in place for your peace of mind.

WordPress dot Org Plugins You Might Have Missed

WordPress dot org has some powerful plugins that you might not have discovered yet. Check out these cool plugins that just might be the solutions you have been looking for. Some of these plugins are still in the draft or development stage as of this writing.

Admin Color Schemes

The Admin Color Schemes plugin brings some personality to your WordPress site with 8 new extra admin color schemes. If you want to add some fun and pizzazz to your WordPress backend for that not so formal look, check out this cool plugin to create the color scheme that matches your personality.

WordPress Importer

The WordPress Importer plugin will import the following content from a WordPress export file: posts, pages and other custom post types, comments, custom fields and post meta, categories, tags and terms from custom taxonomies, authors, etc. The importer also has a couple of filters to allow you to completely enable/block certain features. Take note though that if your exported file is very large, the import script may run into your host’s configured memory limit for PHP.

Debug Bar

The Debug Bar plugin adds a debug menu to the admin bar that shows query, cache, and other helpful debugging information. This plugin is a must for WordPress developers. This plugin tracks PHP Warnings and Notices to make them easier to find when WP_DEBUG is enabled, and mysql queries are tracked and displayed when SAVEQUERIES is enabled. This plugin is extremely helpful for theme and plugin developers, just make sure that plugin is installed correctly.

WordPress Front-end Editor

The WordPress Front Editor plugin is a simple and easy to use plugin that allows you to navigate between the front and back end where you can access more advanced options such as custom fields, edit content, etc. This plugin is still in the development stage.

WordPress Front Editor

The WordPress Front Editor plugin is a simple and easy to use plugin that allows you to navigate between the front and back end where you can access more advanced options such as custom fields, edit content, etc. This plugin is still in the development stage.

Tumblr Importer

The Tumblr Importer plugin allows you to import posts, drafts, and pages including media side loading (for audio, video, and image posts) from a Tumblr blog into a WordPress blog. It correctly handles, post formats, does background importing, and will not create duplicate imported posts.

Blogger Importer

The Blogger Importer plugin allows you to import posts (published, scheduled, and draft, comments, and categories (blogger tags) from a Blogger blog then migrates authors to WordPress users.

Is Your WordPress Site A Target For Hackers?

Online security is a priority website owners should take seriously. How many of us use the same password not only for multiple sites but for other personal information like bank accounts, billings, credit cards, etc.? General website information is available via Whois.com and displays information such as your email address. To the determined hacker, this single piece of information could lead to a chain of personal information tracking and could lead to more devastating consequences aside from identity theft. The epic hacking of Wired’s Senior Writer, Mat Honan, that dissolved his digital life is a reality check that whatever goes online (and even offline) can disappear in a matter of seconds.

Another security challenge is having multiple authors and contributors to your WordPress website. Granting access to users should be managed with a built-in authentication system to filter out unauthorized or unregistered users from accessing not only your resources but also premium information not open to the public. Installing necessary precautions and different levels of security checks can be helpful in creating deterrents to possible security hacks.

Here are some useful tools you can use to protect your site from being compromised.

LastPass – PassWord Manager

LastPass is an award-winning password manager that saves your passwords and gives you secure access from every computer and mobile device. Download and setup is easy and can be done in minutes. Once you’ve created your account, LastPass prompts you to save new sites as you browse – so you’ll never lose another password. After saving a website’s username and password, LastPass will autofill the login when you return to that site. No thought, no typing, no work required – LastPass does it for you. LastPass allows you to share access to multiple users securely. This security tool also helps you address other password management concerns and security threats like keylogging, etc.

UpDraftPlus – WordPress Backup

UpdraftPlus simplifies backups and restoration. Backup into the cloud (Amazon S3 (or compatible), Dropbox, Google Drive, Rackspace Cloud, DreamObjects, FTP, SFTP, SCP, WebDAV and email) and restore with a single click. Key features include: Site duplicator/migrator: can copy sites, and (with add-on) move them to new locations; backups of files and database can have separate schedules; large sites can be split into multiple archives; database backups can be encrypted for security; and download backup archives direct from your WordPress dashboard, among many.

Clef – 2 Step Authentication Mobile App

Clef is a free replacement for usernames and passwords that makes logging into your WordPress site easier and more secure. It is a mobile app that replaces usernames and passwords using your smartphone. This security tool lets any site recognize their users based on their phones, instead of anything they have to remember or type. Clef puts secure cryptography in the hands of every user and frees you from having to remember any passwords. Once you sign in to one WordPress site using Clef, you can sign into all of your Clef-enabled sites with a single click. And once you sign out of the app on your phone, you are automatically signed out of all your WordPress sites.

Google Authenticator – WordPress Plugin

The Google Authenticator plugin for WordPress gives you two-factor authentication using the Google Authenticator app for Android/iPhone/Blackberry. You may already have the Google Authenticator app installed on your smartphone, using it for two-factor authentication on Gmail, Dropbox, Lastpass, Amazon etc. The two-factor authentication requirement can be enabled on a per-user basis. You could enable it for your administrator account, but log in as usual with less privileged accounts. It also works on WordPress installations that have several users aseach user has his own Google Authenticator settings.

All In One WP Security & Firewall

The All In One WordPress Security plugin is a comprehensive, user-friendly, all in one WordPress security and firewall plugin for your site. It reduces security risk by checking for vulnerabilities, and by implementing and enforcing the latest recommended WordPress security practices and techniques. This plugin uses an unprecedented security points grading system to measure how well you are protecting your site based on the security features you have activated. Protect against “Brute Force Login Attack” with the Login Lockdown feature. Users with a certain IP address or range will be locked out of the system for a predetermined amount of time based on the configuration settings and you can also choose to be notified via email whenever somebody gets locked out due to too many login attempts. Monitor/View the account activity of all user accounts on your system by keeping track of the username, IP address, login date/time, and logout date/time.

As always, check for compatibility before installing any plugin or tool. And don’t forget to backup your site as well.

WordPress Themes for Photographers – March 2014

Creating an online portfolio is no longer a challenge nowadays. There are hundreds of options for displaying photographs available to photographers today that give you that expensive professional look. Here are some of the latest WordPress photography themes you can use to show off your prized images:

PhotoReactive – Fullscreen Studio for WordPress

PhotoReactive Premium WordPress Theme is a full screen studio theme for WordPress that photographers will love. This premium theme gives photographers tons of creative options for them to showcase images and other multimedia content both on the homepage and also in the portfolio pages. Full screen slideshows options include touch swipe capability, captions (with or without), photo wall, YouTube and Vimeo videos, static image, and the popular Kenburns slideshow (with or without audio). This theme is also equipped with Ajax & normal portfolio showcases, WooCommerce functionality to help you set up your own photography shop and it is also WPML ready (includes .po .mo language files.)

Devendo Photography WordPress Theme

Devendo Premium WordPress Theme is a flat and modern portfolio theme suitable for photographers. This premium theme is built with Bootstrap 3, is 100% responsive and is also available in four color schemes that can be changed in the theme’s options panel. Key features include: smart overlay search function, integrated social sharing, responsive mega menus with Bootstrap grid inside dropdowns, full screen portfolio with direction aware hover effects, smooth scrolling AJAX-powered horizontal blog, among others.

Fidelity – Premium Photography WordPress Theme

Fidelity Premium WordPress Theme is a modern photography theme with a future-oriented design targeted primarily for photographers but can also be used by design agencies, architecture bureaus, etc. This premium theme takes a full advantage of the latest CSS3 hardware-accelerated transitions (with a fallback to jQuery animations) giving users incredible performance on diverse platforms like desktops, tablet PCs and smartphones. Some of the unique features include: the ability to set up narrow or full width page in a few clicks, the ability to show EXIF data in the portfolio posts, and the horizontal masonry style blog layout that gives you that high end magazine feel. You can also display unlimited slideshows and videos for your background.

The Gentleman – Photography & Portfolio Theme

The Gentleman WordPress Theme is a fully responsive multipurpose theme perfect for any photographer, designer, agency, or any business looking to show off their work. There are multiple homepage layouts, tons of portfolio styles to choose from, and a lot of other features allowing you to build your perfect photography/portfolio website. This theme includes features like: Price tables, team members, multiple blog layouts, preset flat and pattern styles, a powerful theme options panel, multiple sliders including the popular Revolution Slider, multiple portfolio options including the Magnific Responsive Lightbox, and so much more.

Camilla – Horizontal Fullscreen Photography Theme

Camilla Premium WordPress Theme is a modern, minimal, full screen horizontal canvas ideal for displaying your photographs the way you intended them to be seen. This theme’s minimalistic design shifts the focus to your work with the use of distraction-free full screen video-ready galleries . Some of this theme’s modern features include: one-page layout, horizontal scroll, vertical scroll sections in horizontal layout, and it is optimized for mobile devices with its swipe navigation feature for smartphones and tablets, etc.

WordPress Plugins For Video

Video is a powerful tool to draw people to your site. Today’s audience is so accustomed to visual stimulation that the use of video has become one of the fastest, if not the most effective, ways of communicating to a wider audience. Hence, it is already a necessity for websites to be multimedia friendly and capable of handling all types of multimedia content, especially videos.

Check out these WordPress video plugins you can use to create more visual interest to your website.

Advanced Responsive Video Embedder

This simple and lightweight plugin lets you embed videos from many providers with full responsive sizes via URL or Shortcode (clean and easy shortcode syntax). You can show videos as thumbnails and let them open in Colorbox. The Plugin has a set of customization options to embed the video exactly as you like which includes custom URL parameters. You also have options to make the videos as unobtrusive as possible to keep visitors on your site.

YouTube Plus

This plugin allows you to upload content to your YouTube account and easily embed content straight from your WordPress dashboard. Upload new content to YouTube, delete old content from your YouTube account, get other YouTube users videos and even track your YouTube analytics right from the WordPress dashboard. You can also delete content from your YouTube account right from the WordPress dashboard. No need to leave your blog to go remove videos from YouTube. The built in validation makes sure that only you can delete content from your YouTube account. Through the YouTube Plus analytics section you can track important YouTube analytic information for the 25 most recent uploaded videos. The analytics section comes with a fully interactive world map and tons of metric information displayed in tables.

Video Embed

This plugin is a smart and easy way to add responsive HTML5 Video gallery and Video player to your WordPress Site. The plugin adds a Video gallery tab to your admin menu, which allows you to enter Video Title and Video source items just as you would regular posts. Also added setting page “Smartvideo Settings” under “setting” menu to set the height and width of your video player.

Video Thumbnails

Video Thumbnails makes it easy to automatically display video thumbnails in your template. When you publish a post, this plugin will find the first video embedded and locate the thumbnail for you. Thumbnails can be saved to your media library and set as a featured image automatically. This plugin also supports custom post types and custom fields. Additional features include maximum image sizes, more powerful bulk scanning options, a customizable upload directory, and support for popular video services like YouTube, Vimeo, Vine, Dailymotion, Google Drive, etc.

JW Player for Flash & HTML5 Video

The JW Player WordPress Plugin enables you to embed Flash and HTML5 audio and video, plus RTMP and YouTube streams, on your site using JW Player 6. This plugin allows for easy customization and embedding of Flash and HTML5 video using the JW Player in your WordPress posts. It provides support for all of the JW Player 6 configuration options, including custom watermarks, HLS/RTMP streaming and VAST/VPAID advertising.

WordPress Design For A Global Market

Design is subjective. There are generally accepted design principles that govern the design community and serve as guides to evaluating “correct” design. However, not all of them are totally applicable to specific clients especially when Western taste buds meet Eastern culture. But when and where shall the ‘twain ever meet if beauty and design aesthetics are wrapped deeply in mores and culture?

This is the cross cultural challenge that web designers need to face in order to remain competitive in today’s global market place.

West, Meet East

Before the West was, the East was. Two of the world’s oldest civilizations, China and India, are also two of the fastest and most robust economies today. According to Census.gov, as of 2014, China and India ranked as the top two countries with the highest population in the world. China ranked first with 1.3B (population) with an approximate 42.3% Internet penetration, followed by India with 1.2B (population) with an approximate 81% Internet penetration. Approximately 1 billion internet users from these 2 (right to left, top-to-bottom reading) countries alone. And if theme developers do the math, even if at 1% of a billion internet users, that’s still a lot of WordPress themes right there. Too many to ignore.

Global Market Local User Design

We’ve talked about defining your target market and directing your business to reaching your specific demographic. Once you have that down pat, it’s probably time to think of expansion and consider widening your net a little further. To go a little more granular and target the local user.

With WordPress powering over 21% of the Internet and being one of the most user friendly and reliable CMS systems existing today, aside from the fact that it is free, more and more Internet users are looking to it as their platform of choice.

With that, the popularity of WordPress has crossed over into multi language markets despite having been around for only a decade and catering mainly to users of modern languages which are generally left to right in direction. Hence, the increase in demand for WordPress themes with RTL or WPML features or WP plugins that provide this functionality.

The diversity of WordPress users from all across the globe is becoming an important factor in developing themes that are relevant culturally and technically suited to these users local needs. As responsive once was a premium feature that has now become a standard feature in all WordPress themes, so shall the multi language and RTL feature become.

The Design Approach

The WordPress theme development marketplace has grown considerably with designers coming up with better and more user friendly designs that match the general needs of WordPress users. There is a huge pool of WordPress themes available for, generally, almost every type of website need out there. But there is still room to grow for more cross-cultural friendly options.

Below are some design elements that designers need to consider when creating themes that are responsive to culturally diverse user groups. (Notes culled from W3.org and Sitepoint.com)

  • Language
    – Languages don’t have a direction. Scripts have a writing direction, and so languages written in a particular script, will be written with the direction of that script. Languages can be written in more than one script.
  • Typography – fonts and characters
    – Typography can look “busier” to Western eyes than to Asian readers because many Asian scripts don’t have separate upper and lower cases. Some languages have scripts that are not alphabetic at all, but which express an idea rather than a sound. Occasionally, it’s necessary for an author to provide readers with pronunciation help for especially rare or awkward characters, usually with an alternative script in small writing above the ambiguous character.
  • Content presentation
  • Styling
  • Usability
  • Navigation
  • Mirror layout
  • Scripts (Left to Right, Right to Left, Top to Bottom)
    – Text direction is another thing that should not be confused with language. In some scripts, such as Arabic and Hebrew, displayed text is read predominantly from right to left, although within that flow, numbers and text from other scripts are displayed from left to right. Knowing the directionality of text, based on the script(s) to be used, is important to web designers and authors, because right-to-left text can be more complicated (for beginners) to work with and the organization and directionality of the page layout are affected. Therefore, knowing the writing direction can be relevant to estimating the work involved to create web pages in a new language.
  • Images and animations
  • Forms
    – Designing forms for an Asian market can have pitfalls for Western developers. For example, it’s common to require both given name and family name and give an error if both are not completed. Many Asian languages write names with family names first and given names afterwards while some have only one name. Also, do not limit the amount of characters in Address fields.
  • Mobile
  • Propriety
  • Color palettes
    – While choosing your colors for your design, keep in mind that certain colors have different connotations across cultures. For example, red is lucky for Chinese people. On the other hand, Thai people will be offended if you print their name in red — it’s the color that monks employ to write names on coffins, so to write someone’s name in red is to “wish them dead”.
  • Symbols and metaphors

For web designers, W3.org International’s tagline sums it up quite well: “Making the World Wide Web Worldwide.” Let’s!

Top WordPress Plugins February 2014

Dynamic Featured Image

Dynamic Featured Image gives you multiple featured image (post thumbnail) functionality that enables you to have multiple featured images within a post or page. This is especially helpful when you use other plugins, post thumbnails or sliders that use featured images. Why be limited to just one featured image alone when you have the option to add more.

Google Analytics Dashboard for WP

Google Analytics Dashboard for WP will display Google Analytics data and statistics inside your WordPress Blog. This plugin displays detailed analytics info and statistics about: number of visits, number of visitors, bounce rates, organic searches, pages per visit directly on your Admin Dashboard. Authorized users can also view statistics like Views, UniqueViews and top searches, on frontend, at the end of each article. The analytics data is collected in a fast and secure manner because Google Analytics Dashboard uses OAuth2 protocol and Google Analytics API. Its real-time feature displays real-time visitors, real-time sources and per page real-time traffic details

Shareaholic

Shareaholic is an extremely useful tool to get readers to actually discover and submit your articles to numerous social bookmarking sites. This plugin adds an attractive social bookmarking menu and related content widget to your posts, pages, index, or any combination of the three for easy sharing. You can increase pageviews and engagement by highlighting relevant content from across your site to your readers who would not otherwise encounter them. Shareaholic reports all of your important actionable social media metrics including popular pages on your website, referral channels, and who are making referrals and spreading your webpages on the internet on your behalf bringing you back more traffic and new visitors.

Google Drive WP Media

This plugin turns Google Drive into your upload files hosting storage where you can upload and get direct access to your Google Drive so you can manage, upload, and share your files remotely from your WordPress blog. You also have the option to auto insert your Google Drive files into your WordPress Media Library, attach your Google Drive files to your posts, upload your files from your WordPress Administration to Google Drive, or create folders to store your files.

Ebyline Payments

Ebyline Payments is a plugin that allows editors to pay blog contributors easily and safely, all within the WordPress Admin. This plugin is easy to install and setup. You can make payments via credit card to contributors directly in the WordPress interface. Contributors receive payments via PayPal. This plugin is totally tax compliant and the system generates 1099s for each freelancer you pay.

Thank Me Later

Thank Me Later sends ‘thank you’ emails to your commenters. Simply write a message saying thanks and it will be emailed after a time of your choice — 5 minutes, a day, a month, whenever. Thank Me Later attracts readers back to your blog and asks them to check for replies to their comments. Other uses of the plugin include: linking to your RSS feed to get more readers; linking to your Twitter or Facebook pages to get more followers or likes; or giving a discount for purchases.

Google Pagespeed Insights for WordPress

Google Pagespeed Insights is a tool that empowers you to make decisions that increase the performance of your website. Use Google Pagespeed Insights to increase your site’s performance, your search engine ranking, and your visitors browsing experience. This plugin features advanced data visualization, tagging, filtering, and snapshot technology. Report Summaries are a powerful and exclusive feature of Google Pagespeed Insights for WordPress. Summaries display your average Page Score, largest areas for improvement across ALL reports, as well as best and lowest performing pages. You can also configure Google Pagespeed Insights for WordPress to generate Desktop reports, Mobile reports, or both.

Around the Web: WordPress and Tech News

The year 2014 started with a bang and with lots of interesting stories posted around the web. Here’s what caught our eye so far:

Enjoy!

WordPress Resource : Free Icons

The Internet is a great resource for anything and everything – for free or for a fee – especially if you are into web design. Don’t break the bank just yet if you are just dabbling into web design and it is not a professional thing for you yet. Check out these high quality design elements and incorporate them into your projects:

Metrize Icons

Metrize Icons is a free collection of 300 metro-style icons for designers and developers. The bundle also includes Metrize Font Icons and the necessary scripts for compatibility with IE7 and the complete character map. This icon set is perfect for your apps or web projects. You may use these icons for both commercial and personal projects and customize them any way you like. All Icons, WebFont and Updates are Free.

Dashicons

Dashicons is a new feature that slipped into the admin side of WordPress with the recently-released 3.8. This feature gives plugin developers a nice set of pre-made and pre-loaded icons to use. Using them in your WordPress custom post types is as simple as adding a parameter to your register_post_type() function.

Genericons

Genericons are a free, GPL, flexible vector icons for blogs embedded in a webfont and are designed to be clean and simple keeping with a generic aesthetic. It can be used for instant HiDPI or to easily change colors on the fly. It includes: Social icons(Skype, Digg, Reddit, Stumbleupon, Pocket), New generic icons (heart, lock and print), New editing icons (code, bold, italic, image), and New interaction icons (subscribe, unsubscribe, subscribed, reply all, reply, flag), among others.

400 Hand Drawn Icons

400 Hand Drawn Icons Set has been provided by Freepik.com exclusively for the readers of Blog Oh! Blog. These are free to use in your personal and commercial projects and are provided in SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) format and can be easily used on any website.

Free Line Icons from Elegant Themes

This free line-style icon set from Elegant Themes ships with a total of 100 different icons and is a re-mastering and expansion on their previous Divi Icons. The new set has been re-created at a new size and line-weight, and 50 new icons have been added as well! The download package includes the vectored .AI and .SVG files, as well as 32px and 64px .PNGs.

Free eCommerce Icon Set

This set of 33 flat e-commerce icons were exclusively designed and created for Smashing Magazine by the team at Responsive. The icons are ideally suited to e-commerce projects and include many popular payment providers, including Bitcoin. The icons come in different-sized PNGs (32 × 32, 64 × 64, 128 × 128 and 256 × 256 pixels), and the set includes Photoshop and Illustrator files containing all of the icons. Released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license, freely available for private and commercial projects.

Enjoy these free graphic design resources and share your projects with us.