20 Useful Admin Plug-ins for WordPress

Do you know what makes WordPress the number one choice amongst bloggers? Although one can list many reasons but one of the most prominent in the list will be the number of plug-ins it supports. WordPress currently runs more than 20,000 plug-ins that have been downloaded more than 30 chore times! This is both good and bad news. Good news because you will have a lot to choose from. You will almost every time find what you need. Bad news because amongst such a vast ocean of plug-ins it is easy to get lost and drowned in the information overload. To help you out we present you with 20 WordPress admin plug-ins that we feel are the best in their niche. As the name suggests these are admin plug-ins i.e. they will help the administrator of the WordPress blog to operate the blog in a better and more efficient way.

For example, let’s say that you are fed up with all the clutter of the unnecessary and superfluous windows and bars that occupy your WordPress dashboard. Try Ad minimize, listed in the first position below. This plug-in allows you to compress windows to allow more content to be substituted in its place. Obviously different people have different priorities. So with Ad minimize you can customize your WordPress’s dashboard the way you like.

Besides Ad minimize, there are 19 other useful plug-ins that, I think, you should know of. Scroll down and check them out.

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10 Inspirational Typography Plugins for WordPress

Believe it or not – typography or the way you present your text and media on your website – plays a crucial role in building your brand name. Did you know? There are books comprising thousands of pages that teach you how to use a consistent typographical style on your publications. Such as well as “Style Guides” like The Chicago Manual of Style, The MLA Style Manual, Hart’s Rules or The Oxford Guide to Style, etc. Different organizations use different style guides and apply them on their publications in order to achieve consistency throughout the text. If a person who has been reading The Guardian for several months will be asked to identify the paper amongst a collection of many other papers such that the name of the publication is hidden from view, he will have little or no difficulty in identifying it. This is because The Guardian, just like all other standard newspapers, use a specific set of fonts, a specific indentation, a specific line gap, etc. in its publications. Such things help create an authority and reinforce the brand name.

It is not necessary that you follow the standard guides for your publication. If you want you can create your own set of style rules or mix some of your own personal tastes with any standard style manual. Whatever you decide, to help you in your endeavor I present you with 10 inspirational typography plug-ins for WordPress. Some are free while some others cost a nominal amount.

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Woop Woop WordPress CSS Style

Last week, we learned a little bit about basic HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), how it started, how it works and how to read and write HTML “crudely”.

To recap, here’s what we did:

1. First, we took this block of text (Hypertext):

ACT I. PROLOGUE.Two households, both alike in dignity In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.From forth the fatal loins of these two foes A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life; Whose misadventured piteous overthrows Do with their death bury their parents’ strife. The fearful passage of their death-mark’d love, And the continuance of their parents’ rage, Which, but their children’s end, nought could remove, Is now the two hours’ traffic of our stage; The which if you with patient ears attend, What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend. SCENE I. Verona. A public place.

2. Marked it up (Markup) like this:

<p>ACT I.<p>

<p>PROLOGUE.<p>

<p>Two households, both alike in dignity In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.<p>

<p>From forth the fatal loins of these two foes A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life; Whose misadventured piteous overthrows Do with their death bury their parents’ strife.<p>

<p>The fearful passage of their death-mark’d love, And the continuance of their parents’ rage, Which, but their children’s end, nought could remove, Is now the two hours’ traffic of our stage; The which if you with patient ears attend, What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.<p>

<p>SCENE I.<p>

<p>Verona. A public place.<p>

3. To make it appear like this when published online:

ACT I.

PROLOGUE.

Two households, both alike in dignity In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.

In a nutshell, we took some plain block of text we wanted to publish online, marked it up using some simple tags to create a more readable, web friendly version that browsers like IE, Firefox, Safari, etc. will recognize. The tags we used: <p> </p> <h1> <h2> were just hypothetical sample tags, not necessarily real html tags, just to demonstrate how HTML works.

Believe it or not, there was a time when the web was really that simple. Plain, boring, unadorned text. That was before – until a new markup language was created – devoted to styling the look of a web page. The new markup language was called Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).

Going back to our definition of 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.

A bit of CSS history:

“According to the W3C, the CSS specification was drawn up in response to “pressure from authors for richer visual control.” The demand for better control of web pages was certainly there, but browsers in the late 1990s just weren’t up to the job. They implemented CSS very poorly or not at all. As a result, only the very brave or foolhardy adopted CSS in the early stages. Nevertheless, the W3C continued work on the specification and brought out a new version, CSS2, in 1998. This retained all the features of CSS1 and added some new ones.”

CSS gives you the power to set styling rules in one place. When you want to make changes to your web site, you make changes in that one place, and your whole web site changes automatically to reflect those new styles.

Why are they called “cascading” style sheets?

The cascade in CSS refers to the way that rules are added together and applied cumulatively. Think of the cascade in the literal sense of a waterfall or a river. As a river flows from the mountains to the sea, it starts off as a tiny trickle, but as more water is added through tributaries, it becomes bigger and more powerful. Yet the water in that original trickle is still part of the whole.

CSS works in a similar way. You can create a style rule that trickles down through the whole page. For example, it’s common to set the background and text colors in a rule for the body of the page. But lower down, new rules can be added that affect the font or size of the text without changing the color. And just like a river can break into a delta as it reaches the sea, you can break the CSS cascade into different strands, so that a sidebar looks different from the main content or footer of the page.

(source: Getting Started with CSS – David Powers)

With CSS, you can design your web page using different design elements, choose different fonts and font styles, add color, images and every design bling you can think of to jazz up your page. All this is done on a separate stylesheet that is linked to your main HTML code which means you can change the design elements anytime without recoding over and over. Simply put, CSS dresses up your drab and boring HTML and adds some “woop woop woop” to it – CSS style.

More next week.

Breaking the WordPress Language Barrier

“The Miracle Worker” is an inspiring true story based on the life of the young Helen Keller, blind and deaf since infancy, and her gifted teacher Miss Anne Sullivan. The film revolves around these two strong willed characters and the battle to overcome the obstacles that prevent Helen’s ability to communicate. Because of the strong and yet loving persistence of Miss Sullivan, Helen overcame. The language and communication barrier broke and Helen learned how to speak. How did it happen?

The “miracle” in The Miracle Worker occurs when Sullivan and Keller are at the water pump refilling a pitcher. It is at this moment that Keller makes the intellectual connection between the word Sullivan spells (using sign language) into her hand and the tangible substance splashing from the pump. Keller demonstrates her understanding by miraculously whispering “wah-wah”, the baby talk or gibberish equivalent of “water”.
source: Wikipedia

Many of us can probably relate to the struggle of making that “intellectual connection” between words and concepts especially when learning a new or unfamiliar language. Learning a new language requires an investment of time and effort. A steep price but the fruits of which is that “Aha!” moment when comprehension finally sets in and the satisfaction of knowing that the intellect and understanding have miraculously met.

For many, trying to learn the language of WordPress is a daunting thing. For the average person, it is indeed a struggle but, the good news is, it is not impossible. So what language exactly are we trying to understand?

HTML – The language of the web

Going back to our previous definition of HTML, we said that HTML, or Hypertext Markup Language, is the W3C standard language with which all web pages are built. It is the native language, the mother tongue of all other web languages – the building block from which all other web languages are built. Once we understand what it’s for, how to read it and write it, the easier it will be to understand everything else.

Let’s break it down a little bit more. The book HTML5- 24 Hour Trainer by Joseph Lowery writes:

The Internet, or World Wide Web, is essentially a network of computers. Browsers, like Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Safari, are computer programs that display web pages, which, in turn, are written in HTML. So, at its heart, HTML is the language of the Web.

As noted, HTML is an abbreviation for HyperText Markup Language. HyperText is text presented on one electronic device – whether it’s a computer, smartphone, or something else — that is connected, via a link, to other text, which could be located elsewhere in the same document, on a different page in the same website, or on an entirely different site. HyperText is perhaps the defining essence of the Internet: the ability to link from one web page to another, thus creating a web of information.

A simple hypertext system that connects raw textual content pretty much describes the earliest Internet systems. So how did we get to the rich multimedia experience that makes up much of the web today? That’s where the second half of the HTML abbreviation, Markup Language comes into play. The Markup Language part of HTML takes plain text with additional codes or tags and turns raw text into easily readable text on other electronic devices.

Lesson. Read and Write.

Here’s an example of HTML in action. Let’s say we want to send this block of text to be displayed on different browsers and it will be viewed on different devices:

ACT I. PROLOGUE.Two households, both alike in dignity In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.From forth the fatal loins of these two foes A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life; Whose misadventured piteous overthrows Do with their death bury their parents’ strife. The fearful passage of their death-mark’d love, And the continuance of their parents’ rage, Which, but their children’s end, nought could remove, Is now the two hours’ traffic of our stage; The which if you with patient ears attend, What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend. SCENE I. Verona. A public place.

Although all the information you need to convey is contained here, it’s a struggle to understand the meaning because it’s a big block of plain text. It would make a lot more sense if we were able to MARK IT UP in some way to indicate structure as well as communicate content. How about if we break it up into paragraphs using symbols, like this:

<p>ACT I.<p>

<p>PROLOGUE.<p>

<p>Two households, both alike in dignity In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.<p>

<p>From forth the fatal loins of these two foes A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life; Whose misadventured piteous overthrows Do with their death bury their parents’ strife.<p>

<p>The fearful passage of their death-mark’d love, And the continuance of their parents’ rage, Which, but their children’s end, nought could remove, Is now the two hours’ traffic of our stage; The which if you with patient ears attend, What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.<p>

<p>SCENE I.<p>

<p>Verona. A public place.<p>

One symbol, <p>, shows where the paragraph starts and another, similar symbol, <p>, shows where it ends. Overall, it’s better and more readable, right? The problem is that everything is still on one level. Perhaps we can show the difference between a heading and a paragraph of text by using different symbols, such as an <h> for a heading and a <p> for a paragraph:

<h>ACT I.<h>

<h>PROLOGUE.<h>

<p>Two households, both alike in dignity In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.<p>

Getting better, but are all headings the same? How about if we indicate the most important heading with the number 1 and a less important heading with a 2, like this:

<h1>ACT I.<h1>
<h2>PROLOGUE.<h2>

Now when a computer program, like a browser (IE, Firefox, Safari), renders this marked-up text, it strips out the MARKUP SYMBOLS (called tags in HTML) and shows the text with the appropriate styling.

ACT I.

PROLOGUE.

Two households, both alike in dignity In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.

Is it starting to make a little bit more sense now? Did something break? Hopefully, a light bulb switch turned on or something clicked in your head and you’ve found your “Aha!” moment. If you have, you will start looking at html code differently. You can try reading and writing and even try to slowly interpret what all the gobbledygook means. If you haven’t figured it out yet, you can go back to the lesson, find your own text block and practice using the markup symbols we used.

More next week!

Magazine WordPress Themes 2013: Trends

One of the usual challenges of online newspapers or magazines is streamlining content in a more readable and user friendly format. Because of the verbose or content-heavy nature of these sites, careful thought needs to be made in creating a theme layout that employs clever typography skills and information management techniques to create content that is readable and easy on the eye. Visual cues need to deliberately designed and strategically placed to draw attention to the most important sections of the site despite being bombarded by tons of images and information all at the same time. Because we are living in the digital age, careful thought and consideration also needs to be given to the never ending technological race to release the latest device or gadget where these websites will be accessed.

In light of all that, we think that Magazine WordPress Themes will continue to see improvements and changes in the following areas:

Easy to Implement, Clean, and Streamlined Design with an Emphasis on Readability

A well organized layout eliminates clutter and confusion and creates a pleasant navigational experience for visitors. This creates the impression that the people behind the publication are professionals and consequently adds credibility to the magazine’s reputation. Carefully chosen fonts and font sizes also add to the overall readability of the site and will hopefully encourage casual readers to become loyal subscribers.

Drag and Drop Features

Every publication is different. Each one has specific requirements based on their own reader base. Some formats may work for a certain season but become dated in the next. Magazine WordPress themes should be flexible enough to handle different layout configurations without much ado. One viable solution is to integrate a Drag and Drop feature to give website owners flexibility to reconfigure their websites and switch design elements around easily.

Single Page Templates

One of the benefits and yet at the same time one of the disadvantages of a magazine styled theme is that more content is featured on the front page. The homepage is filled with images and content to gain maximum exposure and accessibility. Perhaps more and more Magazine WordPress Themes will be designed with alternative options to use infinite scrolling single page templates to ensure that all posts will be given equal amount of exposure. This also eliminates the need for more clicks from visitors.

Responsive Layouts

The mobile web revolution has forever changed the way people access the internet. Online publications hosted on WordPress should be responsive or have that option available to them. Devices and gadgets are constantly evolving therefore Magazine WordPress themes need to be in step or be able to adapt to these technological changes quickly.

Search Engine Optimized, Affiliate, and Ad Ready

The lifeblood of print publications is in advertising. The same holds true for online publications. As these websites increase in size and readership, more and more resources are required to maintain it like hosting space, multiple authors and contributors, maintenance costs, etc. Magazine WordPress Themes authors need to design with these considerations in mind and give WP theme users backend options to monetize the site. Provision for and management of ad blocks or affiliate links should be standard built-in features already.

Rating and Review System

People love to voice their opinions and having this feature built into a Magazine WordPress theme encourages interactivity. This helps increase site traffic and later on adds credibility and authority which is translates into higher ranking sites as well.

Translation Ready

The Internet is an international marketplace represented by people from all around the world. Magazine WordPress themes need to be translation ready to take advantage of the untapped global target market.

The digital revolution has already eaten up a great chunk of the print generation but there is still room for growth. Although there are some printed materials that digital can never replace, those that can, will definitely benefit from this paperless trend we are seeing.

HTML5 WordPress Themes 2013: Trends

The evolution of HTML from the time it was introduced years ago to the HTML5 we know today is a technical geek lover’s journey. This article is not about that but just in case you are interested to know how it all came to be here are some interesting resources for you to check out. For those who want a more comprehensive history of HTML5, you can read all about it here – Dive into HTML5 by Mark Pilgrim. For those who just want a quick overview, check out this cool infographic The History of HTML5 published by Mashable. If you are really want to get into the technical stuff, you can go straight to the source right here – W3C.

What’s so Cool About HTML5

According to PCMag:

HTML5 was designed to provide a comprehensive application development platform for Web pages that eliminates the need to install third-party browser plug-ins such as Java and Flash. HTML5 provides support for 2D graphics, document editing, drag and drop, browser history management, audio and video playback and local file storage.

Simply put, HTML5 is composed of a set of rules that tell computers how to interpret code to display websites. It’s the 5th version of a set of instructions, governed by specific rules, that tells your browser how to execute these commands to display a specific design. It is the language of the web. HTML5 includes the following updates:

HTML5 introduces a number of APIs that help in creating Web applications. These can be used together with the new elements introduced for applications:

  • Media elements (video and audio) have APIs for controlling playback, syncronising multiple media elements, and timed text tracks (e.g. subtitles).
  • An API for form constraint validation (e.g. the setCustomValidity() method).
  • An API for commands that the user can invoke (used together with the command element among others).
  • An API that enables offline Web applications, with an application cache.
  • An API that allows a Web application to register itself for certain protocols or media types, using registerProtocolHandler() and registerContentHandler().
  • Editing API in combination with a new global contenteditable attribute.
  • Drag and drop API in combination with a draggable attribute.
  • An API that exposes the components of the document’s URL and allows scripts to navigate, redirect and reload (the Location interface).
  • An API that exposes the session history and allows scripts to update the document’s URL without actually navigating, so that applications don’t need to abuse the fragment component for “Ajax-style” navigation (the History interface).
  • An API for base64 conversion (atob() and btoa() methods).
  • An API to schedule timer-based callbacks (setTimeout() and setInterval()).
  • An API to prompt the user (alert(), confirm(), prompt(), showModalDialog()).
  • An API for printing the document (print()).
  • An API for handling search providers (AddSearchProvider() and IsSearchProviderInstalled()).
  • The Window object has been defined.

WHATWG HTML has further APIs that are not in HTML5 but are separate specifications at the W3C:

  • An API for microdata.
  • An API for immediate-mode bitmap graphics (the 2d context for the canvas element).
  • An API for cross-document messaging and channel messaging (postMessage() and MessageChannel).
  • An API for runnings scripts in the background (Worker and SharedWorker).
  • An API for client-side storage (localStorage and sessionStorage).
  • An API for bidirectional client-server communication (WebSocket).
  • An API for server-to-client data push (EventSource).

source: W3C

How Does this Affect WordPress Developers?

The HTML5 standard features make it easier to develop faster, interactive, and more semantically correct web pages, eliminating the need for functions that require JavaScript and Flash. WordPress designers, authors, and developers can take advantage of HTML5 enhancements on these 6 key elements: video, application cache, canvas for images, geolocation, worker threads, and notification. No doubt, HTML5 has bridged the divide between desktop and mobile and so far it is the best way to create mobile-friendly websites on a variety of devices.

What Trends do We Expect See in 2013

  • The rise of the baked, boilerplate, bare bones or blank HTML5 Themes
  • HTML5 will be supported by all new WordPress themes
  • More single dynamic pages websites with animation features
  • WordPress themes running on HTML5 compatible smart phones
  • Responsive design
  • Simple and clean themes (no to options-overload, yes to feature-specific themes)

HTML5 is still a work-in-progress and its adoption into more and more WordPress themes will continue as more and more users turn towards the mobile web. We can continue to expect more power, more speed, and more capabilities from it in the future as this technology continues to mature.

25 Helpful Twitter Plugins for WordPress 2013

Twitter is one of the most visited social networking platforms on the planet. WordPress is one of the most widely used blogging platforms. When the two meet, you can expect beautiful things to happen.

Below we present you with 25 helpful Twitter plugins for WordPress – Plugins can make your WordPress site do virtually anything.

Here’s an example of what you can achieve with one of these Twitter Plugins for WordPress.

It is a common habit nowadays that people sign into their Facebook, Twitter, and Gmail accounts when they start their computer, and after checking their accounts they typically close all these web pages but do not sign out of their accounts. Instead they go on to work on new web pages and they occasionally return to their accounts to check any latest updates. Now there is a plugin named “Simple Twitter Connect”, no. 5 below in this list, which enables you to log into your WordPress dashboard through your Twitter profile. Once you install the plugin and sync everything then you can login to your WordPress dashboard with your Twitter account. If you have the habit of being logged into your Twitter account all the time then you can log into WordPress by just a click of the button – you will just have to hit the “Sign in with Twitter” button and you will be in.

This is just one example of the power of the Twitter Plugins presented below. Scroll down for more info on these wonderful Plugins for 2012 – 2013.

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Business WordPress Themes 2013: Trends

Business websites have always been put up for one purpose: to bring about more conversions/sales that will impact the company’s bottomline. The advent of the Internet has redefined the markets our companies and enterprises have operated in. Thomas Friedman has considered it one of the forces that “flattened” the world. What is amazing is that the Internet continues to evolve. Analysts have predicted that there will be a shift to mobile devices between 2013 to 2015, a forecast that is now turning into a reality. With this change in platform, businesses have to rethink how they do business on the web.

With a transition on the way businesses use the Internet, the question that needs to be asked is: “How do we develop business themes that will address this emerging trend towards mobility?” We need to consider how people use the mobile web. Business WordPress themes are no longer confined to corporate portfolios alone. More than ever, these themes should be designed to be multifunctional with eCommerce capabilities integrated in its core and these business WordPress themes must be flexible enough to adapt to the rapid changing face of the marketplace.

A good business WordPress theme built with this mobile trend in mind should focus on responding to these basic online activities that people do – people use the mobile web primarily to search, share, and shop. These are, in a nutshell, what people really do online – search for information, share what they find, and shop for stuff they need or want. WordPress themes for businesses should be designed in such a way as to enable people to Search, Share, and Shop without taxing memory, network, and computing resources especially if the user is using a mobile device. Product and price information should also be easy to share and be compared to competitors. Purchases should be safe, secure and robust over 3G infrastructure dominant in emerging markets of the developing world.

Aesthetically, the business theme should be responsive with the base design optimized for tablets which is now becoming the new mainstream. As a website owner, providing your clientele with the most pleasant online experience on your website will have a direct impact on your conversions. Addressing what they need in the simplest and fastest way possible will always yield good results.

Design trends and WordPress theme bells and whistles will come and go. These are all nice and fun to have but one day they are in, the next day they are out. Nice, flashy websites don’t make a business successful. It still boils down to good old-fashioned business practices like courtesy and excellent customer service, whether online or offline, that will win the day. These business ingredients transcend technological trends anytime.

25 Very Useful WordPress Calendar Plugins for 2013

Time management is one of the biggest problems faced by business owners be they digital business or brick and mortar. There are too many things to do and when you do one thing you obviously can’t do something else (MBA programs call this the “opportunity cost”). Therefore, to manage your time properly and make the most out of the few working hours that exist each day, you must find the best tools to help you manage your time properly. Enter digital calendars.

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