How long does it take for your WordPress website to load? Two seconds? Three seconds? Heaven forbid, more than four seconds? If you don’t know, there’s a good chance that a slow-loading website is costing you pageviews and conversions. The first step to fixing any problem is admitting that you have a problem. But how do find out if you …
The Ultimate Guide to WordPress Spam
Akismet, the most popular spam killing plugin for WordPress, encounters 7.5 million pieces of spam per hour on average. That’s twice as much spam as there are people in Los Angeles. Every hour. Back in 2007, WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg knew spam would be a growing problem for the CMS, saying at the time it was getting so bad that …
JavaScript for WordPress Developers: Learning the Basics
JavaScript was developed over 20 years ago at Netscape and for a while in the mid-late 1990s it was considered a roadblock to a standardized web. Look how far we’ve come since! JavaScript is now used on 93.6% of all websites in the world. Automattic even recently developed a desktop client for WordPress.com, written in 100% JavaScript. Whole sites and apps …
WordPress Development for Intermediate Users: Internationalization
Internationalization, or i18n, is the process of developing your plugin or theme so it can easily be translated into other languages. And since WordPress is used all over the world, it’s important to ensure your code can be easily translated into whatever language is needed. This is the seventh post in our WordPress Development for Intermediate Users series. This series …
XML-RPC and Why It’s Time to Remove it for WordPress Security
From the very beginnings of WordPress, there have been features that allow you to interact remotely with your site. These same features build your community by allowing other bloggers to reference your posts. At the core of all of this is XML-RPC. XML-RPC, or XML Remote Procedure Call, powers these features in WordPress: Connecting to your site(s) with your smartphone Trackbacks …
An Introvert’s Guide to Surviving WordCamps and Making it Out Alive
Going to WordCamp Europe just isn’t worth it. There are too many people, the commute is huge (Vancouver to Vienna!) and the whole trip is just way more expensive than it’s actually worth. At least, that’s what I thought when I was initially prodded to go. I’m ashamed to admit I almost didn’t go this year because all of the …
Q&A: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About WordPress Multisite Answered
If you’re a keen follower of this blog, you’ll have noticed my series of posts on WordPress Multisite a few weeks ago. And if you’re learning about Multisite, you may have signed up to my Academy course on the subject. The comments, questions and discussions that the courses and posts have generated have been awesome, to say the least. Dozens of …
8 Completely Free Ways to Steal WPMU DEV’s WordPress SuperPowers
When I started out in WordPress I was broke. Not just broke, broke-ass. Newly married, new baby, $6.57 in the bank, no paycheck coming in and starting a new online business. I needed to start and grow a site. I needed the support of a community. I needed it all at top quality. And I needed it all completely for …
How to Add a Hello Bar to Your WordPress Site (and Why Everyone is Doing It)
Want to boost your conversion rates? That’s what hello bars are all about. Whether you want to add email subscribers, advertise special deals, drive traffic to a landing page, or make a site-wide announcement, hello bars get the job done. What are hello bars? Hello bars, more generically called notification bars, are the bars added to either the top or …
WordPress Development for Intermediate Users: Custom Fields and Metadata
The default Page and Post content types in WordPress are enough for many websites, but if you really want to harness the powers of WordPress as a CMS it’s time to start learning about custom fields and metadata. This is the sixth post in our WordPress Development for Intermediate Users series. This series follows on from our popular WordPress Development …