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WordPress, FedEx, and UPS.
Think of WordPress as a package delivered to your doorstep by the FedEx gal. Think of your WordPress theme as a supplemental package delivered by UPS. Think of your 20 different WordPress plugins as an stack of smaller packages delivered by UPS, FedEx, the US Postal service, a local courier service, and one or two…
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Why You Need a Web Plan
I’m a web guy, and my site got hacked. There’s almost no explaining the sinking feeling when you log into your web site and find it hacked. But because I had a backup plan, getting my site back online and free of malware was simple and painless. It turned what would have been days of…
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Why Aren’t My Posts being Shared on Social Media?
Even the best content will often not be shared online, despite hours of effort and even significant financial investment. This post is my deep dive into what makes some content get shared, and how you can tee up your content to be shareable. There are 3 reasons why people aren’t sharing your posts: People Don’t…
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Tech folks: Stop calling things Easy.
When you call something “simple,” “easy,” or “self-explanatory” in product documentation, you’re insulting your reader. You should stop doing that. Let’s put it in another context to illustrate my point. Scene: local auto repair shop. Your mechanic emerges from under the hood holding a small piece of rubber between grease-marked pointer finger and thumb. “Here’s…
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What Matt Mullenweg is Getting Wrong In the 5.0 Release
But first, an attempt to empathize with the core team. The reality that many of us on the outside need to grasp is that Gutenberg and WordPress 5.0 needs to ship, and soon. The urgency, far from being a conspiracy theory or hostile takeover, is that it’s already late at this point. Many of the…
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The WordPress Community Deserves the Why on the Timeline of v5.0
The leadership of the WordPress project must be transparent with the “why” of the release date of WordPress version 5.0 and the new editor. Initially, Matt Mullenweg said “April” during the last State of the Word address. There was an audible laugh from my side of the room, but more importantly, there was no “why”…
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GDPR, Jurisdiction, and Some Honest Questions.
This post isn’t really about the GDPR legislation, though it’s the latest piece of legislation out of the European Union that has the world’s attention, so it got me thinking again about what this post is really about. This post is about jurisdiction. Specifically, why does the European Union creating a law have any effect…
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Using The WP Rollback plugin to beta test Better Click to Tweet
Starting today, you can beta test pre-released versions of Better Click to Tweet, to test new functionality, ensure compatibility with your environment, and/or lend a hand to aid in development. With version 5.5+, there’s a method for you to update to the release before it alerts you to an update on the plugins page of…
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WordCamp Raleigh 2017: Lead Organizer’s Recap
It’s two days after #WCRaleigh 2017, so I thought it’d be fun to get some Words Pressed about my experience this year as a first-time Lead Organizer. A lot has changed since the time I was an accidental organizer in 2015. The things that went really well Chris Lema unsurprisingly made for a fantastic Keynote…
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How to change the “Click to Tweet” text on Better Click to Tweet for WordPress
Last week I added a feature to Better Click To Tweet for WordPress that continues to cause it to live up to it’s name. You can officially change the “Click To Tweet” anchor text on a per-box basis, now. Here’s what I mean: Before, while it was possible to change the text that is tweeted (kind…
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How To Roll Back WordPress Plugins
Ever updated a plugin, and had it break some functionality on your site? First of all, here’s hoping that you didn’t do that on the live site, because shame on you for cowboy coding. But now’s not the time to chastise you for that: it’s time to fix the problem. If you still have…
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How to submit a good support ticket
Think to yourself: if I dropped in, directly in the middle of a conversation, and was forced to figure out what needs to be done based on the information being presented only from this point forward, would I be able to do so? That’s what a support ticket is. It’s a conversation between you and…
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How To Switch to Better Click To Tweet.
So I’ve convinced you that switching plugins from Click to Tweet by the folks over at TodayMade (the makers of the top-notch content marketing editorial calendar CoSchedule) is worth it. But what about all of those tweet quotes you’ve already added to dozens (if not hundreds) of blog posts? Going back through to switch each quote manually…
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Why Experts recommend the “Deactivate All Plugins” method
You have an issue, and the first thing the folks on the support forum say is always “deactivate all plugins.” Here’s why:
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What Lawn Care Taught Me About Why You Should Read Changelogs
My neighbors pay someone to cut their grass. As far as I can tell from being an only-mildly-nosy neighbor, here’s how the weekly-ish transaction goes: Yard guy (we’ll call him Pete) shows up to mow the whole lawn. Right before he starts, Pete walks up to a cushioned chair on the front porch, and picks…
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BCTT Tutorial: Changing the “via username” on a Per-Box basis.
As of version 4.7, users of my popular Better Click To Tweet WordPress Plugin have the ability to programmatically change the “via @username” on a per-box basis. Here’s how that works: If you use the visual editor, clicking the little blue birdie icon will produce the pop-up that you are used to, with one important…
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Your Website Needs to Get Out Of Its Own Way
I like themes, plugins, and websites that get out of the way. Why do you have a website? Too many folks start with “because we need a website,” and that’s immediately apparent when you look at their site. If they had a specific, measurable, written goal for the website, they’d have a website that gets…
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Themes Vs. Plugins: Which should Do What?
Your plugins are the organs of your WordPress site. They are functional, and enhance content in ways other than just aesthetically. Your theme is the skin of your WordPress site. It’s aesthetic, not primarily functional. In fact, done correctly, your theme could be even more like clothes than skin. Themes change design and plugins change…