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Redirection: An Easy Way to Handle 301 Redirects
Since I’ve switched to my new design, I’ve also done quite a bit of cleanup work on the content side of things. I pruned a lot of old articles that weren’t bringing in search traffic (and weren’t related to the site anymore), cleaned up a lot of the categories, and set my permalink structure to…
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The Best WordPress Social Sharing Buttons
If you run a blog (or a church site with some sort of event calendar or news section), having a place where your visitors and members can share your content is absolutely invaluable. Sometimes all it takes is for people to start spreading the word about an event. By giving them the chance to do so,…
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A Look at The Best WordPress Contact Forms
No site is complete without having a contact form of some kind on it. Whether you use it for lead generation, user submitted content, or just to have people stop and say hello, having a form visitors can easily fill out to send you a message is crucial. WordPress is privileged to have an amazing…
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WordPress Heartbeat API: An Introduction
If I were to mention to a casual WordPress user something about the WordPress Heartbeat API, most would have never even heard of it, much less know that it’s been in WordPress since version 3.6(!) with very little fanfare. But, as it turns out, the Heartbeat API has gained traction in the developer community, as…
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Jetpack 3.0, An In-Depth Look: New Modules, New Design
Jetpack – WordPress’ popular “modular” plugin – released a major update on May 20th, and with it came a slew of major design changes and a few additions to the plugin, dubbed “Jetpack 3.0”. Those familiar with Jetpack will recognize a lot of the same great functions you know and love – just wrapped in a nice, pretty…
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WP-Migrate-DB: Migrating a WordPress Installation in 5 Easy Steps
If you’re a WordPress developer, migrating a finished development project can be one of the trickiest parts. There’s moving parts in many places that have to be taken into consideration, and migration is (unfortunately) where WordPress actually could use some improvement. However, it’s a necessary evil – one that I’ve done almost daily for a…
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WordPress 3.9: An Early Overview
With the release of WordPress 3.9 beta 1 on March 11, everyone is (or should be) ensuring their plugins and themes are ready for the update. There’s a lot of exciting things coming from this update, and it’s easy to overlook some of the more technical (but still important) aspects being added into WordPress. There’s…
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The Toolbox: 4 WordPress Plugins I Can’t Live Without
Whenever I speak at conferences, attend meetups, or even just causally mention WordPress in conversation, there’s one question that comes up in nearly every conversation I have: What WordPress plugins do you recommend? That list is constantly in flux – a new plugin will be developed that replaces an old one, or an old one…
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Fighting the WordPress White Screen of Death
We’ve all been there: We’re editing the WordPress theme file, setting a new function and *BAM*: We view the site and it’s nothing but a sea of white pixels. There’s no messages, no errors, nothing to indicate what you’ve done wrong. And it’s frustrating: sure, removing the change would fix the problem, but I (as I’m…
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My Take on WordPress 3.8
WordPress 3.8 came out just a few days ago, and I jumped at the chance to install it on as many of my blogs as I could manage. This was one of the most anticipated updates in years – and with good reason. It was a complete overhaul of the admin interface and added quite…
