Financial Plugins for WordPress
by Tevya on Oct.31, 2011, under post, wordpress
Here’s a great debt-calculator plugin for WordPress: Debt Calculator is a plugin that allows visitors to your site, figure out how long it will take to pay off debt.
TurboTax released a plugin to put a income-tax refund calculator in any post/page: TaxCaster.
Property Tax Calculator helps visitors figure out what their property tax should be and what percentage goes to what.
How to Backup WordPress Before Upgrading
by Tevya on Jul.10, 2011, under How-To, WordPress Plugins, WordPress Updates
WordPress always warns you to “please back up your database and files” before upgrading to the latest version of WordPress. Since a great-looking new WordPress 3.2 was recently released with some new features you may want (I love the full-screen writing mode, it really helps me focus on just writing), I thought I’d share the best ways to backup your WordPress files before updating.
First, it’s unlikely that you’re going to loose your files as part of the WordPress upgrade. They’re just being extra cautious. You can do a full backup through the hosting admin area (usually cPanel), or just login with an FTP client and download all your files. But if you use a reliable hosting company who backs up files on a regular basis, that’s not so much of a worry. However, it is possible that your database (where all the text, organization, etc. of your site is stored) could be damaged. An even more likely possibility is that the newest version of WordPress may not work with an older plugin you have, that has not been updated by it’s author. If it provides some functionality that’s vital to your site/blog, having a backup of the database, makes it much easier to roll everything back to a previous version of WordPress. Continue reading »
WordPress 3.2 Launches With Redesigned Admin Interface
by Tevya on Jul.06, 2011, under wordpress, WordPress Updates
Yesterday, July 4th, 2011, WordPress 3.2 launched. This launch was mostly about making WordPress smoother, easier to use, and faster. It upped its requirements, dropping support for old browsers such as Internet Explorer 6 (which even Microsoft doesn’t support anymore, and encourages you to upgrade), and added some pretty nice enhancements to the interface.
The first thing you’ll notice is the Admin interface looks different. No more “title bar” at the top of the screen, and the various settings/options down the left now appear “docked” to the side of the page, much like Chrome’s tabs when you use sidetabs (see screenshot below). Another great feature is the new “distraction free” writing/posting interface. It’s super clean and simple and pops-down a bar with basic controls when you move your mouse to the top. It really takes away all the typical “clutter” of the WordPress post interface, and let’s you focus only on writing. This is an excellent feature for the real “writers” out there.
Moving a Blog to from Typepad to WordPress
by Tevya on May.16, 2011, under How-To, wordpress, WordPress Plugins
I helped a friend move his blog from Typepad to self-hosted WordPress recently (actually it’s not quite complete yet). And I just wanted to spell out what I did for anyone else who might need to do this same thing. It can be fairly advanced, but with the help of some specific instructions, it can be done without too much effort. This is especially true if the blog is not too large, or at least doesn’t have too many images in the posts (this one’s relatively new and doesn’t rely heavily on images, so it worked great).
- I setup the new WordPress install on a new account at Hostgator. But I wanted the blog to continue functioning on Typepad until everything was ready to go on the new site. So we didn’t change the nameservers for the domain at his current registrar.
- But you need a way to work with the WP site, so I used these instructions from Hostgator on how to change your hosts file, so that my computer would go to the new WordPress site, when I typed the domain in the browser. Also, 1 thing that is not on there: you’ll also want to include the ftp variation: “ftp.domain.com” after the “www.domain.com” one so you can login via ftp. As you’re going along, if you need to access your site at Typepad through your domain, all you have to do is take that line back out of the hosts file and save it again. I kept the hosts file open throughout this process so I could switch back and forth as needed. Continue reading »
Big Things Coming Soon! and WordPress on AppSumo
by Tevya on May.13, 2011, under Class News, How-To, StartWP News, wordpress, WordPress Plugins
Big Things Coming Soon
We can’t tell you what yet, but we’re working on some big changes and updates to Start WordPress (both the class and other things). So stay tuned, and look out for more announcements, right here on our blog.
WordPress on AppSumo Continue reading »
WP jQuery Lightbox Replaces Lightbox 2
by Tevya on Apr.03, 2011, under WordPress Plugins
On most WordPress sites we manage or build, we include a lightbox of some sort so that you can click images and see the larger version in what looks like a pop-up window, over the webpage, with the webpage itself usually darkened or faded out.
We’ve almost always used one of two plugins: Shadowbox JS, which is our favorite, but requires that you pay to get a license for the original Shadowbox.js code, if you’re using it for commercial purposes, and has a dark theme; or Lightbox 2, which works great and looks just like the most common lightboxes you see. Unfortunately Lightbox 2 plugin has not been updated to work well with the last several versions of WordPress. So after some searching, we found the excellent WP jQuery Lightbox plugin, which looks the same as Lightbox 2, but is updated and works with WordPress 3+.
We just installed it, disabled Lightbox 2, then enabled WP jQuery Lightbox. It has a couple settings if you want to set them, but basically just works great as is. A great drop-in replacement for Lightbox 2!
Take Charge of the WordPress Dashboard
by Tevya on Mar.29, 2011, under How-To, WordPress Plugins
I’ve been working on improving and updating the awesome family websites that we offer over at FiddlerStudios. One thing I really wanted to do was present a custom interface for the person who actually signs up and pays for the family website. I’d already used the Adminimize plugin to limit what normal users could see and access when they were logged in, but wanted to let the client have some additional control and access. This is partly from necessity, as they need to be able to approve new users as they register.
The Resulting Dashboard
So, unlike normal people who register for their site, we decided to let the client person see the dashboard, but we wanted to customize the experience, so they wouldn’t see all the default WordPress widgets and get confused. The first step (something I wish Adminimize would just include) was to get a plugin to hide widgets in the dashboard. Two seemed to stand out:
- Dashboard Widget Remover – very straightforward, simply check which user levels you’d like to hide the various widgets from.
- Dashboard Commander – much the same, but with more advanced permissions levels to select from. Also, it can control some dynamically generated dashboard widgets (but not WordPress.com stats). So if you’re wanting to hide some that have been created by a plugin, this one is better.
We got rid of all widgets except “Right Now.” Then we thought, “while we’re at it, why not just customize it further with some FiddlerStudios stuff as well?” Continue reading »
Get Rid Of or Enhance the New WordPress Admin Bar
by Tevya on Mar.25, 2011, under WordPress Plugins, WordPress Updates
You may have noticed that WordPress 3.1 has an “admin bar” just like when you’re logged-in to WordPress.com blogs. You may also not like it, or not want it included on certain sites or under certain situations. It’s important to remember that it’s not displayed for any users who are not logged-in to your site.
If you find yourself wanting it removed, or to manipulate it in other ways, here are 3 great plugins I found to do exactly that:
- Global Hide/Remove Admin Bar Plugin – this one is dead simple, with only 2 options: disable the bar, and disable the options under user’s profile, where they can turn the admin bar on and off.
- WP Custom Admin Bar – this one’s a step more advanced than the previous, allowing you to enable/disable the admin bar based on the user roles (eg. subscriber, editor, etc.).
- Admin Bar Disabler – this plugin gives basically the same capabilities as the previous one, but is built by a different developer, and lists full multi-site capabilities.
I am using the 1st one on some sites where I don’t want the bar there at all. So far it works great!
Use Jetpack to Supercharge Your WordPress Site or Blog
by Tevya on Mar.21, 2011, under WordPress Plugins
Automattic, the company that essentially owns and is the driving force behind WordPress, has released a great new plugin called Jetpack. Basically it combines several previous plugins that Automattic had ported from its WordPress.com service.
As a quick sidenote: WordPress.com is where Automattic makes some of it’s money through hosting blogs for other people who don’t want to setup their own WordPress-based site or blog, like we teach you to do here at Start WordPress.
While Jetpack combines these previously available features, it also adds new ones, with promises of more to come. Here’s a list of what Jetpack can do for your site (from the WordPress.org plugin repository):
- Simple, concise stats with no additional load on your server. (previously WordPress.com stats)
- The WP.me URL shortener.
- Hovercard popups for your commenters via Gravatar.
- Easily embedded media from popular sites like YouTube, Digg, and Vimeo.
- A simple way to include beautiful mathematical expressions on your site.
- A widget for displaying recent tweets. (previously Wickett Twitter Widget)
- Your readers can easily share your posts via email or their favorite social networks. (previously ShareDaddy)
- An artificial intelligence based spell, style, and grammar checker. (previously After the Deadline)
You can get it for your self-hosted website or blog from the WordPress.org repository, or just search “Jetpack” from the Plugins>Add New are in the WordPress admin.
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