WP Realm

WordPress news, community news, reviews and more from all over the world

WordPress Themes: One Size Never Fits All

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When introducing WordPress to my students, there’s a lot of confusion about themes. I’ve also come across this on the WordPress support forums. Beginners just don’t know which theme to start with or which one will be best for their project.

With so many themes to choose from, it’s easy to understand. Knowing which theme is perfect for you depends on your level of expertise, your project and budget. This might seem a bit strange, but deciding on which theme to use is very similar to choosing where to go on holiday.

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Make Your Clients an Offer They Can’t Refuse

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Over the past few years I’ve developed my fair share of WordPress plugins. Not just as projects for myself but also for bigger firms. And especially for those bigger firms I’d like to have some sort of continuation plan. Not so much for myself but more for them, just in case the plugin could use some improvements due to advancements in WordPress itself or if there’s better ways of achieving the same outcome. And to me personally there is no better way to do this then to make the plugin publicly available so others can use it, fork it and what not. I like to educate my clients, teach them that they reap what they sow and that giving back to the community will ultimately be beneficial to themselves as well. [Read more…] about Make Your Clients an Offer They Can’t Refuse

Get Involved with Creating the Ultimate WordPress User Manual

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There’s been all sorts of buzz going on over on the make.wordpress.org/support/ blog ever since it was set up. The support folks and documentation writers are an all-round friendly group, and if you’re looking for a way to get involved with WordPress it’s a great place to get started. In fact, if you’d like to help out with WordPress docs and aren’t quite sure how to get started, there’s a project running at the moment which will ease you into the process while giving you a chance to get to know the gang: the WordPress User Manual. [Read more…] about Get Involved with Creating the Ultimate WordPress User Manual

Closing the Cookie Jar

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On June 5 2012, the new Dutch Telecommunications Act came in force. This act is a direct result of a recent EU ‘Cookie’ Directive regarding websites storing information on your computer. For the most part the directive is about the use of cookies, but other examples are “HTML5 local storage” and “local shared objects“. This EU Directive (officially known as the EU Directive 2002/58 on Privacy and Electronic Communications, otherwise known as the E-Privacy Directive) states in Article 5(3) the following:

Member States shall ensure that the storing of information, or the gaining of access to information already stored, in the terminal equipment of a subscriber or user is only allowed on condition that the subscriber or user concerned has given his or her consent, having been provided with clear and comprehensive information… about the purposes of the processing.

There are already a lot of sites discussing and explaining the European directive like Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) and All About Cookies. You can find tons of information on them like the difference between session- and persistent cookies. Apart from the distinction between session and persistent cookies, cookies can also be separated into functional and non-functional cookies. Functional cookies are cookies that are required for the basic operation of your application – most of the time these are also session cookies. Non-functional cookies however are not required for your application to work properly, they are additional and most of the time they only provide an added value for the applications owner. It’s on these last kind of cookies the directive applies. The EU Member States all have their own legislations derived from the EU Directive, they all are slightly divergent amongst themselves.

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Interconnect/IT Launch the Auditor

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The Auditor has been in beta for some time and was finally launched yesterday by Interconnect/IT. The plugin, as the title implies, creates an audit trail of all of the actions that have been carried out on a WordPress website, bringing a new level of ease to debugging client sites. From the website:

One day, a client of ours changed a WordPress setting. An important one. He didn’t tell us. He just told us his site was broken and it needed fixing, urgently. We were only able to guess at what had happened.

We realised that we weren’t the only people with this problem – if you administer WordPress sites, you need to know what other people are doing when they’re logged in. You need to know when something’s been changed.

After six months of development and testing, The Auditor was born.

The plugin lets you: [Read more…] about Interconnect/IT Launch the Auditor

How to Stay Sane While Working Online

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You know those days. The ones where everything on your computer is blinking at you, your inbox causes you to sigh and close it, the phone will not stop and it’s possible that funky smell may be coming from your person. On top of that, every little thing that crosses your path is causing irrational feelings of anger. On the rare occasions you do leave your desk, the people you live or work with shrink back or get out of your way.

Does this sound familiar?

You aren’t alone. It happens to all of us. It’s also a sign that you need a break.

Yes, I said it. This is your WordPress Mom talking and she’s being.. well, your mom. It really is for your own good. [Read more…] about How to Stay Sane While Working Online