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Torque

Archives for 2015

Using taxonomies and ontologies to improve blog search and discovery

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Community

Published

March 26, 2015

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One of the challenges around reaching a larger audience is that potential readers might use a variety of words to search for the same thing. Semantic processing techniques that leverage taxonomies and ontologies are helping to create rich metadata that can help improve readership or make it easier for people to find relevant information on a blog more efficiently. The WordPress platform has plugins used for custom taxonomy features which makes it easier to create tags and labels for content. But much richer use of semantic processing techniques are available from various tools that can be leveraged in house or in […]

Are you using the social force of WordPress?

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Community, Featured

Published

March 26, 2015

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If you’re into Star Wars, one thing everyone can probably agree on is that The Force is pretty dang important. Not only does it serve as the means through which Luke saves the day, but it also acts as the underlying theme of the entire franchise. Which, yeah, is pretty important. Now, if WordPress were to have a force behind it, I’d have to say it’s the social element. Sure, the backend code is important, as is the easy-to-use dashboard. But when you get right down to it, the thing that serves to benefit WordPress users the most is ability […]

40+ resources to find free stock photos for your WordPress website

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Featured

Published

March 25, 2015

16 Comments

Is there a way to start an article of this kind without the stereotypical “they say a picture is worth a thousand words” kind of thing? I guess not. Well, at least I snuck it in without going for it directly. Anyway, there’s no denying that visuals are pretty important when it comes to web content. Being confronted with a full page of uninterrupted text can turn away even the most promising prospect. And that is because humans are highly visual creatures. In fact according to this graphic, visual information is processed 60.000 times faster within the human brain than […]

Plugged in: Beautiful image sliders with Meta Slider

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Community

Published

March 24, 2015

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Image slider plugins are insanely popular. They make up three of CodeCanyon’s top 10 bestselling plugins of all time, and some of the free options have been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times. It’s not hard to see why, either. Image sliders are an important design element on many major websites. They allow you to add eye-catching images to your homepage, make your website feel more interactive, and improve navigation by linking to internal pages. In other words, they can really improve user experience. Today I want to take a closer look at the Meta Slider plugin. With more than 1.8 […]

This Week In WordPress: 03/23/2015

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Doc Pop

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Community

Published

March 23, 2015

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Just in case you missed it, here’s a roundup of the latest happenings from this past week. If you have a news tip you’d like to share, write us at [email protected]. News Highlights: Jetpack 3.4 update: The new Jetpack update provides protection from brute force attacks. Frito Lay’s custom project management app: Frito Lay’s custom built project management tool was built with WordPress Julie’s WordPress training: Julie Kuehl is on a mission to become a full-time WordPress developer. Cart abandonment and WooCommerce: Tips for reducing eCommerce “cart abandonment.” Remove Hello Dolly: A pull request was made to remove “Hello Dolly” from the […]

Are you a WordPress developer? You may be bringing service rates down

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Community, Featured

Published

March 23, 2015

36 Comments

There’s an interesting debate developing in the WordPress community surrounding what a WordPress developer actually is and the dropping rates developers can charge. If you are a WordPress service provider, you’ve probably seen first hand both the explosion of WordPress developers (many of them under qualified), as well as a drop in the overall rates that are being charged. Let’s first discuss what is occurring with the explosion in developers, why rates are dropping, and some possible solutions you can implement. What exactly is a WordPress developer? Do a Google search for the term “WordPress developer,” and you’ll see developers […]

CodeCanyon’s top-selling premium plugins of all time

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Community

Published

March 20, 2015

3 Comments

WordPress plugins are a quick and easy way to extend your website’s functionality with minimal fuss—and, best of all, with no coding skills required. Of course, with literally thousands of WordPress plugins available, it can be difficult to find the best one. Now, I regularly read articles listing the most downloaded free WordPress plugins—the lists invariably contain all the usual suspects like Jetpack, Contact Form 7, and WordPress SEO by Yoast. However, you don’t really see versions of this list for premium plugins. This is because reliable download figures are harder to find for premium plugins. But that’s exactly what […]

How to avoid plagiarism on your blog or website

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Development

Published

March 19, 2015

70 Comments

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Yet on the Internet, some people take this type of compliment way too far. Copied content runs rampant online. Getting someone else’s work onto your site is as easy as pressing Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V. Why bother writing your own article when somebody has already done it and better? However, these are really the extreme cases. Copyright infringement and blatant content scraping like that are in the realm of spammers, black-hat SEOs, and other dubious individuals that people like you and me want nothing to do with. Yet, even as honest, hard-working bloggers or […]

Q&A with Wired.com’s Jake Spurlock

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Doc Pop

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Featured, Videos

Published

March 19, 2015

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Originally launched in 1994 as “Hotwired,” Wired.com has grown into a family of successful blogs that reports on current and future trends in technology. Early this month, Wired announced their first major site overhaul in 8 years. We were fortunate enough to talk with Jake Spurlock, one of the software engineers on the project, about what it was like to migrate 17 active blogs to one single WordPress install. Here’s what he had to say: Torque: First off, can you tell us a little bit about what you do at Wired?? Jake Spurlock: I’m a software engineer at Condé Nast, a “premier […]

Stronger together, learning from WordPress security vulnerabilities

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Community, Featured

Published

March 18, 2015

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Last week two very popular plugins, WooCommerce and WordPress SEO, identified, fixed, and disclosed security issues. The details of these vulnerabilities are now publicly available, which allows other developers to learn from their mistakes. In a previous article for Torque, I discussed the importance of responsibly disclosing security issues. To get a better understanding of this in relation to the recent vulnerabilities I reached out to James Golovich, a WordPress developer who recently discovered security issues in WP All Import, Easy Digital Downloads, and IgnitionDeck as well as several other plugins and themes, which he details on his highly informative blog. […]

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