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Torque

Archives for 2015

11 simple tips to boost your website’s security

Filed Under

Featured, Security

Published

January 14, 2015

2 Comments

When launching a new website it’s easy to get carried away with crafting the perfect design and adding great content. For many, including myself, security is merely an afterthought. However, every year attacks on WordPress websites are growing in-line with the platforms popularity. More worryingly, 70% of WordPress websites have vulnerabilities that hackers could exploit. With minimal protection, that means your precious website could be a hacker’s next play-thing – scary, right? Today I want to help you boost your WordPress website’s security with eleven simple tips you can implement right away. If you want to build a successful, sustainable […]

Using Namespaces In WordPress Development

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Featured

Published

January 13, 2015

8 Comments

Namespacing and class autoloaders are two important tools provided by PHP that WordPress developers should take advantage of more frequently. I wrote about why, and provided a brief introduction to both of these tools in my last article for Torque. This article offers an in-depth introduction to namespaces in PHP. Namespaces are the better, more flexible version of using unique preferences in your class names. In addition they help structure your directories and allow you to take full advantage of autoloaders that follow the latest standards, including Composer’s autoloader. This article assumes that you’re already familiar with the basics of object-oriented PHP. If […]

How to create a custom 404 error page for WordPress

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Featured

Published

January 12, 2015

33 Comments

Why on earth would you want to build a customized 404 error page for WordPress? Isn’t that wasted time and effort? Shouldn’t you rather invest in making your site airtight so that nobody will ever be confronted with it in the first place? Fair point. On the Internet, 404 is probably among the most hated numbers in existence. Visitors curse it, webmasters try to eradicate it and overall nobody has good things to say about it. (On the other hand, one of the most desired digits online is Matt Mullenweg’s phone number. Just kidding, that link doesn’t go anywhere.) The […]

7 laws of WordPress maintenance

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Featured

Published

January 9, 2015

12 Comments

You’ve built a brand new WordPress website, and it seems like the hard work’s over and you can just sit back. Well, not quite. Now is the time for the one thing most WordPress users don’t do: maintenance. Don’t fret. Keeping your website maintained is a pretty simple task. It requires only 15-30 minutes a month. Below, I’ve detailed the 7 most important parts of keeping your site maintained. Follow each of these and you’ll keep your site secure, protected, and performing at optimal levels. 1. Keep it up to date From time to time, updates will be released for your […]

DradCast Episode 069: The Incredible Hawk

Filed Under

Archives

Published

January 9, 2015

No Comments

[y=4Dd_fU78WxE height=400] Show notes: John Hawkins is a 3 time host of the Dradcast, web developer, and WordCamp speaker/organizer from Las Vegas. He co-founded 9seeds, a custom WordPress development company. You can find John on Twitter @vegasgeek Sippin’ on Brad – Grub Soda Dre – H2O John – Shock Top Chocolate Wheat Pressing topics Kim Parssell, #wpmom, Passes Away Last week, Kim Parssell passed away in her home in Southern, Ohio. Post Status Gets a Redesign Version 3.0 of Posts Status has just hit the web. Bar tricks Brad – Professional WordPress Third Edition is the highest rated advanced WordPress book, authored by Brad Williams Dre –  Theme Review John – Toon Whisperer […]

42 must-have blogging tools for WordPress bloggers

Filed Under

Development

Published

January 8, 2015

23 Comments

WordPress is an amazing blogging tool. The platform makes creating and maintaining content-centered websites very comfortable and easy. However, the work doesn’t end there. Running a blog is a lot more work than many people think. Putting together amazingly helpful and shareable content alone is a tall order. Getting it into the hands of an audience is even harder. As a consequence, in order to ease the load on the shoulders of bloggers and content marketers, here is a list of essential tools that will make your life a little easier. Tools for content idea generation Content is the meat […]

Changes to EU VAT Legislation: How It Impacts WordPress Users

Filed Under

Featured, News

Published

January 7, 2015

30 Comments

While most of us were busy nursing a New Year’s hangover on January 1, 2015, the EU was introducing new VAT legislation, which could have huge consequences for tens of thousands of online businesses. In a snapshot: this new legislation changes the way VAT is applied to digital products purchased from within the EU. Prior to the changes, VAT was charged in the seller’s country only — meaning only one set of accounts were needed to keep your VAT tax affairs in order. However, going forward VAT will be charged in the country in which the digital product is purchased, making the […]

Why And How To Use Class Autoloading and Namespacing To Improve WordPress Development

Filed Under

Community

Published

January 6, 2015

6 Comments

Chris Aprea recently wrote a great post on why WordPress’ (continued) support of unsupported versions of PHP, especially PHP 5.2, is preventing WordPress developers from taking full advantage of the way the language has evolved over the last 8 years or so. Two of the best features in PHP, which WordPress developers have generally shied away from since they were not fully supported by PHP 5.2, are SPL autoloaders and namespacing. These two complementary features make it easier to use small, more manageable, and more easily reusable classes. Technically, PHP has had autoloading since 5.0, but the addition of namespacing […]

14 WordPress Web Design Trends in 2015

Filed Under

Featured

Published

January 5, 2015

30 Comments

Happy New Year, everyone! Ah, what a glorious year 2014 was. Full of highlights for WordPressers, web designer, and developers everywhere: Several major releases, tons of new plugins and themes, as well as thousands of fresh WordPress websites. A good time to be alive, isn’t it? However, now we need to take off the party hat, brush the confetti from our shoulders, and turn our eyes forward. “Tempus fugit” as they say. So brew yourself a fresh cup of coffee, sit down at your laptop and get ready for. . .what exactly? Good question. How will websites look in 2015? […]

Supreme Court tackles online threats: What does this mean for bloggers?

Filed Under

Featured, News

Published

January 2, 2015

No Comments

On the first Monday of December, the Supreme Court of the United States heard oral arguments in Elonis vs. United States, in which the Court took up the issue of what intent should be required for a person to be convicted under 18 U.S.C. § 875(c) which makes “communication containing any threat to kidnap…or…injure [another person]” a federal crime punishable by a fine and up to 5 years of imprisonment. Anyone who has spent any time on the Internet knows that threats and harassment are a common, if ugly, occurrence (see, for example, gamergate). What you might not know is […]

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