Does the following sound familiar? You want to make a change to your WordPress site. So you fire up the FTP connection, locate your desired file and download it, make the necessary changes and upload it back to the server. After that, you refresh your browser page to see the changes in effect. If that is your workflow, don’t worry. You are not alone. Everyone starts out like that. It’s only later that people professionalize with things like local development and trying out design changes via Firebug before committing changes to style.css. It’s a natural process and you shouldn’t be […]

It’s no secret that mobile traffic is a force to be reckoned with. In recent years, the number of mobile Internet users has surpassed that of desktop users. By now, more than one-third of Internet consumption happens via phones, tablets, and other mobile devices. In some cases, these numbers are even higher. In the USA, for example, mobile devices account for more than half of all digital media consumption. It is, therefore, no wonder that mobile capabilities of websites have become a ranking factor in Google as evidenced by the “mobile-friendly” tag in the SERPs. The conclusion: As a WordPress […]

No matter whether you are running a blog or another kind of website, online success is all about creating a relationship with your audience. However, how do you do that? How do you establish a bond to an anonymous mass of individuals who happen to stop by your website? Luckily, together with the means to build an online presence, technology has also provided us with a way to understand those who visit us there. I am, of course, talking about web analytics. Analytics tools take a lot of the guesswork out of running a website. Without them, we would all […]

WordPress will never be able to do everything you want it to do… and that’s a good thing. If the platform contained every functionality known to man, it would be a monster. Goodbye, five-minute install! Fortunately, there are plugins. Lots of plugins. WordPress add-ons make up for what the core lacks. It’s no wonder the extendability provided by plugins is one of the platform’s biggest strengths. It is, therefore, no secret that, while there are tens of thousands of plugins in the WordPress directory, the difference in quality can be vast. In an attempt to divide the wheat from the […]

If you look at a WordPress page with any of the available developer tools, you might get the impression that it is mainly made up of HTML and CSS with some occasional JavaScript. However, what you see there is only the end product. In the background, much of any given WordPress page is actually constructed from PHP functions and database queries. These get interpreted by the browser who then spits out the page in a viewable form. While CSS works well to make superficial changes (colors, sizes, etc.), if you want to make bigger, structural alterations, you will need to […]

I have a serious problem with the WordPress editor. In my humble opinion, it has one big flaw that I have very little understanding of and that hinders beginners from creating good content. What I’m talking about is that the so-called kitchen sink—a second line of formatting options at the top of the WordPress editor—is hidden by default. To access it, users have to click on the furthest button on the right that says Toolbar Toggle. Only then does the second row of buttons appear. Why do I care so much? Because, besides the ability to indent and underline text, […]

The WordPress editor is the central work hub for content creation. Once you have your site up and running, you’ll probably spend about 80% of your time there. If you think about it, that’s pretty impressive. One part of your website that lets you take care of 80% of your work? Sounds like a powerful tool. The WordPress editor is something we take for granted. Its look, behavior, the even its formatting options are so intuitive that even newbies will quickly become familiar with it. This familiarity, however, is somewhat artificial. Just like the rest of the platform, you can customize […]