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Torque

Community

Entrepreneurship Isn’t Easier the 2nd (or 3rd) Time

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Community

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January 24, 2014

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You step onto a boat. It feels different—but you expected that, because you’re on the water. And while you enjoy the next few hours (or days) on the boat, you don’t really think about what it will be like when you step onto dry land. When you finally step onto land, it’s apparent you’ve developed “sea legs” because you still feel like you’re moving, even when you’re not. It’s not like you’ve never walked before. It’s not like you don’t know that you’re now on land. You just can’t out-think the reality that your brain and body got used to […]

Episode #30: The Wizard of Oz

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Community

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January 23, 2014

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Show Notes Host Michelle Oznowicz is the managing editor of Torquemag.io. She can be found on Twitter at @MichelleOz What they’re sippin’ on: Michelle: Chimay Brad: Captain Morgan Private Stock Dre: Maker’s Mark How Michelle got started in WordPress. After a decade of (mis)adventures in Hollywood, Michelle moved back to San Francisco and started working as an writer and editor for a magazines using WordPress. On July 29th 2013, Torque launched. Michelle came on board as the managing editor of this community-driven publication to help others get involved and have a voice in WordPress media. Not every submission is accepted, […]

Why We Redesigned WP Valet

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Community

Published

January 22, 2014

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Why We Decided to Rebrand Original Branding: When we launched in May of 2012 (and up until a few weeks ago), our original branding consisted of a darker color scheme, as you can see above. This was intentional. Our main reasoning was to convey the feelings of sophistication, security, and efficiency that the color black provides to ensure our potential customers felt safe. Specifically: Sophistication Glamor Security Emotional safety Efficiency Substance Our main goal was to separate WP Valet from other services with similar offerings, and to specifically target Enterprise-level customers. Our New Branding: One of the most obvious reasons […]

WordCamp Phoenix 2014 Day One: The Beginner Track(s)

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Community, Events

Published

January 18, 2014

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After working with Sufyan and Meg on WordPress for Beginners: Too Many Choices? last week, I’m particularly interested in WordPress education for beginners at the moment. Considering the extremely high percentage of new users who abandon their sites within 7 days on WordPress.com (96%!)—as discussed in depth by Al Davis in The State of WordPress Education, I think it’s important for us to think about the beginner’s experience, and how it can be improved, from an education standpoint. With this in mind, I decided to follow an all-beginner track for day 1 of WordCamp Phoenix yesterday. Out of the 5 tracks offered—Beginner User, […]

WordPress for Beginners: Too Many Choices?

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Community

Published

January 16, 2014

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WordPress is the world’s favorite choice when it comes to creating a website, and there are various reasons behind its popularity. Among such reasons, ease of use and easier customization stand tall as the most common ones. Fortunately, for beginners, getting started with WordPress is not rocket science. It is relatively simple to set up a small website or blog with WordPress. And then after you’re set up, you can do many things to personalize or customize your blog—choose a theme of your liking, install plugins for additional functionality, tweak settings, and so on. All said and done, if you are […]

MotoPress and the Merits of Drag and Drop

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Community

Published

January 15, 2014

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Last year, John Saddington wrote a piece for WP Daily (R.I.P.) about the plugin MotoPress, which led to a rather interesting discussion about drag and drop functionality in WordPress. MotoPress has since refined and released a version of their plugin, and I thought it might be a good time to revisit the plugin and the issue. MotoPress Content Editor Think of MotoPress as a drag and drop post editor. Basically, you create a new post, then click a button to enter the “MotoPress Content Editor,” a unique editor where you can drag and drop various components into place. There are […]

Matt Mullenweg Turns 30… And Becomes CEO of Automattic

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January 14, 2014

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Yesterday, on the heels of his 30th birthday, WordPress creator Matt Mullenweg announced that he would be taking over as CEO of Automattic, the company he founded just over eight years ago, marking a transition from his focus on tech and product to business. He will be swapping roles with Toni Schneider, who announced in a blog post yesterday that he felt a “sense of completion” in regard to Automattic’s early goals and that he was ready to “work on some new product ideas.” Schneider will fill the role of advisor that Mullenweg has held. “Internally this isn’t a big […]

WordPress Information Architecture: Why a Beautiful Site Can Still Suck

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Community

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January 13, 2014

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Information architecture is the process of considering how a site can be shaped to provide the best experience for users. If you’re interested in web design and development, you’ve no doubt come across web design showcase sites that are intended to show off the skills of a particular designer or technology. They are usually beautiful sites and pack in every whizz-bang CSS technique and cutting-edge JavaScript feature they can—but, from a user’s perspective, they suck. They suck because they’re created to demonstrate the designer’s versatility and skill. They are a paradigmatic example of putting form before function. They do their […]

Here Are My 2014 WordPress Predictions…What Are Yours?

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Community, Featured

Published

December 31, 2013

5 Comments

Everybody loves to make predictions, especially this time of year. It’s human nature for us to analyze our environment and want to make educated guesses as to what is just over the horizon. We all do it. Yet few people actually follow through with checking on their predictions a year later. So let’s change that this year! As a big fan of the Tech News Today podcast and their prediction and prediction results episodes, I asked all of you for your predictions on the Advanced WordPress Facebook page. I also wanted to make a few of my own for WordPress in 2014 […]

WooThemes Hits 2 Million WooCommerce Downloads

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Community, Featured, News

Published

December 19, 2013

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Today, WooThemes proudly celebrates a major milestone—reaching 2,000,000 WooCommerce downloads. Impressive, right? And yes, that’s Torque contributor Matt Cohen of WooThemes sharing his excitement in the photo above. (I “borrowed” a screenshot from the fun video they made to toast the occasion; you should check it out too.) We’re happy for them. According to statistics from builtwith.com provided on WooThemes’ site, 9% of ALL eCommerce websites are now using WooCommerce. Now that’s good business! Here’s the breakdown provided by WooThemes of the industry verticals currently leveraging WooCommerce for their businesses: In other WooNews, the community behind the platform is continuing to […]

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