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Torque

Community

10 Essential WordPress Plugins For Bloggers

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Community

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August 19, 2016

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Today, WordPress powers a wide range of websites. However, it began as a blogging platform, and it still remains the leading choice for running a blog. The CMS allows bloggers to extend their site’s functionality using plugins. There are so many plugins out there, so which are crucial for bloggers? You shouldn’t just download plugins to download them, but still, there are certain plugins that can make a blogger’s life easier. This article talks about some of the most essential WordPress plugins for blogs. The Necessary Ones Whether you are running a blog or some other kind of site, there […]

Product Launch UX Best Practices Part 4: Welcome Pages

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August 18, 2016

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To have a successful product launch, it’s important to help the user get started. A good user experience (UX) ensures users stick around. During the launch of my plugin, CF7 Customizer, I encountered a very serious issue: There is a huge disconnect between the developer and the end user.The very first page you see is the welcome screen, which introduces you to the product and gets you started. In the first part of this series, I mentioned that when I handed my plugin to 10 people for beta testing, 8 of them didn’t know where to go and what to do next. […]

Torque Earns Silver Stevie Award For Best Company Publication

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Community, Featured

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August 11, 2016

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In 2013 Torque set out to create community engagement and become a valuable resource for WordPress professionals globally. Our goal was clear: “to create a hub for community building and offer a forum for WordPress news.” We have since published countless stories for and by WordPress developers, designers, users, and enthusiasts. Our incredible contributors each bring with them a unique perspective, skill set, and experiences to collectively fuel Torque’s continuous growth. Today we are happy to announce that our dedication to the WordPress community has earned us a Silver Stevie International Business Award for Best Company Publication. This achievement is […]

The Difference Between Classes and Objects In PHP

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August 9, 2016

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The standards for WordPress development are slowly moving from turns of procedural code that lack proper abstraction to more SOLID and object-oriented code. That’s a step in the right direction, but let’s not forget two important things that often get left out of these discussions: putting code in a class does not make it “object-oriented,” and object-oriented PHP is not, by definition better. Today, we will discuss what what an object is and what its role is. Then we can discuss what we mean by “true object-oriented programming” and whether it really matters if your code is “true OOP” or […]

How To Customize The WordPress Backend (For Clients And Yourself)

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Community, Featured

Published

August 3, 2016

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One thing that WordPress users most appreciate about the platform is its flexibility. Pretty much anything on a website built with it can be customized: Page templates, custom post types, widget areas, you name it. Yet, one area that is often still treated like it’s set in stone is the backend. Most of the time we concentrate on changing things in the front of the site but take the WordPress admin area for granted as it is (or as themes and plugins make it). However, the ability to change doesn’t stop there. WordPress wouldn’t be WordPress if you couldn’t also […]

20 Of The Most Successful WordPress Businesses

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August 3, 2016

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One of WordPress’s biggest advantages (and reasons for its success) is the fact that the platform is completely open source — anyone can use it for any purpose without paying a dime. This is why some people have a hard time taking WordPress seriously as a line of business. After all, how can you make money with something that anyone can use for free? If that is you or your client, you first need to remember that WordPress not only powers the websites of some of the most famous brands, people, and companies in the world but by now it […]

The Freedom Of WordPress

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July 29, 2016

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Last week, Torque asked community members to share their WordPress story for the chance to win a trip to WordCamp US 2016. We were pleasantly overwhelmed by the number of submissions. It was inspiring to read about how WordPress has touched the lives of some many people — from leading them to financial freedom and enabling them to spend more time with their families to empowering users to travel the world. A big theme throughout was accessibility and how people with disabilities found their home in WordPress and the community. We set out to help someone get to WordCamp US and […]

IncludeWP Is A New Home For WordPress Frameworks

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July 27, 2016

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After the plugins review team made a statement disallowing frameworks in the repository last March, Co-founder of Freemius Vova Feldman decided to find them a new home. With help from Luca Fracassi from Addendio, Feldman and his team created IncludeWP, a hub to display all open-source frameworks for WordPress. IncludeWP uses the WordPress.org APIs and SVN to automatically identify which .org frameworks plugins and themes are using, which empowers developers to see who exactly is using their product. Moreover, it also enables them to start a new product with a strong foundation. The work behind the project is all open-source and can […]

A Guide To WP_Query

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July 26, 2016

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When I started out as a WordPress developer,  I was working with object-oriented PHP before I even really knew what it was, thanks to WordPress post API class, WP_Query. In that article, I said that PHP has two data types that are considered “compound,” meaning we can store more than one piece of data in them. In PHP, objects and arrays are the only two data types that are actually considered compound. Objects are similar to arrays in that they provide structure for storing data, however, unlike arrays, objects are created with blueprints called classes, which can contain functions. In […]

Happy Third Birthday, Torque!

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July 26, 2016

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Torque this month proudly celebrates its third birthday! That’s three years of plugins, themes, tutorials, community, and WordPress. Torque has evolved since its launch but has remained steadfast in its mission to be an indispensable resource for the WordPress community. We put together some stats to highlight the magazine’s success since 2013 [Click to enlarge]. In honor of Torque’s birthday, we are sending one lucky winner to WordCamp US 2016. To enter, share your WordPress story. Submissions will be accepted through July 28 at 11:59 p.m. EST! We also put together a special video to celebrate: Thank you to all of our contributors, we […]

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