Development

Embedding social content is a simple yet effective way to make your WordPress site more engaging. However, Facebook has announced a change to its API that could potentially break all your website’s embedded Instagram and Facebook content. If your website features any Facebook or Instagram embeds, then the upcoming oEmbed Application Programming Interface (API) change will affect your website. Luckily, there are steps you can take to ensure this update doesn’t leave you with empty pages. In this post, we’ll discuss what this controversial API change is, and what it means for WordPress. We’ll then share how you should be […]

When it comes to site management, security is of the utmost importance. As such, making sure everything is up to date is a large part of keeping your website secure. Automatic updates are WordPress’ way of trying to help with that. If you already have lot of tasks on your plate (like most of us), it’s all too easy to let an important WordPress update slide. Yet, the longer you postpone the update, the more your website becomes exposed to security vulnerabilities due to outdated themes and plugins. In fact, outdated software components are one of the most common reasons for […]

The WebP image format is a great way to speed up your WordPress site. Large photos are often the main cause of slow loading times, but even an image compressor can leave your users forced to load megabytes of image files and slowing their connection to a crawl. Plus, compressors can also make your images blurry. But there’s an often overlooked file format that can compress images down to nothing while barely affecting quality at all. If you hate how lossy JPEG compression makes your photos look, or the huge file sizes of PNGs, WebP might be just what you’re […]

The internet is an exciting place. With new developments and improvements happening every day, marketing leaders have to constantly maintain their website and keep a fresh online presence. If you work with WordPress, you know all too well that maintaining your site could be its own 40 hour/week job, especially if you want long-term security and online organizational growth. As an open source software, WordPress is home to around 63% of CMS users, with its code open to study, use, change, or redistribute. Anyone can take advantage of its convenient features and customize the platform with a variety of themes, […]

PHP 8 is coming and WordPress runs on PHP. It’s the core to absolutely everything the platform does, from its underlying functions to add ons like themes and plugins. Out of all the languages WordPress uses, PHP is by far the most important. As a consequence, you can imagine that major PHP updates are a big deal. From speeding up your website to adding new attributes and functions for developers to work with, it’s important to keep up with it all. Even if you’re not a developer yourself, you should have a general idea what to look out for when […]

WordPress 5.5 “Eckstine“ brought several awesome features to the platform’s core, which made it a success – well, mostly. As with any update, there were undeniably problems. The main issue stems from WordPress’s decision to remove the outdated jQuery Migrate. In fact, many developers were caught unprepared for this update despite recommendations for developers to test and update their code. Scaling one’s website to generate higher amounts of traffic by attracting visitors became even challenging due to messed-up performance optimization and caching plugins. Examples of these include Yoast, Classic WordPress Editor, and Social Welfare. Read on as we determine the […]

This is the second in a series of articles I’m writing on accessible web experiences. In the first article, “The ADA and Universal Design: Why Do We Develop Accessible Web Experiences?” I discussed the “why” of accessible digital design. In this article and those that will follow, we’re looking at the “how.” In the early days of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), it became common to see wheelchair ramps retrofitted to the entrances of stores, restaurants, libraries, government centers, and other businesses and public buildings. They were often added as an afterthought to architecture that had not been designed […]