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WordPress freelancer tools to help run your business smoothly

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Featured

Published

January 14, 2015

4 Comments

It’s important to keep your WordPress business as organized and streamlined as possible — however, this can be challenging when you’re a freelancer, working without employees. Fortunately, there are a number of software tools available that can make running your freelancing business much easier. Anything that can be offloaded to software, should be. This way, you can concentrate on what you do best. Below are a list of the top tools I use every day as a WordPress freelancer. Freshbooks Invoicing is a hassle. But Freshbooks makes it quick and painless. I create all of my invoices within Freshbooks, and then have options […]

11 simple tips to boost your website’s security

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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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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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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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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 […]

Changes to EU VAT Legislation: How It Impacts WordPress Users

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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 […]

14 WordPress Web Design Trends in 2015

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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?

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Featured, News

Published

January 2, 2015

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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 […]

WordPress Highlights from 2014

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Community, Featured

Published

December 31, 2014

1 Comment

It’s been a great year for Torque Magazine — filled with plugin reviews, business development, WordPress releases, interviews, and more. Let’s take a look at some of Torque’s most popular articles in 2014!  WordPress mobile 2014 was a big year for mobile devices in WordPress land. The year kicked off with a the release of AppPresser — the first mobile application framework for WordPress. The theme of WordPress mobile gained momentum throughout the year. . . Torque even went mobile: You can read about the official app (made with AppPresser’s Reactor service) here. Here are some of the top WordPress mobile articles on Torque in 2014: Yes, you really can use WordPress […]

Getting the most out of social media analytics

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Featured

Published

December 30, 2014

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The rise of the Internet has led to the creation of a large number of social media communities that allow users to share information with each other via platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and the linked nature of the blogging ecosystem. On the one hand, these various social media platforms are proving an ideal channel for blog owners to reach more users through various social media marketing strategies. On the other hand, blog owners are also starting to leverage these various platform for tracking the growth of their blog, the interests of their audience, and to improve the image, awareness, […]

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