Update: For more information, you can download our free ebook, The Ultimate Guide to the WordPress REST API. In my previous articles on the JSON REST API, I focused primarily on retrieving and editing posts — both from the current site and from a remote site. In this article, I’m going to branch out a bit and focus on post meta. I’ll be covering how to edit and create meta fields using the API, and how to search for them. Before We Begin There are a lot of ways to add and edit custom fields — i.e., meta data — in WordPress. Though […]
The Versatility of WooCommerce: The Business Models They Support
If you’re looking for an accessible approach to starting your own business, eCommerce is one of the most viable business opportunities around. Because everything is done online, you won’t have to find and lease a storefront to do business — which is the long-term, high-risk expense that puts most people off. For an online business, you simply pick a niche you’re passionate about, identify some products, and start selling. When it comes to choosing an eCommerce plugin, WordPress users are spoilt for choice. However, with over 4 million downloads to date, WooCommerce is the most popular, and is also highly recommended by […]
How Plugin Developers Should Manage Image Assets
With the release of WordPress 4.0, the plugin installation experience saw a bit of an upgrade to make it more user friendly. This means users will be turning to the WordPress.org repository and WordPress admin more and more to browse and discover new plugins. As a plugin developer, making sure that you have all of the proper assets, a banner, an icon, and screenshots is a great way to ensure that users will understand what your plugin does, and make it stand out in search results. Now is probably a good time to take stock of the image assets that […]
Emerging Technologies Promise to Quantify Emotions
A variety of technologies are emerging for tracking emotions via the Internet using techniques such as text-analytics, speech analysis, and video analysis of the face. Better tools for tracking emotions holds promise for bringing awareness to our inner state through outside feedback. This kind of technology also promises to make it easier to understand how websites, mobile applications, and ads impact the emotional state of users. “The end goal should be to reengineer business to be truly customer-centric, which was infeasible until emotional analytics entered the picture,” said Armen Berjikly, Founder and CEO of Kanjoya, a sentiment analysis service. Ken […]
Marketing Advice for Developers: How to Get Paid for Your Plugins and Themes
“Really?! Eight downloads? I have been sleep deprived for three months for that? I missed my daughter’s middle-school play for eight freakin’ downloads? Eight!?” Creating a product can be a disappointment. You pour your heart and soul into something for months, cut all the time from working with clients that you can, neglect your day job to the point that you are not sure if they won’t fire you, and isolate yourself to the point that your family starts referring to you as “the other person living here.” Until finally, it’s done. The thing you have been working on is […]
The Importance Of Practicing Responsible Disclosure
Earlier this year, a security vulnerability in WordPress and Drupal was discovered by a member of Salesforce’s security team, Nir Goldshlager. Goldshlager co-authored an article on Mashable about the vulnerability, which Mashable waited to publish until after the issue was patched in WordPress and Drupal. This is a great example of responsible disclosure of a security vulnerability in open source software. The issue itself was reported in private to those who could fix it. It was kept a secret only long enough for the affected software to be patched. Now the exploit (and how to fix it) is available for developers […]
Understanding User Roles for WordPress Beginners
Off the shelf, WordPress allows you to assign a number of different user roles to people who use your website in one capacity or another. Now for the newest of users, this may not seem like such a big deal, but after a catastrophic event — like the office manager accidentally wiping out the company website right before the president gives a big press conference and directs everyone to your site to get all the details on your new, game-changing product — maybe you’ll understand its significance. But, if that person had only a certain level of access to the website and wasn’t […]
4 Ways to Help Optimize Mobile Traffic
Mobile traffic is taking the Internet marketing world by storm. According to Mobify, in 2013 more than 1.2 billion people accessed the internet from mobile devices, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that 15+% of all traffic can be accounted for by mobiles. Clearly, it’s time to jump on the mobile optimization bandwagon (if you haven’t already). Otherwise, with an unoptimized website and marketing strategy, you could be losing up to 15% of your potential leads! To help you get started with mobile optimization, here’s a list of 4 important elements of your business that are in desperate need of […]
A Review of WordPress 4.0
On September 4, 2014, WordPress 4.0 was released to the world, named “Benny” after much-loved jazz musician Benny Goodman. Now that the dust has settled, I’ve been able to spend some time with the new WordPress 4.0 to get a feel for the new features, and I’m ready to give my verdict. For those of you expecting huge leaps forward as we jump from WordPress version 3 to version 4, you might be a little disappointed. There doesn’t seem to be any more new features than you would find in a typical WordPress update, like, for example, the jump from […]
The Plugin Installation Experience Gets an Upgrade in WordPress 4.0
It’s here: WordPress 4.0. As some of you know, my main passion in WordPress happens to be plugins, and above all, plugin discoverability. And WordPress 4.0 has made some great strides in this area, adding a completely new plugin installation experience that makes it easier to sort and find the plugin you are looking for. To see what the new plugin installation interface looks like, you can visit Plugins -> Add New after you have updated to WordPress 4.0. You’ll notice some pretty big changes right away. The most noticeable change is an upgraded UI, where installable plugins are arranged […]

4 Comments