Struggling to get your content shared on social media? Try using a social locking tool to increase your social shares on every post. When you create valuable content, you obviously want to reach as many people as possible. With every hit of the “publish” button, you cross your fingers and anxiously hope that your readers share your post. Sometimes they do . . . but sometimes they don’t. But what if there was an easy way to increase your number of shares every time you publish new content? You’ll be happy to know there is (and you’re probably not using it)—social lockers. Instead of […]
How to Harness the Subtle Powers of Typography
Try to think of the most attractive website you’ve recently visited. Now, try to recall the characteristics that made it so appealing. Perhaps it’s the content, or maybe it’s the stunning photography. Whatever your reason, it’s likely that typography has in some way influenced your opinion. Words can harness the artistic power of thought, and typography provides the visual component to this art. Typography is the process of displaying and setting different typefaces, and it plays an important role in WordPress website design. Font selection and style can create personality, change connotation, and set the mood for your website or blog. It […]
The Thriving World Of Open-Source eCommerce
The success of WordPress is, at least in part, accredited to its adoption of the open-source software model. Quite simply, the term “open source” refers to something that can be freely modified and used under The GNU General Public License, or GPL. For the WordPress community, it’s part of what brings everyone together. It’s what allows anyone to freely use, study, distribute, and develop the WordPress project. Today, I’d like to discuss an important part of the WordPress ecosystem — eCommerce. While WordPress is well known for democratizing publishing, it has also provided a platform for many people to develop their […]
Is It Time to Retire Your Blog’s Sidebar?
When it comes to blogging sites, sidebars have been around for many years. Of course, there have always been blogs with special layouts that didn’t include a sidebar, but for the most part, the majority of bloggers have preferred having a sidebar (sometimes, even two). However, after the release of Twenty Thirteen, the WordPress theme that took us “back to the blog,” certain blog designs that didn’t employ the sidebar became available. Then, following the release of Ghost, and its free or premium “content-first look” themes, more and more WordPress themes became available—discarding the use of the sidebar. Question is, […]
Are Social Sharing Buttons a Valuable Addition to Your Website?
No sensible person would deny that social media networks are a prodigious source of web traffic. Almost everyone has a Facebook account, whether they like it or not, and many of the most influential sharers on the web regularly tweet. Google+ may or may not have a positive impact on SEO, but a tighter integration with Google certainly isn’t going to hurt. And then there’s Pinterest, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Tumblr, and more. It might seem foolish to even ask the question “Should I have social media sharing buttons on my site?” because the answer seems self-evident. I’m a firm believer that every component […]
Learn Something New, Every Day
A couple of weeks ago, John Resig wrote an article entitled Write Code Every Day. Resig is the creator of the jQuery library, among other open-source projects. In the post, Resig discusses a shift in the way that he works on open source projects. He went from writing code whenever he had time on nights and weekends, to contributing valuable code every day—though individual contributions were a little more concise. Resig set some ground rules for himself, such as keeping projects open source on GitHub, and writing code before midnight, but generally stuck to the “write code every day no matter what” […]
4 Ways to Turn WordPress into a Multilingual Website
There are plenty of good reasons to offer your website in more than one language. Having a multilingual site can create opportunities to reach different clients and markets on a global scale. Unfortunately, WordPress doesn’t offer out-of-the box support for running a bi- or multilingual website. However, there are a number of plugins available to bridge this language barrier. Generally speaking, you can choose between 4 different ways to offer multilingual content on your WordPress site: One post per language—Each language version of an article is set up as its own post. These are then linked together, indicating that one is the […]
Memory Bank: Blogging with Dementia
Imagine for a second not being able to recall the names of paintings, songs, or places you once loved. Try to picture yourself being confused about how to fry an egg, or in what order to shower and get dressed? Now think about what it would feel like to have others assume that you are no longer competent at anything. These are just some of the dilemmas faced by Kate Swaffer, an Australian blogger, who has been diagnosed with younger onset dementia. What Is Younger Onset Dementia? Dementia is a syndrome that causes serious loss of cognitive ability and affects memory, attention, language, and problem […]
Taking a Look at Ghost Buttons
There’s a new design trend in the house, it’s called Ghost buttons. And in terms of design trends, these near-translucent buttons are rising in popularity every day. In this post, I’ll take a look at some websites that have already started using Ghost buttons! Ghost Buttons It’s difficult to properly define a Ghost button. Simply put, they’re basic shapes with a transparent background that is (ideally) delineated with a solid border. As such, a Ghost button gives an empty or hollow appeal, and blends with the overall design composition. Thus, when coupled with delicate typography and/or contour-styled graphics or a solid […]
The Ultimate Guide to Speeding Up WordPress
Roughly 4 years ago, Google announced page load speed as a SEO ranking factor. Since then, webmasters around the world have been contriving new ways to keep their load times down. In this article, I’m going to provide a collection of these practices to help you speed up your WordPress site. Before you start implementing any of the tips I’m about to list, it’s important that you know the current speed of your WordPress site. This will allow you to accurately compare the before/after results when testing the new plugins and steps listed. My favorite tool for this is Pingdom, but […]

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