The Internet has made it possible to run a website for a truly global audience. This raises the interesting question, though: how do I best serve readers in different countries? For many webmasters, this isn’t a problem at all. For example, here at Torque our content is identical whether you’re based in the US, UK, France, or anywhere else in the world. As long as you can read English, our content will serve you well. Sometimes, however, a one-size-fits-all approach isn’t the best option. Consider an eCommerce store, for example. If the eCommerce store sells internationally, it may need to adjust its […]
Deadline approaching for Community Hub poll
There’s only one day left to vote for the features you’d like to see included in the WordPress Community Hub. The poll will close at 00:00 UTC January 29, 2015. In early December, Jenny Wong gave the green light for the Community Hub project — a project that will make it easier to find WordPress user groups all over the world. The announcement also pointed to this as an opportunity to make the hub into so much more: “. . .The community hub can be the WordCamp.org of local user groups/ meet ups. This would mean that user groups who want a localized […]
Changes to EU VAT Legislation: How It Impacts WordPress Users
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 […]
Supreme Court tackles online threats: What does this mean for bloggers?
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 […]
A Review of WordPress 4.1
After a few days delay, WordPress 4.1 finally arrived. Named “Dinah” after jazz singer Dinah Washington, WordPress 4.1 is the first “minor” release after WordPress 4.0 landed in September. Many of the features added in 4.0 have been improved, and there are some brand new functions, too. Today I want to introduce to you the main changes made to the WordPress platform in 4.1, and to share my thoughts on them. Twenty Fifteen Theme Of course, the main new feature in WordPress 4.1 is the brand new default theme, Twenty Fifteen. In my opinion, it is a huge improvement on […]
Get the Torque app for your iOS or Android device
Hey smart readers, we just wanted to let you know that the official Torque Magazine app is now available for your smartphones. You can download it free for your Android or iOS device! Last week you probably saw our walk-through of AppPresser’s new Reactor service, which turns WordPress sites into native, cross-platform apps. Our mobile app was created with that same technology. So now you can read an article about porting your WordPress site to an app on an app that was ported from a WordPress site. Meta, right? Here’s a quick demo of the app in action: We’ve already seen […]
Turn your WordPress site into an app: Reactor review
WordPress has already conquered the Internet, and is slowly but surely turning its attention towards the world of apps. This is nothing new: there are plenty of impressive services out there promising to turn your WordPress website into a full-blown app, suitable for inclusion on Google Play and the App Store. One of the best of these services is AppPresser, which I discussed several months ago. Well, the people behind AppPresser are back with their revolutionary new app builder, Reactor. This combines nearly a year’s worth of feedback from AppPresser to give WordPress users exactly what they want when building […]
Google Officially Releases Mobile Friendly Labels
Yesterday Google officially announced the latest addition to its search engine results pages: mobile friendly labels. With the number of mobile users constantly on the rise, it is little surprise the latest changes were implemented with mobile users in mind. Creating a mobile-friendly experience is hardly groundbreaking — webmasters have long been embracing responsive designs to cater to mobile users, and Google already penalizes websites that aren’t optimized for mobile devices. However, the latest announcement signals a serious commitment to mobile users, and this could have repercussions for the millions of WordPress users around the globe. What are the changes? […]
WordPress Community Shares Thoughts on Microsoft’s Open Source News
On Wednesday, S. Somasegar, the corporate vice president of the developer division at Microsoft, announced that Microsoft is opening up access to .NET and Visual Studio — a move that will lead to universal access of Microsoft’s industry-leading platform and tools. In the coming months Microsoft plans to continue to open source the full server-side .NET Core Stack: ASP.NET 5 down, the Core Runtime, and Framework, Somasegar said. In addition, the open source .NET will be expanded to run on Linux and Mac OS X in addition to Windows. As of Wednesday, several components of the core .NET framework have been released and […]
Torque Is Growing, Come Join Us!
Got lots to share with the WordPress and the open source community? We’d like to hear it! Over the past year Torque has shared nearly 2,000 articles and our audience has continued to grow. We’d like to keep growing with them, but we need your help. Our goal is to be the community hub for new and advanced WordPress professionals. With topics ranging from the differences between Posts and Pages, to processing form data using the REST API and AJAX — we cover the gamut. If you are interested in sharing your knowledge on community events, news, SEO, plugins, themes, client management, and more, send an email […]
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