Web Design
When to Use a WordPress Plugin and When Not To
WordPress Plugins are immensely useful. The fact that WordPress has so many plugins is one of the reasons I, as a web designer, favor WordPress for small business websites. However, it’s important to be aware that plugins come with their own share of problems. Let’s examine the advantages and disadvantages; sometimes it’s better to do without, or to actually hard-code a fix or find another approach instead of using a solution. Advantages of Plugins They’re very easy to install They’re the most user-friendly; as a web designer, I like to set up plugins so the client can easily turn it off or change the settings. Someone else is maintaining...
Read MoreChanging Your WordPress Site URL
When you move your WordPress site, letting the site know about its new URL can be a hassle, but can lead to many types of errors if you are not careful: the site may not load at all, only the home page may load, images may not load properly, internal links may be broken, and so on. Here is a checklist for the next time you have to do this. There are two main ways to do this; one requires access to run SQL queries (usually by using the PHPMyAdmin tool in your web host’s dashboard, which is typically CPanel), and the other requires editing files through FTP and using a plugin. No matter which method you use, make sure afterwards to login to...
Read MoreMoving Your WordPress Site
Changing web hosts? Restoring from a backup? Here are some items to check. Files FTP these folders to your new site: wp-content/plugins wp-content/themes wp-content/uploads Of course, you might choose instead to manually install the plugins and your theme. You might even load your images from a CDN and not need the uploads folder. But in general, these are what you will want to move. Database Backup Export your site database with PHPMyAdmin from the old site. Typically this is as easy as going into “PHPMyAdmin” (your web host should provide this tool in CPanel), clicking the export tab, then clicking the button. I do recommend checking the “drop...
Read MoreWhat Social Media Share Buttons Should I Use?
I’m sure that, when you read a blog post, you have often noticed buttons underneath the blog post (or sometimes on top or beside) saying things like “share and enjoy!” or “get social” or “pass it on” or “tell your friends” or something similar. They may provide convenient buttons to save you a click or two in sharing the link of that website to literally dozens of services. Facebook, Twitter, Google +1, Bebo, Digg, Del.ico.us, email, MySpace, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Orkut… the list goes on and on. Which ones do you really need? I’ve noticed that major social media gurus–those who seem to be the most...
Read MoreHow Do I Add Facebook, Twitter and Google +1 Buttons to my Site?
There are multiple ways to add those lovely little Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus One buttons to your blog posts so that viewers can use them to help promote you. If you’re wondering why only those three buttons, check out What Social Media Share Buttons Should I Use? The Manual Method Each service provides a tool to help you generate the exact code you need to add into the basic HTML of your site. Add a Google +1 Button (note that under “Advanced Options” you can choose to show or hide the count) Get Facebook Like Button Code (you may want to deselect the “Send Button,” choose either “button_count” or...
Read MoreHow to Add YouTube Thumbnails
There are numerous plugins to embed videos into your page, or you can get the HTML to embed a video directly from YouTube. And this can be quite useful, when you want to play a video in your page–typically when the page or post revolves around the video. However, there are times when you just want an image thumbnail linking to the video, instead of embedding the video directly. This can be for a number of reasons: you only want to use a small area for the video–large enough for a thumbnail, but too small to play the video you’re aware that your audience may be looking at your site from work, behind firewalls that may not let them view pages with...
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