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AI Writing Tools – Aint Going To Change My Style
AI Writing and Music tools have an early and deep presence in savvy AI usage. And as a Yoast user in WordPress and Grammerly with Office being a constant companion one can say this scriber is not exactly a Wordcraft Virgin. But ChatGPT has suddenly inserted real muscle into the auto-generation of paragraphs, presentations, and …
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What Is Google Searching For?
For the past year, Google Search has been under self-induced duress and now serious Chatbot direct competitive threats. The self-induced trauma comes from so many popup and inserted ads, unexpected Schema Location and SEO inserts/elaborations under less user control. Based on Kinsta’s 21 Alternative Search Engines to Use in 2023 [which was last updated back …
Cookies Required in WordPress
How often have you as a WordPress User gotten this demand in any browser – Chrome, Firefox, Opera? Too often or hardly at all? My question is what causes the message. And does the “Get out of Jail ” link [taking you to a legitimate sign-on startup screen] always appear when you encounter the screen. …
WordPress Media Roadmap
While working on a review of WordPress Photo Editors at the PhotoFinishes.ca a number of WordPress Media Library questions arose for which immediate answers were not available That is what this post is about; so lets consider the deferred issues: 0 -3rd party, free Media Library photo editor plugins certainly enhance image editing in the …
Benchmarking Breakdance, Bricks Builder and Oxygen Builder
It is interesting times in WordPress Frontend Development as UI vendors contend for developer loyalty by offering new Layout frameworks [Flexbox, CSS Grid, 3D Float, etc] , more templating features/flexibility, novel plugin consolidations and better runtime performance. Yes, developers and agencies, you have a lot on your decision plates as WordPress UI vendors contend for …
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Why CSS Is So Busy
Inherently CSS, Cascading Style Sheets, do not have to be busy or complex. Classic CSS 1 & 2 commands like color, margin, text-size, and others are easy to understand. However, CSS commands have 3 inherent layers of potential complexity. The first is the fact that every HTML element can have many CSS commands styling the …
Whipping up your own free WordPress Site
There are the many reasons for Whipping up a WordPress Website. Because a free, full-service website can can meet immediate needs: 1 -Temporary testing site for trying out WordPress themes, plugins, styling and apps. Stay upwith new WordPress trends an technology by trying out the tools on a real temporary WordPress site; 2 -Staging site …
WordPress ThemeBuilders Under Stress
Our MasterWP.guru blog recently posted WordPress Under Duress, a report underlining multiple signs of pressure impacting WordPress. The WP Tavern Posting acknowledged several signs of stress. The article cited intensive competition from other CMS systems such as SquaresSpace and Shopify, increased complexity throughout the rapidly changing WP Core and profound shortcomings in both the Gutenberg Editor …
Toronto WordPress Group Mobile Performance Meetup
Normally Toronto WordPress Meetup Group has a monthly meeting designed to help fix any WordPress problems that attendees want to pose to the Meetup Organizers, Robin MacRae and Drew Mathers. But yesterday’s November 15th meetup featured a discussion of how to improve mobile performance which lags the desktop speed for the same page.contents but different …
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WordPress AMP for Mobile Speed
AMP-Accelerated Mobile Pages is mobile page speed up technology pioneered by Google. Web & WordPress users have had to come to grips with major mobile speed deficits in the light of changes in mobile usage: The Global use of the Web has shifted from desktops to mobile devices – desktop=44% vs mobile devices=56%. There are …
Measuring Website Speed – State of the Art
Performance tuning of WordPess sites is currently in the best of times and the worst times. Best of times because there is a consensus about 6 key performance tuning methods which should be applied as a set of triage steps while doing performance tuning. These six standard steps are featured in the upcoming WP Speed …
WordPress Speed Matters – A Free Meetup
TuesdayNov 8th 2022 evening at 6PM is the date for a free and very informative Zoom meetup about the latest trends in WordPress Performance Tuning. Lets start with three basic points. First WordPress is used on 43% of the top 10 million Websites worldwide. Therefore WP technology is an important factor across all web development. …
EmbedPress Demo
First a Google Docs proposal for WordPress Plugins checker Next, a YouTube |Next a Powerpoint And now a PDF, but only by using a 3dFlip book because the EmbedPress shortcode has failed to work – it delivers empty space no PDF
More Elementor Duress
Having already done a review of Elementor Under Duress just 2 months ago, it hardly seemed timely to do another More Elementor Duress. But having tried to create a container with attached Motion Effects and then an Elementor Popup – both using the new Elementor 3.72 with full Flexbox container implementation abruptly changed plans. There …
The Elementor Briefing
Elementor is such a pivotal player in WordPress Development starting with its 11 million actives users and the popularity of its namesake PageBuilder now become a ThemeBuilder UX. If one does development work in WordPress you are very likely either using Elementor directly or interacting with other Elementor based websites as W3Techs sees Elementor as …
WordPress WebPage Performance Tuning
WebPage Performance Tuning WordPress Performance Tuning is like WordPress SEO, an anointed discipline akin to Alchemy – complex practices subject to many sub-disciplines. As a result, three WordPress performance experts agree [ Adam Connel at BloggingWizrds, TomDupuis at Online Media, and Staff at WPBuffs ] that there are a number of factors that can impact …
Gallery Tests Elementor
Elementor Pro Justified Gallery All New Gallery Masonry UAE Elementor Add-on Gallery These Elementor gallery widgets are very competitive with top Galley plugins like FooGallery or Envira Galley. Elementor’s gallery widgets have a host of features including popular layouts [masonry, justified, and grid], lighthbox display of full size images, captioning of images, display of all …
Mobile WordPress Trends Meetup
Mobile WordPress Development often gets the short end of the analytics stick. Fortunately, Hootsuite publishes annual reports on the state of the Web World which clearly shows the pivotal role mobile devices play on the Web. Mobile in their many forms play everywhere in contemporary computing. For the past 5 years these reports have marked …
Elementor Flexbox: A MVP Achilles Heal?
Elementor has reached the pinnacle of WordPress Frontend tools – a PageBuilder become ThemeBuilder that has 10million active user websites, has just released a Elementor Cloud Hosting Service [to mixed reviews and runtime performance concerns], and is undertaking a massive shift to Flexbox CSS Framework as the core of its UI Interface. It is the …
CSS in WordPress – Sep 20th Meetup Review
This afternoon’s free WordPress CSS Style Editors Meetup is so crammed with helpful info on WordPressDesign and Styling we will have to take the Trevor Noah Daily Show approach to Headline News by telling you just the most useful styling tricks and tips to help ease and expedite your WordPress layouts and designs. For example, …
WordPress Plugin Auto-Update Goes Awry
In a review in December of last year, this website reviewed 4 plugins that helped control the Nuisance Nags that plague many WordPress admin pages. In the end Admin Notices Manager was recommended. Since then the Nuisance Nags have gotten even worse. On my websites I was seeing 3-5/page accumulate each week. So the Admin …
WordPress Revolution: Elementor Cloud Website
Elementor Cloud Website is Elementor’s dramatic entry into the WordPress Cloud Hosting Service business. Here is what you get: $90US/year = 1 cloud website “No hidden costs, no price hikes.What you see is what you get. Period.” Additional Elementor Cloud Websites require a subscription costing $99/year/website A subscription delivers 1 full Elementor Pro powered WordPress …
WordPress World of Change
Like the World in general, change is taking place at an accelerated pace in the World of WordPress. And WordPress Developers can see it in the first downturn in WordPress market share in 10 years. And one of the biggest drivers of change in the WordPress World is the rapid growth of its CMS market …
Cloudflare Performance Anomaly
Cloudflare lately has been garnering interest and strategic WordPress alliances not just with its CDN_Content Delivery Network but also Domain Management, Security Services and Performance Optimization. For example, Elementor Pro Cloud new offering CloudFlare as part of the overall bundle. More recently Cloudflare acquired Area 1 to bolster its Secure Email services. But the crux …
Are Gutenberg Editor’s Speed Results A Big Lie??
Within the past year there have been many reviewers claiming Gutenbrg Editor delivers faster web pages than popular PageBuilders – see Metabox*, WordPress.com[ is blind to theWYSWYG gap in the Block Editor], Jack in the Net*, Jack Cao Tests*[fails to use normal caching and media optimizations]. In sum, there is a common factor of limited information …
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Meetup-WordPress Backend Bustout
Most of the attention in the WordPress community for the past five years has been about the effort to build a better WordPress frontend – a Visual Editor using React JavaScript that becomes an integral part of the WordPress core and runs increasing portions of the WordPress “No Coding Knowledge Required” system. But the Gutenberg …
Hiding Nuisance Notices in WordPress, etc
Okay, Nuisance Notifications [aka Nags] are not exclusive to WordPress. You may also be plagued by unsolicited notices in the lower right-hand corner of your PC screen as Google and Facebook and Microsoft and just about every app you have bought now presume to have the right to popup unsolicited PR notes at random moments …
New Surge Performance Plugin
This banner headline at WP Tavern recently caught my attention. Surge: A New Page Caching Plugin for WordPress with No Configuration Required Having just done a WordPress Meetup featuring WordPress performance plugins, one that delivered performance tuning without having to do any tinkering with performance settings – this was of keen interest. So the logical step …
Gutenberg: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
In honor of 3 years + 1 day after the Gutenberg editor was announced, The Toronto WordPress Meetup Group will have a free zoom Presentation at 4:PM Wednesday discussing the virtues and shortcomings of the Gutenberg Editor. Here are the preliminary notes: In addition, here is another view on Gutenberg Editor – the newly appointed …
The WordPress Editors
WordPress has seen a relatively slow succession of editors in its 18 year history. But in the past 5 years the situation has changed dramatically as WordPress has experienced a rapid progression in what can be done beyond the Basic Editor. This review will look at this evolution in how WordPress users create and edit …
Gutenberg vs the PageBuilders- Performance Speed Tests
Among the many WordPress PageBuilders, the conventional wisdom is that Gutenberg Builder is on the rise as long overdue features such as more styling options for blocks and use of block patterens as templates begin to match long delivered PageBuilder capabilities. Perhaps the breakthrough feature is Gutenberg’s delivery of true drag and drop operations for …
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Gaslight Banner Ad from Microsoft
Wikipedia defines gaslighting as Gaslighting is a colloquialism that is loosely defined as making someone question their reality.. The term is also used informally to describe someone (a “gaslighter”) who persistently puts forth a false narrative which leads another person (or a group of people) to doubt their own perceptions… Some would argue that because gaslighting has …
Cyberattacks By Software Vendors
Cyberattacks are usually associated with data breaches where hackers steal valuable information for sale to a variety of “info merchants”. Or behind the scenes there are BDDoS=> Bot-based Direct Denial of Service attacks designed to cripple competitive websites. But as the Dark Web emerges with increasing malvolence there is an an increase of attacks on …
How to Find News About WordPress
One of the most frequently asked questions about WordPress is what is the WordPress market share? The answer is easy – go to W3techs.com scroll down and get the latest report on the top CMS system as used by the top 10 million websites in the World.: But as a WordPress Developer or Agency you …
No PhotoPea in Advanced Image Editor
The Advanced File Manager plugin has two nagging probles. First, its Dark Mode theme titling disappears on hovering over a file. Second, Advanced File Manafger promises PhotoPea image editing But PhotoPea fails to show up. Trying to open the advanced edit, users right-mouse click on an image to open image processing options. The Open and …
Looking for a Better Visual Editor
It maybe late to be looking for a better Visual Editor given the rapid improvement in both Page Builders like Elementor, Beaver or Divi plus the Gutenberg Block editor. But this developer is still looking for an improvement for the Visual Editor. Kay features sought include drag and drop layout, user CSS styling blocks, insertable …
Gutenberg Block Editor, 2 Years Late
Two years after the 2018 introduction of Gutenberg, the Plugins rating tells the story: ,Despite being the default Block Editor on a WordPress Install, Gutenberg can still barely scrape above 2 on 5 in the WordPress plugins ratings. Yet recent WPTavern reviews show some major strides in the improvement of Gutenberg and Block Editor offerings: …
WebP with WordPress
Controling your website’s image sizes has become a top priority among Web developers Here is the reason why: As of 2017 end , HTTPArchive.org reports that images comprised 54% of the total page download size. And since response time is inversely related to page load, developers wanting to achieve 2 seconds or better response time …
Banned WordPress Plugins
At a recent WP Meetup about Database plugins I was faulted for not citing which of the plugins being reviewed had been banned by WordPress or other vendors . Yes, I was aware of banned plugins. But I had never deliberately looked for them However, a Securi note that 78% of hacked websites used WordPress …
WordPress Popup PDFs
This tutorial is based on the fact that PDFs have become the leading document integrators on the Web. Note the distinction – PDF are multi-page containers for completed rich output like word documents, spreadsheet tables or Visio, UML Object diagrams. PDFs are not like web development containers like Docker, Kubernetes, and Envoy which encompass complete …
Measuring your Website
Measuring the Web The Web is the20th Century’s Cauldron of Change. The Web is spilling out change that is innovative, widespread and intimidating. Innovative because with DIY- Do-It-yourself Web Development tools it is possible for individuals and teams to create online presences and services that would have been improbable before the Internet. Widespread because in …
What is the True Cost of Shared Hosting?
CMS systems for small and medium scale sites using WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and others mostly use shared hosting. That is where your website shares a CPU & Supporting Software, memory, diskspace and Internet bandwidth with 2-4 other websites on the same machine in which all of these assets are “time-shared”. This has been and currently …
Editorx Beta Bolsters Wix?
Wix and Squarspace have to watch out, Shopify, a Canadian startup specializing in shopping sites, has taken over their runner-up position in the Content Management System sweepstakes Both Wix and and Squarespace are saddled with same dynamic – low usage websites and comparatively a small number of website than their competitors. Wix appeared to have …
Element Kits Free & Pro Elementor Widgets
At the Toronto WordPress Meetup Group we have been doing a series of presentations about the substantial widgets and features available in Elementor. But in the process of doing the research some Elementor add-on vendors offer freemium packages in which their free components and widgets are very attractive – such is the case with ElementKits …
Happy Addon’s Free & Pro Elementor Widgets
At the Toronto WordPress Meetup Group we have been doing a series of presentations about the substantial widgets and features available in Elementor. But in the process of doing the research some Elementor add-on vendors offer freemium packages in which their free components and widgets are very attractive such is the case with Happy Add-ons. …
ClassicPress: Why a WordPress Clone?
ClassicPress is a GPLv2[Free Software Foundation] clone of WordPress version 4.9.x – any theme, plugin or website that runs on WordPress 4.9 will run on ClassicPress. The ClassicPress FAQ page provides key insights into the reason for ClassicPress: ClassicPress is a community-led fork of the WordPress content management system that preserves the classic TinyMCE editor …
Bulking-up WordPress Security
WordPress hack attacks are becoming more prevalent – almost like a multi-headed gorgon, hackers have many more sinister attack vectors as seen in these reports from FossBytes and ThreatPress . These reports describe not just one attack many different approaches to hacking which often involves 2 or 3 step before the main hack attack is …