allaboutwp-blog

[allaboutwp-blog]

The best tips for Divi by Elegant Themes

[allaboutwp-blog]

Customize functions.php by creating a plugin

One of the main reasons of the WordPress success is the ease with which we can adapt it to our needs.

But no, this time I'm not talking about the huge ecosystem of themes and plugins that you have at your disposal (that also does), but those little pieces of code that we copy and paste to get that extra functionality that we love so much.

There are two major problems in the world of WordPress customizations.

On the one hand, many users copy codes without knowing or understanding what they are copying.

This problem is especially difficult to combat, because a person who does not know nothing about programming or any notion of how the source code works can hardly evaluate if the piece of code that has been found by the network is safe and reliable.

My recommendation is that you only copy and paste code that you find on trusted sources.

The second big problem is that many users don't understand where they are hitting the personalization code.

In general, most sources where you will find these resources recommend that you paste them in the functions.php file of your theme. The reason for proposing this simple: all WordPress websites have a theme installed and, like any theme, have this file.

So the simplest way to dump a fragment of PHP code into our WordPress installation and make sure it works is to do it in the functions.php.

While it’s true that this is not a very serious problem, my experience has taught me that it can have unintended consequences.

The most obvious of all occurs when WordPress releases a new version or even a minor update. Or when your theme is updated

When you install a new version of your theme, what WordPress does is to delete the old version and completely replace it with the new one.

In other words, WordPress just loaded the functions.php file with all your customizations and replaced it with a new and clean one.

Believe me when I tell you that you will not be happy when you discover that you have lost all the customizations you made before.

This can be solved, obviously, with a backup. But this is more a fix than a real solution; after each update you should remember to reapply the changes you made.

And having to rely on "remembering things" is the perfect formula to screw up.

The solution

To prevent a theme update from loading all the customizations that you have put into your WordPress, just ... do not set them on the theme! Obviously not?

But, of course, if you cannot edit the functions.php file, where do you put the code? Well, it will enough if you create a small plugin for it.

First, you must create a PHP file (let's call it My-customizations.php) with the typical header of a WordPress plugin:

<?php /** * Plugin Name: My Customizations * Plugin URI: https://miurl.com * Description: Customizing WordPress * Version: 1.0.0 * Author: Johann Strauss * Author URI: https://miurl.com */

Next, add all the code you want, as you can see here:

<?php /** * Plugin Name: My Customizations * Plugin URI: https://miurl.com * Description: Customizing WordPress * Version: 1.0.0 * Author: Johann Strauss * Author URI: https://miurl.com */ defined( 'ABSPATH' ) or die( 'Get out!' ); /** * Changes admin's footer text. */ function custom_text_in_footer_admin() {  return '¡Thanks for your support!'; }//end custom_text_in_footer_admin() add_action( 'admin_footer_text', 'custom_text_in_footer_admin' ); // Add more functions here

Finally, upload it to the / wp-content / plugins / directory of your installation and activate it from the WordPress Desktop »Plugins (called Customizations):

Extra Advice

If you want your customizations to be available and no administrator user can unintentionally disable the plugin, do not upload the plugin to / wp-content / plugins /. Instead, upload it to the / wp-content / mu-plugins / directory (note the mu-fragment!).

As you can read in the WP Codex, the plugins that are in that directory can not be disabled from the WordPress desktop, it is enough that they are in that directory so that they are active and run before any other plugin.

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What is WordPress MultiSite and when to use it

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How to hide almost anything using CSS

When working to design a nice Website with a WordPress theme, many times there will be something you don’t like and want to hide, or what is much better, eliminate it.

Especially when using free themes, that usually have some big limitations of customization and configuration options.

If you decide not showing something that comes with theme, and there is no way to hide it from your WordPress customization dashboard. One of your options is to use CSS to hide it.

But first of all you must know that this method is not the recommended option. CSS works fine, but it’s not the best solution in anyway.

With CSS you're hiding something, but it’s still there and keep loading even if it’s not seen. And that adds a little and precious time to page load.

So it’s better to eliminate codes that generate that element in the first way. So it will never have to load. But that’s not so easy, and much more difficult if your PHP programming skills are less than average.

So you can hide almost anything using CSS. It’s a fast and easy solution and can save you many hours of hard work getting into codes.

Learn here how to hide almost anything using CSS

Inspect element

The first thing you must do is to grab the CSS selector. We use a developer tool included in every browser.

Open your web page were the element you want to hide is.

Click the right button of your mouse.

Select Inspect Element option.

This is the element inspector were you can see all the html elements of the page shown in the active tab of browser, with its classes and id’s.

Notice when you scroll down the lines of codes how elements are highlighted on web page.

Identify the element

Now you have to identify the element you want to hide. Just move your mouse through the inspector box until you find it. You’ll got it when the element is highlighted.

Sometimes you have to go deep inside into the nested elements<div>, <section> or other to get exactly the CSS selector of the element you want.

Copy CSS selector

Now that you’ve found the element you want to hide, just copy the CSS selector.

Place your mouse cursor over the code of the element you’ve searched before.

Press right button, select copy option and then CSS selector. now you have the CSS selector path.

Edit CSS code

Be sure to hold that CSS copied in the browser, maybe you want to paste it on a notepad before continuing.

Now open your WordPress Dashboard and go to the CSS custom editor box.

If your theme doesn’t support custom CSS you can edit style.CSS file, but that's not good idea since all your modifications to this file would be lost when the theme is updated.

But almost all themes include custom CSS box somewhere. If not, you will have to create a child theme in order to make the customization the right way.

The CSS selector you’ve copied before would look something like this:

#wpbf-inner-footer-left

Now paste it into the custom CSS editor box and following type this:

{display: none:}

So the full thing would be:

#wpbf-inner-footer-left {display: none;}

If you want to follow programming good practices write it this way adding a comment at the top:

/* Hide left footer element */

#wpbf-inner-footer-left {

display: none;

}

Save and exit. Now go to web page. ¿Can you see it now?

Congratulations, you’ve just learned how to hide almost anything using CSS.

[allaboutwp-blog]

5 plugins that will definitely boost UX

Here a brief list of WordPress plugins that will definitely boost the user experience of any website.

UX is something you should care a lot about when designing a website, whatever the goal of the website is, a good UX will help a lot to achieve the objective.

Good UX can make the difference. It can lead to a buying decision, take the desired action or just to perceive confident feeling when visiting a website.

After all, that’s what's UX is all about, to give the visitor a nice trustly felling.

These 5 plugins will help to improve UX in different ways. There are many others that also can help. Here we mention just a few of them:

WP Smush

WP Smush is one of the best plugins for image optimization. If you’re asking how can that help to improve UX, the answer is speed.

Page load speed is one of the most important things when talking about UX, if a web page loads slowly, UX drops drastically.

Users don’t like to wait to much time for a page to load. You should aim to load all pages of your website in 2 seconds or less.

So it’s important to have all images well optimized to enhance UX, or at least to maintain same level without harm.

QuadMenu

This is a plugin that let you create awesome menus, with rich content such as images, galeries and much more within tabs. This is what is known as mega menu.

This kind of plugins will really boost the UX of any website giving a stunning appearance to the menu, and that's very important when talking about UX since its one of the first things users view when accessing a website.

A mega menu will also improve greatly the navigability, gathering all website sections and content within the menu. Something very useful in website with many pages and different kinds of content.

A mega menu makes things easier to find, especially for users that don't want to waste time searching what they're looking for. And that improves UX a lot.

WP Super Cache

Talking about page load speed, this plugin will also help with that.

We are not going to explain what caching it's about, that deserves a full post.

All you have to know is that this plugin, and other cache plugins too, will definitely speed up your entire website.

And that’s one of the better way to improve user experience.

A fast website gives a high quality felling to user.

It will help to achieve the objectives of website making things easy to visitor.

Meta Slider

There’s a big discussion about sliders and UX. Some argue that it’s not good idea to use slider because they slow down pages and that visitors often view them as banners and don’t pay attention to them.

By the other hand, some experts says that users stay engaged while switching images, and that those images consolidate the message that images intend to give.

The real thing is that sliders looks great in website headers, of course it all depends on the images quality. And it’s also not recommended for all websites.

But if well implemented, sliders can improve UX. And this plugin is one of the best of its kind.

WPTouch  

More and more people surf the Internet from their smartphones every day. That’s a fact and that is why responsive design is so important to give a good UX to visitors.

But sometimes responsiveness is not enough and can be improved. Many responsive designs lacks touch screen features.

Same happens with some other functions that optimizes UX when accessing website from smartphones and other devices.

With this plugin, you can be sure that your website is fully optimized for mobile devices. It provides your WordPress installation a full new theme, that will be shown to visitors when accessing from smartphones.

[allaboutwp-blog]

What you need to start a WordPress Website

If you want to run a WordPress Website there are several things you will need before. WP is a fully customizable CMS and it’s easy to use once configured properly.

But first of all you will need a lot of willing to learn and work hard to achieve your goals. It’s not so hard to launch a WP Website, but that’s not even half of the work. 

The real challenge comes after you finish the setup and configuration of your Website.

To launch a Website with WordPress you’ll need the following:

Desktop computer or notebook

Of course, who can think otherwise.

The thing is that many people think they can run a Website from their smartphones or tablets.

That’s a big mistake. If you don’t have a desktop computer or a nice notebook forget it.

It’s better to start saving money for buying one. Follow my advice.

You will need full viewing of everything you’re going to do. And smartphones or tablets are not the best for that.

Responsive design is great to enhance user experience, but it’s not the best thing to do all what is needed to setup and go on with your website along time.

Maybe you can do it anyway, but it will be very uncomfortable. I can guarantee that.

Some designing and content creator skills

Anyone with enough knowledge can set up a WP Website in short time, and even make some customization if having some basic coding skills. But you’ll get nowhere only with that.

No way you can succeed if you don’t have at least basic designing skills. Your Website can be great, but if it looks ugly nobody will visit it.

Same happens with content. You’ll need to write down some good content so visitors stay and read what you have to say.

No matter if everything else is awesome. If your content sucks, your website sucks.

Content is much more than text, you’ll also have to be able to create rich multimedia content such as videos, stunning images, infographics and more.

There are lots of different content formats to explore and get the potential each one can give you.

Server

Now we are talking about more technical concepts. To run a WP Website you will need a server.

There are many offers out there you can check, from the cheapest to the most expensive and high quality hosting services. You pick the one that better fits your budget.

For a new website, a shared hosting plan is the best option and the most economical. You can always upgrade to a dedicated server if things go exceptionally well.

Choose wisely which hosting company you will sign on with. Measure the cost-benefits relation and read many users reviews.

Domain

And of course, you will need a domain name. This is where your Website lives. No domain, no website.

There are some free domains available you can find but please don’t use one. It will stop you from achieving whatever you want. You’ll always find some issue sooner or later, trust me.

And you don’t want people remembering your website URL address with something like http:///miawesomewebsite.Er#s432.ru. That's not kind with your future followers. And doesn’t trigger any trustworthy feeling.

There are many domains for you to choose. With prices that starts from 1,99 USD per year. Or if you want a .com it will cost you only 10 USD each year.  That's nothing if you compare it with any other spending you have in your annual balance. And it’s worth it.

So if you already have all in this list, you’re ready to start the thrilling and challenging road of WP knowledge.

There will be good times and you will certainly have bad experiences, but it's worth it.

Prepare yourself for this and more, prepare for a true adventure.