How it looks in your dashboard :

Download the Plugin Here »

I also created a quick one-page website for the project which details briefly what it’s about and how you can access the feed.

There are three ways you can access the feed :

• Download The Plugin
• Follow on Twitter
• Subscribe to the RSS Feed

I also did some work on the feed itself and changed how it is handled – before it was a little unstable and sometimes showed duplicate entries. With the new method it has been working perfectly and will be updated with new entries every 30 minutes.

Submissions

I am now looking for new submissions so I can hold a monthly poll to pick new sources for the feed, if you would like to submit your site or someone elses that I have missed out, please contact me and let me know!

The post A Better Planet: Website Live & Plugin in the Repository appeared first on WPLift.

Visit Tokokoo »

About Tokokoo

Tokokoo has specially designed and developed WordPress themes for eCommerce and small business websites. You can find various eCommerce themes (support WooCommerce and WP eCommerce plugin) for any kind of business. From apparel/clothing store, bookstore/publishing business, to furniture business. Also, if you’re a freelancer or owner of a small workshop, you could utilize Tokokoo themes to build a professional online presence.

Take a look at some of the themes you win  …

Arloji

Arloji is designed to make your small business looks ‘big’, established and reliable. With lots of airy space between large images and detailed typography, Arloji leads your website visitors to focus more on your content. Arloji could be used as your business theme or online store website using WooCommerce plugin.

Sapatoo

An elegant multipurpose WooCommerce theme comes with every advanced feature you need to launch a profitable business, whether it’s an online store or small business website. Sapatoo applies stunning design, mobile ready feature and large image slider on the homepage.

Sabak

Sabak is a dynamic and crisp WooCommerce theme designed with awesome multipurpose features. With 3 mode options available, you could choose Shop to run an eCommerce site, Portfolio to build a portfolio site, or Catalog to display your work samples without using eCommerce plugin

Mantel

Featuring Mantel, a stunning theme designed with abundance of white space  for your apparel/clothing  store and business. It comes with a big image slider with handful effects on the homepage, large product image on the product page, and several layout options to display your products in the Shop area. Mantel is designed to be flexible. Use it to run your online store or tweak it to be your business website’s professional look, it’s only one click away.

Bajigoor

Bajigoor is a versatile theme designed for your online presence, whether it’s a small business, freelancer or portfolio website. Showcase your best projects using 6 portfolio page templates come with handy features to categorize them and let your potential clients search relevant projects easily.

Enter Here

To enter, use the widget below – you can gain entries by leaving a comment, liking our facebook pages, following us on Twitter, tweeting and liking this post.
The competition will run for 7 days, end date Monday 27h May.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The post Tokokoo Competition: Win 3 Club Memberships 20+ eCommerce Themes appeared first on WPLift.

There are a good number of blogs about WordPress which deserve to be included but are never given the chance for whatever reason and there remains so many sites on the list that haven’t updated in ages or contain a lot of content unrelated to WordPress.

My attempt to provide a solution is A better Planet, a free plugin you can download and install which will provide a dashboard widget with latest new from more relevant and fresh sources

To start off with I have manually selected 30 of my favorite sources to be included which I think are of high quality and provide up to date WordPress news, tutorials and resources. Part of the reason I dislike the planet feed is that no one knows who is in charge of it or how you can get your site accepted on there. With A Better Planet I have decided to accept submissions for any site to be placed on the master feed and once a month I will hold a vote and the top two sites will be added, you can submit your site as many times as you like – sound fair enough ?

Download from the WordPress Repository:

Download A Better Planet Here »

So who is currently on the list ?

Official Feeds

• WordPress
• Make WordPress
• BuddyPress
• bbPress

WordPress Blogs

• WPLift
• WPDaily
• WPBeginner
• WPKube
• WPShout
• WPMayor
• WPMU
• WP Smashing Magazine
• WP Tuts +
• Code Poet
• Do it with WP
• Post Status
• WP Candy
• WP Tavern
• WP Explorer
• WP Realm
• WP Recipes
• Theme Shaper

Individuals

• Lorelle
• Mark Jaquith
• Konstantin Kovshenin
• Matt Mullenweg
• Tom McFarlin
• Brian Krogsgard
• Oliver Dale
• Adii Pienaar

I decided against including any blogs for WordPress companies as although they can provide good content, that could quickly turn sour with spam and so on.

So who have I blatantly forgotten ?! Nothing personal if I have, built this thing fairly quickly today so let me know in the comments or drop me a line and I will include them in the vote for next month.

Download A Better Planet Here »

The post Introducing “A Better Planet” Fresh News Widget for your WordPress Dashboard appeared first on WPLift.

Happy Friday Folks!

This is our (sort of ) weekly WordPress news roundup post, you can view previous news roundups on this tag. I also post frequent WordPress links on Twitter all week, follow WPLIft here if you are on Twitter. Our facebook page is growing nicely with over 2500 members now so please “Like” us on Facebook. Finally, I’m also on Pinterest so you can add me there as well.

WordPress News and Articles

Ghost: A Beautifully Simple Blogging Platform That Could Spell Trouble for WordPress

Of course I’m talking about the initial rollout of the new blogging platform Ghost. Dreamt up by designer/developer John O’Nolan on his personal blog in the fall of 2012. The attention this concept received within the blogging community made it crystal clear to O’Nolan that he was onto something that a very large and passionate group of people wanted. And now he’s actually building it.

http://wplift.com/ghost-blogging-cms

Give WordPress Beta Releases A Spin: Information & Resources

Have you ever done a major WordPress update, refreshed your site, and realized with horror that some critical piece of functionality has broken? When an application is as frequently updated and modular as WordPress, something is going to break at some point. It’s often plugins that cause problems; sometimes they’re just not ready for new versions.

http://wplift.com/wordpress-beta-releases

How To Contribute To WordPress

WordPress is built by volunteers. People from all over the world collaborate to create the core software, write the documentation, provide support, translate WordPress, organize events and generally keep the project running. Individuals work on WordPress in their free time, and companies ask their employees to get involved.

http://wp.smashingmagazine.com/2013/05/10/contributing-to-wordpress/

The Epic MMORPG and the WordPress Freelancer

What if our journey as WordPress entrepreneurs were like an epic MMORPG? You know, a massively-multi-player-online-RPG?

http://wpdaily.co/mmorpg-wp/

The WordPress Planet is Pants – and here’s how to improve it

Since back in the day I’ve had a keen interest in the WordPress Planet, sure sometimes it’s been a bit snarky, but at the end of the day I am genuinely interested in good WP news coming through the pipes into my various dashboards.

http://wpmu.org/wordpress-planet-pants-problem/

WordPress SEO Community & Roadmap

Our WordPress SEO plugin has been getting more and more downloads, bringing it to the top of the most downloaded plugin chart on WordPress.org fairly regularly. With that comes more interest from other developers as well, which is something we absolutely love, but is kind of impossible to manage properly on WordPress.org.

http://yoast.com/wordpress-seo-community-roadmap/

Using WPTavern To Share Your Knowledge With The World

While the Tavern is definitely back in business, there is one specific goal I have in mind that I would like to accomplish. That goal is changing the content direction of the site so that it’s not created by one person, all the time.

http://www.wptavern.com/using-wptavern-to-share-your-knowledge-with-the-world

Cátia Kitahara Interview

Meet Cátia Kitahara (@catkit), co-founder of the Brazilian WordPress Community. She’s a web designer and hacker at Hacklab in São Paulo – Brazil.

http://build.codepoet.com/2013/05/16/catia-kitahara-interview/

Scott Basgaard Interview

Scott makes a living under his alter ego, Scotty B, who is a Support Ninja over at WooThemes specializing in WooCommerce.

http://build.codepoet.com/2013/05/09/scott-basgaard-interview/

Pexeto Passes $1M in Sales on ThemeForest

Pexeto, a developer/designer duo that builds premium WordPress themes, passed $1,000,000 in sales and earned Power Elite status with Envato.

http://wpdaily.co/pexeto-1m/

Tutorials and How-Tos

Non-Destructive Customisation of WordPress Themes using a Child Theme

Similar to how Photoshop allows you to edit images using adjustment layers without altering the original image, you can use the same concept when customizing WordPress themes.

http://wplift.com/customise-wordpress-child-theme

Brad WIlliams on Secure WordPress Development

One of the most important steps when writing code, regardless of what platform the code will run on, is making sure it is secure from hacks and exploits.

http://wpengine.com/2013/05/brad-williams-on-secure-wordpress-development/

How To Internationalize WordPress Plugins

Up until this point, I’ve traditionally included a plugin.po file with each of my plugins to make it easy for translators; however, Gary’s been kind enough to point out the a .pot file should actually be included.

http://tommcfarlin.com/internationalize-wordpress-plugins/

WordPress Multisite with Nginx – How to set it all up and enjoy the blazing fast consequences

Recently, due to the many attacks launched on the internet, especially the botnet DDoS attacking WordPress hosts, I was forced to move some of my sites to a shared server — a virtual machine — with little memory and just a slice of one CPU core.

http://wpmu.org/wordpress-multisite-wordpress-nginx/

Quick Tip: After the Content – Share This

In this post, we’re going to cover how and why we should include a “Share This” section with our content.

http://wp.tutsplus.com/articles/tips-articles/quick-tip-after-the-content-share-this/

How to Insert WordPress Photo Galleries Anywhere Into Your Theme

Last December WordPress dramatically stepped up the way media was handled. It improved the Media Library, the Media Manager, and even default WordPress photo galleries.

http://wpmu.org/insert-wordpress-photo-galleries-theme/

Design Patterns in WordPress: An Introduction

For those who have an extensive background in software engineering, design patterns should be familiar territory; however, there’s an entire group of developers – especially in the web development community – who aren’t necessarily familiar with design patterns (even though they’ve likely used them!).

http://wp.tutsplus.com/tutorials/creative-coding/design-patterns-in-wordpress-an-introduction/

Resources & Freebies

18 WordPress Plugins for List Building & Newsletter Management

There’s a case to be made that the most important thing you can do with your WordPress website is build out a good email list. Even if it’s not the most important thing, it’s certainly in the top five.

http://wplift.com/wordpress-plugins-for-list-building

7 Quality Social Lockers for WordPress

The idea of social lockers is nothing new. Some folks have been using them to get their content more likes, tweets, and pins. You need to have special content to pull this off. You should also adopt a conservative approach with this strategy or your could turn your visitors off.

http://www.wpjedi.com/social-lockers-for-wordpress/

Genericons

If you’re designing a UI or just want to use some beautiful, clean, retina-ready icons somewhere else in your site design, you’ll be hard pressed to find any as beautiful as Genericons.

http://build.codepoet.com/2013/05/14/genericons/

The post WordPress News, Tutorials & Resources Roundup No.29 appeared first on WPLift.

This can make WordPress users scared to update at all. While understandable, remaining on an older version is a terrible idea. WordPress is a secure platform, but every piece of software that does something more complicated than print “Hello World!” is going to develop bugs, and those bugs are occasionally exploitable by hackers and other malicious parties. The more out of date an installation is, the more likely it is that someone will have found a way to exploit it. Sticking with an older version just because it works fine creates a potential open door to having your site hacked, and is one of the reasons so many WordPress sites are serving malware.

If updating can break a site and not updating isn’t an option, the obvious solution is testing. WordPress makes is very easy to test upcoming versions while they are still at the beta phase. Beta’s should absolutely never be deployed on production servers, that’s even more likely to break a site than a major update, but setting up a testing environment that’s more or less identical to the production environment isn’t difficult.

Testing the WordPress beta’s before they are released has three main advantages.

• You Get To Test Against Your Plugins – While betas aren’t the final product, and a beta not breaking a plugin doesn’t mean that it won’t happen in the final release, testing the beta should give you some idea of what to expect. Once you’ve got a testing environment set up, you can track the beta through to release candidates and final release, so you’ll have no surprises when the time comes to update the site itself.

• See New Features First – Having a beta installation lets you see all the good stuff that WordPress will be delivering in the next release. You can prepare for any site changes that need to be made, plan for taking advantage of new features, and develop ways to include administration improvements into your workflow.

• Play Your Part In Reporting Bugs – All open source software relies on its users reporting bugs during the development phase. Testing the betas and reporting bugs to the WordPress Trac is an excellent way to give something back to the community that develops this awesome free resource and will help make sure that the final release is as bug-free as possible.

The next release of WordPress will be version 3.6, which contains a number of great additions, including the ability to embed tracks from Rdio and Spotify, better revision comparisons, and improvements to the image Post Format features.

There are two ways to test it.

• Download The Zip – Just as you would when you are doing a new WordPress install.

• The WordPress Beta Tester Plugin – This is the method we recommend. The plugin will let you switch an existing installation (not your production installation!) to the beta track, and it will update as new betas are released. If you’re particularly brave or want to help with bug reporting, you can enable the “bleeding edge” feature, which will update the WordPress installation to the version that’s currently being worked on every night, rather than the development releases (things will break).

Whichever way you choose to do it, testing the betas is the best way to keep abreast of new features and make sure you’re prepared for when the final release comes.

About Graeme Caldwell — Graeme works as an inbound marketer for Nexcess, a leading provider of Magento and WordPress hosting. Follow Nexcess on Twitter at @nexcess, Like them on Facebook and check out their tech/hosting blog, http://blog.nexcess.net

The post Give WordPress Beta Releases A Spin: Information & Resources appeared first on WPLift.

What is a Child Theme?

A child theme is a theme that inherits properties and functions from another theme called the parent theme. You can then edit, modify and add new features or functions because the files in the child theme overwrite the parent theme.

What You’ll Need

Before we start editing all the files, you’ll need to get a few things ready. First, you’ll need FTP access to your WordPress website or something like MAMP to host your own WordPress site. Without a live WordPress website, you won’t be able to see the changes you are making. Next, you’ll need your text editor of choice. And finally a parent theme such as the default Twenty Twelve theme that comes with WordPress.

1. Creating a Child Theme

All that is needed to create a child theme is one folder and one file. Head to the “/wp-content/themes/” folder within your FTP client. You’ll notice a few folders named after all the themes you installed. Create a new folder and give it a descriptive name such as “twentytwelve-child” or “parenttheme-child”.

Go into the folder and create a CSS file and name it style.css, and then add the the following information into the CSS file filling out the fields however you see fit.

/*
Theme Name: Twenty Twelve Child
Theme URI: http://example.com/
Description: Child theme for the Twenty Twelve theme
Author: Your name here
Author URI: http://example.com/about/
Template: Folder name of the parent theme
Version: 0.1.0
*/
Once you’ve completed this step you should have a working child theme.

2. Importing Parent Theme CSS

Now that you have the necessary folder and files created, we are going to import the parent theme’s CSS. Add this line of code to your CSS file:

@import url(“../parenttheme/style.css”);

This will tell your child theme to inherit all the CSS properties and settings stored in the parent theme’s CSS.

3. Activate Your Child Theme

To activate your new child theme, simply head to your WordPress dashboard and find the Appearance > Themes page. If you followed the previous steps properly you should see your child theme in the list of selectable themes.

Simply hit Activate and your WordPress website will now be using your child theme. If you take a look at your live WordPress website you won’t see any changes because we haven’t made any changes to the parent theme yet.

4. Customizing the Child Theme

This is where the fun starts, now that everything is setup we can begin changing and altering the parent theme to our liking. As we explained before, the child theme files overwrite the files stored in the parent theme folder. Therefore we can create variations of the parent theme without editing the core files. You need to remember to have a working version of your parent theme uploaded in your themes folder at all times and make sure your @import points to the right location.

Start changing some CSS properties and then view your website to see the changes.

5. Using functions.php

If you intend to add or edit some of the WordPress functions within your parent theme you should create a functions.php file inside your new child theme folder. Add new functions inside the new file and they will be loaded alongside the functions from the parent theme.

The functions.php in your child theme doesn’t overwrite the one from your parent theme, instead they will be both loaded. If you make changes directly to the core functions.php you may have to rewrite those changes after every update. Using a functions.php file within your child theme solves this issue.

6. Editing PHP Files

Making changes to the PHP files from your parent theme is the same concept as editing the CSS. Any files within your child theme will overwrite the parent theme counterparts. For example if you wanted to edit the header.php you’ll need to create a new header.php in the child theme folder and write the changes you want inside this file. WordPress will then use this new header.php instead of the parent theme version.

You can also add new PHP files inside your child theme that don’t exist in the parent theme. This will allow to create more specific pages and templates that can be used by WordPress.

7. Reverting Changes

Whenever you need to revert the changes you’ve made, all you need to do is activate the parent theme and now you’ll be back to where you started. This is the beauty of using child themes, you can create several variations and switch between them easily while still retaining the original theme.

Child themes are a fantastic non-destructive method to customizing your WordPress theme. Not only do they allow you to experiment and make changes without affecting your parent theme, it is also good practice to use child themes instead of directly editing your theme files.

Brian L, a WordPress enthusiast, is also an advocate of customizing WordPress themes using the unique ThemeMask method.

The post Non-Destructive Customisation of WordPress Themes using a Child Theme appeared first on WPLift.

Welcome Gate

Welcome Gate is a free plugin that claims to be able to triple your website’s Opt-In rate.

• Full Details | Price: FREE

Pippity

Pippity makes it easy for publishers who respect their readers to create popups that convert. (And convert and convert and convert.)

• Full Details | Price: $49

Hybrid Connect

Hybrid Connect is a very robust plugin that not only provides various types of subscription forms but also allows you to build them in your WordPress admin. And a whole lot more…

• Full Details | Price: $49

Optin Skin

Optin Skin is a premium WordPress plugin that allows you to build and implement beautiful email signup forms across your website.

• Full Details | Price: $67

Ad Plus List Building Popup

Ad Plus List Building Popup is so clean, super flexible and has a fully responsive popup designs! Proven to convert your daily blog visitors into highly responsive targeted email list subscribers OR buying customers within just 2-3 minutes.

• Full Details | Price: $15

Subscribe to Unlock

Subscribe to Unlock for WordPress makes it very simple to create a subscription based content system on your site that requires users to subscribe to an email list, newsletter etc. before viewing content.

Subscribe to Unlock not only handles user / email verification, it also has a list manager that can export your verified subscribers to MailChimp and Unisender, as well .txt and .csv formats.

• Full Details | Price: $14

Subscriber Content Lock for WordPress

Subscriber Content Lock for WordPress makes it very simple to create a subscription based content system on your site that requires users to subscribe to an email list, newsletter etc. before viewing content. Subscriber Content Lock not only handles user / email verification, it also has a list manager that can export your verified subscribers to any popular mail service, in multiple formats.

• Full Details | Price: $15

nyLON Subscription Form – WP Plugin

Easy Newsletter subscription form builder that allow subscribe to download type lead generation that also manages subscribers list. Which can be downloaded as CSV.

• Full Details | Price: $14

MyMail

Super simple Email Newsletter Plugin for WordPress to create, send and track your Newsletter Campaigns.

• Full Details | Price: $25

Subscribe to Unlock Content

Subscribe To Unlock Content is a plugin that allows to lock important content on your WordPress website and display it for subscribed users only. All you need to do is to wrap protected content with shortcodes [subscribelocker]…[/subscribelocker]. If people want to view this content they must submit their contact details. After submission all locked content became visible. Very simple workflow. All submitted data is saved in database or can be re-submitted to MailChimp or iContact newsletter systems. All saved data can be exported as CSV -file to be used with any other newsletter systems. Subscribe To Unlock Content is a perfect way to extend functionality of your website.

• Full Details | Price: $12

All-in-One Subscribe Popup

All-in-One Subscribe Popup is a plugin for WordPress that allows you to add a highly customizable subscribe popup box to your blog or website. It combines 7 different popups (on page load, on external link click, on copy content, on context menu, on scroll down, on idle, on click), which can be used separetely or simultaneously without conflicts. Once raised, popup asks visitors to submit their name and e-mail. These data are saved in database or submitted to MailChimp and iContact newsletter systems. All saved data can be exported as CSV -file to be used with any other newsletter systems.

• Full Details | Price: $14

Subscribe & Download

Subscribe & Download is a plugin that allows to distribute files through subscriptions. If people want to download something from your website or from third party websites they must submit their contact details. After submission they receive download link by e-mail. Very simple workflow. All submitted data is saved in database or can be sent to MailChimp or/and iContact newsletter systems. All saved data can be exported as CSV-file to be used with any other newsletter systems. Subscribe & Download is a perfect way to extend functionality of your website.

• Full Details | Price: $12

Subscribe Popup

Subscribe Popup is a plugin for WordPress that allows you to add a highly customizable popup window with opt-in form to your blog or website. Once raised popup window asks visitors to submit their name and e-mail. These data is saved in database or sent to MailChimp or iContact newsletter systems. All saved data can be exported as CSV-file to be used with any other newsletter systems. The content can be edited using WYSIWYG-editor, and it is allowed to use any shortodes. You can fully customize popup window (window size, window and overlay colors, font scheme color, content and other parameters). Subscribe Popup is a perfect way to extend functionality of your website.

• Full Details | Price: $8

MailChimp Comments

MailChimp Comments is a plugin for WordPress that allows you to subscribe commentators of your posts/pages via MailChimp. When a users comment something on your website, they are immediately added to your email subscription list. You can configure the plugin with respect to your users to avoid any mailing violations (spam). MailChimp Comments is a perfect way to build a list of your commentators.

• Full Details | Price: $9

Simple Mail Chimp Signup Forms

Mail Chimp is one of the net’s most popular email newsletter services. This is a little plugin that adds several ways for you to add email list signup forms to your WordPress website.

When a visitor fills out the form, they are immediately added to your email subscription list.

• Full Details | Price: $6

Subscriber Traffic Pop for WordPress

Subscriber Traffic Pop for WordPress takes the original jQuery version and puts it on steroids to create an awesome list building tool. Turn your traffic into an email list generating army by utilizing the Traffic Pop™ base as a way to generate tons of highly profitable email leads quickly and easily!

• Full Details | Price: $16

Newsletter Tycoon

This plugin allows users to subscribe and receive a newsletter containing the blog latest posts. The newsletter subscription system features a double opt-in system, with email confirmation. Administrators can also activate subscribers.

• Full Details | Price: $14

WordPress Email Newsletter Plugin

The email newsletter plugin is an advanced bulk emailer designed especially for WordPress 3. It is very easy to use and feature rich. Heaps of features which allow you to quickly send professional newsletters to your existing wordpress user database.

• Full Details | Price: $25

The post 18 WordPress Plugins for List Building & Newsletter Management appeared first on WPLift.

Of course I’m talking about the initial rollout of the new blogging platform Ghost. Dreamt up by designer/developer John O’Nolan on his personal blog in the fall of 2012. The attention this concept received within the blogging community made it crystal clear to O’Nolan that he was onto something that a very large and passionate group of people wanted. And now he’s actually building it.

As of the first day of the Ghost kickstarter campaign the project has been fully-funded. In about 12 hours they raised over 25,000 pounds! And they’re still going strong at 112,000+ pounds with some interesting stretch goals that continue to display O’Nolan and Co.’s unique vision for what Ghost can become.

So now that we know for certain this concept is actually going to become a reality, let’s see what all the fuss is about.

Ghost: Just A Blogging Platform

I suppose the first question that needs answering is: What, exactly, is Ghost? And the answer is simple. It’s a free open source platform just for blogging. Nothing more, nothing less.

It has become obvious over the last few years that WordPress has grown up – leaving in it’s wake a “Ghost-sized hole” for people who care primarily about blogging. WordPress has evolved far beyond a mere blogging platform and become something bigger, more complex and to many would be bloggers – quite intimidating. This is a problem that WordPress has attempted to address with more user friendly welcome screens upon new installs, but nothing truly dramatic has been done to actually simplify the software. It’s just growing in a different direction than “simple blogging”.

Additionally, the drawbacks of the WordPress platform do not stop at its growing complexity. It’s also notoriously ugly. Now don’t get me wrong, if you know me then you know I’m a huge WordPress fanboy who makes the majority of his income each month from writing solely on and about the WordPress platform. So I have crazy amounts of love, respect and appreciation for this software. But with that said I’ve often wondered: who stole all the sexy? I mean, seriously! Why does the backend of this amazing tool have to look SO dull and boring?!

Answer: it doesn’t. And it just might end up costing WordPress a lot of users; both current and those who might have otherwise signed up in the future but who would rather use something more attractive given the choice.

I am honestly at a loss as to why the designers/developers working on WordPress have refused to spruce it up over the years but it’s becoming obvious now that they’ve missed a huge opportunity. I mean just look at this gorgeous dashboard concept art for Ghost! They’ve billed it as “A Dashboard That You Might [Actually] Want To Use” and if they deliver anything like the image below – they’re spot on.

But the dashboard isn’t all they’ve re-imagined. Now post management and post creation are equally as beautiful and – to use a term that is wildly overused – revolutionized.

Sorting through your posts on Ghost will allow you to see specific stats and a full preview of the post as seen on the frontend.

Similarly, creating new content has never looked as good or felt as natural as it will on Ghost. Their split-screen approach to writing allows you to see markup on the left-hand side and a fontend preview on the right-hand side. There are very few buttons to distract, the markup allows for much less HTML, and when you write “(image)” in a new paragraph an image uploader holds that space for you to drag and drop your media in later.

So far, I’m seeing a lot to like as a blogger. But those are only three screenshots, what else is going to be different about Ghost?

• Overall, there will be far fewer admin options/controls. There will be no admin color schemes, quickpress, press this, post-via-email, remote publishing, inline theme editing, media editing or multi-site anything that can be controlled from the admin. Many features will either be cut altogether or “just work” within the desktop version or mobile app without conscious user control.
• No native comments. Third party developers like Disqus and others will be available though.
• Limited backwards compatibility. There will be cut-off points at major updates that will require third party developers to remove old code and evolve along with the platform.
• Ghost will be a true non-profit. There will be no commercial side to things as there currently is with Automattic and WordPress.
• And here’s a big one: Ghost will be openly developed using node.js as opposed to PHP. More on that here.

What’s Happening with Ghost Now & How to Stay Up-to-Date

Ok, so all of that sounds great. And if it doesn’t sound great to you, it probably at least sounds interesting. So naturally you’ll want to keep tabs on future developments and updates.

I’m sure we will keep you apprised of anything major, but for those of you (like me) who are really excited about Ghost, here are a few links you’ll want to bookmark for total Ghost news immersion:

• The Official Ghost Kickstarter Page (w/ Updates by O’Nolan posted weekly)
• TryGhost.org
• John.ONolan.Org

There’s actually quite a bit more information available on Ghost at those links than I was able to fit into this introductory post. Specifically the Kickstarter page where they’re actively trying to drive as much traffic as possible to reach their stretch goal. So be sure to check that out at the very least – watch their video – and read updates on new partners, plugin/theming options and more.

Final Thoughts

My favorite thing about Ghost is that it’s already a force of disruption in online publishing and it’s not even created yet. It’s the blogging platform I wanted before I used WordPress and while I was still lamenting the limitations of tumblr. It might actually be the only blogging platform truly created just for publishers. And to me that’s really exciting!

Will it replace WordPress for me completely? No, I seriously doubt it. As a platform for building feature rich websites, I don’t see WordPress going anywhere. But if the two can work together or if I decide to develop standalone blogs, then Ghost will probably be my first choice. Assuming they actually create a great product that does more than just look pretty. I’m also hopeful that the arrival of Ghost will light a fire under the design/development teams working on WordPress and push them to deliver a more beautiful product.

What are your thoughts on Ghost?

The post Ghost: A Beautifully Simple Blogging Platform That Could Spell Trouble for WordPress appeared first on WPLift.

This is our weekly WordPress news roundup post, you can view previous news roundups on this tag. I also post frequent WordPress links on Twitter all week, follow WPLIft here if you are on Twitter. Our facebook page is growing nicely now so please “Like” us on Facebook. Finally, I’m also on Pinterest so you can add me there as well.

WordPress News and Articles

WordPress at 10: Time for a fork?

This 10 year anniversary should also be a time for review, revision, and vision for the future. Should WordPress remain a one-size-fits-all CMS grown out of a blogging platform?

http://designisphilosophy.com/wordpress/wordpress-at-10-time-for-a-fork/

I Will Never Fork WordPress

There’s been a handful of posts this week that have focused on the theory and possibility of forking WordPress. Instead of reacting immediately to some of the posts I’ve spent a bit of time in introspection reading these posts and asking myself if I would ever, myself, seriously consider forking WordPress.

http://wpdaily.co/never-fork/

WordPress.org theme demos leave a lot to be desired

There is a decent, but not perfect, filtering capability on the main theme page of WordPress.org, but the theme discovery process really falls apart with demos. You all know what I mean. When you hit “preview” on a theme page, that terrible thickbox pops up with the theme previewed in a “default” blog format that can really look terrible on many themes.

http://poststat.us/wordpress-org-theme-demos-leave-a-lot-to-be-desired/

Getting Started Speaking at WordCamps? What not to do…

I was talking with someone the other day who asked how they might get started speaking at WordCamps.

http://chrislema.com/get-started-speaking-at-wordcamps/

Google+ Comments for WordPress: A Commenting Revolution or Nothing Special?

We now have Google+ Comments. It looks sleek and sexy and it integrates beautifully with WordPress. So is it set to make a major difference to commenting on WordPress, or is it just another option that will fall by the wayside?

https://managewp.com/google-plus-comments-for-wordpress

Holy Cow – Earn $100K per Month with 1 WP Theme!

Apparently it’s quite possible to build a WordPress theme with only a team of two professionals and completely bankroll it to extreme profitability – like over $100,000 per month profitable.

http://wpdaily.co/100k-month-theme/

Elegant Themes Competition: Win A Lifetime Membership worth $249

We have teamed up again with our friends at ElegantThemes, purveyors of fine premium WordPress Themes, to offer you the chance to win 1 of 3 Lifetime memberships to the site which are worth $249 each.

http://wplift.com/elegant-themes-competition

5+ Reasons Why You Should Try Jetpack (Again)

If you’re a WordPress user you’ve probably heard of Jetpack – when it was released to WordPress.org users just over two years ago it was greeted with a mix of delight and suspicion.

http://www.wpexplorer.com/reasons-to-use-jetpack/

Tutorials and How-Tos

Making Conditional Tags Work Magic in Your WordPress Site

Conditional Tags are one of those things that you can leverage on your WordPress site whether you are an ace in coding or just have enough knowledge to install a plugin. It’s amazing what a simple piece of PHP can do for your WordPress site.

http://wpmu.org/making-conditional-tags-work-magic-in-your-wordpress-site/

Making Remote Requests with wp_remote_get

When it comes to working with remote requests on the server side, there are usually two solutions that I end up seeing. In fact, there are two solutions that I’ve typically ended up using.

http://tommcfarlin.com/wp_remote_get/

Quick Tip: After the Content – More From This Category

Do you have a solid construction of categories on your blog? If so, you might not need a “Related Posts” section at all – you can just display latest posts from the same category.

http://wp.tutsplus.com/articles/tips-articles/quick-tip-after-the-content-more-from-this-category/

A Walkthrough for Jetpack’s “Post by Email” Feature

WordPress has a sufficient, mostly responsive, back-end and great applications for mobile devices, but there might come a day when you’ll just want to send an email to post an entry to your website.

http://wp.tutsplus.com/tutorials/plugins/a-walkthrough-for-jetpacks-post-by-email-feature/

Resources & Freebies

Announcing The WordPress Plugin Boilerplate 2.0

After over a year of various contributions from others and other improvements, I’m proud to release the second version of the WordPress Plugin Boilerplate.

http://tommcfarlin.com/wordpress-plugin-boilerplate-2/

My Top 10 WordPress Code Snippets

Over time I am going to share with you some of my most useful code snippets for use in your own projects or to build upon.

http://wpdaily.co/top-10-snippets/

The Ultimate Beginners Guide To BuddyPress

In this guide I’ll go through the ins and outs of BuddyPress, or as everyone and their dog likes to call it, social networking in a box.

http://wpmu.org/the-ultimate-beginners-guide-to-buddypress/

20 Essential (& Free!) bbPress Plugins to Enhance your WordPress Forum

Luckily there are a whole host of plugins for bbPress that will bring it up to par – that is the subject of today’s post, so let’s take a look at what extra functionality you can add.

http://wplift.com/bbpress-plugins

11 Completely Free Masonry-Style WordPress Themes

jQuery Masonry has become quite popular in the last 12 months because of the possibility it offers for creating more interesting web layouts and in particluar portfolio style sites.

http://wplift.com/free-wordpress-masonry-themes

The post WordPress News, Tutorials & Resources Roundup No.28 appeared first on WPLift.

Masonry is a dynamic grid layout plugin for jQuery. Think of it as the flip-side of CSS floats. Whereas floating arranges elements horizontally then vertically, Masonry arranges elements vertically, positioning each element in the next open spot in the grid. The result minimizes vertical gaps between elements of varying height, just like a mason fitting stones in a wall.

As with any popular web design trend, the WordPress theming community have taken it on board and produced a whole load of themes which use it. So in today’s post I will be taking a look at a whole range of themes which use Masonry to display content.

Clippy

Simple, responsive, pin-style theme for your personal blog.

Full Features »

Pronto

Pronto is a very clean and minimal jQuery Masonry WordPress theme that’s perfect for showcasing your posts in a grid like fashion, that will re-adjust depending on your visitors browser size.

Full Features »

Photum

Photum is a theme to use with WordPress that will turn your site into a clean portfolio that you can use to show off your photos. We have designed it to be neutral and clean so your work can stand out

Full Features »

Gridly

A free minimal & responsive portfolio theme ideal for graphic designers or photographers.

Full Features »

Shaken Grid (Lite)

This was our first theme which we released to the WordPress community and one of our favorites. Shaken Grid uses jQuery Masonry which “arranges elements vertically then horizontally according to a grid.” The result is a gap-less layout even if you have varying post heights.

Full Features »

Vasiliki

Vasiliki is our new fab series wordpress theme. This is a minimalistic theme with jQuery masonry – A dynamic grid layout plugin. It re arranges the content grids in a brick fashion with smooth animation according the browser window size.

Full Features »

Photogram

Photogram is very fluid and responsive, thanks to its slick and nifty jQuery effects. The Masonry and Infinite Loading scripts make page scrolling more convenient than ever. Released as a feature-packed WordPress theme, Photogram comes with a massive slider on the home page for you to showcase your favorite photos and 3 gallery templates.

Full Features »

Tetris

Tetris is a responsive Tumblog style WordPress theme created by AJ Clarke from WPExplorer.com. The theme features a masonry style homepage and archive pages to showcase your posts in a modern fashion and makes use of WordPress post formats so sharing different media types is extremely easy.

Full Features »

Imbalance 2

Imbalance 2 turns you WordPress-based website to an attractive blog, portfolio or even online magazine. This free template designed in strict modern style with a minimalistic touch. Imbalance 2 can easily fresh up your web-magazine or blog. Due to modern flexible features and layout Imbalance 2 fits to almost any project and your visitors won’t remain indifferent.

Full Features »

Paragrams

Free premium wordpress theme, Paragams was made by special techniques and correspond a grid-based lightweight design with almost no images. Paragams, thanks to a number of custom advanced features is really easy-to-use, either for you or for your visitors. This theme is really fits any journalistic-type website whether it is a news-blog or some kind of online-mag.

Full Features »

Aperio

I’m releas­ing a pre­lim­i­nary ver­sion of the ThemeMeme Aperio Prototype, the theme I orig­nally pre­viewed under First Look: ThemeMeme Aperio WordPress Theme.

Full Features »

The post 11 Completely Free Masonry-Style WordPress Themes appeared first on WPLift.

Luckily there are a whole host of plugins for bbPress that will bring it up to par – that is the subject of today’s post, so let’s take a look at what extra functionality you can add.

Administration Tools

bbPress Moderation

To help reduce spam in bbPress forums, this plugin will change the status of new topics and replies to ‘pending’. Any pending topics/replies will be shown as ‘Awaiting Moderation’ until the administrator approves publishes them.

Full Details »

Ultimate WP Filter

Ultimate WP Filter is an advanced WordPress filtering plugin that will censor explicit words words in comments, posts content, posts title, tags, tag clouds and in bbPress automatically by replacing them with asterik(*) characters.

Full Details »

bbPress – No Admin

This plugin prevents all users except super-admins from creating bbPress content when inside wp-admin.

Full Details »

Dashboard Forum Activity

I use the Recent Comments Dashboard widget every single day. It’s the first way I check up on recent activity on my sites. Now that I’ve started using bbPress to power a forum on my site I would like the same bird’s eye view of it too.

Full Details »

bbPress Admin Bar Addition

This small and lightweight plugin just adds a lot bbPress 2.x related resources to your toolbar / admin bar. Also links to all setting/ tab pages of the plugin are added making life for forum administrators/ moderators a lot easier. So you might just switch from the fontend of your site to your ‘Forums’, ‘Topics’ or ‘Main Settings’ page or even plugin extensions etc.

Full Details »

Disable bbPress Profile Override

Links to bbPress profiles are overridden (filtered) and pointed to a members BuddyPress profile when using the bbPress plugin with BuddyPress.

Full Details »

Functionality Plugins

bbP Signature

This plugin adds user signature support to bbPress 2.0. Currently support have been added for BuddyPress installations as well which have site wide forums enabled.

Full Details »

GD bbPress Attachments

Attachments for forum topics and replies are handled through WordPress media library. You can control file sizes from the main plugin settings panel, or you can do it individually for each forum you have set.

Full Details »

bbPress Threaded Replies

bbPress Threaded Replies is based on comment-display functions from WordPress and topic-display functions from bbPress. Settings can be adjusted on the bbPress Forums options page of WordPress.

Full Details »

bbPress Notify

This plugin integrates into bbPress and sends a notification via e-mail when new topics or replies are posted. It is fully configurable in the bbPress settings.

Full Details »

bbPress Search Widget

This small and lightweight plugin is pretty much like the regular, packaged bbPress search widget but just offers up to 13 awesome options for you! For example, easily change the search, placeholder and button texts. Also, set visibility options or add optional intro/ outro texts.

Full Details »

bbPress Enable TinyMCE Visual Tab

Enabling the full default TinyMCE editor mode will display all the buttons, similar to the editor inside the WordPress admin. Depending on your configuration some of these buttons may not be compatible with TinyMCE.

Full Details »

bbPress Quotes

bbPress Quotes adds the ability to quote bbPress forum topics and replies. Upon activation, a quote button is added to the end of replies so users can easily quote another user. Clicking it sends the contents of the reply into the comment area, wrapped in blockquote tags.

Full Details »

bbPress WP Tweaks

bbPress WP Tweaks replaces regular sidebar with forum specific sidebar. When forum page loaded then forum specific sidebar will be displayed. If nothing in forum sidebar then regular sidebar will be shown.

Full Details »

bbPress String Swap

This small and lightweight plugin lets you change the Title of the Forums root view. Plus, I added 3 options for some important (as of my opinion) bbPress Breadcrumb parameters. Additionally, you can change the 4 built-in bbPress Forum User Role names. And finally, I’ve added 5 other important (again, as of my opinion) forum strings used in various Forum, Topic and Reply views

Full Details »

GD bbPress Tools

Adds various expansions and tools to the bbPress 2.0 plugin implemented forums. Currently included features:

• BBCode shortcodes support
• Quote Reply or Topic
• User signature with BBCode and HTML support
• Additional custom views
• Basic topics search results view
• Toolbar menu integration
• Limit bbPress admin side access

Full Details »

Buddy-bbPress Support Topic

A checkbox will be displayed to topic authors in order to let them define their topic as a support one. Once on the topic page, the author, group admin / mod, or super admin will be able to manage the status of the topics (Resolved, Not resolved, not a support topic). If you run bbPress 2.2.4, then the administrator will also be able to manage the support topics from the Topics backend menu.

Full Details »

GD bbPress Widgets

Collection of widgets for bbPress plugin powered forums. Currently included widgets:

• Search Topics (requires GD bbPress Tools plugin)
• Topics Views (selectable list of views to display)

Full Details »

bbPress – Mark as Read

This add-on plugin for bbPress will add new links to the top of bbPress topics that let the current user mark topics as either read or unread.

Full Details »

bbPress Topic Thumbnails

This plugin adds support for Topic Thumbnails with bbPress. It works by retrieving the first image from each topic and displaying it alongside the topic title on the index page. Thumbnails are sized according to the default ‘thumbnail’ size in your WordPress media settings. The images will also resize appropriately if you’re using a responsive WordPress theme.

Full Details »

The post 20 Essential (& Free!) bbPress Plugins to Enhance your WordPress Forum appeared first on WPLift.

Visit ElegantThemes »

ElegantThemes are one of my favourite theme companies – we have a good relationship with them here at WPLift and have been recommending their themes since we started. They are really well designed and for a starting price of just $39 per year for a personal membership I think they are great value. Take a look at some of their latest themes you will receive …

Explorable

Explorable is a location-based theme that pins your posts on a map. Listings become part of a journey, and exploring your website has never been so fun. With the ability to create location-based listings, the theme becomes a great tool for building travel blogs, local business directories, travel guides and more. Combined with user star ratings, a full fledged blog and a fully responsive design; the possibilities are endless.

Foxy

Foxy is a sleek, all-in-one solution for businesses. From eCommerce integration to Responsive Design, Foxy includes everything you need to bring your business online. The themes finds harmony in a balance of simple and striking design elements. Foxy is fun, but it doesn’t let anything get in the way of its structured and functional layout.

Origin

Origin is a stunning grid-based theme that tells a story through imagery. The theme creates a truly engaging experience by saturating the screen with your beautiful photos. The theme is also responsive, meaning it will look and work great on mobile devices as well. If you are an artist looking to showcase your latest work, or if you are a blogger looking to give your visitors a fun new way to browse your latest posts, then Origin is great choice for you.

Nimble

Nimble is a big, bold, and beautiful theme that doesn’t let its own style get in the way. With each design I struggle to strike a balance between style and function. Nimble’s colors are toned down but still delicious and its style is bold but still leaves room to breath. Browsing Nimble on a 27″ Cinema Display is quite a treat, but so is browsing the theme on a small screen as well due to Nimble’s fully responsive design.

Lucid

Lucid is a sleek and modern magazine theme that does a great job displaying tons of content while at the same time avoiding the feeling of clutter. Clean design elements and a strict grid give the theme an organized layout that is a pleasure to read. Lucid is also fully responsive, meaning that the design will adapt to mobile phones and tablets for a more intuitive browsing experience.

Enter Here

To enter, use the widget below – you can gain entries by leaving a comment, liking our facebook pages, following us on Twitter, tweeting and liking this post.
The competition will run for 7 days, end date Tuesday 14th May.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The post Elegant Themes Competition: Win A Lifetime Membership worth $249 appeared first on WPLift.

This is our (sort of ) weekly WordPress news roundup post, you can view previous news roundups on this tag. I also post frequent WordPress links on Twitter all week, follow WPLIft here if you are on Twitter. Our facebook page is growing nicely with over 2500 members now so please “Like” us on Facebook. Finally, I’m also on Pinterest so you can add me there as well.

WordPress News and Articles

Seisuke Kuraishi Interview

Say hello to @eastcoder, a.k.a., “tenpura,” a.k.a, Seisuke Kuraishi, founder of Tinybit.co, co-founder of ja.wordpress.org, plugin daddy to WP Multibyte Patch, and CMS creator extraordinaire.

http://build.codepoet.com/2013/05/02/seisuke-kuraishi-interview/

Customer Service as Art

Rob La Gatta, Community Advocate, shares a little bit about how mighty Modern Tribe handles customer support with a dedicated, remote, freelance team where collaboration, shared goals, and most importantly empathy make for a stellar customer service experience.

http://build.codepoet.com/2013/04/30/customer-service-as-art/

Pay What You Can for WordPress Maintenance – A Discussion

In a few weeks, my wife will be giving birth to our first daughter, which we’re both very excited about. In an ideal world, we’d both be self-employed and be able to spend all day, every day with her. While that doesn’t seem feasible at the moment, my entrepreneurial side has come up with an idea that might help to make that happen.

http://www.doitwithwp.com/pay-what-you-can-for-wordpress-maintenance-a-discussion/

Curating Content for a WordPress Blog (How I Do It)

If you’re a regular reader of the ManageWP blog then you know that my last couple of posts have either been about creating or curating content for a WordPress blog.

https://managewp.com/wordpress-content-curation

WordPress For Rapid Application Development

Last week, I talked about using WordPress as an application platform – once again, even – but Ted Waller brought up an interesting comment that I’ve not heard (at least here on this blog) that I wanted to discuss a bit more.

http://tommcfarlin.com/wordpress-for-rapid-application-development/

How Tony Perez of Sucuri Sets Up His Own Security

This is a guest post by Tony Perez, the COO at Sucuri Sucuri, the provider of choice of WordPress information security, and WP Engine partner. Tony specializes in malware detection, incident handling, and log analysis.

http://wpengine.com/2013/04/how-tony-perez-of-sucuri-sets-up-his-own-security/

Making Translation a Priority

It’s quite amazing how many users will volunteer to translate your theme or plugin. In our case, we get new propositions every week.

http://www.wysija.com/translation-priority/

The Most Exciting Feature of WordPress 3.6: Native Audio and Video Support

The upcoming WordPress 3.6 release will add native support for audio and video files. This one is a real game changer. We’re going to give you a full introduction to the new capabilities and show you how you can use them on your WordPress site.

http://wpmu.org/the-most-exciting-feature-of-wordpress-3-6-native-audio-and-video-support/

Ghost is Looking To Hit Stretch Goal

By now you’ve heard that Ghost was fully funded in less than one day via Kickstarter, which is an incredible accomplishment!  If you haven’t heard of Ghost yet you should familiarize yourself with it, as it appears to be a potentially strong competitor to WordPress.

http://wpdaily.co/ghost-stretch/

Giveaway: Celebrating 1,000 Blog Posts!

Well done to our friends at WPDaily who hit 1000 blog posts in a remarkably short time :)

http://wpdaily.co/1000-posts/

Deploying With Git

I’ve been banging my head on this for a while. It really did take me a year and reading lots of things to begin to understand that I was totally wrong. As with many things, I have to sit down and use them for a while to understand what I’m doing wrong, and what I need to learn.

http://halfelf.org/2013/deploying-with-git/

Tutorials and How-Tos

How to Modify the Parent Theme Behavior Within the Child Theme

What are child themes? Child themes are a useful WordPress feature that allows developers to build a new template without starting from scratch, but by taking advantage of all the features already available in an existing theme.

http://wp.tutsplus.com/tutorials/creative-coding/how-to-modify-the-parent-theme-behavior-within-the-child-theme/

Guide to Creating Your Own WordPress Editor Buttons

Most likely you know that WordPress is bundled with the HTML WYSIWYG editor, TinyMCE. The variety of features, and the ability to be extended though plugins, make it the most used WYSIWYG editor in the world.

http://wp.tutsplus.com/tutorials/theme-development/guide-to-creating-your-own-wordpress-editor-buttons/

How To Programmatically Populate a WordPress Template

The title of this post is somewhat misleading as I’m not actually sharing how to programmatically populate a WordPress template – instead, I’m walking through the process of populating a page that also has a page template applied to it.

http://tommcfarlin.com/how-to-programmatically-populate-a-wordpress-template/

Custom post type and metadata support in the REST API

We’ve recently made some updates to the REST API which is available here on WordPress.com and for any Jetpack-enabled site that have the REST API module activated. The API now has full read and write support for custom post types and post metadata.

http://developer.wordpress.com/2013/04/26/custom-post-type-and-metadata-support-in-the-rest-api/

How to Simplify the WordPress Admin for Your Clients

When we develop sites for clients, sometimes it makes sense to remove some of the UI items they don’t need in the admin area to make it less intimidating. We used many of these admin customizations with WordPress Multisite (or WPMU), to make our customer’s sites more user-friendly.

http://www.presscoders.com/2013/04/how-to-simplify-the-wordpress-admin-for-your-clients/

How To Ban A WordPress User

I was asked a few days ago to create a system would ban a WordPress user from an install. So I created a simple plugin and I wanted to share with you the basics of this plugin.

http://www.wpexplorer.com/how-to-ban-a-wordpress-user/

How to Make a Command Line for Your WordPress Site

I devised a solution to quench my thirst for more WordPress power: a simple in-house plugin that adds a command line to the back-end. And in this post, I’m going to show you how to make it.

http://wpmu.org/wordpress-command-line/

How To Quickly Duplicate A WordPress Database

There are many situations where you may need to copy your WordPress database. The most common scenario would be to set up a development site in order to test new themes or features.

http://wpmu.org/copy-wordpress-database/

Resources & Freebies

15 of the Latest Free & Premium WordPress Content Slider Plugins for 2013

WordPress sliders are one of the most popular features for many WordPress users. They add an undeniable element of style and flare to many web designs and help draw site visitor’s attention to specific pieces of content.

http://wplift.com/wordpress-sliders-2013

How-To: Create a Free Newsroom for Multi-Author WordPress Blogs

In today’s post I’m going to highlight four of the best tools available for a growing multi-author blog.

http://wplift.com/wordpress-newsroom

The WPLift Complete Guide to Google Authorship and WordPress

Since the feature debuted (I believe in the spring of 2012) acquiring Google Authorship for your WordPress website has become a lot easier and a lot less confusing. That is, if you can avoid the old articles out there that make it insanely complicated. Which is why for today’s post I’m going to attempt to cut out all of the unnecessary over complications still floating around on this topic and give you a complete (but to the point) guide on Google Authorship and WordPress.

http://wplift.com/google-authorship-and-wordpress

The post WordPress News, Tutorials & Resources Roundup No.27 appeared first on WPLift.

Slider Revolution

Create a responsive(mobile friendly) or fullwidth slider with must-see-effects and meanwhile keep or build your SEO optimization (all content always readable for search engines). See the heaps of custom transitions/animations for each object on the page! Customize this slider with our convenient drag&drop backend to your very needs.

This plugin features tons of unique transition effects, an image preloader, video embedding, autoplay that stops on user interaction and lots of easy to set options to create your own effects.

Full Details | Price: $15

RoyalSlider (New)

New RoyalSlider for WordPress is responsive image gallery and HTML content slider plugin with touch-swipe navigation. Plugin is mobile-friendly and allows creating completely custom slideshows and css3 banner rotators with images, videos or HTML content in slides. You can also dynamically populate data from Flickr, 500px, or featured posts of any post type – like WooCommerce products. Developed in best pracises of CSS3 and HTML5. For photo gallery you can enable vertical or horizontal thumbnails, enable lazy-loading or fullscreen. Carousel also supports YouTube or Vimeo videos that allows you to create video galleries.

Full Details | Price: $20

LayerSlider

This is the WordPress plugin of LayerSlider! You can create as many layers and sublayers as you want. You can use unlimited images with links. The script is very user-friendly, you can add global settings or local (per slide) settings to each layer or sublayer. You can change delay times, easing types, durations and much more.

Full Details | Price: $15

Facebook Likebox Slider

The best Social Slider plugin for WordPress on the market. Easy to install, 3 click configuration, awesome tabs design. Easy way to get more shares, more traffic, more fans and popularity.

Full Details | Price: $15

All In One Banner Rotator

All In One is an Advanced Jquery Slider WordPress plugin which comes in 5 flavors: Banner Rotator, Thumbnails Banner, Banner with Playlist, Content Slider, Carousel. It allows you to easily create powerful sliders with animated text using HTML standard tags, making the slider very easy to setup and maintain. Please check the video tutorials for each product and the live preview to convince yourself of its quality.

Full Details | Price: $18

TouchCarousel

TouchCarousel is a posts content slider WordPress plugin with touch navigation for mobile devices. You can slide custom post types, with custom taxonomies (categories, tags, e.t.c.) and create layout templates using simple templating system.

Full Details | Price: $21

Premium Featured Posts Slider

The Premium Featured Posts Slider is a recently updated, highly rated WordPress slider full of rich features.

Full Details | Price: $20

KenBurner Slider

KenBurner is the premium way of using a slider in your website. A combination of Ken Burns Effect, state-of-the-art Slider and Text Animations defines this slider.

Full Details | Price: $13

FlexSlider

FlexSlider is a new, fully responsive JQuery slider toolkit by WooThemes.

Full Details | Price: FREE

Meta Slider

Meta Slider is a flexible, intuitive slideshow administration plugin that lets you choose between 4 jQuery sliders.

Full Details | Price: FREE

LenSlider

LenSlider is a WordPress plugin for creation of visual sliders, carousels or slideshows for your site without writing any code. All sliders based on LenSlider skins, and skins have effects based on jQuery and CSS3. Use a shortcode in your posts/pages or static php-code in your template files to integrate any slider you made.

Full Details | Price: FREE

WOW Slider

WOW Slider is a WordPress slider with stunning visual effects and tons of professionally made templates. WOW Slider is packed with a point-and-click wizard to create fantastic image sliders in a matter of seconds without coding and image editing. Responsive, fully accessible as a pure CSS slider if the Javascript is turned off, touch swipe support, all browsers, all devices, search engine friendly, clean and valid markup.

Full Details | Price: FREE

IvyCat AJAX Image Slider

This plugin is a lightweight template/framework for developers to easily add a powerful AJAX image slider to a page.

Full Details | Price: FREE

Oik-Nivo-Slider

[nivo] shortcode for the jQuery Nivo slider; “The Most Awesome jQuery Image Slider”; reputed to be the world’s most popular jQuery image slider.

Full Details | Price: FREE

Full Width Background Slider

A great plugin that allows you to add full page background slider to your website with a lots of custom features. – Adds full page slider to use to your website. – You can add up to 6 images to the slider. – You can add single full page background image to your site. – You can add different slider to different pages of the website. – Easily manageable back-end. – Comes with 6 Great Backgrounds ready to use – Last but not the least its FREE – Set Background color for posts and pages. Now instead of image you can set the background color for the image too.

Full Details | Price: FREE

The post 15 of the Latest Free & Premium WordPress Content Slider Plugins for 2013 appeared first on WPLift.

A big part of coping with their growth and meeting the challenges of high traffic, a 24/7 audience/readership, multiple authors, multiple teams and even multiple sites these blogs had to develop custom tools for managing their newsrooms. I’m unsure what those particular sites have used but the good news is that as rapid growth and large group collaboration becomes more and more normal on the WordPress platform, third parties are developing some really exciting tools and plugins to help meet those same challenges.

Which is why in today’s post I’m going to highlight four of the best tools available for a growing multi-author blog.

If you’re just starting out and putting your first team of writers together then plugins 1-3 are free and they’re going to be exactly what you need. If you’re running or starting a much bigger project with not only multiple authors but multiple teams of authors and various workflows then I’d suggest looking into plugin number four.

But enough with the introductions, let’s get into the plugins!

1. Edit Flow

Edit Flow is one of those plugins that makes you wonder why it’s not just part of the WordPress core, it’s that useful. Even on the blogs I create where I’m the only writer, I’m not sure how I would get by without it. The calendar view and custom post status features alone make it almost indispensable. But for a multi-author site, it’s an absolute must.

Here’s what it can do:

• Calendar – A convenient month-by-month look at your content.
• Custom Statuses – Define the key stages to your workflow.
• Editorial Comments – Threaded commenting in the admin for private discussion between writers and editors.
• Editorial Metadata – Keep track of the important details.
• Notifications – Receive timely updates on the content you’re following.
• Story Budget – View your upcoming content budget.
• User Groups – Keep your users organized by department or function.

Full Details & Free Download »

2. Approval Workflow

Approval workflow solves an issue many multi-author blogs (and multi-site blogs for that matter) have. Efficiently moving content along a workflow from one person to the next.

For instance, a contributor may write up a post but not have permission to publish. So they’ll save that post and leave it for someone else to edit and publish when ready. Unfortunately that post might sit around in draft mode for quite some time before the editor and/or publisher knows what to do with it.

Approval workflow adds a small checkbox to the publish section for users without permission to publish so that they can submit the post to the next person in the workflow.

Full Details & Free Download »

3. Role Scooper

Role Scooper takes a more in-depth approach to assigning and restricting roles within WordPress. This allows administrators to be extremely specific (down to pages, posts, and categories) where certain users can read or edit. In short, it makes WordPress a more thorough and more powerful CMS.

Full Details & Free Download »

4. ContentCloud

And finally we come to ContentCloud by Betaout. It’s a single dashboard interface that syncs all of your WordPress websites and all of the contributors across those websites in one central location designed for managing content and content teams extremely efficiently.

You’ll be able to:

• Design a smarter editorial workflow that’s right for you.
• Collaborate in real time.
• Jump in immediately as the interface is intuitive and easy to learn.
• Manage and unlimited amount of freelancers.
• Take WordPress to places you never thought possible…and more!

This really is an all-in-one solution for large and very active teams. Probably overkill for your smaller to medium sized blogs, but a great investment for high volume projects with big teams.

Full Details » Pricing Options »

In Conclusion

WordPress has always been about removing barriers for content producers. It started out with a simple goal: to make having a great blog extremely easy, even for non-technical users. And in my opinion this group of tools/plugins continues that legacy in an exciting way. Who’s ready to create the next Mashable or TechCrunch?!

The post How-To: Create a Free Newsroom for Multi-Author WordPress Blogs appeared first on WPLift.

What is Google Authorship?

Google Authorship is part of Google’s ongoing efforts to combat spam and validate the trustworthiness of specific authors. How this affects their search algorithms is (as usual) a complete mystery. However, the visual evidence is quite plain to both authors and Google search users when browsing search results. A nice author profile picture appears next to the result, often boosting click-through rates.

In addition to the profile picture (and increased click through rates as a result) there are some other unique benefits to having Google Authorship verified for your WordPress website. When someone clicks your image on a search result it will bring them to a page like the one below. This page will be a huge list of your articles as well as more info on you via Google+. Not to mention there’s a Google+ follow link! Talk about social growth potential!

So now the obvious question is: how do I claim my content with Google and acquire the Google Authorship Markup?

The answer is that there are several ways. I’ve split each solution into the sections below. I recommend reading this post in its entirety, choosing the method that makes the most sense for you and ignoring the rest.

The Non-Plugin Methods of Claiming Google Authorship

If for some reason you do not want to use any of the much simpler solutions listed below, there are two ways in which Google allows you to manually verify Google Authorship for your website.

1. Link your content to your Google+ profile using a verified email address

• Check that you have an email address with the same domain as your blog (for example, nathan@wplift.com (not a real email address btw)).
• Make sure that each article or post you publish on that domain has a clear byline identifying you as the author (for example, the author box below and the byline at the top of this post).
• Visit the Authorship Page and submit your email address to Google. No matter how many articles or posts you publish on this domain, you only need to do this process once. Your email will appear in the Contributor to section of your Google+ profile. If you want to keep your email private, change the visibility of your link.

2. Set up authorship by linking your content to your Google+ profile

• Create a link to your Google+ profile from your website. It should look like this:

  

  The rel=”author” tag is really important; so make sure that’s in there just like the image shows. Most people choose to put this link in their header.

• Add a reciprocal link back from your Google+ profile to the site you just added. You can do this by going to About > Links > Contributor To > Add Custom Link > And enter your site’s URL.

Once one of the above methods is complete, go to Google’s Structured Data Testing Tools and check to see if your search snippets now feature a profile picture.

Note: Both of these methods work (obviously) but since your using WordPress any one of the methods below is bound to be easier. It’s just that this wouldn’t be the complete guide if I didn’t at least briefly explain the “official” methods provided by Google.

The Easy Method of Claiming Google Authorship for Genesis Users

Genesis is one of the most used WordPress theme frameworks in the marketplace. As such they’ve decided to “bake in” the second method provided by Google above. Here’s what you do:

Go to your profile page of Google+ and copy the link. It should look like this – https://plus.google.com/u/0/117930730043793469237/posts

Next, navigate to your WordPress Admin > Users > Your Profile and paste that link into the new Google+ section.

Then you will want to go back to your Google+ profile > About > Links > Contributor to > Add Custom Link and add your blog URL.

When this is done you should be able to head over to the Google Structured Data Testing Tool and check to make sure everything is working properly.

Note: I’m running Genesis on my personal site and when I first tried to claim my Google Authorship via the steps I just mentioned it did not work. I later found out this is because I was also running SEO by Yoast and did not have those settings configured properly. So if like me you are in the same position then be sure to double check the SEO settings I’ll show below too.

The Easy Method of Claiming Google Authorship for SEO by Yoast Users

There are few (if any) WordPress plugins that are as ubiquitous as SEO by Yoast. Combine that with the fact that Google Authorship is the new big thing for boosting SEO and you’ve got a great reason for a new feature. Which is exactly what happened back in June of 2012, making SEO by Yoast the easiest way for the majority of WordPress/Google+ users to claim their Google Authorship.

Here’s what you do:

Go to your Google+ profile and add your blog URL under About > Links > Contributor to. Also, double check to make sure your +1′s tab is public. Then before going to WordPress copy your Google+ profile URL.

In your WordPress Admin navigate to Users > Your Profile and paste your Google+ profile link into the contact info section.

Then, go to your SEO by Yoast sidebar menu > Titles & Meta > Home tab > Author Metadata and select your name in the drop down menu. Click Save Settings.

When this is done feel free to head back over to the Google Structured Data Testing Tool and see if everything checks out.

The Highest Ranking Plugin Solutions for Claiming Google Authorship

Now I realize that not all WordPress users are running on Genesis or using SEO by Yoast. So here is a quick list of the highest ranking plugin solutions for claiming your Google Authorship markup from the WordPress Plugin Repository.

Note: Each plugin has step by step instructions on their info page, installation page, or in the help documents of the plugin once installed.

1. Google Author Link

2. AuthorSure

3. WP Social SEO Booster

4. Fancier Author Box by ThematoSoup

In Conclusion

The conversation surrounding Google Authorship has been confusing. It’s the new big thing on the block and in everyone’s haste to understand and communicate their “expertise”, a lot of people over-complicated the process.

Thankfully that’s not the case anymore. With any one of these simple plugins (or with Genesis) you can quickly and easily reap the rewards of having claimed your Google Authorship markup. I hope this post answered any questions you might have about Google Authorship and WordPress, but if not please feel free to drop us a line in the comments below and we’ll be sure to get back to you with our best answer.

The post The WPLift Complete Guide to Google Authorship and WordPress appeared first on WPLift.

I released a new theme this week, check out CleanBold and get a 50% discount for the next 7 days.

This is our (sort of ) weekly WordPress news roundup post, you can view previous news roundups on this tag. I also post frequent WordPress links on Twitter all week, follow WPLIft here if you are on Twitter. Our facebook page is growing nicely with over 2500 members now so please “Like” us on Facebook. Finally, I’m also on Pinterest so you can add me there as well.

WordPress News and Articles

Update WP Super Cache and W3TC Immediately

Shame on us for not catching this a month ago when it was first reported, but it seems that two of the biggest caching plugins in WordPress have what we would classify a very serious vulnerability – remote code execution

http://blog.sucuri.net/2013/04/update-wp-super-cache-and-w3tc-immediately-remote-code-execution-vulnerability-disclosed.html

5 Common Theme Development Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Review is a key part of Theme Wrangling, so we spend a lot of time looking “under the hood” at themes. Here are some of most common theme development errors that come up in the review process, and some tips on how to avoid them.

http://themeshaper.com/2013/04/24/5-common-theme-development-mistakes-and-how-to-avoid-them/

But Seriously, WordPress as an Application Platform?

Is WordPress is suitable as a platform for application development, then does it make sense to use it when another framework, set of libraries, or core tools may also fit the bill?

http://tommcfarlin.com/wordpress-as-an-app-platform/

WordPress Theme Trends 2013 – A Detailed Look at Business Themes

This is the start of a new series of posts I have been intending to do for a while where I will be picking one style of WordPress theme and taking a close look at the current features and trends for that kind of theme. In today’s post I’m going to be examining Business / Corporate style WordPress themes.

http://wplift.com/wordpress-business-theme-trends

Why You Should Join the Theme Review Team

With a growing number of submissions to the directory, the volunteers of the Theme Review Team need your help. Anybody passionate about WordPress and willing to learn is welcome to join the Team.

http://www.wpkube.com/join-the-wordpress-theme-review-team/

Where are the Women in WordPress?

Since my first Programming 101 lecture at college 10 years ago where I was just one of five women in my class, it seems not a lot has changed.

http://wpmu.org/women-in-wordpress/

Taking stock: how WPEngine triggered a revolution in WordPress hosting

WordPress hosting has seen a revolution over the last couple of years, with a huge shift away from cheap, crappy shared hosts and a move towards expensive, quality, managed hosting.

http://wpshout.com/wpengine-revolution/

Tutorials and How-Tos

How to add the Google+ Comments to WordPress

A few days ago, Google+ officially announced the release of a new commenting system for blogger blogs and within hours people started using it on non-blogger sites.

http://www.wpkube.com/how-to-add-google-comments-to-wordpress/

What Theme Authors Need to Know About Post Formats in WordPress 3.6

The next major release of WordPress is already around the corner. This is a big one for theme authors with a major focus on post formats. There’s a new post formats UI for the WordPress end-user, along with a new system of handling and displaying this data in our themes.

http://wp.tutsplus.com/articles/news/what-theme-authors-need-to-know-about-post-formats-in-wordpress-3-6/

Plugin Templating within WordPress

In this post I’d like to cover two aspects of using custom templates. The first step is to show that we can use a custom file contained directly in the plugin itself instead of loading the default single.php, and the second one is how to create your own custom file in your theme folder.

http://wp.tutsplus.com/tutorials/creative-coding/plugin-templating-within-wordpress/

Top ways to promote your WordPress site

Someone once said about blogging: “never before have so many people said so much to so few”.  I find this quote hilarious because it really does capture a lot of blogs quite well.

http://www.pingable.org/top-ways-to-promote-your-wordpress-site/

How to Display Instagram Photos in WordPress Sidebar Widget

In this article, we will show you how to display Instagram photos in your WordPress sidebar widget.

http://www.wpbeginner.com/plugins/how-to-display-instagram-photos-in-wordpress-sidebar-widget/

How to create a directory within the uploads folder

When developing a plugin or theme, it can be useful to be able to programmatically create a directory within the wp-content/uploads folder. Here is a handy piece of code to do it.

http://www.wprecipes.com/how-to-create-a-directory-within-the-uploads-folder

Quick Tip: After the Content – Author Info

In this post, we’re going to learn the importance of the “Author Info” section.

http://wp.tutsplus.com/articles/tips-articles/quick-tip-after-the-content-author-info/

Resources & Freebies

CleanBold Theme Launch: Minimal Portfolio WordPress Theme

Today I released a new theme over at ThemeFurnace called “CleanBold“. Its a really minimal style portfolio theme with simple bold typography and a lot of whitespace.

http://wplift.com/cleanbold-minimal-portfolio-wordpress-theme

How To: Add A Parallax Content Slider to WordPress with Free Plugin

Parallax is a nice effect which scrolls the background along with the foreground at different speeds to give the effect of depth, we have previously looked at themes that used it but what if you want to use it in your existing site ? That’s where the free plugin “WP Parallax Content Slider” comes in.

http://wplift.com/free-wordpress-parallax-content-slider

All the Best & Well-Designed Free WordPress Themes from April 2013

The end of april is approaching so it’s time for our monthly roundup of free WordPress themes. This month we have some good portfolio themes, a theme for universities or other educational institutions, some business themes, a pinterest style theme and some clean personal themes.

http://wplift.com/free-wordpress-themes-april-2013

Ad Management in WordPress: Comparing Four Top Plugins

In this article, I shall be taking a closer look at four of the most popular premium ad management WP plugins

http://www.wpmayor.com/plugin-reviews/ad-management-in-wordpress-comparing-four-top-plugins/

The New WordPress Dashboard Design (MP6) – Try It Now!

The WordPress dashboard is set for a redesign and the preliminary layout is stunning. The project, codenamed MP6, aims to modernise the entire WordPress dashboard, making it flatter, responsive, cleaner and easier to read and navigate.

http://www.doitwithwp.com/the-new-wordpress-dashboard-design-mp6-try-it-now/

The post WordPress News, Tutorials & Resources Roundup No.26 appeared first on WPLift.

CleanBold costs $49 or the developer club membership is $99 which includes all themes.
WPLift readers can use the following coupon for 50% off both for 7 days only ( ends 2nd May 2013)

• Purchase CleanBold for $24.50
• Join the developer club for $49.50
• Use Coupon code: CLEANBOLDLAUNCH

About The Theme

The main focus is the portfolio area which lets you show off your designs, products, art or photography in style.

The theme also incorporates a traditional blog section which you can use to let your visitors know about your latest news or for general blogging purposes.

As with every other ThemeFurnace theme, you get the TF Panel for theme options so you can control the Slider, Typography options, Social Media and many other options.

Conclusion

Im really happy with how this theme turned out – I wanted something really clean and simple that could be used to quickly set up portfolio or product type websites. I think the design works well on big screens and also mobile devices. Give it a whirl if you’re looking for something like this!

The post CleanBold Theme Launch: Minimal Portfolio WordPress Theme appeared first on WPLift.

Download WP Parallax Content Slider Here »

Install The Plugin

Download the plugin and in your WordPress admin, visit “Plugins” > “Add New” > “Upload” and upload the file.

Click “Activate” under the plugin and you will see it then adds a new menu under “Settings” called “WP Parallax Content Slider” visit that to start with the plugin.

Configure the Plugin

The first thing you will need to do is place some code to display the slider – there are two methods for this, adding some PHP code into your theme directly or by placing a Shortcode. These two methods aren’t ideal – I would have liked a method to auto-insert it into the theme.

General Display Options

The next section contains the display options – you can choose whether to make it dynamic which means it pulls content from your blog posts or static HTML, you can set the number of pixels for the background to move and the delay in milliseconds for each slide and finally you have a choice of colors for the background.

This is how the backgrounds look :

The next section is for configuring the dynamic mode options – here you can set whether to use blog posts, pages or both for the slider. You can choose the number to display, sort order and can choose from just your chosen categories. Finally you can set the max title length and choose an image to use if there is no “featured image” set for the particular post.

Conclusion

I quite liked this plugin – it might be a little difficult to install if a user is not familiar with placing PHP code into a theme file – they might struggle to know which theme file to place it in etc and a shortcode is not ideal either as these only work within posts and pages etc.

The actual effect in the slider looks good but I would like to see it a little bit smoother – also uploading a custom background image would be a nice touch. At the moment the easiest way to do this would be to create your image and save it over one of the default images included.

So, check this plugin out if you are looking for something simple to display your existing posts in an attractive way – if you need something more powerfull then I recommend you seek out a commercial example.

Download WP Parallax Content Slider Here »

The post How To: Add A Parallax Content Slider to WordPress with Free Plugin appeared first on WPLift.

If you are a free theme creator and would like to be added to future roundups, please get in touch with links to your work.

You can see last months free themes here or you can check out all of our past free WordPress themes on this tag.

Snaps

Snaps is a free portfolio theme for WordPress perfect for showcasing portrait images and galleries.

Features » Demo » Download »

Attitude

Attitude is a Simple, Clean and Responsive Retina Ready WordPress Theme which adapts automatically to your tablets and mobile devices. Along with the elegant design the theme is easily customizable with numerous theme options.

Features » Demo » Download »

Clippy

Simple, responsive, pin-style theme for your personal blog.

Features » Demo » Download »

Sensitive

Fully Responsive WordPress Theme using Twitter Bootstrap with Metro Styled Accent. This theme is will make your website adaptable with mobile devices. Theme Features: Custom Homepage Settings, 3 Page Templates, Custom Background Support, Search Engine Friendly.

Features » Demo » Download »

Impulse

A very neat and clean blue, black and white business theme. The theme supports widgets. And features theme-options, threaded-comments and multi-level dropdown menu. A simple and neat typography.

Features » Demo » Download »

Prana

Prana is a beautiful theme with simple and clean design. Theme can easily be used as a personal portfolio, simple blog or a complete business website.

Features » Demo » Download »

Orbit

Orbit Theme adapts your website to mobile devices and the desktop. Theme Options with Color Schemes, Front Page for Business, Fonts Options (include Google Fonts), Social Networking, Slider in Front Page, Search Engine Friendly, 6 Widget Areas (3 in Front Page and 3 for Footer), 2 Menu Positions, 2 page templates with its sidebar and W3C Markup Validated.

Features » Demo » Download »

tdSimple

tdSimple is super clean, very simple and elegant WordPress theme. It’s also responsive.

Features » Demo » Download »

Academica

Academica is an education- and school-oriented CMS theme with a three-column layout and modern design. It is easy to customize and comes with a custom widget, three templates for Posts and Pages, and a featured content slider.

Features » Demo » Download »

Playbook

Playbook is a traditional WorPress theme with a dual column post layout, a fully responsive design, and is jampacked with all MyThemeShop’s best features. Playbook includes SEO optimization, custom widgets, our industry grade options panel, and much more, and best of all, it’s 100% free.

Features » Demo » Download »

Stitch

Stitch is a clean, modern theme in cool tones, with support for one widget area, custom drop-down menus, custom header and background, multiple post formats, and a mobile-friendly, responsive design.

Features » Demo » Download »

The post All the Best & Well-Designed Free WordPress Themes from April 2013 appeared first on WPLift.