Scroll through any major social network and you’ll notice the same imbalance: only a small fraction of users are genuine “creators”. Most people are silent consumers. They browse, like, perhaps comment, but rarely publish original content. Yet platforms live and die on fresh material. New posts are what keep you coming back, and without them the feed quickly goes stale.

That’s why social networks are embracing AI with such enthusiasm. For them, AI is a dream come true: it lowers the barrier to entry, giving anyone the ability to generate something out of nothing. Suddenly, the hesitant lurker who never dared to post a Reel is now sharing dozens. The cycle accelerates – more posts, more likes, more remixes, more scrolling. Engagement figures climb, and the machine keeps humming.

Fifteen years ago, most people weren’t “creators”. Today, nearly everyone is. We’re all productising ourselves in some way, which could be selling a service, a persona, or at the very least, our attention. Even those who aren’t monetising are still feeding the system with content. And with AI tools making creation faster and easier than ever, there are fewer excuses not to join in.

What will it be next year? Something like Gattaca? I don’t think we’re far away from it.

But here’s the catch: when the volume of content skyrockets, quality inevitably drops. If everyone can publish instantly, the pressure to meet a certain standard disappears. The floodgates open, and the platforms don’t mind, because for them, quantity matters more than quality.

So who really wins in this new creator economy? Not the average user, and not even the creators themselves. The real winners are the tech giants. They own the infrastructure, the algorithms, the distribution channels, the digital motorways we all travel on. And every new piece of AI‑generated content is another toll they collect.

AI may empower individuals in small ways, but at scale, it’s a wager placed squarely in big tech’s favour. And if it pays off, they’ll be the only ones cashing in.

That’s just my thoughts on AI and the creator economy, but feel free to form your own opinion.

The post The Creator Economy in the Age of AI appeared first on Liam Jay Designs.

Hyperlinks serve as the web’s connective tissue, ubiquitously woven into the fabric of online content. Their pervasive nature means that the design and operational aspects of hyperlinks, particularly external ones, typically escape our attention. Yet, as we delve deeper, we uncover the significance of their design—a critical element in the user experience.

Most external links should open in the same tab, but there are occasions when opening a link in a new tab makes the most sense

As an example, if a user is filling in a form, and navigates away from it, they’ll lose unsaved or all of their progress. External links that are on the form page or part of the form could open in a new tab to ensure that the user doesn’t lose their progress.

Accessible design and code for external links opening in a new tab

Here’s the HTML for a link with an icon and text that is visually hidden off the page. I’m not including the CSS for this as I’m sure you already have your own visually-hidden styling, so feel free to adjust the class names in the below example to suit your own project.

<a href="#0" target="_blank" rel="noopener">
  Example link text 
  <i aria-hidden="true" class="icon-external"> 
  <span class="visually-hidden">Opens in new tab
</a>

Hopefully this acts as a basic starting point to help you to make external links user-friendly and accessible

Read more of my tips via this blog.

The post How to make external links user-friendly and accessible appeared first on Liam Jay Designs.

If you’ve done any development work with WordPress then you’ve probably noticed two similar looking rows in the database. Specifically WP_HOME and WP_SITEURL.

These two have always confused me.

To set the URL of your site you need to use the WP_HOME constant, not the WP_SITEURL constant.

The WP_SITEURL constant does not change your site’s URL.

Confused?

The official description of what WP_SITEURL does is “the address where your WordPress core files reside.” This is also confusing because it’s a URL, not a directory.

Don’t blame me for this, I’m just the messenger imparting the information. I don’t make the rules!

Setting WP_HOME and WP_SITEURL overrides the home and siteurl entries in the wp_options database table. So that, at least, makes sense.

// NOTE: These must not have trailing slashes
define( 'WP_HOME', 'https://website.com' );
define( 'WP_SITEURL', 'https://website.com/wordpress` );

The WP_SITEURL setting can also be used when you have moved your core WordPress files to a different directory.

One final thing to note is that when moving sites, these aren’t the only things you have to change. A full database search-and-replace for the URL strings are recommended.

Hopefully, this explanation has helped to show the difference between WP_HOME and WP_SITEURL in WordPress.

If you want to learn more, I recommend this blog post on the entire guide to the wp-config.php file – https://deliciousbrains.com/developers-guide-to-wpconfig/

If you need any help with your own website, please get in touch.

The post The difference with WP_HOME and WP_SITEURL in WordPress appeared first on Liam Jay Designs.

<?php
$args = array(
    'post_type' => 'product',
    'posts_per_page' => 12,
    'tax_query' => array(
            array(
                'taxonomy' => 'product_visibility',
                'field'    => 'name',
                'terms'    => 'featured',
            ),
        ),
    );
$loop = new WP_Query( $args );
if ( $loop->have_posts() ) {
    while ( $loop->have_posts() ) : $loop->the_post();
        wc_get_template_part( 'content', 'product' );
    endwhile;
} else {
    echo __( 'No products found' );
}
wp_reset_postdata();
?>

The post Featured Products Loop in WooCommerce 3 appeared first on Liam Jay Designs.

Getting SSL on MAMP can be a pain. For local development you can use self signed certs. To overcome the problems relating to local dev on OSX. I do the following:

Please note, I am using Google Chrome for this and have not tested in on any other browsers.

1. Create your certificate and serve it up.
2. Navigate to the https url.
3. Open dev tools > security > view certificate.
   
4. Drag the certificate icon to the desktop and double click on it, this will open up keychain access.
5. Drag the certificate icon to login, open up log-in and double click on the certificate (it should be named with the dev domain or similar) open up the trust dropdown and select always trust. Go back to your app close the window and re-open with https, you should now have ‘faux’ https for your dev domain.
   

The post Self-signed certificates for SSL on MAMP appeared first on Liam Jay Designs.

This post is more for my own future reference than anything else, so I can use it when I need to make a GDPR Compliant Contact Form, but it might be of some help to others too.

I’m sure by now, almost everyone in the web industry will have heard about GDPR, so it’s not something I’m going to explain here. If you’re dealing with a more complex type of form then there’s many other things that will need to be considered, but that’s beyond the scope of this post.

I’ve read a lot about making forms GDPR compliant, which changes depending on what purpose the form in question does.

In most cases, what I was looking for was a simple reference for what do you need to do to make a simple contact form GDPR compliant.

Disclaimer: this is by no means legal advice and is based entirely on my findings of this subject so far. It’s likely that many things could change regarding the law or that plugins could become updated. Please seek proper legal advice on the subject if required and remember to check for the latest WordPress updates.

Acceptance Checkbox

In an effort to keep this super simple, for most basic contact forms to be GDPR compliant, you’re going to need to include an acceptance checkbox.

A condition of GDPR is that you must gain a user’s consent whenever gathering data. This must be their explicit consent, which means it has to be opt-in (rather than a pre-ticked checkbox), it must be separate from any other terms and conditions and make it clear as to why you want the data and what you’re going to do with it.

It could also be argued that it is reasonable to assume that if someone willingly provides you with their contact details that they are okay with you storing their data and for you to contact them based on this request, but at no point have they agreed to receiving marketing emails like newsletters or promotional offers. If you’re taking that attitude then no acceptance checkbox is needed as long as you never send them newsletters or such like.

Email or Database submissions?

The big question is how you’re handling the form submissions. If they’re not being stored on the server and relying entirely on email responses then you probably don’t need to let users know that you’re storing their data (because you won’t be). However, I personally think that an acceptance box is best practice as you’ll still potentially be dealing with data and storing it for a certain period of time via email anyway, so gaining a user’s explicit opt-in and linking to your privacy policy would still be good practice.

Examples

Below are a few examples of contact form acceptance checkboxes with wording that I like to use.

Hopefully this has helped to give a brief overview of what’s needed on a simple GDPR compliant contact form.

The post GDPR Compliant Contact Form appeared first on Liam Jay Designs.

Unlike a programming language that requires knowledge of loops, variables, and other concepts, CSS is pretty easy to pick up. Maybe it’s because of this that it has gained the reputation of being simple. It is simple in the sense of “not complex”, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Mistaking “simple” for “easy” will only lead to heartache.

I think that’s what’s happened with some programmers coming to CSS for the first time. They’ve heard it’s simple, so they assume it’s easy. But then when they try to use it, it doesn’t work. It must be the fault of the language because they know that they are smart, and this is supposed to be easy. So they blame the language. They say it’s broken. And so they try to “fix” it by making it conform to a more programmatic way of thinking.

I can’t help but think that they would be less frustrated if they would accept that CSS is not easy. Simple, yes, but not easy.

Thanks Jeremy for writing something so succinct and eloquent to put across a potentially complex subject.

The post CSS is not easy appeared first on Liam Jay Designs.

Luckily, I found the following CSS solution that did the trick – bonus is that no javascript is needed!

:last-child:nth-child(odd)

For a working example of this, checkout this pen on codepen – click on the list items to remove one so you can see the different styling for the last item come into play.

See the Pen Selecting the last item in a 2 column list of varying length by Liam (@Sweetums66) on CodePen.

Hat tip to Jackie Balzer for originally suggesting this CSS tip which I’ve no longer been able to find.

The post CSS Tip – Selecting the last (odd numbered) item in a list of varying length appeared first on Liam Jay Designs.

Do I need to use Grunt?

Do I need to use Gulp?

Do I need to use Sass?

Do I need to use React?

I see people asking these type of questions a lot, and I think the answer should be to ask what problems each of those things is trying to solve and do you have those problems?

If the answer is yes then you probably should be using the ones that help to solve those issues, but if not then why over complicate your work process?

Don’t be afraid to KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) your workflow.

The post KISS your workflow appeared first on Liam Jay Designs.

A couple of days ago, I saw the above image by Yash Bhardwaj who created this humorous little illustration showing what everyone who has ever worked on a design project will have experienced at one time or another.

I know as I used to be guilty of doing the same thing, and I figured there might still be a lot of people struggling with this issue.

My solution uses multiple folders to create a better file structure for each version and it’s worked well so far.

If you maintain good file structure you’re making things much easier across the whole project, so next time you’re working on a project, instead of just adding _final to your filenames, why not try splitting each version out into its own folder (V1, V2, V3 etc..).

The post Good File Structure For Design Visuals appeared first on Liam Jay Designs.