The WordPress.org Plugin Repository Now Officially Accepts GPLv3 Licensed Code
WordPress core team member Andrew Nacin recently posted on the WordPress development blog that the wordpress.org Plugin Repository now accepts GPLv3 compatible code, which brings it inline with the themes directory. There’s no need to get into the joys of understanding all the different software licenses here, but if you distribute code, in particular open source code, understanding licensing requirements is essential.

Optimizing WordPress Loading Speed with header.php and .htaccess
WordPress automatically loads in a lot of information with header.php and some of the enqueued scripts from functions.php. WP Tuts Plus gives you some great examples of some spring cleaning you can do in header.php and with your .htaccess file. One helpful tip: if you have a large site with many posts, reduce your MySQL database size by removing revisions.

How to Fix Hacked WordPress Sites: Step by Step
Having your site hacked is scary. Are you able to retrieve your data, is everything lost, when did the attack occur? These are all questions that can give a developer or site owner a heart attack, but they can all be dealt with. WordPress Jedi calmly goes over how to see what happened, how to scan and fix files and the steps to take after you are back up and running. After you read this, go back up your database, because really, what can it hurt to be safe?

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WordFence – Security Plugin
This past week I saw a tweet from @gilbitron about a new WordPress security plugin. It was the same day that a site I’m not too involved with was hacked and put on the malicious Google list. After taking a few seconds to check out the description of WordFence, I was sold. A free security plugin that sends you emails when you’re infected? Perfect. After installing the plugin and running a few scans, I found that, thankfully, my site was fine. The only alerts I got were for plugin updates. WordFence also has premium plans, but the free plugin will do for those that just want some surface-layer security. Take a look and read about some of the cool features.

Handy WordPress Body Class Reference
Options abound in this handy reference from Organized Themes. Creating a function to detect browsers and add a special class is definitely one of the finer nuggets in the post. Especially helpful for pesky cross-browser sizing issues.

Add Theme Editor Link in Admin Bar
WPBeginner has some of the most useful WordPress snippets I’ve seen in the WordPress community. As simple as this snippet is, it could really help out your Admin UI if you frequent the Theme Editor page.

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Soliloquy: Responsive jQuery Slider
Everyone seems to have the “best” responsive jQuery slider plugin, but we doubt there will be any shortage of new responsive slider plugins this year. Soliloquy definitely has a chance to be the best (minus the $20/yr price tag) and sets the bar pretty high. With WooThemes acquisition of FlexSlider, it’s only a matter of time until they unleash their own beastly responsive slider plugin.

Creating a Mobile-First Responsive Web Design
This is one of the best overviews I’ve seen yet about responsive web design and development. The article addresses structure, style, data URI’s, and much more. Best of all, it’s all developed in HTML5 so you can see how everything fits together for a future-proof website.

Fixing “Error Establishing Database Connection”
If you’re new to the WordPress scene, it’s very possible that you will see this error at some point. No need to be scared of it, WPBeginner does a great job of explaining why you get the error, how to fix it and how to get your site up and running once you’ve hit the database error.

Pretty Cool CSS3 Checkbox Styles
The above link will take you to a magical land of styled checkbox inputs. Something that was previously tough to do without the help of JavaScript or some very clever code can now be designed and animated with some nifty CSS3. Even if you never plan to use the code snippets, at least check out the demo.

Why Minify?
Minifying is something most websites should do, and of course there’s a plugin for it. WPMU gives you an inside look at Better WordPress Minify, a plugin that minifies your JS and CSS files on activation. While the results appear minimal, they were still positive and worth a look.

Responsive Images for WordPress
We’ve discussed responsive images in WordPress before, but David Smith of .net magazine found a way to successfully remove the automated height and width attributes given to images. With a simple preg_replace PHP snippet, you too can have fluid images on your site.

Screenqueries BETA
A great site to take a look at your site on many different devices. While not perfect, this is definitely a better way to test responsiveness than going out and buying every mobile device you can think of.

GChart – WordPress Chart Generator
Basically Google Charts for WordPress, GChart looks like a great plugin for business, analytics, or other kind of statistical site. We’re nerds when it comes to numbers (read: we were almost actuaries) so we think GChart is pretty cool. With a $12 price tag on Code Canyon it seems like a worthy investment.

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Where The WordPress Economy Is Going
Another really good article about the WordPress economy and where things are headed. Smashing Magazine takes a look at the state of WordPress Multisite, Software As A Service, Teaching, and the Future of WordPress. Be sure to take a look at the end of the article, which has some of the top WP people to follow and learn from.

GitHub’s Octocat-mania
I have always loved the Octocat. It’s quirkiness and fun look have gotten me to hunker down and learn how to use GitHub. This past week I came across octodex.github.com which holds all of the Octocats that have ever been created. There are 75 in total at the time of this writing and range from Tron-octocat to Link-octocat and many more. If for nothing else, take a second to smile at open-source creativity.

10 Useful SQL Queries To Clean Your WP Database
It would be easy to install WordPress and never touch your database. MySQL is fairly reliable and for the most part you could install WordPress several times without ever glancing at the table breakdown in PHPmyAdmin or however you view your MySQL tables, but the link above will give you a few good reasons to take a glance at your tables and clean them up. These SQL Queries can help you do some housecleaning or help you batch deactivate your plugins. Which of these SQL queries will be most beneficial to you?

New jQuery Upload Plugin
A new jQuery file upload plugin that looks pretty sweet, built with Bootstrap and Glyphicons. On the demo site you can use all of functionality as if you were actually uploading to a server (your files will be deleted 5 minutes after upload). The plugin works with any server-side scripting language so go test it out!

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WordPress 3.4 Preview of New Features
And speaking of the beta, here’s a little preview of what you’ll find in WordPress 3.4. The major buzz seems to be around Theme Customizer with Previewer, which allows you to edit custom option on a theme and preview them before you switch over to the new theme. Not sure if your custom elements will look good in a theme the customizer previewer solves that issue for you. The UI for that particular portion is also pretty slick. Other new features include, but are not limited to: flexible custom header sizes, support for installing child themes from the WordPress Themes Directory and performance improvements to WP_Query by splitting the query.

Interesting WordPress Statistics
We’re math nerds here at Max Foundry, so statistics make us happy. Statistics about WordPress make us even happier. With the stats in the above link you may be surprised with the number of WordPress sites currently running on the web. If 16% of the internet doesn’t get you excited to keep working with WordPress, then maybe you’ll stick around for the higher employment needs. Elance.com is reporting that WordPress programmers are high in demand, second to General PHP programmers.

Web Font Combinator
With Google Web Fonts, Adobe Typekit, Font-Squirrel and the thousands of free font sites, the opportunity to use interesting fonts on the web is at an all-time high. This handy little site was built to let you play around with different webfont combinations. Change the h1, the h2, the body text and the background to get a perfect combo.

Protect Your WordPress Site Using .htaccess
One of the only negatives of having more sites developed with WordPress is the security threat goes up. More sites, more people trying to hack those sites. So how can you protect your site? .Net Magazine offers a few helpful tips for using the .htaccess file to steer would-be hackers away from your precious files. If you are the only person making changes to your site, check out Admin access from your IP only.

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Translating Your WordPress Site
Supporting multiple languages is important if your site or blog is going to reach more than one core demographic. WPLift takes a look at some of the best ways to get your site ready for speakers of any language. Google Translate seems to be a top choice, but the Polylang UI definitely has me leaning in that direction. What do you use to make your site multilingual?

Awesome WordPress Wallpapers
WordPress Wallpapers is the best collection of wallpapers related to WordPress on the web. Although there are only three pages of wallpapers at the time of this writing, expect more in the coming weeks. Geek out and let your desktop show off what your real passion is. Another great part is that wallpapers are also available for tablets and mobile devices AND they’re all free. The WP community is wonderful!

11 Light Subtle Patterns by Orman Clark
We’ve talked about subtle patterns before and use them quite frequently, so of course we’ve got love for these 11 patterns. This freebie will add some texture to your backgrounds, giving it more depth and making you look like a texture genius. You’ll have to submit your email address, but it’s worth it to add some depth to that background textures folder on your desktop.

Beautiful Web Type Combinations
Font combinations can be tough. Do you go with all serif, all sans-serif or a nice mixture? The above GitHub repo was created and contains 8+ of examples and the names of the fonts used. Although you may not want to use these exact combinations, it’s a great piece of inspiration for web-type brain-blockage. Watch the repository on GitHub to see updates when they happen.

Interesting Javascript Library for Syntax Highlighting
More wonderful GitHubness with this project that makes your code pretty. Rainbow is a customizable Javascript library that is great if you’re tired of the standard syntax highlighting. Not a fan of yellow? That’s fine, Rainbow has editable CSS for you to easily make color changes. To grab the Rainbow library, simply fork it on GitHub or just watch the repo.

GitHub – Instantly Beautiful Project Pages
With all of this GitHub talk we would be remiss if we didn’t discuss the new GitHub Page Generator. After pushing a project to GitHub, you can instantly have a great page to accompany the project. As it stands now there are only eight themes to choose from, but as the generator grows in popularity, so too will the theme library. Check it out and tell us what your favorite theme is.

MORE CSS
If you missed it yesterday, one of the best technology-related pranks was MORE CSS, the extended brother of SASS and LESS. What’s MORE you ask? Only the finest way to use CSS. With the slogan “write more, do less” you know people want it to catch on. No more confusing numbers, just write it all out!

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WP App Store
The idea of the WP App Store is to bring the theme and plugin shopping experience into the dashboard, making finding the plugins you want and need much simpler. Be on the lookout for the launch date sometime in April. If you go to the home page you can sign up to receive a notice when it goes live.

Coming Soon – Easy Digital Downloads for WordPress
In the digital world, there has always been a conversation about how best to sell digital goods. Security, stability and easy access are all big issues to keep in mind when putting your digital product on the market, but Pippin’s Plugins is planning on helping you out. Easy Digital Downloads for WordPress is coming soon and will be completely free. Check out the link above for more specs.

TrendMicro – Compromised WordPress Sites
This past week TrendMicro reported there had been a massive amount of WordPress sites compromised and while the article ends up being a plug for TrendMicro security products, it’s still an important piece of knowledge. How do you personally protect your WordPress sites and what are your favorite security plugins?

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All Settings Plugin
See all the hidden options in your WordPress site with the All Settings plugin. For those that may want to control every single aspect of a WordPress site, this plugin is definitely for you. The plugin simply adds an extra menu bar to the Settings panel and shows you everything. The plugin takes everything from options.php and turns it into an easy to use admin layout.

WordPress Genius Bakery – Jitterbug
Earlier this week, Max Foundry backed a Kickstarter project called the “Jitterbug Bakery,” located (in the future) in Georgia. The project will result in the building and establishing of a bakery/coffeehouse/WordPress Genius bar when completed. All Jitterbug employees will be proficient in WordPress and it will be a great place to go for blog or site help. It’s awesome to see the WordPress community rallying around this project, with some devs offering WP help to those who donate to the project. There are also tastier incentives to making a donation, like bakery recipes or baked goods care packages.

How to Create Stunning Effects With 165 Media Queries or Less!
Arley McBlain wrote a guest post on CSS Tricks this past week all about media queries and responsive design. While there aren’t too many code snippets, there are some great ideas in here, from tweaking personal projects to changing descriptive words based on browser size. And yes, if you view the demo and view the source, there are 165 media queries for changing the content. Now that is dedication to responsiveness.

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WooThemes Acquires FlexSlider
Big news in the responsive slider realm this week as FlexSlider, in our opinion one of the top responsive sliders out there, was picked up by WooThemes. FlexSlider creator Tyler Smith will still be running point on the upgrading and technical support of FlexSlider, but will now be backed by the WooThemes tech team. They are already working on the next version of FlexSlider, and don’t be surprised if WooThemes releases a plugin in the near future.

Writing Unit Tests for WordPress Plugins
Updating your plugins for WordPress can be tasking, both before and after the upgrade gets pushed. To take some of the stress out of your updates, Smashing Mag wrote this article on unit testing your plugins to make updating as smooth as possible. The article also includes what NOT to unit test as well as other great tips.

WordPress GitHub Plugin Updater
Allow your WordPress plugin to be updated whenever you push out a new version of your plugin to GitHub; similar to the experience users know and love with the WordPress.org plugin repository. This can help streamline your updating process, getting your new versions out in a simple fashion.

Font Awesome – Bootstrap Iconic Font
If you haven’t heard about Twitter Bootstrap yet, pop your peepers at this. It’s a responsive framework with a huge amount of flexibility with a 12-gutter responsive system, built-in tooltips, and so on. Font Awesome was created specifically to make implementing icons in Bootstrap quick and easy. Using the <i> tag, and a class of your choosing, you can pop any of the 150+ icons into your page easily. Keep an eye on this icon font as there are more updates planned for the near future.

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PliablePress was seeking a natural partner as it shifted the main focus of its business to custom WordPress development. Said PliablePress Managing Partner Michael Martin, “After I closed PliablePress, several people had an interest in taking it over. Max Foundry has a history of running a successful WordPress product line, which convinced me that they were the best possible team to partner with. They have a solid history of looking after customers very well, so this really is a great outcome for existing PliablePress users. I know that management at Max Foundry will continue producing great WordPress products.”

According to Senoff, Max Foundry is looking to partner with top designers and developers in building out its portfolio of themes through both the acquisition of well-followed themes and by launching new themes. The company’s products include “Marketeer”, a theme integrated with WordPress landing pages; “MaxInbound”, the leading WordPress landing page plugin for quickly adding landing pages to any WordPress site; and MaxButtons Pro, the industry-leading CSS3 button generator.

Inquiries and interested parties can contact Max Foundry here.

Affiliates of Max Foundry earn 50% of each sale originating from their site. More details about Max Foundry’s affiliate program can be found here.

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