Yesterday, WordPres 5.0 "Bebo" was released. With it came a brand-new content editor called Gutenberg that completely changes how you edit posts and pages in WordPress. Now, this isn't a surprise - Gutenberg has been in development for years. Before it was merged into core, it was a plugin you could install to beta test. And, for the entirety of its existence, it's been a point of contention and debate in the WordPress community. What's the sitch on Gutenberg? To be honest, I didn't much into the discourse surrounding the 5.0 release and Gutenberg. It was at times very volatile, and I just ... Keep Reading
Off-Site Backups: What They Are & Why You Need Them
Let me tell you a little story. A story about how keeping off-site backups of my site (and my client sites!) saved my skin. Recently, my host experienced a... cataclysmic failure. It was a complete freak accident that I don't think anyone could have seen coming, but it resulted in almost every website they host going offline. Unfortunately, it took them quite a while to get back online - they went down Friday evening and my server wasn't restored until Tuesday morning. Not only were the websites down, but nobody could access their hosting account at all. No FTP, no cPanel ... Keep Reading
5 Quick Tips to Speed Up WordPress
You can literally never go wrong by making your website faster. It's helpful for your SEO - Google will rank slower websites lower than quick ones, especially on mobile. It's also crucial to making your website user-friendly (and help boost sales!). Now, there are all sorts of tactics you can use to speed up WordPress. But here are some of my tried-and-true absolute favorites. And you can do most of these in less than an hour. Heads up! This post contains affiliate links - some of the plugins or services I've linked to might give me a little "kickback" if you sign up. As always, though, I ... Keep Reading
Introducing Delight – a Girly Genesis Theme
Earlier this month, I quietly launched Delight, my first premium Genesis theme. When I say quietly, I mean quietly. I put up a post in Instagram and Facebook, pushed "publish" and walked away. My schedule has been crazy, but I really wanted to get it out in the open. So I had a quiet, little launch. Well, consider this Delight's Grand Opening. Because she's out there are ready for business, baby! (Yes my theme is a she, deal with it.) Introducing Delight! I don't get to do a lot of traditionally "feminine" designs. While my own branding is pretty feminine, I'd say 90% of my clients are ... Keep Reading
Better Responsive Video Embeds
Responsive videos are, at times, tricky. Especially when you're trying to embed a video from YouTube or Vimeo. You see, by default, YouTube videos "respond" by shrinking their width but keeping their height. Ultimately, this results in cropping the video down to a weird square. Try resizing your browser. See how the video crops? When you play the video, the inside will resize to the correct aspect ratio, so you have a lot of extra black space at the top and the bottom. Like when you were watching a "wide screen" movie on a square CRT TV in like, 2001. This approach is ... Keep Reading
How To: Add a Favicon to Your WordPress Website
Like Google Analytics, a favicon is something that every website should have configured. There are a lot of plugins that "help" you add a favicon to your WordPress website. But I'm a big fan of not adding plugins where you don't need to. And WordPress has custom favicon support built in! Want the quick & easy version? Here's a video showing you exactly how to add your own favicon to your WordPress website: Videos not your style? Here's a step-by-step tutorial. Step One: Log In to Your Website I feel like this is pretty self-explanatory. If you're not sure how to do this, you ... Keep Reading