Setting up WordPress locally in less than 5 minutes

By Simon TomkinsLeave a comment

I’ve tried and tested lots of local WordPress solutions over the years, most notably WAMP, MAMP, and Docker, to name just a few. The thing is, I’m impatient. I’d prefer to spend my time designing and developing rather than fiddling around in the terminal or wondering by a local SQL has become corrupted after a reboot and is no longer recognized (thank you MAMP for that one).

After copious gnashing of teeth and colorful swearing I’ve settled on, what I think, is an absolutely outstanding environment for developing sites locally. And that’s Local by Flywheel.

Read Full Article

Where And How To Add Code Snippets To WordPress – Both PHP And CSS

By Colin Newcomer9 Comments

Are you struggling with how to add code snippets to WordPress?

Code snippets unlock a whole heap of helpful functionality…but sometimes it seems like developers just magically expect you to know where to put each code snippet, right?

And because digging into source code is a serious thing, you definitely don’t want to trip up and accidentally make a mistake…

To help you avoid that unfortunate circumstance, I’m going to cover two things in this post:

  • Where to add those code snippets you see flying around the WordPress community
  • How to safely add those code snippets so that they don’t mess up your site and you won’t accidentally lose them if you update your theme (or switch themes)

Read Full Article

How To Give Your WordPress Site A Periodic Health Check

By Colin NewcomerLeave a comment

When you launched your WordPress site, you probably did a thorough test to make sure everything worked just like you wanted. On the first day of your new site, it’s like moving into a brand new apartment – everything is clean and works perfectly!

But as time goes on and wear and tear takes its toll, it’s all too easy for that to change…both for apartments and WordPress sites. So to make sure your WordPress site is still humming along perfectly, you need to be a little proactive and give your site periodic health checks.

That’s what I’ll be talking about today – how to give your WordPress site a health check to make sure it’s still in tip-top shape.

Read Full Article

8 Helpful WordPress Analytics Plugins That Aren’t All Named Google Analytics

By Colin NewcomerLeave a comment

You’ve got a WordPress website – congrats! Now you need to figure out how to make your website better. And part of doing that is learning more about your content and your visitors. Figuring out what content is the most popular, where your visitors are coming from, what they’re clicking on…

That all helps build a more successful website.

But if you want to do that on WordPress, you’re going to need help. That’s where WordPress analytics plugins come in. And that’s also where most WordPress blogs rattle off a list of Google Analytics plugins and call it a day.

To avoid that, I’m going to spend this post covering a variety of WordPress analytics plugins. Yes – one of those plugins deals with Google Analytics – but the rest open up new analytics options you might not have known about.

*Note – I’m going to refer to all of these as “plugins” because they all offer a dedicated WordPress plugin. But a few of these tools are technically SaaS products. The plugin terminology is used for simplicity.

Read Full Article

Gutenberg Editor Review: Thoughts on the New WordPress Editor

By Colin Newcomer6 Comments

For the longest time, you’ve been writing your WordPress posts in the open source TinyMCE Editor that’s included in the core WordPress software. Sometime soon, likely WordPress 5.0, that’s slated to change with the introduction of the brand new Gutenberg Editor.

Yes, the WordPress team is in the process of completely changing the content creation experience. It’s a pretty big deal.

Just recently, the team released the beta version of the Gutenberg Editor to the public. It’s listed on WordPress.org, so you can try it out for yourself (though don’t do that on a production site).

But before you run off to experiment, I thought I’d dig in and give you my very own Gutenberg Editor review.

Read Full Article