WordPress

WordCamp Lehigh Vally 2018

by Em Are · Aug 19, 2018

This weekend I had the opportunity to speak at the 3rd occasion of the WordCamp Lehigh Valley. My topic, WordPress Security, was directed to those new, or not-so-new, to managing or creating their own websites in WordPress. I have attended the two previous Lehigh Valley WordCamps, and the event is growing every year. It is organized and managed by good people who provide an exciting conference.

Below are a couple of tweets related to my presentation. Once the video of my talk is published on wordpress.tv I’ll update this post with the link.

Standing room only at the WordPress Security talk with @MattRyan_co. #WCLVPA pic.twitter.com/oBhSVXEMTZ

— Expander Digital (@expanderdigital) August 18, 2018

Slides from today’s WordPress security talk at WordCamp Lehigh Valley #wclvpa https://t.co/PXGETeT7LL pic.twitter.com/D5Fd9TeuOl

— Matt Ryan (@MattRyan_co) August 18, 2018

Link to slides

I’m In The Right Place

by Em Are · Dec 23, 2015

I celebrated my birthday yesterday. Another one in the books. It was different somehow. Working as a freelancer, from a home office, gives me plenty of opportunity for quiet reflection, especially at this time of year when business activity seems to slow.

The development projects were all caught up, support issues had been dealt with for the moment, so I had time to read a few of the blogs I follow. There were a number of year-end wrap ups, and a few really good how-to posts. The year-end wraps caught most of my attention. You see, I am coming to the end of my first year as a full-time WordPress developer and small business owner.

In previous years I was able to look back and see how things went as a part-time freelancer. Those two years are marked with an asterisk (*), you know, the indicator to check the footnotes. They had some other form of income, either from a part-time job, or most recently, from another full-time gig that ended abruptly with the Friday-end-of-day-can-you-stop-in-my-office-before-you-leave-im. “We’ve decided to go in a different direction….”. Oh, please, spare me the BS!

While the income as a freelance business owner has no-way come close to the income I earned in corporate America, the intangible benefits have far exceeded my expectations.

Visited my doctor this past week for my 6-month check-in. Blood pressure and that bad cholesterol stuff are both way down. First time in more than 7 years. Now THAT’s an accomplishment to be proud of. I think I can count that as some sort of money in the bank, right?

I categorize that as a symbol of one of the soft benefits of my new chapter. I’m more relaxed, I think, and I have slowed down. I like to think that decisions I make are more thought out and less knee-jerk. I’ve learned to step back from potentially tense situations (aka questionable communications with clients, friends, family) to add space for thinking.

I can’t control how things will turn out. I can’t change things that have occurred. I CAN affect how I react to things right now. I can live in this moment and be present to what I am experiencing and how I react to it.

After all, isn’t that what it’s all about? Being present to the situation we find ourselves in, engaging with it, and making the next right decision on how to proceed with it.

I’m going through the process of looking back on my business year. I think that I have positively impacted a number of small businesses by building new business websites for them, or helping them to maintain their existing small business website. Revenue has definitely increased from the previous year; albeit a little short of where I had projected. Time to re-think marketing and prospecting activities.

I have met a number of awesome people this past year. Some I have been able to teach something to, but many more I have been able to learn from. I attended 5 WordCamps and 12 WordPress meetups. I made presentations three times at meetups and volunteered at the Philly WordCamp. Being the’local guy’ I even helped coordinate a multi-national gathering of #genesiswp folks at the inaugural WordCamp US in Philadelphia earlier this month. Now THAT was cool.

So, as long as I’m willing and able to learn something new, I think I’m in the right place. This place, this moment, right now.

Onward and upward.

WordPress 4.3 – Oh The Things You Can Do

by Matt · Aug 19, 2015

I upgraded this website today to the latest release of WordPress. That is version 4.3, code-named “Billie” after the famous jazz singer Billie Holiday. You can read the back story about the name and the rest of the new features here. It’s a cool read.

WordPress 4.3! Oh, the things you can do with this release…

It WILL increase your happiness. There’s so many reasons to upgrade to the new release, but the thing I’m most jazzed about are the updates that come to life in the post editing screen. Oh baby! I love keyboard shortcuts. I have from my early days of MS-DOS (yes, I did say MS-DOS, you do the math). I always go to the keyboard shortcuts whenever I get a new app to use. I’m so much more efficient when I can rely on the keyboard, as opposed to the mouse/touchscreen/trackpad/<insert fav GUI device here>, when trying to do almost anything on the PC. Maybe it’s different on a MAC, but I don’t know; I live in the Windows world.

Back to WP 4.3 … the content editor, that’s the big empty box you usually see when you are adding a new page or post, now has really cool SHORT, shortcuts, that work, and are so helpful.

Cool Heading Style Shortcuts

No more clicking up to that ”Paragraph’ box to select the heading I want to use. The heading for this paragraph … I just kept typing to add it. Finished the previous paragraph, hit “Enter” followed by two “#”, the words “Cool ….” and, voila, it turned into a Heading 2 format style. Be still my twitching fingers. Sorry “Anker Vertical Mouse”. We’ll being seeing less of each other from now on. You want it to be Heading 1 style … you know … the biggest one that looks great for top of page headings. Just hit one # and keep typing. You have a Heading 1 style. Works for three, four, five or 6 # in a row. All the heading styles, literally at your fingertips.

Lists, Lists and More Lists

I am a list lover. I use Evernote for everything. Lots and lots of lists in Evernote. Constantly hitting the Ctrl + Shift + B sequence to make bullet lists. I missed that when writing in WordPress. I could copy my EN list into WP, but, well you’ve seen what happens to formatted text when you drop it in to the content editor. It always seems a frustrating game of chance for me. I never know what I’m going to get and it always involves deleting end of line characters, adding a new “Enter” character, rinse and repeat.

But now, in WordPress 4.3, I can keep writing. Start that line with a “-“, and as you type through to the end of line, “YES”, a bullet list item appears! Life is good. Simplicity flows over and around me. I hear the sound of ocean waves caressing the beach, so zen-like. Okay, maybe it’s not THAT great, but it is pretty damn cool.

Blockquotes Too

I’ll be honest. I don’t do much with blockquotes. The first three, yes three, websites I put up for clients had blockquotes interspersed in the content pages to emphasize, well, quotes. Know what? During the site acceptance review, ALL three of the clients came back telling me I had a typo in all the quotes. No right quotation mark. It’s indented. Looks out-of-place.

Really?

So that’s why I stay away from them unless the client SPECIFICALLY SAID THEY WANTED IT.

But when I do get to use them, starting the block of text with a ‘>’ is just about as cool as sliced bread. Auto-formatted just like my style sheet says. No selecting, clicking, adding new lines. Just keep typing and it appears!

Hit the little ? button in the editor menu bar to get the full listing of shortcuts. I’m sure you will learn something new.

More Changes Under The Hood

There’s quite a bit more stuff in there too. Easy to add site icons and favicons. I guess I don’t have to use that custom code snippet any more. Clients can now change that at will. An easy way to add menu items right from the Customizer. While I haven’t’ used it much yet, I do anticipate it streamlining my website setup workflow. And that is a good thing.

I think one of the most important under the cover items is the update that forces strong passwords. I am a true believer in strong passwords. My LastPass vault has just over 500 unique passwords in it, all 12 characters or longer, in the most obtuse arraignments ever. I could never remember them all, or even 2 of them for that matter. A password manager is a must. Forcing users to use strong passwords will be an inconvenience, for a while, until they figure out how to work with it. It is just one of those things you need to deal with.

Good Overview

wpbeginner.com did a great overview of this update, and broke it all down to very simple ideas for implementation. Go check out their blog post on what’s new with WordPress 4.3.

I’ll be updating the rest of my sites, and client sites, over the next few days. Can’t say enough good stuff about this.

Need Some Help

Cap Web Solutions, my alter-ego, can help you update your WordPress website to this latest release. Reach out, even if you just have some questions, they/we/I can help.

Until next time.

All the best.

WordPress Maintenance Release 4.2.3

by Matt · Jul 24, 2015

It was announced on wordpress.org on July 23 that version 4.2.3 of WordPress was released. Being a point release, in most instances this update will be automatically applied to your site. However, if you have automatic point release updates turned off, be sure to manually apply this update. The wordpress.org post provides instructions for the process.

It is a security release addressing problems in WordPress versions 4.2.2 and earlier where a cross-site scripting vulnerability was uncovered. This XSS vulnerability, could allow users with the Contributor or Author role to compromise a site.

Here is a link to the post on WordPress.org.

WP Tavern, one of my favorite go-to sources for breaking news in the world of WordPress, offers another great perspective on this release by Sarah Gooding. Check out her post here.

List of Genesis Themes

by Matt · Jul 8, 2015

Recently I have been asked by a few web development clients to give them some ideas about where to look for Genesis themes for their websites. A couple of the website packages we offer at Cap Web Solutions allow clients to choose an existing theme to be implemented on their site with varying degrees of customization.

I always send them first to the StudioPress Theme Selector page. Then I usually identify a few other top tier theme shops and pass along those links. I would go through the typical email copy-n-paste to assemble the lists and then I thought “someone must have already done this. Someone has already built a list of Genesis theme shops.” A tweak of my google search from ‘Genesis theme shops’ to ‘Genesis theme lists’ did the trick. A number of great lists were my reward. I went through a bunch of them, and, well, you know, I stayed near the top of the search results. Don’t we all?

There right near the top was Andrea Whitmer. While she and I have never met face to face, we have had a number of “conversations” via comments on her blogs. I trust her. After all, she’s the one who calmed my fears about jumping on-board with the Genesis Developer Pro Package last year. And I am soooo glad I did. Anyway, I feel that I can trust her theme shop recommendations to pass them along, untouched, to my web development clients.

So here it is. Andrea has assembled an awesome list of 3rd party theme developers. No doubt you will find something that coincides with your mind’s eye of what your site could look like.

Enjoy!

[listly id=”ZLH” layout=”short” show_header=”true” show_author=”true” show_sharing=”true” show_tools=”true” per_page=”25″]

Disclaimer: Some of the off-site links referenced on this site are what is referred to as an affiliate link. If you choose to purchase or use the product or service through that link, I will get a small referral fee from the service or product provider. The price of the resource is the same whether or not you use my affiliate link.

WordPress Updated

by Matt · Apr 21, 2015

WordPress version 4.1.2 was released today. This is a major security fix and we strongly urge everyone to update. Cap Web Solutions will update all of our support and maintenance customers right away. Additionally, all sites we currently have under development will be updated by day’s end.

Check out the release announcement yourself.

Do I Have a Great Bootstrapped Business Idea? #7daystartup Day 1

by Em Are · Jan 5, 2015

Here I am on a re-read of Dan Norris’ excellent book: The 7 Day Startup: You Don’t Learn Until You Launch (not an affiliate link). I purchased the book in December, read through it in an afternoon, and started churning things over in my head. With the bustle of the holiday season now past, its time to get back to work. I am going through the Day 1 task of brainstorming some ideas and then evaluating them against a checklist provided by Dan.

My business, Cap Web Solutions, has been up and running almost 6 months now. I am staying busy and loving the entrepreneurial business. I am learning new things every day, from the technical aspects of WordPress, PHP, CSS and challenging hosting partners to dealing with clients on a whole new level. Previously as a member of the corporate world, there was always limits on how I was able to interact, what I was able to offer to customers, and how I could respond. Now, as a solo business owner, I am able to interact, offer, and respond as I decide is right. This is a good thing, a very good thing.

However…yes, there’s always a ‘however’…I find that my original focus for the business has broadened. I have widened my aim so that more and more opportunity that comes across my plane, falls within my business niche. I have forgotten how to say ‘no’. I was so good at it before, or rather, I was good at repeating what my corporate handler always told me. Now, I’m saying ‘yes’ to each opportunity that comes to me. As I noted earlier, I am staying busy, but am I busy on the stuff that I really want to do with my business? I’ve decided that I am not. And so, it’s time to get the focus back. To niche down to the real opportunity for me and set myself up to offer the services that I am really excited to offer AND that I feel I can deliver the best value to my customers.

Back to Day 1 of the start-up. While technically this is not a start-up, it is a re-launching of business. Yesterday and most of today I have worked on the business idea. After 6 months I am able to make a few needed refinements on what it is I want to offer and how to offer it. My first goal was to offer WordPress support and maintenance services to local small businesses, churches and people in transition. As a related service, I would convert your existing non-WordPress site to a WordPress site and then give the ongoing support and maintenance for that site – this under a monthly support agreement. What I find is that I’m doing much more WordPress conversion and new development projects and much less monthly support and maintenance.

My “start-up/re-launch” will focus on the small regular tweaks/ changes/ updates/ maintenance of WordPress websites. What are these things, you ask? Well, it’s all that little stuff that you need to do to your WordPress website every month to keep it going, looking fresh and shiny, and staying current. It’s not big stuff. It’s tiny stuff. Backups, tweak a font or image, post a blog entry, update a plugin, set the SEO info for a page, change a color. Stuff that is accomplished in about 30 minutes – sometimes a little more than 30 minutes, sometimes a little less than 30 minutes. These are things that come up each month that you either don’t know how to do, or don’t want to do, but need done. I’ll attend to the details, so you don’t have to.

Since this tiny stuff only takes about a half hour, I’ll get your tiny stuff done quickly, usually in less than a business day. Have lots of little things to get done? We can handle it. In fact, we can reasonably handle one a day if that’s what you can throw at us. We do like to take the weekends off, but if it’s urgent, okay, we’ll do that, so long as you let us know its urgent and don’t take advantage of us.

Have a bigger job to do? Well, we’re going to have to pass. I can refer you to some excellent developers who can take that job, but we”re going to stay focused on being the best tiny task doer for your WordPress site.

So that’s it in a nutshell. The business idea is formulated. I have written it down. Heck, I’ve shared it with the Interwebs – that means its real. Right?

Tomorrow I’ll have the service better described so that both you and I will have a better understanding of what it will look like when it re-launches. Then I’ll have what we call an “MVP”, or minimally viable product. The front end will be pretty, but the behind-the-scenes stuff could be a little rough. But isn’t that okay? As long as the customer is getting the value they are paying for, how it is delivered is not as important. Right? Well, that will work for a while, but it really doesn’t allow for maintaining high levels of referable customer service and sustainable business growth. And after all, that’s what exploring new opportunities is all about now – finding something that I can do to support my family and I, while providing a needed service to my community.

By the way, if you haven’t read Dan’s book, do check it out. A refreshingly easy read, with a well laid out plan. I like his comfortable style of writing. It resonates with me. Maybe it will for you too.

Image Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/NPP/launch/index.html