John Blackbourn’s Query Monitor has quickly become a favorite debugging plugin for WordPress developers ever since it was released last November. The plugin has 227 stars on github and has been downloaded more than 5,000 times from WordPress.org. One of the unique features of Query Monitor is the ability to narrow things down by plugin…
Swedish designer Anders Norén is relatively new to the world of WordPress theme development but his breathtakingly simple themes are a refreshing addition to the ecosystem. Last August, Norén released Lingonberry, a responsive, retina-ready theme with beautiful typography. Delighted by the success of Lingonberry, which has received more than 8,000 downloads from WordPress.org, Norén decided…
The Aesop Storytelling Engine was created to empower the art of digital storytelling by making it easy for WordPress publishers to create interactive, feature-rich posts. Before Aesop came on the scene, these types of long-form storytelling posts often required quite a bit of code and were not easy for your average user to create. The…
Power Menus is a new WordPress plugin designed to make it simple to control menu items. The plugin handles both access and visibility on individual menu items and includes the following options: Control visibility of menu items for logged-in or non-logged-in users Show or hide items per user role Limit access to posts and pages…
The Learning Registry is an open source initiative dedicated to bringing together high quality digital learning resources from federal agencies and public and private organizations around the web. The registry is available for anyone to use – educators, publishers and developers are encouraged to tap into the database and add resources that haven’t yet been…
Last year Bootstrap joined the flat design craze with its 3.0 release and a new optional theme. The default box model and basic UI components have been greatly improved. Bootstrap 3.1 introduced an official Sass port, further expanding the framework’s toolbox. Awhile back, we featured WordPress themes built using the Foundation front-end framework. Since Bootstrap…
If you’ve ever tried to update a large WordPress multisite network, then you’ve undoubtedly experienced the frustration of watching that spinning indicator hang once it’s found a domain that can’t be reached. This is quite common in the case of domain mapping. A ticket exists for fixing this issue in WordPress, but in the meantime…
I never used to pay much attention to WordPress’ Distraction Free Writing mode. When the feature landed in WordPress 3.2, I thought I’d never use it. I was so used to the post editor screen as it was that I thought I was able to tune out all the extra noise related to content creation.…
Bucket List is a new plugin that lets you organize multiple lists of goals within WordPress. In case you’re not familiar with the term, a “bucket list” is a list of things you want to do before you kick the proverbial bucket. Many people get a kick out of crossing these items off one by…
Eric Blanchard has always been a techy at heart. In 2007 he was working with the Sinton Police Department. He wanted to create a website for the department but had no idea how. After some research he started learning CSS, HTML, MySQL, and PHP with the help of a friend. Blanchard cut his teeth building…
Arcade Basic is new free theme from WordPress theme designer c.bavota, who favors Bootstrap as a front-end framework for his products. The theme features a fullscreen header image, followed by a large call-to-action, widgetized homepage area and a block of posts at the bottom. Arcade Basic packs in a solid set of features under the…
Mark your calendars for Tuesday, Feb 25th. WP Elevation will be hosting WP Think Tank, a panel discussion about the future of WordPress. The event will take place live on Google Hangouts at 8PM UTC and participants will be able to join via a chatroom and ask questions. Inspired by topics that have come up…
Buckets is a plugin that has been providing an alternative to WordPress widgets for the past two years. Created by plugin developer Matthew Restorff, Buckets allows you to create reusable pieces of content and place them anywhere on your WordPress site. When describing his motivation for creating Buckets, Restorff says that the plugin was meant…
There’s a curious design trend among WordPress themes that shows no signs of stopping. The prominent use of mint green has become designers’ favorite highlight color. The trend started in the greater design community, as recently illustrated by Automattic design engineer Mel Choyce in her tweet commentary: Some interesting color trends appearing on dribbble: https://t.co/JUOl11VFnS…
Did you know that WordPress has built-in support for finding and using special characters in your content? This was news to me, after noticing a tweet from Mel Choyce, inquiring if anyone ever used the feature. The replies indicate that most have never used it. But what if that’s because nobody knows it’s there? After…