In one of the most apropos uses of a .blog domain, Refined.blog is a new website that promotes personal blogging with a curated list of software engineering blogs. It’s a simple site with an index of blogs, their Hacker News scores, tags, and a link to each blog’s RSS feed. The search function is very…
WordPress.com has partnered with Pexels, a popular stock photo library, to offer convenient access to stock photos inside the post editor. Hundreds of high quality free stock photo sites have cropped up on the web over the past few years, but Pexels is differentiating itself with a commitment to hosting diversity-focused images and videos that…
Over the years, I’ve received requests from people wanting their comments removed from the site. I recently received a request from a reader that I remove a comment they made three years ago because it was showing up in Google search results for their name. Normally, I ignore these requests as it makes me feel…
When I wrote about enhanced plugin installs being removed from WordPress 4.2 last week, a few readers asked how I created the animated image that shows how shiny updates work. I used LICEcap by Çockos Incorporated, which is free, GPL licensed software available for Windows and OSX. LICEcap has an adjustable frame that you place over…
Oli Dale has an article on WPLift that describes what subject matter he’d focus on if he started a site devoted to WordPress today. Throughout the article, he mentions niches that are already well covered such as WordPress news and tutorials. He concludes the article suggesting that new sites about WordPress be narrowly focused on…
Pocket is a handy service for saving articles to read later. It has mobile apps for every platform and its own reader that makes any content easy to read on the go. Once in awhile you read an article that really inspires you. Pocket’s tagging feature makes it possible to share those articles on your…
Earlier this year Copyblogger set the blogosphere ablaze with its controversial decision to turn off comments. The announcement cited the burden of moderation, spam, and the availability of other conversation “outposts” as the main reasons for closing comments. It also gave the impression that Copyblogger had in many ways outgrown comments: Blog comments are an…
There are several options when it comes to backing up a WordPress site. Depending on the type of access you have, retrieving the database or an XML backup is easy. But what if you don’t have access to the database or the backend? Consider the following scenario presented on the WordPress subreddit: A relative who…
Disqus announced it is testing out a new advertising technique in the form of sponsored comments. According to the post, the experiment has been going on for at least a month and based on the results, is expanding it across the service. The sponsored comments are clearly marked as such and can contain any type…
In the course of blogging about important issues, there are times when you may need to link to dubious or objectionable material in order to provide context for your post. For example, some subject matter may necessitate a reference to racist material or a fraudulent business. Unfortunately, when it comes to SEO, the age old…
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.…
Remember favicons? Those cute 16×16 pixel images that are used to quickly locate a site when multiple browser tabs are opened. According to Philippe Bernard, favicons are not mobile friendly nor do they look good on mobile platforms by default. That’s why he created RealFaviconGenerator.net. The site generates favicons that look good in all major…
Typeform is a brand new free service that makes it easy to create stylish forms. The interface reminds me of GravityForms. Field types are located on the left part of the screen while the form structure is on the right. There are a myriad of field types ranging from dropdown boxes to multiple choice questions.…
Checking for broken links using WordPress plugins can lead to intensive use of server resources and impact site performance. Plugins like Broken Link Checker are restricted on certain webhosts because of the performance issues they can introduce to a site. Thankfully, there are free programs available that off-load the process of checking links from the…
On October 31st, Opera announced that it is shutting down My Opera on March 1, 2014. My Opera is a social network of sorts made up of blogs, email, and a place to discuss Opera with friends. While the initial concept was launched in 2001 and then expanded upon in 2006, Opera states there are…