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If you keep up with the many different text editors and developer tools available, you may have heard of a newer IDE called Visual Studio Code. VS Code is a free, open source code editor that is lightweight like Sublime Text, but offers many of the same features as bigger IDEs like PhpStorm or WebStorm. In this article I’ll review some features and extensions of VS Code that I really appreciate, and show you how to make the most out of it for WordPress and general web development.
WordPress Integration
Out-of-the-box, VS Code doesn’t support WordPress and PHP in general as well as some other development environments like PhpStorm. Luckily, that’s easy to change by installing some extensions. I recommend installing the PHP Intelephense extension, which adds PHP auto-completions, symbol navigation support, and a much better way to find references in your workspace.
While that will add autocompletions for PHP core functions and any functions that you have defined in your project, it won’t pick up on any WordPress core functions. For that I recommend installing the WordPress Snippet extension, which adds helpful autocompletions for most WordPress core functions,

“I just love those video backgrounds and we need them on our new website.” No, you don’t. “They are so engaging and set a friendly mood.” No, they don’t. “It’s an amazing new feature and it helps conversion.” No, it doesn’t. Besides that, the conversation is annoying me. Video backgrounds suck big time. Our good friend Karl Gilis of AGConsult said it perfectly: “Video backgrounds are the new sliders. They’re a distraction.” And just like sliders suck and should be banned from your website, so do video backgrounds. Why do you need that video background?
I dare to state that video backgrounds were invented by web agencies trying to convince customers of a particular design:
Hey, this will make you stand out!
Now this really sets a mood on your website, don’t you think?
Of course we can create that video for you at a mere x dollars extra
Video backgrounds will keep your visitors’ attention, so time on page goes up and that’s good for Google.
What!? You’re not maintaining that site for Google, but for your users. The second reason for video backgrounds is that we all have said at one point

You can find Primoz on LinkedIn or Twitter. This is our recent interview with him, as part of our Kinsta Kingpin series. Q1: What is your background, & how did you first get involved with WordPress?
Hi

The freemium model is a well-known business model in WordPress. Basically, you have a free plugin with core features and a pro one with advanced features (or add-ons). In this tutorial, you will see how I use OOP to show my users the upgrade option. That could help you get better conversions in WordPress plugins. Loading Order
To use OOP to drive better conversions, you will have to understand how everything works. The first thing is the loading order.
In my own plugin, I am using Freemius to provide my Premium version. That service allows me to have the premium code in the same place as my core features and on deployment, my premium code will be extracted from the free version.
If you’re using another method, that’s fine, as long as you are loading your premium classes before the free ones. You don’t have to load all the premium feature before, just the classes from the features you want to show as premium features. It might be confusing now, but bear with me and I’ll show you what I mean.
Plugin Features
In this example, the plugin premium features will be some of the integrations. Imagine an admin screen of integrations. Each integration is a separate class.

This is an updated version of the original post. It started out as a tutorial demonstrating how to add an image to a category but I’ve since amended it to include adding an image to a custom taxonomy as well. How to add an image field to the category field
Here’s what we’re aiming to achieve for standard categories. Details on doing the same for custom taxonomies are below.
There are a lot of tutorials around for how to add fields to categories. However, these mostly use an old method where data is saved to the theme options. But since WordPress 4.4, it’s been possible to save meta data for taxonomies in a similar way to saving post data. Secondly, I wanted the ability to upload an image for the category using the default WordPress media manager. So I came up with the following class:
The whole thing
/**
* Plugin class
**/if ( ! class_exists( 'CT_TAX_META' ) ) {class CT_TAX_META {

public function __construct() {
//
}

/*
* Initialize the class and start calling our hooks and filters
* @since 1.0.0
*/
public function init() {
add_action( 'category_add_form_fields', array ( $this, 'add_category_image' ), 10, 2 );
add_action( 'created_category',

The greatest shopping extravaganza is about to happen: Black Friday and Cyber Monday are just around the corner. While these events are on everybody’s calendar, one problem eclipses all the fun!
There are just too many places that offer great deals.
We at Cloudways realized this dilemma and decided to lend our readers a helping hand. We scoured the internet for the best themes, plugins, and extensions on offer for WordPress, Magento, PHP and Drupal Black Friday deals. Don’t think we forgot web hosting deal either, as that is included as well!
The Cherry on the Top!
We know that many of our readers are waiting for the Cloudways Black Friday deal to launch their projects. To welcome these new users here is a great deal: $150 hosting credit
Use the coupon code BF150 when you sign up for for a NEW Cloudways account. In the coming months, 10% of your monthly invoices will be deducted from this credit. This way the new users will continue to enjoy the Cloudways experience at a great price.
Now, on to what I promised earlier – the longest list of Black Friday deals for your WordPress, Magento, Drupal and PHP applications.
Exclusive Deals From Our Partners
This is the Thanksgiving

A number of WPSSO Core customers using JetPack have reported that shortlinks no longer work for Custom Post Types (CPTs). According to JetPack, this is a feature, and PHP code specifically for this JetPack feature must be added to your functions.php file — or an additional property added to the Custom Post Type definition. Unless you have made these PHP code changes, JetPack will break the WordPress wp_get_shortlink() function for all Custom Post Types. Because of this new JetPack feature, the current version of WPSSO Core may show a warning on Custom Post Type editing pages that the post shortlink is empty — which also prevents WPSSO Core from checking the current post webpage for duplicate meta tags. Additionally, the WordPress “Get Shortlink” button on post editing pages and the link rel="shortlink" HTML tag in webpage headers, will be missing.
The upcoming version of WPSSO Core checks for empty values returned by the wp_get_shortlink() function and provides a correct shortlink URL. This not only addresses the new Jetpack feature, but also fixes incorrectly coded themes that disable the link rel="shortlink" HTML tag by returning an empty

WordPress powers over 28 percent of the web. With that comes 150,000 plugins and themes, which adds up to over 1.3 billion downloads on WordPress.org alone. It’s truly a powerful platform that can allow for a lucrative plugin business. However, when we examine the space more thoroughly, we find that only less than 5 percent of the products have a paid offering. You may think that these 5 percent own 99 percent of the market, but it’s actually far from it. The monetized items are only 22 percent of total active items. The vast majority of installed and active plugins and themes in the WordPress market actually have no paid offering. Most WordPress Developers Can’t Jump (Do Not Monetize)
Technically speaking, developing open-source distributed software like a WordPress plugin or a theme is fairly easy. A combination of PHP and JavaScript/HTML and basically that’s it – you are ready to roll out your WordPress product! No need for servers to run your software, you don’t necessarily need to know much about databases, and object-oriented programming is not even required. In fact, many of the most popular plugins and themes in the WordPress ecosystem were

If you are using WordPress, then you are probably familiar with the

This turbulent second half of the the Dumitru Brinzan interview revolves around his controversial blog post Inside WordPress.org Theme Review Team: Money, Abuse and Inconsistent Leadership. Donnacha and Dumitru discuss the series of events that led him to be the first member of the WordPress.org Theme Review Team to publicly call out the corruption that makes WordPress worse for users but, conveniently, hands a million dollar business advantage to leading volunteers.
We talk about how Dumitru’s background, growing up in Eastern Europe before the fall of communism, imprinted upon him the urgent importance of not allowing corruption to slide, especially in slow-moving, bureaucratic, cult-of-personality situations.
For anyone involved in WordPress, this interview is worth listening to precisely because it is so rare to ever hear an insider talk openly about the very real problems that are festering behind the apparent blockbuster success of WordPress.
Dumitru Brinzan:
@dumitru
http://www.Brinzan.com/
@hermesthemes
Donnacha:
@WordSkill
http://www.WordSkill.com/
https://www.RedPen.com
https://www.facebook.com/donnacha

I’ve been sitting on the idea of this post for some time because I’ve not been sure how to best articulate it. Some of us are better than words with others and all that. But I thought since it’s been a while since I’ve written anything beyond a technical post, that maybe I’d use this time (you know, during the whole upcoming holiday season and all that), to share some thoughts, opinions, and observations on all things WordPress.
For those who live and die by hit pieces or the “…you’ll never believe what happens next” stuff we’re used to seeing on so many social media outlets, this is not that post.
Instead, this is one person who has been working with WordPress in a professional capacity for close to a decade in a technical way who’s simply sharing observations.
There’s a lyric I like:
Opinions are immunity from being told you’re wrong.
Maybe that works here, maybe not. I don’t know. But I’m going to open comments on this post, and although I may not respond to them, I’m genuinely interested in other people’s take on their experience with WordPress.
Musings on a Decade of WordPress

“Gutenberg” is the codename for the 2017 WordPress editor focus. The goal of this focus is to create a new post and page editing experience that makes it easy for anyone to create rich post layouts. This was the kickoff goal: The editor will endeavour to create a new page and post building experience that makes writing rich posts effortless, and has “blocks” to make it easy what today might take shortcodes, custom HTML, or “mystery meat” embed discovery.
Key take-aways from parsing that paragraph:
Authoring richly laid out posts is a key strength of WordPress.
By embracing “the block”, we can potentially unify multiple different interfaces into one. Instead of learning how to write shortcodes, custom HTML, or paste URLs to embed, you should do with just learning the block, and all the pieces should fall in place.
“Mystery meat” refers to hidden features in software, features that you have to discover. WordPress already supports a large amount of blocks and 30+ embeds, so let’s surface them.
Gutenberg is being developed on GitHub, and you can try an early beta version today from the plugin repository. Though keep in mind

Back in the days when we released the first version of Dokan, it was actually a Premium Theme. If you know Dokan only for a year or two, I know how ridiculous it sounds. But, that’s how it all got started. Soon we realized Dokan could do more, and to be able to grow we need to change dramatically, we evolved to a fully functional Plugin. Later we created many addons that adds even more functionality. Currently, there are over 18 official and 3rd-party addons. But the current process is – you have to buy a Dokan Pro license and buy Addons separately. We are changing this to help you, the Dokan user (the most important segment) grow, at the same time, we (weDevs) could push Dokan to new heights. Dokan Pricing Before?
Currently, there is a free core version of Dokan available at WordPress.org, that will remain the same. You get all the awesome feature, which is even comparable with other premium solution (you could look at this comparison if you have not yet). If you want to upgrade now you have this packages for you to upgrade –
What Is Changing?
In short, we are combining Dokan Pro and our addons. So, now you don’t have to buy Dokan Pro & Addons separately,

Enclavely, Inc., the owners of the Tailor Page Builder plugin, have announced that they will be discontinuing its development effective immediately. Andrew Worsfold, the original developer, launched Tailor in April 2016 and the plugin received an enthusiastic reception from the WordPress community. After performing a critical review of the major page builders available to users in September 2016, Pippin Williamson found only three that he could happily recommend to his customers: Tailor, Pootle Page Builder, and Beaver Builder. This recommendation was based primarily on code quality, usability, and compatibility with other plugins.
The plugin came under new management in July 2017 after the original developer no longer had enough time to dedicate to the project. Worsfold sold it to Enclavely, whose owners were early and enthusiastic users of the plugin, for what he said was “a nominal amount.” Three months later, the new owners cite the cost of keeping up with Gutenberg and other competitors as the primary reason for discontinuing its development:
Gutenberg is going to be bundled with WordPress itself. That’s definitely going to give a tough time to all 3rd party page

People say it’s a page builder killer. And being that I’ve created my own page builder (Page Builder Sandwich – which is currently having a major rebuild btw), I’m obviously concerned. How will it impact my business? My competitors’ business? Will it kill all page builders?
I don’t know. But if it does then I’m in big trouble.
Last time I checked out Gutenberg, it was just a short demo and wasn’t available for download as a plugin. That was a long time ago, and I’ve been thinking that I need to check it out ASAP to see whether I should be worried or not.
I don’t know much about the current progress of the project. From what I know and what people are saying, Gutenberg is the NEXT WordPress.
Trying It Out
I downloaded Gutenberg from the WordPress plugin directory and tried it out. Here’s my first impression:
Everything’s suddenly in blocks. This is quite different from how it was before, where it was a text editor.
If you’ve used a page builder, then it’ll feel familiar. Page builders kinda do this as well, mainly because it’s easier to manage different types of content in a “blocky”

“Everyone makes mistakes” is an excuse that just doesn’t cut it anymore. Especially in this day and age when you have everything you need to make a great website available at your fingertips. Your website or blog may have various content types with the highest conversion rates. Still, if your landing page fails to attract the right kind of attention, your visitors may not remain interested enough to even want to go through your content. What a waste.
When starting a blog or creating a website, neglecting your landing page can be one of the worst mistakes you’ll ever make.
Your landing page is the first thing that visitor see as soon as they access your main URL. Vamping it up is just as important as optimizing your WordPress database.
What good are speed and performance if your landing page fails to make your visitors stay and explore your website?
So then, here’s a list of the common mistakes people make on their landing pages, and what you need to do to either fix or avoid them:
1. Too Little or No CTAs
Your website has one true goal: to turn as many of your visitors as possible into subscribers, customers or clients.
To achieve that, you need clear and

Involve yourself in enough WordCamps, meetups and community forums, and you start to notice a trend. The same kind of question is asked over and over. It sounds something like… What plugin should I install to do {feature}?
WordPress users have the world’s most popular CMS, with 29% of the web under its wing and 53,000+ plugins, yet there is still a confidence gap when choosing plugins and themes. Right now, WordPress does a great job of providing plugin and theme information related to:
The features
The support you receive
User reviews
These are all part of what makes a good plugin or theme, but there is an important piece missing. This piece of information answers the question…
Will the code I’m about to install break or put my site at risk?
A plugin or theme could deliver the exact range of features you need, with great support, and positive reviews, but if the quality of code it contains is poor, you risk the integrity of your website. A single line of good code can unlock potential for you and your website, but bad code can trigger untold calamity.
Unfortunately, the barrier of entry to writing good code is higher than we would like to admit.
The good news

WP Engine was founded in March 2010 by Jason Cohen after his experience of working and founding startups for many years. The idea for the startup, which has been developed to boost the speed of WordPress to make it more scalable and secure, initially came to Cohen after noticing sites crashing due to high traffic. Speaking to Techworld, Jason Cohen, CTO and founder of WP Engine said: “I found that by doing customer interviews that those were the four things; speed, scale, security and service for WordPress were something people would pay 10 times more for than they would pay just to have the site somewhere in a cheaper situation.
“So it was originally born out of a need that I had, so the spark of the idea was something I had but it took some research to figure out whether it was actually a good idea,” Cohen added.
This is how Cohen brought the idea to life, and as the years progressed and the company widened they began to do more to provide advanced digital experiences for WordPress users.
“One of the things we do is contribute a lot to the WordPress community, so WordPress is open source that means a lot of people contributed to it and still do so it’s

Holiday is upon us, even if you are not shopaholic (most likely you are, as you are reading this post!), this is the best time of the year to buy digital or physical products. I use this time to shop or renew things that I am going to use for the next year. I actually save things I want to buy in a To-Buy Shopping List in Apple Notes, but while discussing with few of my folks about what I am preparing to buy this year, they were asking me to share the list with them, so I thought why not make my Black Friday/ Cyber Monday Shopping List public? It's not secret, maybe it will save some of your time where I have already did the research and digg properly, and in the same way you guys could advice me if you found some interesting deals in the comment*. I just upgraded to new MacBook Pro 15-inch latest 2017 model with the Touch Bar. I am upgrading from my near 7 years old MacBook Pro Early 2011, this time I decide not to directly migrate using Time Machine, instead I am setting up new machine from scratch. So, I took time to re think my app preference and work environment.
I tried to move away from some of the apps and services I was used to for many years, and opened my heart for new and

Wordfence is the number one security product for WordPress today. We have evolved from a small team of two founders in 2012 into a 28-person company of highly skilled and credentialed analysts, developers, engineers and support staff. Since we launched Wordfence in 2012, our team has steadily expanded outside the WordPress space. We launched Gravityscan earlier this year, giving our customers the ability to scan any website for vulnerabilities and malware. Gravityscan has been a resounding success and joins our growing stable of products and services.
The team that started Wordfence has grown into an experienced and pioneering security organization. Today, we are the team behind:
Wordfence, the leading firewall and malware scanner for WordPress with over 50 million downloads.
Gravityscan, a groundbreaking service that scans any website for malware and vulnerabilities, no matter what platform you use.
Our popular site-cleaning service, which helps our customers rapidly recover from a hack.
Our site security audit service, which helps our customers ensure their sites are locked down and secure.
We also regularly publish research into the newest threats on the Wordfence blog.
Today we

We are getting closer to that time of the year - Black Friday. This is the date where every business owner can accumulate the biggest sales of the year. But other than giving a discount, what can be done to guarantee more sales on Black Friday? According to Adobe, 2016's Black Friday brought in a record breaking $3.34 billion in online spending. 2017 holds a promise to be even better.
In this post, I want to suggest 7 ideas that you can easily implement in your site to get more sales on Black Friday. These ideas include: Hero, countdown, price table, coupon, promotion bar, single product sale offer and banner. This tutorial is published alongside the release of our Ultimate Black Friday Kit, and includes examples from the very same kit.
Let's go over these examples, and see how to get your website ready for Black Friday in no time!
The hero section of your homepage is the one section that is most viewed by your first time visitors. This is the section that will set what kind of impression the user gets about your company and your product.
This is what makes it the perfect location to promote your special Black Friday offer. Using Elementor, you can quickly change your current hero to

WordPress 4.9 hit the shelves last week meaning 29% of the web woke to a nicely wrapped package of code filled with improvements to the way they work with the Customizer, safer and clearer ways to work with code in the admin, and new and upgraded widgets. To peek behind the curtain (which is nicely transparent in our world of open source), we’ve asked Weston, Mel, and Jeff, Co and Deputy Leads on the 4.9 release, some questions about their experiences on the project and their thoughts for where WordPress is heading in 2018.
Q: So how does one find themselves leading a release that impacts 29% of the web?
Mel: With a great sense of responsibility and a bit of trepidation. The customization focus has been somewhat “on hold” while work on Gutenberg progresses, but there’s plenty of updates we can make while we wait. It made the most sense for Weston and I to co-lead 4.9, so we could concentrate on making some site customization improvements and lay some groundwork for Gutenberg in the future.
Weston: This year is somewhat different than previous years in how the WordPress project has been managed. This is the first year we’ve had dedicated focuses (Editor,

Is selling WordPress plugins your route to a multi-million dollar fortune? Or will you just end up living in poverty with your mother? Here are seven things you can learn from dealing drugs that might help you run a successful WordPress plugin business. “Selling drugs is the worst job in all of America”
Substitute the word ‘drugs’ for ‘plugins’ and ‘America’ for anywhere you like and you have the perfect description for how it feels sometimes when sales are flat, support calls are mounting up, and you can’t find the cause of the bug you’ve been trying to fix for the last three days.
The quote is taken from Steven Levitt’s 2004 TED talk called ‘The freakonomics of crack dealing’ (around 55 seconds in). The talk is a few years old now but definitely worth checking out if you haven’t seen it already. Levitt is one of the authors behind Freakonomics and his TED talk covers the famous chapter in the original Freakonomics book which reveals the economic reasons behind why so many drug dealers live at home with their mothers.
In short, back in the early 80s you couldn’t really make any money selling marijuana