AI Writing Tools – Aint Going To Change My Style
AI Writing and Music tools have an early and deep presence in savvy AI usage. And as a Yoast user in WordPress and Grammerly with Office being a constant companion one can say this scriber is not exactly a Wordcraft Virgin. But ChatGPT has suddenly inserted real muscle into the auto-generation of paragraphs, presentations, and […]
Cookies Required in WordPress
How often have you as a WordPress User gotten this demand in any browser – Chrome, Firefox, Opera? Too often or hardly at all? My question is what causes the message. And does the “Get out of Jail ” link [taking you to a legitimate sign-on startup screen] always appear when you encounter the screen. […]
Benchmarking Breakdance, Bricks Builder and Oxygen Builder
It is interesting times in WordPress Frontend Development as UI vendors contend for developer loyalty by offering new Layout frameworks [Flexbox, CSS Grid, 3D Float, etc] , more templating features/flexibility, novel plugin consolidations and better runtime performance. Yes, developers and agencies, you have a lot on your decision plates as WordPress UI vendors contend for […]
Why CSS Is So Busy
Inherently CSS, Cascading Style Sheets, do not have to be busy or complex. Classic CSS 1 & 2 commands like color, margin, text-size, and others are easy to understand. However, CSS commands have 3 inherent layers of potential complexity. The first is the fact that every HTML element can have many CSS commands styling the […]
WordPress ThemeBuilders Under Stress
Our MasterWP.guru blog recently posted WordPress Under Duress, a report underlining multiple signs of pressure impacting WordPress. The WP Tavern Posting acknowledged several signs of stress. The article cited intensive competition from other CMS systems such as SquaresSpace and Shopify, increased complexity throughout the rapidly changing WP Core and profound shortcomings in both the Gutenberg Editor […]
Toronto WordPress Group Mobile Performance Meetup
Normally Toronto WordPress Meetup Group has a monthly meeting designed to help fix any WordPress problems that attendees want to pose to the Meetup Organizers, Robin MacRae and Drew Mathers. But yesterday’s November 15th meetup featured a discussion of how to improve mobile performance which lags the desktop speed for the same page.contents but different […]
WordPress AMP for Mobile Speed
AMP-Accelerated Mobile Pages is mobile page speed up technology pioneered by Google. Web & WordPress users have had to come to grips with major mobile speed deficits in the light of changes in mobile usage: The Global use of the Web has shifted from desktops to mobile devices – desktop=44% vs mobile devices=56%. There are […]
WordPress WebPage Performance Tuning
WebPage Performance Tuning WordPress Performance Tuning is like WordPress SEO, an anointed discipline akin to Alchemy – complex practices subject to many sub-disciplines. As a result, three WordPress performance experts agree [ Adam Connel at BloggingWizrds, TomDupuis at Online Media, and Staff at WPBuffs ] that there are a number of factors that can impact […]
Elementor Flexbox: A MVP Achilles Heal?
Elementor has reached the pinnacle of WordPress Frontend tools – a PageBuilder become ThemeBuilder that has 10million active user websites, has just released a Elementor Cloud Hosting Service [to mixed reviews and runtime performance concerns], and is undertaking a massive shift to Flexbox CSS Framework as the core of its UI Interface. It is the […]
CSS in WordPress – Sep 20th Meetup Review
This afternoon’s free WordPress CSS Style Editors Meetup is so crammed with helpful info on WordPressDesign and Styling we will have to take the Trevor Noah Daily Show approach to Headline News by telling you just the most useful styling tricks and tips to help ease and expedite your WordPress layouts and designs. For example, […]
WordPress Plugin Auto-Update Goes Awry
In a review in December of last year, this website reviewed 4 plugins that helped control the Nuisance Nags that plague many WordPress admin pages. In the end Admin Notices Manager was recommended. Since then the Nuisance Nags have gotten even worse. On my websites I was seeing 3-5/page accumulate each week. So the Admin […]
WordPress Revolution: Elementor Cloud Website
Elementor Cloud Website is Elementor’s dramatic entry into the WordPress Cloud Hosting Service business. Here is what you get: $90US/year = 1 cloud website “No hidden costs, no price hikes.What you see is what you get. Period.” Additional Elementor Cloud Websites require a subscription costing $99/year/website A subscription delivers 1 full Elementor Pro powered WordPress […]
WordPress World of Change
Like the World in general, change is taking place at an accelerated pace in the World of WordPress. And WordPress Developers can see it in the first downturn in WordPress market share in 10 years. And one of the biggest drivers of change in the WordPress World is the rapid growth of its CMS market […]
Are Gutenberg Editor’s Speed Results A Big Lie??
Within the past year there have been many reviewers claiming Gutenbrg Editor delivers faster web pages than popular PageBuilders – see Metabox*, WordPress.com[ is blind to theWYSWYG gap in the Block Editor], Jack in the Net*, Jack Cao Tests*[fails to use normal caching and media optimizations]. In sum, there is a common factor of limited information […]
Meetup-WordPress Backend Bustout
Most of the attention in the WordPress community for the past five years has been about the effort to build a better WordPress frontend – a Visual Editor using React JavaScript that becomes an integral part of the WordPress core and runs increasing portions of the WordPress “No Coding Knowledge Required” system. But the Gutenberg […]
Hiding Nuisance Notices in WordPress, etc
Okay, Nuisance Notifications [aka Nags] are not exclusive to WordPress. You may also be plagued by unsolicited notices in the lower right-hand corner of your PC screen as Google and Facebook and Microsoft and just about every app you have bought now presume to have the right to popup unsolicited PR notes at random moments […]
Gutenberg vs the PageBuilders- Performance Speed Tests
Among the many WordPress PageBuilders, the conventional wisdom is that Gutenberg Builder is on the rise as long overdue features such as more styling options for blocks and use of block patterens as templates begin to match long delivered PageBuilder capabilities. Perhaps the breakthrough feature is Gutenberg’s delivery of true drag and drop operations for […]
How to Find News About WordPress
One of the most frequently asked questions about WordPress is what is the WordPress market share? The answer is easy – go to W3techs.com scroll down and get the latest report on the top CMS system as used by the top 10 million websites in the World.: But as a WordPress Developer or Agency you […]
Looking for a Better Visual Editor
It maybe late to be looking for a better Visual Editor given the rapid improvement in both Page Builders like Elementor, Beaver or Divi plus the Gutenberg Block editor. But this developer is still looking for an improvement for the Visual Editor. Kay features sought include drag and drop layout, user CSS styling blocks, insertable […]
WordPress Optimizing: Clean-up tools
WebP with WordPress
Controling your website’s image sizes has become a top priority among Web developers Here is the reason why: As of 2017 end , HTTPArchive.org reports that images comprised 54% of the total page download size. And since response time is inversely related to page load, developers wanting to achieve 2 seconds or better response time […]
Banned WordPress Plugins
At a recent WP Meetup about Database plugins I was faulted for not citing which of the plugins being reviewed had been banned by WordPress or other vendors. Yes, I am aware of banned plugins. But I had never deliberately searched for them. However, a Securi note that 78% of hacked websites used WordPress confirmed that […]
WordPress Popup PDFs
This tutorial is based on the fact that PDFs have become the leading document integrators on the Web. Note the distinction – PDFs are multi-page containers for completed rich output like word documents, spreadsheet tables or Visio and other Object diagrams. PDFs are not like web development containers like Docker, Kubernetes, and Envoy which encompass […]
Measuring your Website
Measuring the Web The Web is the20th Century’s Cauldron of Change. The Web is spilling out change that is innovative, widespread and intimidating. Innovative because with DIY- Do-It-yourself Web Development tools it is possible for individuals and teams to create online presences and services that would have been improbable before the Internet. Widespread because in […]
What is the True Cost of Shared Hosting?
CMS systems for small and medium scale sites using WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and others mostly use shared hosting. That is where your website shares a CPU & Supporting Software, memory, diskspace and Internet bandwidth with 2-4 other websites on the same machine in which all of these assets are “time-shared”. This has been and currently […]
ClassicPress: Why a WordPress Clone?
ClassicPress is a GPLv2[Free Software Foundation] clone of WordPress version 4.9.x – any theme, plugin or website that runs on WordPress 4.9 will run on ClassicPress. The ClassicPress FAQ page provides key insights into the reason for ClassicPress: ClassicPress is a community-led fork of the WordPress content management system that preserves the classic TinyMCE editor […]
Bulking-up WordPress Security
WordPress hack attacks are becoming more prevalent – almost like a multi-headed gorgon, hackers have many more sinister attack vectors as seen in these reports from FossBytes and ThreatPress . These reports describe not just one attack many different approaches to hacking which often involves 2 or 3 step before the main hack attack is […]
Thinking Styles and UI Widgets
There has been a revolution in thinking over the past 50 years. How rationalizations is colored. The dual nature of Decision making. And better processes for thinking in general. The following set of presentationa and talks highlight some of these thinking insights. But there is also a revolution in creating smart UI interfaces in WordPress. […]
Blog Authority and Readability Tools
Google has shaped content on the Web more than any other technology vendor. True, Apple has had a wide influence on the design and style of web pages. And Facebook dominates social media and messaging. And Microsoft owns the Desktop. But with its search engine leadership in all the World except China, Google shapes […]
Oxygen and the WordPress ThemeBuilders
WordPress has seen a wave of Themebuilders over the past few years and coming from two sources – themes with builtin PageBuilders and PageBuilders taking over many theme functions. On the theme side there are 7 popular themes which come with PageBuilders as part of the package – Avada with Fusion Builder, X with Cornerstone, Monstroid2 with Power Page Builder, Strata with an included […]
Elementor + Livemesh Free Addon Plugin
In the next few months , the OpenSourcery will be featuring good plugin add-ons to the popular WordPress PageBuilders. What are the popular WordPress ? Beaver Builder, Elementor, Divi and Thrive Architect are used on a number of my clients websites. And Elementor leads WordPress PageBuilders with the most active user – over 3 million. […]
WordPress PageStyling with PageBuilders
WordPress Page Styling has moved from being the primary domain of the Theme chosen to display the website to what can now be called PageBuilder PageStyling. Now this transition from CSS styling via Theme to broader control of CSS styling options has been picking up pace in the past five years. The break up of […]
Automation of Website Translations
About five years ago for a consulting assignment, we looked at programs that could automatically translate from one language to another. Of course, Google Translate and Babylon were two major players. Well as more Web users are looking for an economical automated translation of the text on a website from one language to another, there […]
Web Development Tools Overview
While completing a posting on the Mobile Mandate in Web Development, I ran across this excellent review of contemporary Web Development skills and tools. What makes this video compelling is that there is a natural order to the explaining the tools. Thus, the progression is from HTML and CSS to SQL,PHP and Vanilla JavaScript and […]
Google Sites: Website Builder
A video demo of using Google’s new Sites Builder Model for Live Editing of a Web Page All of the Website Builders tend to follow a consistent layout of their Page Design tools. First and foremost, users get to see a live Web Page Canvas where all their edits are shown live.– so as users […]
WordPress UI Christmas Presents
The WordPress Year long race to launch the Gutenberg Block Editor in 2018 has triggered a whole Christmas bag of related WordPress UI developments. And many of those UI tricks and plugins have been either introduced or refined and released for a year end Holiday treat. But perhaps the singular WordPress Christmas present has been […]
WordCamp Toronto 2018 Features Gutenberg
WordCamp Toronto 2018 is coming to the North York Civic Centre at roughly the same time as WordPress 5.0 and the new Gutenberg will be released. So it should not be a surprise that the WordCamp theme is Gutenberg and the Future of WordPress. The timing could not be more fortuitous because the much delayed […]
WordPress Debugging 101
This is a case study in debugging WordPress when things go crazy wrong. Here is the problem: It is really very simple – when I try to upload images to the Media Library it says the file has been uploaded but only a blank thumbnail appears in the Libraries gallery There are several blank thumbnails […]
How Gutenberg is Shaking WordPress UI Foundations
But It Is Theme And PageBuilder Vendors Who Are Currently Transforming How WordPress UI Design Is Actually Done Let us be clear, Gutenberg is by itself having a profound effect on WordPress UI Design and Development. Here are some of the major trends. Gutenberg brings the 3rd Generation JavaScript frameworks to WordPress. In the case […]
Speed Wins: Why WordPress Adopted JavaScript
Why More of WordPress UI is written in JavaScript not PHP With the announcement of Calypso, a JavaScript based UI in November of 2015 and then the launch of the Gutenberg project in 2016 using React.js, WordPress Head Honcho Matt Mullenweg tripped off a lot of conjectures as to why the departures from WordPress’ primary […]
An Introduction to Brizy
This is the latest and most interesting PageBuilder, what Gutenberg should be. [iframe src=”http://theopensourcery.ca/brizy/index.html” width=”100%” height=”900″]
Protected: The WordPress Role in the GDPR Rollout
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
WordPress Gutenberg Looms Large
On St. Patricks Day in Toronto, The Toronto WordPress Meetup Group had a 2 1/2 hour session devoted to the implications of Gutenberg to the WordPress developers and wider community of users. Great St. Patty’s Day Fun in TOTown. The Meetup brought out 26 WP Developers on a gorgeous Saturday afternoon. All of the group had […]
MultiLayout Themes: WP-PageBuilder Framework
MultiLayout Themes are changing profoundly how WordPress Page and Post Designs are done. This website has covered the trend and our companion Web Development site has recently looked at some of the major players. This review of WP-PageBuilder Framework will be the start of an ongoing set of reviews about MultiLayout Themes [ML-Themes] as they […]
Site Origin PageBuilder Comes To Gutenberg
The new Gutenberg is not going to be a WYSIWYG PageBuilder . So Site Origin has brought its popular PageBuilder to Gutenberg. Here is how Greg Priday, Innovator in Chief at Site Origin, describes the situation: In effect, Greg is making Site Origin PageBuilder work within Gutenberg now. This is an interesting strategy as other […]
Cornerstone & Divi PageBuilders
Here are two WordPress PageBuilders which support important features that make for productive development – extensive styling options for each UI element plus targetted section as well as page templates. One of the key advantages of PageBuilders is that they deliver frontend, WYSIWYG editing so end users as well as developers see what they are […]
CSI Best Member’s Website: A Tour-de-force Design for a WordPress Newby.
Creating a brand new website is a challenge even if you are using the most popular website development tool, WordPress [29.3% of the world’s websites are done in WordPress]. First, WordPress tools and features are developing rapidly – in a 2016 Podcast review we cited 41 essential WordPress plugins. Today 21 of those plugins have […]
MultiPurpose, Multilayout Themes or How PageBuilders Became SiteBuilders
WordPress themes have always had multipurpose capabilities to a degree. One has seen it with built-in front page sliders, configurable headers,multi-page theme layouts, and even importable complete mult-page Website designs like the Moody theme seen here. In addition, some Multipurpose themes pack on a frontend PageBuilder like Visual Composer. But these MultiPurpose themes lack key Multilayout capabilities […]
Now WordPress PageBuilders Become SiteBuilders
There is no doubt there is a lot of competition in the WebBuilders marketplace. There are at least 10 very good WordPress PageBuilders. WordPress is now used on 29.2% of the world’s websites. Yet it is undergoing a PHP to JavaScript makeover with Gutenberg. Gutenberg , you see, is more than a Javascript based new Visual Editor […]
CSI Member’s Excellent Website: Kunle.TV
Kunle.TV states its purpose and vision on its front page with a full width, video mission statement capped with the Cisco declaration – “By 2019, 80% 0f all the world’s Internet traffic will be video”. Kunle.tv is written in WordPress and every page is filled with informative videos ranging from Futurism Weekly through Video Presenting […]