WordPress Cities: The New Government Web Standard

by Craig Grella November 15^th, 2012 2 Responses

City, town, and other municipality websites have long been in need of usability updates. Systems made decades ago were static and hard to update, rarely interact with any kind of social media, and see visitors often complaining about not being able to find the information they need.

Put simply, most governments are online in domain name only – with no meaningful interaction. And that’s certainly not reflective of today’s growing “community” on the web, nor its more recent advances in online technology.

WordPress News

WPMU’s Best in WordPress: November 5th – 11th

by Craig Grella November 12^th, 2012 Leave a comment

Lots of great links in this Best in WordPress episode, and we’re going to get right to it. This week, we focus on productivity plugins and styling your responsive sites.
1. Automatically Create CSS from Photoshop: CSS3Ps
If you use Photoshop and you design sites, you’re going to love this link. CSS3Ps developed a plugin for Photoshop which converts your layers to valid CSS3 to use inside your design projects. Works amazingly well and delivers clean code.
2. Ghost – The New WordPress?

Community

WordPress Wins the Election!

by Craig Grella November 9^th, 2012 Leave a comment

WordPress has its roots in the personal blog, but it has grown to become one of the most widely used web platforms in the world; powering nearly 1 in 6 websites today.

It’s no wonder politicians have adopted WordPress – it allows for the easy display of personal information, which is essential to a candidate getting-out his or her message; and it also provides functional plugins necessary in today’s web – like social networking integration, community building, group creation, event listings, and of course – blog posts.
The WordPress Powered Candidates

WordPress Plugins

Create Custom Email and Webinar Signup Forms with Elevatr

by Craig Grella November 6^th, 2012 6 Responses

Getting email subscribers into your Aweber account isn’t hard to do if you know how to insert code into your site. But if you’re not familiar with HTML, adding email subscriber forms can be a chore.

Styling those forms can be even harder to do, especially if you don’t know how to edit your theme’s custom CSS files, or have a truck-load of money to pay a designer.

Enter Elevatr.

Elevatr is a new form plugin that does two things (and does them well):

helps you create custom email signup forms right in your post/page editor (currently integrated with Aweber and Mailchimp)

News

WPMU’s Best in WordPress: October 28th – November 4th

by Craig Grella November 5^th, 2012 Leave a comment

We start off this week with a video interview of the WordPress creator by the Wall Street Journal. We end with a post on sliding widget panels. In between, you’ll find this week’s best WordPress posts from across the web covering topics like CSS grid systems, strengthening your community themed site, creating custom widgetized sidebars, and more.
1. Wall Street Journal Interviews WordPress Creator Matt Mullenweg: WSJ.com

News, WordPress Development

WordPress Cloud Development with Koding

by Craig Grella October 31^st, 2012 6 Responses

Koding (koding.com) is a cool new application that allows coding and development in the cloud. It’s particularly handy as a WordPress development environment; one that is reached even when you are on the road and your computer is safe at home.
Koding Features
Koding is much more than just coding and development; it’s a social network and hub for developers to share code snippets, best practices, and to improve the overall level of coding across the web.

WordPress News

WPMU’s Best in WordPress: October 20th – 27th

by Craig Grella October 29^th, 2012 Leave a comment

Welcome to the second edition of WPMU’s new Best in WordPress, a weekly series showcasing the best posts from around the web on anything and everything WordPress.

This week we’ve got a developer friendly Best in WordPress; we’re highlighting articles that cover WordPress frameworks, editing and styling the WordPress Dashboard, and best practices for plugin settings pages and theme options pages.
1. Popularity of WordPress Infographic: WPLifeguard

Themes

Free Responsive Newspaper Theme

by Craig Grella October 26^th, 2012 3 Responses

Newspaper style themes are some of the most popular on the web because they feature some of the best blogging has to offer – cool teaser posts with scalable thumbnail images, interesting typography, featured category views, ad placement, and more.

That’s why we were excited to try out the new creatively titled (and FREE) theme, Newspaper, from the gang at Fearless Flyer.

WordPress News

WPMU’s Best in WordPress – October 12th – 19th

by Craig Grella October 22^nd, 2012 Leave a comment

Welcome to WPMU’s new Best in WordPress, a weekly series rounding-up the best posts from across the web covering – you guessed it – WordPress!

But we’re not just listing random posts. This series features articles and posts that really standout: the most highly commented, often shared, and extremely detailed posts on topics of interest to the WordPress user community, including code snippets, tutorials, design tips, theme previews, plugin lists, and more.

This week we’ve highlighted 8 articles that cover WordPress design, security, and social sharing.
1. How to Scan Your Site for Potentially Malicious Code (WP Beginner)

WordPress Themes

Thesis 2.0: A First Look

by Craig Grella October 10^th, 2012 28 Responses

Last week, Thesis 2.0 was released as a premium WordPress Theme Framework. It was the first major update, a total theme re-conception really, in more than four years.

The result is a drag and drop website and theme creator like no other; with the ability to create custom websites in just minutes with absolutely no custom coding.

Thesis 2.0 is comprised by four featured areas; Site Options, Skins, Boxes, and Packages. Each has a distinct function, powerful in its simplicity.
Site Options