Category Archives: WordPress Resources

Earlybird Question: Determining Theme Quality & WP Site Deployment Tips

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Question

When browsing themes in say, Themeforest, how do you know if a theme is coded well or not prior to purchasing?

Also, say you have an exisiting website and you are replacing it with a WP site. Is there a way to install it on the main directory yet still have old site displaying? That way you don’t have to mess with transferring directories. If there is no way to do that, is there a plugin/program that will help with the transfer of the site from staging to live? I found this, anyone ever try these? http://premium.wpmudev.org/blog/8-plugins-for-safely-moving-wordpress/

Answer 1: Determining Theme Quality & Performance

You have just found one of the biggest risks when buying a theme, and it’s not just about code quality, but rather how the backend of the WordPress site itself is setup. Many times complex template modifications systems are put in place, which while they sound incredible end up being poorly supported and leaving customers frustrated.

Here are a few suggestions for weeding through themes:

  • Run Google Page Speed on the theme. While I wouldn’t expect an incredible score, you can at least see if there are any red flags
  • Don’t just base a template on the homepage, look at the other template types and shortcodes that are available to you
  • Look over the comment & support history on theme forest, or on the developers private forum. See if there are any complaints or issues, also check the response time. An active developer shows that they care and take things seriously.</li

Answer 2: Tips for Deploying a WP site

I highly recommend making use of a local development environment. For tips on how to set this up ChikGeek puts on a great course called “Intro to WordPress development”, you can contact them here. Otherwise just google “local wordpress development environment setup” there will be quite a few results.

Having a local environment will allow you to do and test everything you want, after which you can just move things over to your live environment or where the site is hosted.

There are several plugins to do this as well. At Solid, we have tried several, but nothing was as reliable as we wanted and most require intermediate knowledge (incase something goes wrong). Try asking around at WordCamp too, or read reviews for various plugins online.

Also, if you are a web design company, don’t forget to set aside a few hours or more in your project budget. Hosting & servers can be complicated and sometimes be unpredictable.

The best method for moving a site is detailed on Smashing Magazine here:
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2013/04/08/moving-wordpress-website/

Earlybird Question: Amazon Affiliate Links for Multiple Countries

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Question

My question is: How is the best way to set up an Amazon affiliate link on a WP website? We are Canadian, but most sales come from outside Canada. With all the eBooks and products on Amazon, how do we set up an International Amazon account and maintain it?

Answer

In short, there is no international amazon account. Unfortunately it does not exist. Amazon, while connected, runs compartmentalized on a per country basis. Because of this you have to have affiliate accounts in each country that you wish to have an account for.

In terms of a solution, after you have multiple affiliate accounts, the next step is to develop a plugin that detects the origin country of a user and swaps the correct affiliate ID. Imagine it like this:

  • If: a users country = Canada
  • Then: insert “Canada Affiliate Variable” into the code

The only way it won’t work if a visitor is blocking a browser from detecting that information, for example by using a proxy server.

There are a number of ways to program this, but we do recommend investing in a developer to create a custom plugin for you.

There are a few plugin services popping up that do this, but use caution. All it would take is some creative programming to hijack your affiliate ID, allowing a plugin developer to take your commissions. While not all plugins are bad, nor their developers – always use caution.

Finally, keep an eye on Amazon affiliate news – this could always change in the future.

Help make WordPress

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WordPress is a collaborative effort by people from all over the world. Being an open-source platform (meaning that anybody can see and use the code which actually enables WordPress to press words), it is vital to have engaged and interested participants who will help to bring the next iteration to life.

Capture of screen at make.wordpress.org

One of the best ways to learn is by doing. And there is plenty that needs doing over at WordPress central. Everyone is invited, from experienced coders to those who are just learning PHP. And writers, too! (Somebody needs to make the documentation read like a Grisham novel.)

You can learn all of the many ways that you can help WordPress to continue to evolve by vistiting the Make WordPress page at make.WordPress.org.

Four top WordPress resources

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WordCamp is a great place to learn more about WordPress, what it can do for you, and how you can use it to get your message to the world. But even if you live in San Francisco, probably the most tech-jacked city on the world, there is still only going to be one WordCamp per year. So what to do?

It’s helpful to know the best places that you can go for information about WordPress. Since WordCamp Calgary 2015 is still weeks away at this writing, I have put together a little list of great resources that you can rely upon to get your questions answered now.

 

WordPress.tv

 
WordPress.tv front page
Talks from WordCamps around the world are captured on video and saved at WordPress.tv. Imagine that! Hundreds of hours of WordCamp programming right at your fingertips and in the comfort of your own home! You can even wear your pajamas while you watch. (I don’t want to give anyone the impression that you can’t wear your peejays to WCYYC2015. If it feels good, you do it.)

 

wpbeginner

 
wpbeginner front page
These guys provide some of the best ongoing tips, tricks and traps for WordPress users. Make sure to give them a follow on twitter as well. They’ll e-mail you with stuff they want to sell you, but then, you might even get some deals on stuff you want to buy. Did you know that they’ll even set up your site for you? You have to sign up for hosting with one of the companies that they’re affiliated with (wpbeginner will get a referral fee for that). If this step is what’s holding you back, then this might be a super easy way to at least get up and running.

 

WP101

 
WP101 front page
wp101 is another WordPress resource that you can look to in order to learn what you don’t yet know. They have a paid-access forum where you can get your questions answered. Pros may want to check out their plug, conveniently named WP101Plugin. It delivers tutorials on using WordPress right to your clients’ dashboard. You can spend less time doing the tutoring yourself.

 

WordPress.org

 
WordPress.org forum page
This is the WordPress homespace. As such, it’s going to have the most official information about what you need to know. Their forums are–well–extensive. Their How-To and Troubleshooting forum has amost half a million topics. So yeah, there’s a lot there. While an incredible resource, the downside is trying to find exactly the information you’re looking for in such an enormous repository. This support goes back many generations of WordPress, so getting the stuff that’s going to answer the question you have right now can be difficult. That said, you can be sure that, provided you can find it, the question you have has probaby already been asked and answered a few times already.

I’m going to provide a weekly round-up of timely information and links from around the ‘Net for you up until WordCamp Calgary 2015 on May 23. Check back to this blog, and I’ll help you to navigate the rich sources of information about WordPress that are out there awaiting your eyeballs.