Hidden Content Options for Your WordPress Website
As a WordPress website owner, you have the power to control what content is visible to your visitors and search engines. Sometimes, you may want to hide specific pages from search engines and navigation menus, while other times, you may prefer to restrict access to certain pages only to users with custom permissions. Here, we…
Dawn Theme 4 Column Grid Html
Here’s how to add 4 responsive columns to add any page without a custom page template using these built-in css classes in the popular Online Store 2.0 Dawn theme for Shopify. Simply end the page and switch to the “text” view and paste this html structure. Note that the “center” class on the individual column…
Clean Up Data for MailChimp Import
MailChimp’s sample import file isn’t a bad place to start with getting your contact into your audience. But it can also leave some messy data on your hands. Here are some tips to clean up up your data for MailChimp in Google Sheets before you import as a csv: 1) Get your column names correct.…
How to Add an Outside User to a Google Domain Registration
Although you should be careful about who you add permissions for to control your domain, adding an outside user to your Google domain registration is easy. Here’s how to give a user outside your of your domain or organization access to your DNS settings. Sign in to Google Domains. Select the name of your domain.…
Add a Full Width Notification Bar in Miva to the Shadows Theme
How to easily add a full-width notification bar in one of the latest Miva Ready Themes with these quick code snippets placed in your user interface and css. This has been tested and works in the Shadows Ready theme. Go to User Interface > Settings in the admin. Scroll down to Global Header & Footer…
Workaround to add a notification bar to a Divi theme WordPress site
Here’s an easy workaround to add a notification bar to your WordPress site with the Divi theme without using a plugin. As a work-around, it doesn’t include tons of options but it’s work-able and you don’t need any plugins. In fact a lot of notification bar plugins won’t work with the Divi theme so this has saved me a few times for clients needed a quick solution.
Turn off Animations on Mobile in the Divi Theme
Sometimes animations can be problematic on mobile phones by slowing down the website responses and negatively affecting the user experience. To turn off animations and disable them on mobile devices in the Divi WordPress theme you can use some CSS combined with a media query. You can add the CSS to your theme options inside…
Quick WPEngine Site Launch Checklist
Here’s a quick WPE Site Launch checklist for launching WordPress sites for the first time on WPEngine assuming you’ve already done the basics like setting your permalinks, etc. Delete any unused pages and that “Hello World” post Make sure that your contact form is working correctly and mailing the right people. Make sure your privacy…
Unleash Powerful Workflow Methods in Divi Builder
Building and maintaining websites using the Elegant Themes Divi theme gets faster with these power user tips. 1. Use the premade Divi Layouts. 2. Use Right Click to extend section, row module styles throughout pages, sections or rows. There’s a ton of power hidden in these. 3. Setup Global Sections on your first page build…
Steps to Prepare for Your Small Business Website
Ready to get going on your shiny new business website? Excellent! Here are the general steps to prepare for your small business website presence. Note this list assumes you’ve already figured your USP (unique selling proposition) and are now ready to shout it out to the world. Figure out your domain name Create a list…
Access Your SiteGround Temporary Url
Author’s note: The following article is no longer up to date as SiteGround has moved away from using a CPanel. Here where to find the temporary url which is only available during the SiteGround website’s creation process. You can easily access your WordPress site via the SiteGround temporary url without the DNS propagation…
Export WooCommerce Customers with Addresses from WordPress for Shopify
There’s a simple way to export your customer information from WooCommerce without using a plugin including their shipping address and phone number into a csv. This is particularly handy if you’re looking to export WooCommerce customers to import them into Shopify. We’ll get this done using a query in phpMyAdmin on the WordPress database. But…
How to send photos in the highest resolution on iPhone
How to send photos in the highest resolution on an iPhone Looking to increase the resolution of photos and animated gifts in iMessage or Apple Mail? To send a photo of the highest quality via text or email, start by double-checking both your iMessage and Apple Mail app settings. Why would you want to send…
Create a Google Account without a Gmail Address
When you have a Google account it unlocks the ability to use their free services for your business like Google Sheets, Google Docs, Google Analytics, Google My Business, Google Search Console, Google Voice and more. Here’s step-by-step instructions on how to set up any email account as your Google account. A lot of people assume…
Favorite WordPress Plugins
These plugins do the amazing and make working with WordPress so much more powerful, and flexible. Most are free, some are paid. All are worth your time and donations for the plugin creators. All-in-One WP Migration by ServMask – if you miss using the Blog Vault migration when importing to WPEngine this is your savior. Free…
Stop Blocking Search Engines from Crawling your WordPress Website
You may not be getting the most out of your website if you search your brand name and Google comes up with “No information is available for this page.” Google explains why they’re not showing any information. But how can you fix it fast and stop blocking search engines indexing for a WordPress site? Most of…
Add Animated Divi Menu Underline on Hover
You can easily add an animated divi menu underline beneath each menu in the Divi theme from Elegant Themes with a little custom css added to your WordPress site running the Divi theme. This menu underline effect grows from the center and shows on the desktop menu only. This css style is using the default settings for…
Getting Started on Time Keeping and Invoices as a Freelancer
Using Google Docs and Sheets for invoices Time Keeping with Google Sheets In order to invoice for your services you need to either have a set price (sometimes called a project price) for your services or an hourly rate. If you’re charging on an hourly basis (sometimes called time and materials) then you’ll need to…
WP Engine vs. Liquid Web Managed WordPress Hosting
Considering making the switch away from WP Engine in favor of Liquid Web’s Managed WordPress Hosting? I made a shift with over 30 sites a few months ago and thought I’d share my results, the pros, and the cons with you thus far to help you consider WP Engine vs. Liquid Web. Things you’ll like…
Modern Creative Holiday Cards
Winter isn’t here yet but yes, it’s coming and so is the season of holiday card giving. No email, tweet or text can convey the card and thought of snazzy modern creative holiday cards with a hand-written note. Here’s 11 examples of choose to from including clean design, eye-catching illustrations, humor and even a Game…
Easily Manage Consistent Type in Photoshop Mockups
Consistent Type in Photoshop throughout a bunch of design mockups can be a challenge. Here’s a great way to keep your type consistent across your mockups in Photoshop using Adobe’s Creative Cloud libraries via the InVisionApp. Editor’s note: this is no longer available. 🙁
Online Printers for Greeting Cards and Invitations
Here’s our experience with online printers for high-quality greeting cards and invitations based on selection, cost, ease of use and card quality. What started out as an article to recommend online printers has become a cautionary tale. Bottom line, expect to maybe save some money over a local printer but give yourself plenty of time…
Override Gravity Forms Field Type to Show Mobile Telephone Keypad
To force a Gravity Forms number field to display the telephone keypad on mobile devices you have to override the field type for a selected field. You can accomplish this by adding the below code to your WordPress child theme functions.php file located in your /wp-content/themes/child-theme folder. Yes it’s true that by default Gravity Forms…
Find the exact color on a website
It’s easy to find the exact color from a website. It doesn’t matter if it’s a color from an image, a logo, a video or really any part of a website. Here’s how to find that color from any pixel on the page.
Functions to Improve Divi WordPress Theme
Here are some functions to super charge and improve the Divi WordPress theme. You can add Font Awesome, speed up your site, remove the Projects Custom Post Type and if you’re using Gravity Forms, track form submissions as Google Analytics Events.
Add PHP and Shortcodes in Widgets in WordPress
Yes you can use PHP and shortcodes in widgets in WordPress. I’ve tried both of these and they work well. 1 – Use shortcodes in widgets without a plugin. 2 – Execute PHP code in widgets without a plugin.
Stop Tivo from Announcing Fast Forwarding and Other Stuff on the Screen
Why is Tivo announcing that you’re fast forwarding? Tivo is in Screen Reader Mode. Hold down the A button for 2 seconds to turn it off. Or hold it down for 2 seconds to turn it on and annoy your family members or roommates! Or your pets! My dog niece leaves the room when Tivo…
NATO Phonetic Alphabet Poster
This is a little bit of design genius from the folks at Outside Open: A NATO phonetic alphabet poster that fits all on one page and is easy to scan and read. Why so genius? If you’ve ever had to give a secure password over the phone, you’re not asking that question. They said it best with…
8 Reasons I’m Ditching the Fitbit Charge 2
8 Reasons why I’m ditching the FitBit Charge 2: It sucks as a watch. More than half the time I raise my wrist to show the time, it shows nothing. It sucks as an alarm. I’ve slept through the alarm twice in a month. It’s a hungry little bugger. I don’t know what needs charging more…
Add a Full-Width Google Map to the Footer in Genesis
To add a Snazzy full-width Google map to the footer of the Genesis Digital Pro theme we’ll need to: 1) Prepare the Google map to fit in new section. 2) Add a new section above the footer widgets. and 3) Adjust the CSS to sit the map nicely against the footer. Ready to map it up?
Standing Desk Pick
I’ll spare you all the reasons why you should want a standing desk. Let’s just say I’m never going back and the reason you can’t find a stand-up desk on the cheap on Craigslist is that no else wants to part with theirs either. My only regret is that I only have one at the…
Remove Projects Custom Post Type from Divi
Want to remove projects custom post type from Divi, the premiere theme from Elegant Themes? Sometimes a robust theme like Divi needs to be stripped down a bit. Yes, the Divi WordPress theme from Elegant Themes has a lot of functionality built in. Yes, that’s an understatement. And no, you don’t have to have it…
WordPress Relaunch Checklist before Migrating Staging to Live
You’ve been slaving away building the perfect new version of your client’s website. You’re building it on a staging site of course or better yet on your local machine. If it’s on WPEngine’s staging version, all you have to do to is go back to the live site, select the staging menu and select “Deploy site…
Adding Automatic Shopify Structured Data for Products
Adding structured data in the schema.org format for products is a best practice for search engine optimization in your Shopify store. And JSON-LD is now considered the recommended and preferred method for adding the structured data. Google provides a handy Structured Data Testing Tool to see how your microdata looks. And more good news is…
Add an Automatically Updated Copyright Date to your Website
Out-of-date copyright dates are all over the internet. In a way it’s good. It lets you know that the site probably hasn’t been touched by the webmaster since the year shown in the footer. But for your own site you always want that copyright date to be current. Right? So skip the Rose bowl and…
7 Free Web Page Speed Tests
You feel the need. The need for speed. But how fast is your web page? You can look at your load time and a waterfall of your file requests with Chrome developer tools, in Safari or Firefox but that read out is limited to your own connection speed and sometimes your hosts file or cache…
Adjust Photoshop Scratch Disk Preferences on Launch
Sometimes with really really large files in Photoshop you need to add or adjust scratch disk space. On a Mac hold down the Option + Command keys and start Photoshop normally. You should see a dialog box pop-up with the option to select your primary and secondary scratch disks. Select your scratch disk memory preferences…
Location Product Photography Shoot Equipment List
A quick goto list for location product photography photo shoots so nothing is left behind. Camera Bag Camera Bodies Charged camera batteries and charger Empty memory cards Lenses Lightmeter plus extra battery Hot Sync Radio transmitter Laptop Laptop charger Tripod head plate Strobe Lights kit Lights Spare bulbs Power cords Extension cords Stands Speed ring…
Domain Name Tools to Find the Right Website Name
Before you pick a website name there’s a few things to think about. Like how short could it be? Can you get away with an acronym? Some quick general rules for picking domain names: .com is preferred. Search engines and users will thank you for getting a .com domain. .net is “okay” but better suited…
Take Screenshots on the Mac Like a Boss
Want to lay down the law with your Mac make it cough up the screenshots on the Mac you need. Let’s start with the best way to screenshot. How to take a screenshot of a selected portion of your screen and copy it to your clipboard Do this instead of filling up your desktop with random screenshots…
Shopify Site Launch Checklist
The Shopify Store Launch Checklist is a good place to start. Many thanks to @tuckerschreiber for that. This Shopify Site Launch checklist adds a few things I think are crucial and skips over some basics like image optimization and setting up extra channels. Test on some actual mobile devices. Okay yes this is basic but…
Easy Way to Edit the Hosts File on a Mac
The hosts file allows you to override the IP address for a website provided by DNS servers. It’s easier to edit than it might seem and doesn’t require you to edit in terminal, which can be daunting. It’s particularly useful to test 3rd party SSL certificates at WP Engine before changing the actual DNS. Yes…
Correctly Exporting the Database from a WordPress Site
There are a lot of options when it comes to exporting a WordPress database for a website to import on a new hosting provider. Here are the three methods to export I’ve used the most with the best success: #1 Export directly from phpMyAdmin I find this method to be less messy than using a plugin…
Create a List of Files & Folder Contents Into a Text File
Save Folder Contents List into a Text File Easiest way to Create a List of Files & Folder Contents Into a Text File on a Mac is by first opening the folder in Terminal. Assuming you’ve setup this service it’s a lot easier than opening Terminal and then navigating to it. Once that is done simply type…
Installing an Inexpensive SSL Certificate on MediaTemple’s GridServer
MediaTemple won’t give you support installing a 3rd Party SSL on their shared hosting GridServer product but it is straightforward and the savings can rack up over time if you compare their $75 a year charge for installing a certificate to adding one from NameCheap for as little as $9 a year. That’s right, save $66…
Accessing a SiteGround Staging Site by IP
You’ve come over to SiteGround from WPEngine and now you want to access a staging site before your DNS has propagated. No dice. This is easy in WPEngine since they set a subdomain on wpengine.com for every site but on SiteGround you need to have access to the DNS. If your site’s nameservers aren’t pointed…
Open Multi Page Pdfs in Illustrator
This script worked wonders for me in Adobe Illustrator CS to open multi page pdfs in Illustrator with each page of the pdf ending up on it’s own artboard. I’ve also tested it and it works well on Illustrator CC to import multiple pages from a pdf into Illustrator as well. Here’s how to use…
Return the first day of the Month in Google Sheets
No need to kick in your computer screen. Here’s the functions to return the first day of the month in Google sheets, or the last day of the previous month or the current day.
Sync WordPress Users from LIVE to Staging
Note from Editor: This article was written in 2016 about what is now in 2021, WPEngine’s legacy staging. The general process can still work with different site environments but databases need to be exported and imported rather than just copied. Side note: this process can also be used to update Gravity Forms forms and entries…
A suggestion for faster Harvest Invoicing
In the hope for an even faster invoicing tool, I sent this suggestion to Harvest, the popular online time tracking and invoicing tool that is so loved by freelancers and small teams.
Get the Last Word in Google Sheets Cell or Excel Cell
Here’s what you need to retrieve the last word (or the first) in Google Sheets cells or using Excel if that’s your preference. Get the Last Word in Google Sheets =TRIM( RIGHT( SUBSTITUTE( A1 ; ” ” ; REPT( ” ” ; 100 ) ) ; 100 ) ) but if you might have any trailing…
How to merge multiple CSV-files into one with Mac OS X Terminal.app
Found this csv merge tutorial and it works great to merge csv files on mac into one file. An explanation and quick piece of code that will help you to simply merge large numbers of .csv files (or for that matter: any kind of text files) into one. I used it to merge multiple .csv…
Open a folder in Terminal from Finder
1. Set the preference. This screenshot is from El Capitan. 2. Right click on the folder at the bottom of the finder window or simply right click on a folder in the finder Boom. It opens in terminal.
Save 20% off your first payment with WP Engine
Save 20% off your first payment with WP Engine. Use code SPEEDUP. Expires 5/31/2016. Mr Dif edit: Save 20% off your first payment with WP Engine. Use coupon code SUMMERSAVINGS. Expires 8/31/2016. That hosting coupon is toast. This banner is still good for 20% off hosting at WPEngine: Updated on 6/12/2018 About WP Engine:…
Media Temple Web Hosting Discount Code
Updated: 10/11/2016 This discount on Media Temple hosting is good through Dec 31, 2020