Posted on by Graham

This is simply a list of plugins/options for WordPress configuration. But if only it were that simple. I’ve put a lot into the following list of plugins and, well, it’s been a beast getting here. So, this is my trade secret. Shhh, don’t tell anyone!

What does that mean to us WP developers? It’s a list of WP plugins I use, specifically for a basic website (not ecom), to help a site get up and out the door. I’ve tested the following list after filtering each plugin based on functionality and experience. I’ll update this list when it changes.

Disclaimer – I do not work for, receive money, or promote any of the following;

Akismet

For security purposes, I can’t comment too much on this. Comes installed with WP and it has proven very helpful in the past. Do you like cleaning databases and poring over row after row of spam? Yeah, me neither.

All-in-One WP Migration

This, this sweat-ever-loving, blow-my-mind, shut-the-front-door plugin saved my you-know-what in 2017. I can say it has been saving it ever since. This plugin is purposed for transferring a site from one location to another by backing up the site’s files and database. I have also used it as a back up system and deploy this every time I update themes/plugins. A very big deal.

Contact Form 7

If you develop WP sites, you already know about this. If you don’t develop, consider this a trade standard. Use Contact Form 7 for all your forms.

Duplicate Post

I’m writing this into a block, but that block is in a post. Pages are posts too. I could go further down that rabbit hole, but I’ll stick to the point: WordPress uses posts. Duplicate Post will, well, duplicate your efforts. Great for page/post prototyping scenarios.

Yoast SEO

You have a website. You have data structured properly (I hope). You want it to be indexed, searchable, and optimized. You want Yoast.

So that’s it for now. I three other plugins under the hood. One for custom post types (written by your’s truely) and one that handles SMTP. The third is in a testing phase. I hope this helped someone.

If you have any questions or would like to comment/disagree/edit this, check it out on twitter.

Posted on by Graham

In the past, I’ve addressed (ok, ‘obsessed’) about project management and how projects should have flexible deadlines. Now I’m just giving up. I think something might have snapped (in my mind) at the end 2018 and there is no going back. I officially hate project management (not the people), project time tracking, and possibly even project management software (no offense intended). I’ve done some ‘reverse-thinking’ – which is basically asking what is the intent or purpose of something. Applying that to project management and I’m coming to the result of “management now has a time table of how long each project should take.” Which applies to some tasks or projects but definitely not websites.

Boom.

So much wrong on so many levels. But why is that wrong? Time management is not “wrong,” nor is it bad. Applying a scientific (in that “what worked for project ‘A’ will work for project ‘B’) theory (not theorem) to time management is horribly wrong because there are too many variables which are fluctuate in that equation and too many opinions. Separate teams waiting on each other / waiting on the client / waiting for fonts that are proprietary / has anyone selected a domain / what are we promising to the client … I could absolutely go on.

And I’m not here to complain.

By now you may be wondering about when I’m going to talk about fusion. Well here ya go. Fusion hasn’t happened yet. You can go out on the ol’ internet and read all sorts of articles about how company x has achieved “progress” with a machine they’ve built. My point is it’s not up and running in that’s what I think of time management in terms of site development. I’m continually trying to overcome this obstacle and when fusion happens, life as you know it will change dramatically. Just like the singularity. I’d like to take this moment to just express my gratitude and appreciation (maybe even love?) for robotics and AI – please don’t torture us for fun. But fusion, when achieved, will be awesome. It will revolutionize our electricity/battery problem. It’s clean, too. But it’s in the future and we just can’t use it now.

Maybe that’s where we are with trying to measure site development project lengths.

http://www.publicdomainfiles.com/show_file.php?id=14025264624720

Update: I believe I may have missed this point: Project management works as expected in a lot of other situations and I’m not trying to be negative to management or middle management as a whole. I especially mean no offense to the people in those positions.

Posted on by Graham

I started back at Woodard last week. Welcome sign and all. A bit nostalgic and a tad scary. If one we’re to put that aside and assess the scenario, one may conclude that the result is favorable with ones’ own desk and office.

When Chewy is in your selfie, it’s a “chelfie”

That’s Chewy. He’s one of my co-workers and it turns out he’s not into data or code. And the commute! Ohhhh the sweet, sweet 12 minute drive from my house. Things are good aside from a little fear. But what is life without adversity?

I went home on Tuesday for lunch and jumped on to the ol’ puter. I started working on a project (I’m building sites for fun now) and 5.0 has really sinked its teeth into me. I adjusted one page template and unleashed the ol’ WP loop and that was it.

I have a learning curve which I have combined with a conscious effort to restrict myself from using code in the site. This way I can hand it off to a customer with little training needed.

First thing on the agenda is to build out an “everything” page for reference. I’ve already made the pages. Maybe throw some images into a folder and then start thinking about the text. Excited to get back to that. If the first customer doesn’t bite; re-brand and resell.

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