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How to Get Notification of WordPress and Plugin Updates

Have you ever wished you could be notified whenever there’s a WordPress update available or there’s a plugin on your WordPress powered website that’s in need of upgrading?

With WordPress in use on such a large number of websites worldwide, it has never been more vulnerable to attack. Unfortunately, there will always be people who are trying to find and exploit any weakness they can use to their advantage. Whether it’s a weakness in the WordPress code itself or a flaw in one of the many plugins available for WordPress there will always be a risk.

Keep your WordPress up-to-date

That’s why keeping your WordPress install and all the plugins you use up-to-date is so important.

UPDATE!

We now recommend ManageWP.com as the go-to service for keeping one or many WordPress installs up-to-date. You will need to install their plugin on each WordPress website you manage. Thereafter you can choose to be notified by email when there are plugins, themes, or core WordPress updates available and even apply those updates to all the websites you manage from the ManageWP.com website. They also offer pay-for services such as backups, automated security checks and more.

Sign up for a free account at ManageWP.com here and download the ManageWP Worker plugin to start keeping all your WordPress website up-to-date. [Read more…]

How to Restore Data from iCloud

If you’re an iCloud user this helpful article will be worth your time.

iCloud, however, much like real clouds, is notoriously opaque. It’s hard to see just what you have stored in it. Nonetheless, Apple has made it easy, at least, to fix some truth-related issues in iCloud, and you can do it with a readily accessible tool: a Web browser on any Mac or PC.

Check it out if for no other reason than to give you a little peace-of-mind that you’ll be able to get your data if you need it.

How To Edit Jetpack infinite scroll footer text on Genesis Themes

Infinite scroll on websites is becoming more common and is a clever and effective method for retaining site visitors. With infinite scroll there’s no longer a need to click the previous or next archive pagination links.

With the Jetpack plugin thankfully there’s a one-click method of activating infinite scroll on your self hosted WordPress powered site. But if you’re using the Genesis Theme Framework, as I am these days on all the sites I develop, when you try to activate infinite scroll you may receive a polite message which states that your theme isn’t compatible with the infinite scroll feature. Our you may not receive an error message but infinite scroll just won’t work.

By the way, if you aren’t using Genesis Theme Framework and a Genesis Theme, you should be, get the framework and a theme here.

[Read more…]

How To Add A Read More Link to Genesis Child Theme Excerpts

Using the Genesis Theme Framework is a huge help when setting up, customizing and maintaining a WordPress powered website. But sometimes the default settings won’t quite meet your requirements.

Recently while customizing a Genesis Child Theme for a client’s website, in the theme settings I had set the Content Archives to Display post excerpts. But when viewing the post archives the excerpts did not have a “Read More” link like the client wanted. [Read more…]

My Number 1 WordPress web development tip

Here’s my number 1 WordPress web development tip — install WordPress locally.

Want to develop websites faster? Start using WordPress. Maybe that should be my number one tip. But in my opinion, to best build and prepare a website for deployment you’ll be much happier working on the site if it’s running an a WordPress install that’s running on your own machine.

If you’re using a Mac check out this very thorough and helpful tutorial over at WPCandy.com on How to install WordPress locally on a Mac.

If you’re using a PC then I’d suggest using this BitNami WordPress stack to install WordPress locally.

When you’re ready to move your WordPress site to the web server WPCandy.com has help for that too.

Loaded and free WordPress User Guide

Here’s a loaded with detail WordPress User Guide updated for WordPress 3.2 made available by interconnectit.com for free in PDF format. Whether you’re an end user of WordPress or have clients who need help harnessing the power of WordPress this is a rich, handy and free resource.

WordPress visual cheat sheet

There’s a new and very handy WordPress Visual Cheat Sheet available for download at woorkup.com. One can never have too many WordPress cheat sheets.

Hot new WordPress theme – Mystique revisions

Mystique is a powerful new theme that gives you so many reasons to love it. This is one of the most feature rich GPL theme’s I’ve seen in a while. Go take a look at the demo site to discover all the features, page layouts and included options. Nicely done.