New Themify.me Builder addon

Another short post about an update to a favourite WordPress Addon from Themify.me – the new Builder addon.  This follows up my previous post on the new slideshow addon (about a week ago).

I use Builder on just about all the WordPress sites I have developed so far, I find it very flexible in terms of its layout options and range of widgets.  I’m aware there are a number of similar addons out there but I like Builder as its ‘built in’ to the Themify.me themes I use and also allows me to create my own layouts on pages I create.

In a way it reminds me of the Rapidweaver ‘stacks’ I used to use when I started creating web sites with Rapidweaver.

These days most of the stuff I do is in WordPress and I still like the ability to drop widgets into place and create a layout without having to dive into HTML and CSS most of the time and still be able to do this when I need to.

The main features I like in the update are the new, cleaner and simpler ‘front end’ (combined with live preview, to see how I am going as I do my layout) and the increase in the number and options available for widgets in the back end.

If you are new to WordPress, I can recommend Themify.me for the variety of what they offer as a member.  You may not need it all at first but in my own experience I have used quite a lot over the past few years since I’ve been a member and the membership has paid for itself.

See a Penny pick it up…

You know the old saying “see a penny, pick it up, all the day you’ll have good luck!”  Let me tell you, its not true ;’-)

The other day coming home from the airport, I saw a ‘penny’ (actually it was a 1 euro cent piece) lying on the ground at the bus station, where I was hoping to catch the next bus home.

I bent down to pick it up, the old saying ‘played’ in my head, I smiled, looking forward to the good luck coming my way.

Ten minutes later I discovered I had lost my bus ticket (my Opal pass with about $40 credit on it) and about $100 out of my pocket.  ‘Good luck’ my ^$$! 😀

Some say it was ‘good luck’ I discovered that I had lost my bus ticket so quickly, as I was able to cancel it straight away, preventing it being used and preserving my balance

Some say it was ‘lucky’ I didn’t lose all the money in my wallet and my iPhone, which was in the same pocket as the money I lost, as I was able to buy another ticket to get home

I say “I don’t know what planet you are from?!!” but I did not have ‘good luck’ that day!

I still have the ‘penny’, maybe I should throw it away before it causes me any more ‘good luck’ but I am superstitious and am afraid that will cause even more bad luck.

One thing for sure, its going to stay lying on a table at home.  I won’t be picking that ‘penny’ up again!

 

I have a dream…er, a tech learning goal = Bachelor or WordPress

Here’s another ‘tech learning’ goal to add to my (growing) bucket list in terms of new and different tech skills I want to equip myself with…. Bachelor of WordPress! Sounds impressive, right? 🙂

Many months ago, I started doing some online learning courses at WPMU DEV’s Academy and I really enjoyed them.  The one problem was, I had to keep up with the week by week lesson pace and complete the assignments before moving on and I just found that I fell behind on some weeks and found it hard to catch up again.

That is why I am delighted that the Academy has gone ‘on demand’ (all except the one course called dream small market big dont do it this way – which sounds interesting too).

So its off to the Academy again this weekend to start the Bachelor of WordPress course and do it at my own pace.  I’ll be qualified in no time   a few years hopefully some day! 😉

WooCommerce 3.x : I’m excited

Today I was catching up on some of my tech reading and one thing on the reading list was about the new release of WooCommerce – version 3.0

Some of the features I really like include:

• The addition of CRUD classes – yay for CRUD, the ability to Create, Read, Update and Delete WooCommerce ‘objects’
• A new CLI powered by the REST API – GUI’s are overrated, I love the ‘old school’ Command Line Interface approach, so fast to do stuff

The announcement was back in April (yes, that’s how far I am behind in my tech reading) and so now release 3.01 (at least) is now available, so I would not be on the ‘bleeding edge’ to install it.

For anyone else who is keen to try the instructions for updating your site can be found here.   If anyone has already installed the new release let me know of your experiences (good and bad) 🙂

New Themify.me Slideshow Addon

Just a short post about a new WordPress Addon from Themify.me that I really like – the new Slideshow addon.  See example in features image…

I’ve been a member of Themify.me for some years now and use their Theme’s and Addon’s in a number of the WordPress web sites I have developed.  I was attracted to join Themify.me because I liked the variety and ‘freshness’ of their WordPress stuff.

It was ‘cost effective’ to join and have access to all the content, rather than (initially) buy just the few things I needed for some of my early sites, and the Themify team have been updating their content and adding new content ever since and I always find something of interest and value in their releases.

The new Slideshow addon is just the latest example and, fo me, stands out as one of the best slideshow addons I have seen amonst the plethora out there in the WordPress-blog-o-sphere.

I’m going to update one of my sites to include the new addon soon as a ‘weekend project’, watch this space 🙂

Evernote ‘templates’

I have been an Evernote user for a number of years and just love the ability to be able to:

• make notes on any of my devices – Mac, iPhone, iPad
• store them in the Evernote cloud
• access them wherever and share them with whoever I want
• tag them for easy search and discovery

Recently an email popped into my inbox with a link to a blog on ‘Evernote templates’ and I decided to check them out and see how I might be able to use them in my ‘work’ (and play) with Evernote.

The blog gives a good overview of the concept and has links to ‘template’ resources created by Evernote and other people.

While not exactly ‘templates’ (more like a re-usable Evernote document) the ideas presented in the blog are very interesting and I have already started to use some of the sample templates provided.

If, like me, you already use Evernote, check out the ideas in the blog.  They gave me some additional ideas for saving time and effort using Evernote and I’m already on the way to creating some of my own ‘templates’ for common Evernote notes, tasks, etc.

Helping others: Finding good affordable web site hosting for small WordPress sites

The title of this Blog sounds like the holy grail for us WordPress site owners doesn’t it? If you don’t think so, then thank your lucky stars because you have probably never experienced the problems I have been wrestling with over the past few months… and I hope you never will! 🙂