Category Archives: WordPress

Twenty Twelve is now part of WordPress 3.4

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Reblogged from Coen Jacobs:

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The first version of the all new Twenty Twelve theme has been added last night to WordPress 3.4 Alpha in Changeset 19842: Initial import of the Twenty Twelve theme, by Drew Strojny. This time around we’re trying something different than the previous twenty-something themes, a much more minimalist approach that affords easy use as a CMS in addition to being blog-forward. More information will be on wpdevel soon. Props drewstrojny and lancewillett. You can see a live demo, setup by James Collins: Twenty …

Moved to WordPress.com

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Yes, I moved my blog from a WordPress.org (The open source blogging software) blog to WordPress.com (A hosted version of the open source package). I believe that most people do the reverse, mainly because they want more control and freedom over there WordPress blog. I decided to give some of that freedom and control away, but I hope to get some excellent service and hosting in return. So I don’t have to spend time on the performance of my blog.

That other thing is that I spend too much time on my blog. And that’s great, because of al that hacking and tweaking I learned a lot about WordPress. So I recommend that to all of you, but I feel now that the time I spend on my blog is not really paying it back. I could and I am spending more time on WordPress websites of clients. I learn a lot more on those websites then on mine.

What that also means is that I don’t have to spend much time on the technic of my blog and spend more time on writing. One of my goals is to write more, especially more in English. Practicing is the best way to learn things, right?

Of course there are a few thing that I will miss.

  1. Google Analytics statistics; I’m going to miss all the advanced stats of my blog. So I really hope that some day WordPress.com will integrate the possibility to use Google Analytics.
  2. Search Engine Optimization; I’ll miss the extra possibilities that some plugins gave me to optimize my blog for search engines (and humans of course). I would love to see some more SEO options. To start with adding a Meta Description and custom SERP title,
  3. Hacking & Tweaking; Yes, I will miss the friday night with an ice-cold beer, some good old rave techno and breaking WordPress.

Maybe I’ll go back to WordPress.org in a few years. We’ll see.

Don’t know what the differents is between WordPress, WordPress.com and WordPress.org? You should read this.

Presentation about WordPress and Personal Branding

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Last friday i gave a presentation at the Eindhovense School about Personal Branding and WordPress.

I started with an introduction about myself and my story of my ‘brand’. The first SERP of Google is the most important page of your personal brand. So you have to make sure that you like what’s on that page. The best en quickest why to change it is creating new good content. Preferably on your own website.

Then i started about WordPress, the history and the difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com. Of course I showed some awesome examples and recommended some premium themes, plugins and great sources to learn more about WordPress.

And after my presentation it was time for the students to get started with their own WordPress blog.
Continue reading →

6 Infographics about WordPress

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On my other blog, Simon Shares, I posted over time a few infographics about WordPress. In this post I will sum them up. Some of them are almost a year old, but I think that they are still interesting to read.

WordPress by the Number

WordPress by the Numbers
By Page.ly

The Power of WordPress

The Power of WordPress
By Tech King

The Anatomy of a WordPress Theme

The Anatomy of a WordPress Theme
By Yoast

WordPress by Jazz Legends

WordPress by Jazz Legends, An Infographic About the WP History
By Blogging Pro

Which Blogging Platform Should You Use?

Which Blogging Platform Should You Use?
By WPbeginner

WordPress.org vs. WordPress.com

Self Hosted WordPress.org vs. Free WordPress.com
By WPbeginner

If you know more infographics about WordPress. Feel free to share them in de comments.

Comic Sans FTW

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A good friend of mine, Coen Jacobs, just released a new plugin called Comic Sans FTW. YES! Comic Sans FTW. When I first saw his tweet I thought I would get Rick Roll’d. But sadly he actually build the damn plugin and released it.

What it does is it simply turns your WP admin in to “Instant Comic Sans awesomeness”. It changes all the fonts in the back-end to Comic Sans. Of course I installed it on my WordPress installation and I love the Hello Dolly lyrics in Comic Sans. I was just kidding.

According to Coen, Comic Sans is going to take over the world, one WordPress installation at a time and the next big feature will be Comic Sans on the front-end. Total Comic Sans Awesomeness!

A great spellchecker for WordPress

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I would like to share with you a plugin I just started to use this weekend. It’s called After the Deadline and it is built by the guys of Automattic. You know, the company founded by Matt Mullenweg, who is behind WordPress.com and WordPress.org and many more great things.

After the Deadline is a plugin that really nifty checks your spelling, style and grammar. It’s only for English so not really useful for my Dutch blogs but for this blog it’s really handy. My English writing is not yet on a level that I would like to be. That’s one of the reasons I started this blog in English. This plugin really helps me find mistakes and corrects them. So if you have an English WordPress blog, you should really try this plugin and let it check your writings.

Installation

Go to Plugins -> Add New and search for ‘After the Deadline’. Click on Install Now and wait a few seconds. Then you can activate the plugin and you’re ready to go!

Update – 26 may

I just read on WPMU.org that there is now also a After the Deadline for BuddyPress. It will add all the functions of the WordPress version to the BuddyPress Groups, Forums, Activity Stream, Profiles, Messages and Blog Comments.

Disable or minimise the WordPress Admin Bar

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WordPress 3.1 is about to release and one of the biggest changes is the Admin bar. WordPress.com already has a admin bar. If you would like to disable it, you can use a plugin, or add some code to the functions.php. If you would like to disalbe the Admin bar for yourself. Go to Users -> Your Profile. There you can click on the checkbox if you would like to disable the Admin bar in the dashboard and on your website.

Disable Admin bar

Joost de Valk wrote some more about how to disable the WordPress Admin bar by add some code to the functions.php of your theme.

Of course there are already a lot of plugins that can also disable the Admin bar. I really like the plugin called: Admin Bar Minimiser. It doesn’t disable the Admin bar. It just adds a little option to minimise the Admin bar. It’s a simple solution, and I like it.

Minimise Admin bar

To check out the WordPress Admin bar, you must run the latest beta version. It not recommend to do if you are not an advanced WordPress user.

Tweaking with W3 Total Cache

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This weekend I had a little bit of spare time left to play with W3 Total Cache, one of my favorite WordPress plugins. So far I didn’t use the Minify option of the plugin for this theme. When you install W3 Total Cache, go to the General Settings page to turn on Minify. Then go to the Minify options page. Click on Help and a wizard will come up. Just select the files you would like to minify and the plugin will do the rest for you. Clear all the cache and feel the difference in speed.
I used Pingdom to measure the difference in loading time before and after the changes.

Before

The total loading time before was 1,6 seconds. There for you have to load 27 objects withe a total size of 269,8 KB. There are 4 CSS files, and 6 scripts. Those are very easy to minify and to combine in to one file.
Check the test on Pingdom for more detailed information.

Now

Now the total loading time is 1,3 seconds. And it has to load 18 different objects with a total size of 96,3 KB. The biggest change is the CSS files. There is now just one big CSS file of just 18,5 KB.
Check the test on Pingdom for more detailed information.

W3 Total Cache is such a great plugin with to much options. There are always things that I can tweak to make simonvreeman.com faster. If you have a WordPress blog, you should definitely check out this plugin. We all love fast loading websites right?!