Technology Resources
Explore the latest web design trends and tools with our comprehensive technology blog, packed with valuable resources and information.
PDF & Printing Plugins for WordPress
One of our fellow WordPress superusers asked the question recently: “Why isn’t there a plugin to create PDFs from a WordPress page?” She works on a local real estate blog, and the subjects of her articles frequently request PDFs of their stories—which involves creating the PDFs by hand. We thought, “That’s odd.” Surely there must be such a plugin. And indeed there is! That’s the great thing about WordPress. Because it’s open source, there are thousands upon thousands of developers working to create new plugins for WordPress every day, and often… they’re even free.
WordPress.org vs WordPress.com
For people who are first looking into the idea of starting a WordPress website, there’s one major stumbling block that we’d like to clear up. You can go to WordPress.com and set up a WordPress website in a few minutes. The hosting for that site is free forever, which is great, but with their free website you get a domain name that looks like this: http://myamazingsite.wordpress.com. Not so appealing, right? That shouldn’t be your dealbreaker; you can pay a small fee ($13) to add a domain you already own. And your site will enjoy the automatic security updates and spam-fighting power of the organization behind WordPress—which are two benefits that must not be overlooked. The limitations, however, are substantial. You must choose from a limited supply of themes. You can’t install plugins. When it comes to styling your new site, you are limited to the changes you can make via CSS… and even then, you can only make CSS changes if you subscribe to a premium plan. Here’s a list of the limitations of a free site hosted at WordPress.com...
WordPress Maintenance and Security
Taking over an existing WordPress website, we logged on for the first time to be greeted by a sea of issues. Upgrade core! 300 spam comments! 10 plugins have available updates! Another satisfying day… and we aren’t even being sarcastic! There’s nothing like putting a website that’s gone to seed back in order. WordPress maintenance is important, but if you’ve been reluctant to pay a monthly fee for it in the past, don’t be embarrassed or afraid if you want to reconsider. Our motto is “Straight answers from smart people,” and that means we can give you a variety of solutions to an existing technical problem. Telling clients out of hand that they need to scrap everything and redesign from scratch isn’t helpful when we’re getting a quote from a plumber or an electrician, and we’re not going to take that approach either. Instead, we’ll offer a variety of solutions, which can range from a minor facelift, to a back-end cleanup, to monthly maintenance, to periodic maintenance. We understand your top priority is to maintain a web presence commensurate with your brand, and to that end, our goals are to keep you up-and-running while looking good and offering the functionality your customers most need. If you’ve got a WordPress website, that means that we need to make it as secure as possible, that you’re on the right hosting platform for your needs, and that everything on the front end is working correctly and looks right, aesthetically.
