In December 2018 Gutenberg – the new WordPress – editor finally launched and changed how we edit WordPress sites. It is intended to make the editing process easier, more intuitive and more fun for general users. I’m a fan – I think it’s a step in the right direction and makes editing easier and clearer.…
Google has now started charging, or at the least taking credit card details, in order to let you use their API key to add their maps to your site. You can read more about that here in this useful blog post from High Rise Digital. It’s still possible to add a google map for free,…
Sometimes you want a gap between two blocks. When you have an image that has text from a particular paragraph block wrapped around it you may not want the following paragraph text block to wrap as well. Separating blocks can be a problem with an image block and a paragraph block that you have put…
WordPress users like Gutenberg Gutenberg, the new ‘block’ editor, is a great development for WordPress.org. Editing content is more intuitive, especially for beginners. I have demo’ed Gutenberg for my local WordPress meetup (in Cambridge, UK). I’ve also taught Gutenberg as part of a 10 week beginners’ course on WordPress at a local college. In both…
In a WordPress website you have several areas – sidebars, footers, etc – which get edited and managed in different ways. Once you know what they are it’s easier to plan your content and shape how your site will look. It also helps you plan how users will navigate their way around it and to…
When it comes to finding images for your site there are a lot of options around. You have a choice of sources for your photos – your own, stock photos, professional/bespoke images and also a mix of these. Depending on the purpose of your site, one option may stand out as the obvious one. It…
The Web Style Guide: Foundations of User Experience Design (by Patrick Lynch and Sarah Horton) is fabulous. It achieves its aim of setting out clearly, in great detail (and always with justification and explanation) how to create a website. No one can know everything about website design. We all bring our biases, our experience and…
Simple site, needed fast Usually I use WordPress.org (it’s the free and open source sibling of WordPress.com which is a little different). Recently, however, I put together a site which required the speed and ease of WordPress.com to be ready in double quick time. Nicole, one of my best friends, lost her beloved Nan a…
If you’re daunted by WordPress and scared to start, or just want to have someone around ensuring you’re covering all the basics then a course running from January 2019 at Hills Road Sixth Form College in Cambridge could be just what you need. At only £125* for a whole term (ten lessons) you’ll get a…
Gutenberg is landing… Tomorrow, December 6, 2018, WordPress.org will update the core of WordPress with the new editor, ‘Gutenberg’. It’s a little controversial and makes some big changes to how the ‘back end’ of your WordPress site will look once you have updated WordPress. Some links that may help you Get the official intro from…