Category Archives: WordPress

Recommended WordPress Templates

There are literally thousands of WordPress templates available. A template presents a structure into which you place your own copy and images to build your website. The structural work is done for you, saving a great number of hours (and dollars!). Developers create templates with a specific purpose in mind, so the key is to find a template that matches your purpose.

I have presented here three templates that I can recommend. The developers are known to produce good quality work. These templates are also responsive, meaning that they will present a good appearance whether the website is viewed on a desktop PC, a tablet or a telephone.

Essential WordPress Plug-ins

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If you have a WordPress site or are planning a WordPress site, there are some plug-ins that are just flat-out essential. That said, plug-ins are a mixed blessing. Plug-ins are susceptible to security flaws and are not always maintained properly. It’s especially frustrating to face an upgrade in WordPress with several plug-ins that have not been updated for the latest version of WordPress. For this reason, we rely on the absolute minimum number of plug-ins possible and select our plug-ins from reputable vendors.

Here is the list of our recommended plug-ins:

Ultimate Blog Security

Secure your blog effectively. You can visit their website at Ultimate Blog Security.
Gravity Forms

Not free, but very powerful. Certainly not always necessary. If you need only a simple contact form, use Contact Form 7 instead. But for long and/or complicated forms, you won’t find a better solution than Gravity Forms.
Sociable

Social media sites play a key role in promoting your presence on the web. This plug-in places links to your preferred social media sites so people can share your content on those sites.
VaultPress

Backups are essential and VaultPress provides the best backup for WordPress. Period.
WordPress SEO by Yoast

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) determines how easily people can find you on the internet. This plug-in stands at the top of the heap of SEO plug-ins. Yoast offers top-quality resources and advice on all things WordPress.
W3 Total Cache

WordPress generates html from a mixture of php code and its database. This takes time so your site will load somewhat slowly. Cache plug-ins resolve this in various ways, but W3 Total Cache claims our favorite spot. It builds the pages in advance, so the user just loads a simple quickly loaded html page.

Feel free to contact us about using these plug-ins on your site!

March Special – WordPress Upgrade

The newest release of WordPress is a security update for WordPress 3.3 which features improved performance and ease-of-use. WordPress now supports drag-and-drop uploading as well as built-in support for many of the most popular features that formerly required plug-ins.

Virtual Websource recommends updating to the latest release of WordPress, primarily for security reasons but we believe you will enjoy the vastly improved dashboard as well. And media handling has been greatly improved.

As always, updating WordPress requires that you perform a complete backup of the database and all plugins. But you do backups at least weekly anyway, right? Right??

Prior to upgrading, ensure that all your plug-ins are compatible with the new release of WordPress. This can be a major issue if you have not been upgrading regularly. Often plug-ins don’t get updated regularly – sometimes they are dropped all together and will not work on the most recent WordPress release. We once upgraded a client from 2.9 to 3.3 and the entire site was killed!

Which points up another really important concept – all sites should have a development site where all changes are tested before they go live, including WordPress upgrades. If you don’t have a development site, talk to us about it today.

Virtual Websource is offering a special WordPress Upgrade package for only $50 which includes full backup and plug-in evaluation. This special offer is for the month of March only. Contact Us today to take advantage of this offer.

Announcement! Virtual Websource is now offering an annual WordPress maintenance package for $600! This includes monthly backups, plug-in compatibility checks and WordPress updates!

Stopping the Spam Robots – Captcha and Re-Captcha

I don’t like CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart) . Most of them are difficult to figure out and sometimes – especially with Google – I have to try four or five times to get it right. But the spam robots must be stopped, so CAPTCHA is one of the better ways to deal with them. You can learn all about CAPTCHA at CAPTCHA.net.

I prefer something easier to navigate than the CAPTCHA images, so I use a math spam blocker instead which I obtained from these fine folks in Denmark. It poses a simple math test (see image left) and has done a great job of blocking those spam robots. I was getting over 50 spam ‘comments’ a day; now I don’t get any.

If, however, you prefer the more traditional CAPTCHA, I can recommend this plug-in.

If you would like assistance with protecting your site from robot spam, Contact Us.

WordPress 3.3.1 Upgrade

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The newest release of WordPress is a security update for WordPress 3.3 which features improved performance and ease-of-use. WordPress now supports drag-and-drop uploading as well as built-in support for many of the most popular features that formerly required plug-ins.

Virtual Websource recommends updating to the latest release of WordPress, primarily for security reasons but we believe you will enjoy the vastly improved dashboard as well. And media handling has been greatly improved.

As always, updating WordPress requires that you perform a complete backup of the database and all plugins. But you do backups at least weekly anyway, right? Right??

Prior to upgrading, ensure that all your plug-ins are compatible with the new release of WordPress. This can be a major issue if you have not been upgrading regularly. Often plug-ins don’t get updated regularly – sometimes they are dropped all together and will not work on the most recent WordPress release. We once upgraded a client from 2.9 to 3.3 and the entire site was killed!

Which points up another really important concept – all sites should have a development site where all changes are tested before they go live, including WordPress upgrades. If you don’t have a development site, talk to us about it today.

Virtual Websource is offering a special WordPress Upgrade package for only $50 which includes full backup and plug-in evaluation. Contact Us today to take advantage of this offer.