Is the new PHP7 Causing Problems to Your Old WordPress Website?

Earlier versions of PHP, despite the one which was recently released have some serious drawbacks in performance. To overcome the lag in speed faced by PHP versions including PHP 5, Facebook has initiated HHVM. All these have become the part of an old story with the introduction of PHP 7. It comes with several number of refreshing changes that are very much acceptable to the community of web developers.

Modifications that are included in PHP 7 to increase the speed are really superior such as the inclusion of new operators, group use declarations, an abstract syntax tree, and support for anonymous classes so on. A billion dollar question which worries developers all over the world is: will the websites made with older CMS platforms like WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal be compatible with PHP7? Users can trace out many number of websites that run with PHP scripting having the assistance of WordPress platforms.

WordPress developers are working on this issue to make the CMS compatible for the new PHP 7. It is not a hidden fact that WordPress functions with the aid of themes as well as plugins. As per the present scenario, WordPress developers have reached the half-way only, nearly half of the WordPress themes, and Plugins do not have the support for PHP7. The best way to save your WordPress website from a wreck is by keeping the updates on time. In short, website owners who have their WordPress site running on PHP 5 will have to consider some essential things before shifting it to PHP 7. Let us read it out here.  

Be Conscious About The Timely Notifications

All hosting service providers usually send notifications to the website owners before they make some crucial updates. Analyze your WordPress website properly, and make sure that everything works correctly after the update. So check out for the notifications, verify your website, and ensure that all plugins, and themes are working properly.

Update Your Themes and Plugins

As mentioned before, we cannot imagine about a WordPress website which lacks plugins and themes. Hence keep these themes and plugins up to date. If any of the factors that assist the working of themes go wrong, the migration of your WordPress website to PHP 7 will not be possible. Then ensure that you are up to date.

Keep a Backup of your WordPress Website

As a website owner you are very sure that everything in your site is working properly, and in addition to that you have kept all updates properly. Then do not be over confident. Keep the backup of your active website in various sources, before you migrate to PHP 7. Thus, you can save your WordPress website from collapsing, even though something goes wrong at the time of migration.

Keep in Touch with the Service Providers

The services of hosting providers are extremely important while shifting your website to PHP7. In most of the occasions hosting providers can offer you valuable assistance. If you are not getting the support of service providers at the given time, you can restore your website to the present condition by using the backup files, and try another time.

Conclusion

PHP developers have done all possible things to make this server side scripting language perfect in terms of functioning. Hence migrating your old WordPress website to PHP 7 will always be a real asset. Webmasters can make it possible by concentrating on some crucial things linked to PHP web development.

Which WordPress Theme Framework is Best and Why?

Developing a theme or template for the purpose of website creation is not the easiest of jobs, even though there are many open source customization services available. Most of the web developers first create HTML templates, and then start WordPress coding corresponding to it. This activity can prove to be very stressful, for developers will have to rewrite the HTML codes to PHP. 

There are other groups of developers who increase the speed of coding by writing the codes in a language which WordPress can read quickly. Then no point of rewriting of codes will come up in the end. Those developers who want to work efficiently will start working with the support of theme frameworks. 

In this article, we can identify what are theme frameworks? What are its’ uses? And what is the best WordPress theme framework?

Theme Frameworks

The initial process of website creation involves the making of web layouts, and theme frameworks are basic tools that support the faster creation of these layouts. It makes the development of WordPress functions so easier. Theme frameworks speed up web development to greater horizons. 

Many of the WordPress theme frameworks available for download now are parent themes. With the use of these parent frameworks, web developers can easily create child frameworks, and permit the parent framework to do the remaining tasks. 

Use of theme frameworks will bring developers certain benefits such as rapid development, execution of more functional options, pre-built set of widgets& SEO options, easy fixing of bugs, no particular need of professional knowledge to customize the codes you have written, and over all great community support. 

If you are thinking of developing WordPress websites, it will be a great idea to use theme frameworks for endless reasons as mentioned above. By following these theme frameworks, you can get fine support from the parent themes. When specially coming to WordPress, we can find a handful of purposeful parent themes, and some of the better themes are mentioned below. 

Genesis

 

Genesis happens to be a WordPress theme framework which is worth every penny you spent from your pocket. It comes with attractive and powerful themes to speed up your web development. It is a set of fine codes that are basically search engine optimized. 

The codes are made of authentic HTML 5, and are responsive in nature. If we consider the security aspects, and community support genesis codes are absolutely top-notch. Another favourable aspect of genesis happens to be the one-time support, and well-written codes. 

Headway

Those who are not well-versed in coding WordPress, Headway is the one they can rely on. It is so strong in its’ drag and drop aspect. The interface provided by Headway is the superior one. This theme framework supports grid layouts, and is coded using HTML/CSS to offer stunning performance. 

Visual Editor of Headway is worth using, and it offers developers many customizable options. There are preview options in which developers can see how the  actual layout will look even before making the WordPress website live. Users can even make small changes to make the web designs attractive by the use of Headway framework.

Cherry Framework

First thing to indicate about Cherry framework is that it is free, and a web developer will get nearly 70% of things that they find in paid theme frameworks, as well. You will get automatic updates, and excellent data management option. 

Cherry Framework is basically Bootstrap based, and is superb in creation of a child themes. It belongs to the easiest of frameworks to be used, and serves developers at its best while creating blogs. Perhaps Cherry will suit to the needs of novice web developers the best. 

Conclusion

In this extract, we have only mentioned about the finest of WordPress theme frameworks. If you are serious about open source customization services, you may find out a good number of WordPress theme frameworks over the web. Still most of the professional web developers strongly advise Genesis as the best WordPress theme framework, for the web creating options it offers.

How WordPress makes PHP Popular

The title of this article may sound odd to many developers as well as professionals who work with the internet. WordPress is a popular application developed using PHP, and there are many powerful PHP frameworks that offer great web building features over the web. 

Then how WordPress leads to the fame of PHP? There are many methods in which you can identify the popularity of a web page or application on the web. We can correctly identify the popularity of technology, a web page or an application by just counting the search over a particular keyword. 

Open source customization services is a massive field and many things including the WordPress development, PHP web page creation can be included in it. Here in this article, we can trace some reasons that make enable WordPress to make PHP popular among web development communities.  

What the Analysis Suggest?   

Just use the Google Trends, and analyse the popularity of all PHP frameworks and WordPress. The data will itself give you an idea. It will show you the popularity chart based on the keyword searches. Then any user can clearly identify the popularity of WordPress over any other PHP frameworks. 

No Third Party PHP Frameworks  

WordPress is an application developed fully using PHP without any third party components. It is does not need any of the third party components for developing web pages. 

WordPress Installations and PHP Hosting  

If users need to host a WordPress installation, they should resort to a PHP hosting services. Then quite naturally , users will think about PHP hosting as well. The users will then do a general study on PHP installation. This makes PHP even more popular whenever they do WordPress installation process.

WordPress Plugin System

The fame of WorPress can trace back to the development of blogs. Take the case of all the blogs developed over the web. It is more the number of websites developed using PHP frameworks. The WordPress plugins used to create blogs are basically developed with PHP language, hence WordPress indirectly makes PHP famous. 

See Also : Common WordPress Mistakes Committed by Newbies

No Programming Knowledge Need to Create Website  

This will be the most important difference between WordPress and all other PHP frameworks. The person who uses a PHP framework might be a professional or an experienced programmer who knows every aspect of programming. Those who do not know the basics of programming can utilize WordPress for developing websites. It indirectly makes users aware of PHP development as well as hosting services.

Shall I use WordPress to Develop Websites?  

It may sound to be the most important question? WordPress is created using PHP and is the most famous blog making tool. Still, users cannot use WordPress to develop all kinds of websites. Let us explain it in detail. 

If we are planning to create an e-commerce website with a large number of pages that utilize SQL databases severely, we cannot depend on WordPress. WordPress is not created to suit that purpose. It can used to create basic websites that are less in features. 

For creating web pages like blogs WordPress really exceeds all other PHP frameworks, but when it comes to creating websites loaded with massive contents and images, we will have to rely on other PHP frameworks. 

Conclusion   

The main point detailed here is the popularity of WordPress when compared to other PHP frameworks. Let us take the case of any other PHP frameworks including Yii, Laravel, CakePHP so on. 

The WordPress as a term will be quite popular among internet users than the other terms mentioned above. The role of frameworks in PHP web development is unavoidable, even though WordPress as a PHP application is more prominent among the internet users. 

6 Superlative Features of WordPress 4.1

WordPress is a world-best popular blogging platform used by 20.3% of the top 10 millions websites as of Jan, 2015. But in future it empowers more than 60 million websites.

It seems to be a long-awaited for release of WordPress version 4.1, which is available for download or update. This version has proven to be apparent milestone for developers due to its plethora of improvements, advanced functionalities, general updates and new stunning features. Whatever it may be, this version shows something excitement for developers to get into it.

Here we show you what’s new in WordPress 4.1 has brought to us and have a deep look about its prominent features.

1. Inline Image Editing Tool Bar

It’s often being trouble faced by many WordPress newbie’s in aligning and editing image inside the WordPress post editor. Now, it has been solved with help of new inline image editing tool, which enables the user to align images instantly & easily by seeing alignment options in media editor. Further, it allows users to edit an image by utilizing pencil button, which opens the image into a popup.

2. Customization API

Theme developers can make use of this customizer controller API to render your own controls in customizer sections for creating better theme option management based on “Open Source Customization Services”. This API customizer builds entire JavaScript API to ensure lots of improvements in contextual panels and ensures new media experience for end-users.

Read Also : Common WordPress Mistakes Committed by Newbies

3. Plug-in Recommendations

Developers can easily access a list of recommended plugins for WordPress 4.1 due to recent update in the API. You can also create a new tab for recommended plugins instead of replacing the popular tab. It shows you which plugins are performing well across the directory and offers you a strong foundation to initiate good start for plugins.

4. Social Icon Menu

The social icon is one of most significant features in-built with latest default theme “Twenty Fifteen” and it includes familiar social buttons including Facebook, Google, Twittter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Instagram. The default theme will convert them to actual-size icons automatically.

5. Responsiveness

It is the most flexible and fully responsive design that perfectly suits exactly into current web trends for mobile devices. It has multiple navigation menus, which enable you to build the exciting themes in just a few minutes. You won’t find any better tool to develop exceptional sites and it allows to maintain images, galleries, and post meta sections consistently on every page. Twenty Fifteen makes your website being run on a mobile phone in a genuine way.

6. Better Session Management

This feature ensures you a new session management function, which ensures complete control over all sessions acquired on different mobile devices. It is integrated with user-interface management system along with the users section of the dashboard which is helpful in case of your mobile is lost and forgets to log out a system.

Conclusion

However might be, creating websites and applications are extensively utilized by organizations around the world. So by following above mentioned prominent factors, developers will love it and think about the WordPress 4.1 features are perfect match for them in getting greater chances of creating lively websites as well as applications.

Most Important Features of Magento and WordPress

Before creating an e-commerce website, a potential business organization will look for multiple platforms that aid them to accomplish the task as per the norms they have set in terms of budget or time-limits. Thanks to the merits of platforms which support open source development such as Magento, WordPress, and PrestaShop. Among the commonly utilized open source platforms, the titles of Magento, and WordPress are most heard. Here we can discuss the most vital traits of the Magento and the WordPress.

A closer look into Magento

Magento, undoubtedly is one of the best e commerce platforms available right now. It has served various small, medium, and large scale organizations from the day old. You will easily find millions of e commerce websites created using this platform, for the powerful features it offers to the developing community.

One dashboard for multiple stores

Any business owner can easily extend their websites to any level by using the dashboard of Magento brilliantly. It is designed to run multiple windows. It is the best advantage business owners get with using Magento as a platform to build e commerce websites. It has a lot more flexibility.

Great community support

when you compare Magento with any other platform, another plus point you will find is community support. It has many number of followers, and developers to assist the beginners as well as the expert ones.

An organized platform

Magento is a platform which helps developers to do work in a more organized way. It is loaded with powerful filters and attributes to control all types of store arrangement as per the needs of developers. Thus developers can load hundreds of products to the website supported by this platform without any difficulty. The administration controls of this platform are exceptional, and it aids developers to speed up task, that too in an organized pattern.

A closer look into WordPress

Together with WordPress the next term strikes in everyone’s mind is the pluggins. It is at large a content based system which can be used as an e commerce platform as well. WordPress gained popularity in a less time span. WordPress and Magento are platforms that can be integrated each other for creating excellent e commerce websites. A discussion on powerful features WordPress encompasses as an e commerce platform will be noteworthy.

Even new comers find WordPress easy

WordPress has a good number of Plug-ins, as well as widgets that allow beginners to create websites. Users who have different levels of knowledge can deal with WordPress plugins.

SEO-friendliness

When it comes to inbuilt SEO promotional tools, WordPress has a clear advantage over any other e commerce platform. Implementation of SEO features is a bit easy with WordPress.

Hosting is easy, and less expensive

Hosting of websites is very easy with WordPress. It provides developers with a good number of free templates, and even paid templates are costless compared to other platforms.

Conclusion

In short, WordPress will be an ideal platform for novice developers. Magento remains a very good platform for dedicated developers. It is complex in nature for many developers, but once you identify its features correctly, you will feel much comfortable. Both are equally good open source developmentplatforms, and can be used for creating stunning e commerce websites. 

Common WordPress Mistakes Committed by Newbies

WordPress has been the leader among the various Content Management Systems. Needless to say, the second popular CMS only comes a distant second in terms of popularity. PHP is a platform of WordPress. This CMS, which is free, is based on MYSQL.

Like anybody else, even the WordPress users and developers, during the open source development of it, make some common mistakes. These silly blunders can easily be avoided.

8 Common Mistakes Committed and The Ways to Prevent them

1. Failing to Create Backup for Your Site

This common mistake will cost your dearly. All the information and data will be lost due to sheer negligence. However, it can be prevented by having a manual or automatic backup of the WordPress site. Even in the event of website getting crashed or corrupted, all your data is safeguarded. 

To back up, just go to Tools, after that, to Export. Use WP-DB-Backup automatic plugin. Also, phpMyAdmin tool or Vaultpress can be used for self-hosted wordpress.org.

2. Use of Default and Unfriendly Permalink

Permalink (permanent link), or URL of a web page is by default set. The URL structure, which looks gibberish and meaningless, can be changed to more understandable way. You should use right keywords in a permalink. Doing so helps your website rank better in the search engine results, apart from enhancing the user experience. To change the structure of permalinks, go to Settings and then to Permalinks.

3. Not Installing Google Analytics and Google Search Console

It is yet another avoidable mistake. Hope you know what is Google Analytics! Nevertheless, Google Analytics helps you in tracking and reporting your site's traffic. It offers you lots of insights. You get to know the keywords that are to be incorporated into your writings so that you drive more traffic to your site.

Ensure that you integrate Google search console ( previously Google Webmaster Tools). Submission of XML sitemap to console helps you to get all the pages of your website indexed.

4. Continuing the use of Default Favicon

Favicon, or favorite icons are small icons. They could be seen adjacent to page title in the browser window, or the browser's address bar. It is one major mistake done by WordPress newbies, i.e., to continue with the default favicon. Changing the default favicon to you own one would exhibit your professionalism. To replace, checkout for a free favicon generator on the web, visit the images section, replace the default one with your own.

5. Failing Your Mobile Users

Increasingly, people are switching over to smartphones. Failing to make your site mobile-friendly and tablet-friendly will result in you paying the price. What price? Your site will slowly lose traffic. So, to address this issue, use a plug-in like WPtouch for customizing the site for mobile devices. Using responsive Wordpress theme also helps in adapting your site to diverse devices.

6. Not Installing a Caching Plugin

Yet another major blunder. Installing a caching plug-in is of utmost importance. Apart from caching plug-in, Content Delivery Network also has to be used. The reason for this need is that your site wouldn't crash and can even sustain a massive traffic. That said, caching helps in improving efficiency, preventing downtime and also decreases the site's load time. 

W3 Total Cache is the best-known plug-in that could help in speeding up the WordPress blog. Also, WP Super Cache is another plug-in

7. Paying No Attention to WordPress Updates

Every time a bug is found or any susceptibility to it is found, WordPress gets updates. Neglecting any updates will only result in your site becoming prone to attacks from hackers. So take no chances when it comes to security.

8. Creating too Many Categories

While you should be thankful to WordPress for allowing to create as many categories, this may also result in cluttering your site. Properly categorize and structure all the topics accordingly. Offer a pleasant experience to the visitors of your site.

Conclusion

Ensuring that these mistakes aren't committed will help in the success of your WordPress site. Make a list of to-do's so that you do not miss on anything. After all, it is always advised that you "look before you leap."