Posts Tagged
WordPress
Have you ever tightened a screw in with a key? Or pried a nail out of wood with pliers? Or, perhaps, made a stand for a book or iPad out of a hanger? Chances are, at some time or another, most of us have improvised when we needed a tool but didn’t have one on hand. We’ve emailed files to ourselves before Dropbox, or use the to-do list in Gmail to save quick notes, or pasted text into the search box in a browser to keep it for a few seconds. Just like a monkey stacking boxes to grab a banana, we’re pretty ingenious at getting stuff done with whatever we’ve got at hand.
It’s always interesting to see how others put apps to use. Odds are, each of us use Gmail and Dropbox and other popular tools in slightly different ways. Here’s some of my favorite unique ways to use web apps in ways they weren’t originally designed for. If you’ve got another great way to use a web app in a unique way, we’d love to hear about it in the comments at the end!
You’ve released a great new app or started the store you’ve always dreamed of, you’ve gotten covered in all the top sites, and you’ve got customers actually paying you money for your hard work. Congratulations! Now comes the hard part: supporting your customers.
No matter how nice your service or product is, your customers will need help with it. You’ll need to help them with everything from pre-sales questions to billing problems, from issues with your product to things you could have never thought of before.
The problem is, most customer support web apps are rather expensive, and can quickly eat into the meager amount your startup’s making. Plus, they’re often complicated and confusing to use, and don’t work exactly like you want.
WooThemes, the popular WordPress theme design firm, recently launched a brand new app theme, SupportPress. This advanced theme transforms a simple WordPress site into a full-fledged support system for your team. Does it have what your company needs? Let’s dive in and see.
It’s no secret that I am a huge WordPress advocate. It’s full-featured, extendable, and super powerful. However, depending on the project it could be overkill. You need space and a database backend, and you’ll end up with a lot of features that some clients might not use. Especially if you’re making a site that won’t be updated often, most of WordPress’ features will go untouched.
Luckily, there are a bunch of lightweight CMSs. One of them is GetSimple CMS, a promising newer CMS that . Today, we’ll take a closer look at that.
The internet is increasingly a social place where we can actually see the things our friends and colleagues are doing across the web. Social networks bring updates from all of our connections together, and RSS feeds help us see what others are writing on their blogs. However, it can still be surprising sometims to stumble upon a random blog post and see that one of our friends have already commented on it. You might recognize what they wrote just from their name, but most often you can easily recognize them from their profile picture.
With the hundereds of sites you might visit over the course of a week, there’s no way you’d have enough time to upload your profile picture to all of the sites you comment on. That’s where Gravatar comes in. This popular service from the folks at Automattic saves profile info for millions of users. Sites across the ‘net, from WordPress blogs to web apps we review here, then automatically find your picture from your email when you register.
Want to get your own Gravatar? Here’s what you’ll need to do.
If you have a blog or write for an online publication, chances are you’ve used WordPress. From the free hosted WordPress.com blogs to customized WordPress.org installs like the ones that power AppStorm and other Envato blogs, WordPress is one web app you see all the time without realizing. In fact, aside from browsers like Chrome and Firefox, it’s one of the few opensource programs that average users love and know about.
WordPress has in many ways democratized web publishing. The newest version, WordPress 3.2, was recently released, and it aims to make it even easier for anyone from novices to pros to publish their thoughts online. From a speedier dashboard to a new UI overhaul to a distraction-free writing mode, there’s something in the new WordPress for everyone.
In this Quick Look, we’re highlighting ManageWP. The developer describes ManageWP as a new tool that helps people manage multiple WordPress sites from one dashboard. ManageWP helps you manage all your WordPress sites from one dashboard, keeping them updated and secure.
Read on for more information and screenshots!
WordPress Rocks. Over the years WordPress has proved its mettle as a revolutionary blogging Platform and it hasn’t stopped just there. Both the core WordPress developers and third party developers have gone above and beyond their means to convert WordPress into a next generation Content Management System that can run anything.
From blogs to online stores, WordPress runs everything. After the break, let us take a look at some of the coolest themes and apps that can help you manage and enhance your WordPress experience.
WordPress is one of the most popular open source projects today, and it powers an incredible number of websites around the world. Started as a fork from b2 in 2003, WordPress has grown from a simple blogging engine into a full-blown CMS that can be used for a wide range of sites. It’s popularity is largely due to the wide range of third-party themes, plugins, and services that have been created over the past years to enhance WordPress.
Behind it all is Automattic, the company founded by Matt Mullenweg to advance WordPress development. They’ve tried to navigate the difficult path of creating a profitable business around an open source project, and over the years have diversified their offering to provide more value to bloggers and WordPress developers. Recently, though, they’ve created a stir among WordPress developers by creating more for-pay offerings that could compete with third-party developers’ offerings. Let’s take a look at some of the most recent developments in the WordPress ecosystem, and what it means for the future of the platform.
No matter where you host your website, something could happen that would immediately destroy all of your years of work on your blog. Your server could crash, your hosting service could accidentally delete it, or hackers could add malicious code that would take hours to clean up. Just like you (should) backup your personal computer regularly, your website needs backed up too so your data will never get lost.
There are many backup services for WordPress blogs today, ranging from plugins that email you a copy of your WordPress database to ones that archive everything on your site to Amazon S3. The new VaultPress service takes backup to the next level, making sure that everything from your site is redundantly backed up to multiple cloud services within seconds of it being saved on your site. Keep reading to see if VaultPress is the ideal backup solution for your WordPress powered site.
The world of webapps is filled with apps designed to help you manage projects, collaborate with your team, and keep your business running smoothly. Each app seems to have only part of the functionality you’d need to keep your team connected though, so before you know it you’ll end up using a dozen apps. The worst part is, the cost of all these services together can be prohibitive.
That’s where WordPress’ P2 collaboration solution comes in. It’s a free theme for WordPress that lets your team stay in touch with Twitter or Yammer style short messages and makes a great solution for discussions or just letting everyone know what you’re working on. It was designed by the Automattic team to help them stay in touch better while developing WordPress and their other tools.
While at the core it’s still the famous WordPress blogging engine, you’ll usually never see the WordPress dashboard. You can even get it running on a WordPress.com hosted blog in seconds without messing with databases or .htaccess files. Let’s take a look at what P2 has to offer and how your team can use it to stay in touch on the cheap.
Quick Look
Get your app in front of thousands of interested users with a sponsored Quick Look post, including a poll for users to vote for an in-depth review!
Find out more
