Wp Builds

It’s another of chats in the series called the A-Z of WordPress where we attempt to cover all the major aspects to building and maintaining sites with WP. Today is F for... Forms. We expect most sites to have a contact form. Something that does not require the visitor to launch an email client, but there's so many other things that forms plugins have brought under their control. Payments, user registration, post creation and much more. We're also very lucky that the WordPress forms space is so competitive; so many great options to choose from. So today on the podcast we talk about forms, what we've used, what we like and what they can be used for. Go check out the podcast...

This week's WordPress news - Covering The Week Commencing Monday 1st March 2021

So the podcast today might catch you a little off guard! It's not something that I've ever played with before. Today we're talking about Shoutworks, which is a WordPress plugin that lets you boost your voice SEO by creating an Amazon Alexa skill in one click right from inside WordPress. Wait... What! Is this even a thing? Why would I ever want to do that? Well, the short version is that you can use devices like Alexa to alert your audience / customers when you've got updates that they might be interested in. Marketers are always looking for new ways to engage and inform audiences, and this is certainly new. Find out more on the podcast today and leave a comment so that we know what you think...

This week's WordPress news - Covering The Week Commencing 22nd February 2020

It’s another of our chats in the series called the 'A-Z of WordPress', where we attempt to cover all the major aspects to building and maintaining sites with WP. Today is 'E' for... Ecommerce. There's just so much to say here because WordPress and Ecommerce are growing at a phenomenal rate. With so much activity, you'd think that there might be a 'best' way to build an online shop. But as is so often the case with WordPress, there's multiple ways to achieve the same goal. So today on the podcast we talk about our experiences with WordPress as well as surface some of the plugins and themes that we've come across over the years to make your WordPress / WooCommerce shop a reality. Go check it out...

This week's WordPress news - Covering The Week Commencing 15th February 2020

Today we're talking about the DocketWP WordPress plugin with Andre Gagnon and Kyle Van Deusen, the project founders. So, what does it do and why might you want it? It's a plugin that provides you with an easy to access to-do list right inside of your WordPress dashboard. You can sync this list in the cloud so that you, or your team are always doing the tasks that are needed. You also get pre-written tasks lists from industry leaders ready to download so that you're up to speed about SEO, care plans etc. in as little time as possible. It's a small plugin, but one which could possibly have large implications upon your productivity. Check out the podcast today to find out more...

This week's WordPress news - Covering The Week Commencing 8th February 2021

It’s the 4th in our series of chats called 'the A-Z of WordPress' where we attempt to cover all the major aspects of building and maintaining sites with WordPress. Today, we are really going set pulses racing with the letter 'D' for Database! The word alone sounds incredibly dull, and for years I pretended it did not exist. Even now I do anything to avoid directly interacting with it. But I do now appreciate how essential it is to the health and speed of a WordPress website. I’m now quite interested in how plugins and themes interact with the database. All that being said, this episode is one of those where we talk about things that we don't really understand. Being website builders, both David and I tend to just allow the database to exist and we try to ignore it. There's loads in here though, so have a listen to the podcast and let us know what you think...

This week's WordPress news - Covering The Week Commencing 1st February 2021

So if you're a user of WooCommerce, then the podcast today will be of interest to you. It's all about creating the best checkout experience to increase conversions with the CheckoutWC plugin. The checkout process of WooCommerce 'out-of-the-box' is okay, but it's not all that great. Yes, it works, but you know that you've seen better workflows; better ways of guiding you through the final stages of your purchase. The guest on the show today, Clifton Griffin, has been working for the last two years at getting the WooCommerce cart experience as painless as possible with his CheckoutWC plugin. Check it out on the podcast today...

This week's WordPress news - Covering The Week Commencing 22nd February 2021

It’s the third in our series of chats called the A-Z of WordPress, where we attempt to cover all the major aspects to building and maintaining sites with WordPress. Today, it’s the letter 'C' for Caching (including server side caching, front end caching (plugins) and CDNs. However, we avoid getting too deeply into page load times and scores, which we cover separately on another podcast. So what is the point of caching? What does it do and how might we do it with our WordPress websites. It's certainly a complex subject, and we don't have all the answers, but we do surface some good plugins that you might not have heard of. Check out the podcast...

This week's WordPress news - Covering The Week Commencing 18th January 2020

We all know that the WordCamps in 2020 got cancelled. This was a good idea because saving lives comes before attending online events, but I thought that it might be a good idea to get someone on the WP Builds podcast to have a chat with us about WordCamps nonetheless. Why, you might ask? Well, can you imagine what it would be like to be a part of a team who had worked extremely hard to get an event like WordCamp Asia, or WordCamp Europe up and running, only to have to cancel it with just a few days and weeks to go? I could not imagine that, and so I talked to someone who could. Someone who has firsthand experience working on a WordCamp and then having to pivot it into an online event. So find out what's involved in setting up a WordCamp on the podcast today...

This week's WordPress news - Covering The Week Commencing 11th January 2021

I'm sure that we've all had experiences with our WordPress websites where things went wrong; the site was hacked, something got deleted. In most cases we can recover, but if the worst comes to the worst we need a backup to save us. As with all things in the WordPress space, we're spoiled in the number of backup options available to us. There's plugins backups, our hosting backups, 3rd party SaaS backups and more. So which should we use? In this episode of the WP Builds Podcast we explore the pros and cons of the different backup types and why you might want to pick one over another. Have a listen to our thoughts on the podcast...

This week's WordPress news - Covering The Week Commencing Monday 4th January 2021

Writing is important. It's one of the greatest inventions in the history of humanity. In fact, it may very well be the most important. But we can all agree that not all writing is equal. Most of the writing that we create and read has nothing to do with prose. It's the news that we consume, the recipes we crib from, the information that we study and the emails / letters that we use to communicate. In these situations, it's important to write in a clear and understandable way. Errors in grammar, spelling and structure stand out and spoil the flow of what you're trying to get across. So step up ProWritingAid to the rescue! It's a tool built by Chris Banks, the guest on the podcast today. Listen now to see why he built it and how it might help your own writing.

So this is a new series called the 'A-Z of WordPress' in which David and Nathan discuss a topic starting with the next letter of the alphabet. To kick us off, it's A is for Appointments. WordPress works as a great platform for allowing bookings and appointments. There's heaps of plugins which will allow you or your clients to sync their calendar, take payments etc. What are those plugins and are they superior to SaaS alternatives? Perhaps you want to integrate an appointment system into your WordPress website, or maybe you want to pay a company to take this process over for you. There's lots to talk about so join David and Nathan on this new series. Go check out the podcast...