Author: Ben Rothman

Park Picker

This project is written with PHP, HTML/CSS and JQuery with some light javascript in there too.

I was given a list of parks, tags that relate to them (like dogpark, pond and bike path), the park’s website and a picture of that park; I made all of that information into a JSON file. All of the tags of every park are all listed all together each one time and the user chooses the tags for their ideal park, something that has all of or as many of the tags as possible.

The JQuery then immediately rebuilds the page (without a page refresh) and lists the parks in order of how many tags it has that match the tag criteria as well as gives a grade to each park that shows how many tags.

It’s not a terribly complex project, but it gets an important job done and solves a problem in away that is relatively easy to maintain.

This project can be found on my GitHub at: https://github.com/brothman01/park-picker

Plugin WordPress

WordPress: Formidable Forms

Post author By Ben Rothman
Post date August 16, 2020
No Comments on WordPress: Formidable Forms

If you want a complex form with conditional logic, advanced scoring, user registrations and much more, Formidable Forms is the plugin for you. If you want a contact form this plugin works excellently for that too, it’s much more power than you need but it is a good solution.

Formidable forms has an easy-to-use graphical interface to build forms, and then can add conditional logic/assign scores or values to responses right there. If you need to refer to the value of a field in the value of another field, email it or otherwise use it elsewhere in the form, you can just refer to the index number associated with that field or use a url parameter right in the Formidable Forms interface.

If you need complicated and very powerful forms on your site and do not want to build them with code then this is the plugin for you.

There is even a very useful API add-on that I used at work to create API sends to specific endpoints and with specific data including but not limited to the data entered on the form.

WordPress

WordPress 5.5 “Eckstine”

Here it is! Named “Eckstine” in honor of Billy Eckstine.

Speed

Posts and pages feel faster, thanks to lazy-loaded images.

Images give your story a lot of impact, but they can sometimes make your site seem slow.

In WordPress 5.5, images wait to load until they’re just about to scroll into view. The technical term is ‘lazy loading.’

On mobile, lazy loading can also keep browsers from loading files meant for other devices. That can save your readers money on data — and help preserve battery life.

Search

Say hello to your new sitemap.

WordPress sites work well with search engines.

Now, by default, WordPress 5.5 includes an XML sitemap that helps search engines discover your most important pages from the very minute you go live.

So more people will find your site sooner, giving you more time to engage, retain and convert them to subscribers, customers or whatever fits your definition of success.

Security

Now you can choose to update plugins and themes automatically–or pick just a few–from the screens you’ve always used.

Auto-updates for Plugins and Themes

Now you can set plugins and themes to update automatically — or not! — in the WordPress admin. So you always know your site is running the latest code available.

You can also turn auto-updates on or off for each plugin or theme you have installed — all on the same screens you’ve always used.

Update by uploading ZIP files

If updating plugins and themes manually is your thing, now that’s easier too — just upload a ZIP file.

Website WordPress

WordPress: WPOptimize

This life-saver plugin adds a button to the dashboard when installed that allows the administrator of the website to perform certain site optimization tasks such as removing old post revisions, minifying images, removing trashed comments and lots more from the comfort of their own dashboard.

Want to optimize the tables in your database? No problem, just install this handy plugin and with no configuration required you can do that with just the click of a button. If you have a WordPress site and want a boost in performance, as long as the issue(s) causing the slowness are not very uncommon and strange, this is the plugin for you.

WordPress

WordPress 5.4 “Adderly”

Travel WordCamp WordPress

WordCamp Montreal 2019

This was the last WordCamp I attended before COVID and little did I know but it was just under the wire. I went to this event with my friend Evan who goes with me to many of the fun WordCamp events.

This event was held right nearby where I was staying at the John Molson School of Business building at Concordia University. Aside from having a nice venue, there were interesting talks about the UX, generating revenue, the JAM Stack and much more.

It was cool to visit another country and then to also learn about WordPress, the thing I love. We had friends who lived in the area who knew of some great places to eat and visit. I had a great time, and I hope all of my future WordCamp experiences are that great.

Project WordPress

Hosted WordPress Site on raspberry pi

Post author By Ben Rothman
Post date February 5, 2020
No Comments on Hosted WordPress Site on raspberry pi

I know this is a deviation from my normal posts but I had to say something because I enjoyed this exciting project.

I used a raspberry pi to host a WordPress website on my local network. Granted, this would have been a better announcement if the website was available everywhere, but I just wanted to set up a headless installation of Ubuntu on Raspberry pi, SSH in from one of my other computers and host a website on the pi.

To be honest, technologically this was nothing special I suppose because it was not a complex website but the site I made was not a complex site, but this was an interesting project.

Web Development

How to Install PHP_Codesniffer (phpcs)

Post author By Ben Rothman
Post date July 15, 2019
No Comments on How to Install PHP_Codesniffer (phpcs)

Honestly, follow the instructions at this link for the best results: https://github.com/squizlabs/PHP_CodeSniffer

(but the executable path is /usr/bin/phpcs on linux)

I recommend you have composer already to install this but as you can see from their instructions, you can get by without composer (it is just not as simple).

An overview of what you are doing in the instructions:

downloading the phar files.
Using composer to make the codesniffer available globally.
Adding the new phpcs to your PATH system variable

Web Development WordPress

Introducing WPMonitor!

WP Monitor is a plugin I made to solve a common issue that I had at one of my jobs (and yes this is on the WordPress public repository). WPMonitor is the quick and easy way to manage multiple sites from the dashboard.

WP Monitor makes a dashboard widget that uses javascript libraries and color indicators, creates an at-a-glance health check for your site, telling you how many plugin updates, theme updates, core updates, PHP version, SSL, and lots of other key information for maintaining a WordPress website! The best part is that with a single click you can create a print out or pdf (for a paperless option) to get reports on all 20 of the sites you manage in 2 minutes.

The plugin is free and, as I said, solved a common issue I had at work. Never again spend your time looking for each vital statistic on your WordPress website for maintainance, just use WP Monitor to get the information quickly and easily.

Project Web Development WordPress

Introducing ChatPress!

Hey everyone! ChatPress is a plugin that I am working on that creates chatrooms on any page that they are put on in a WordPress website. I did not put this in the plugin repository because it is more of a personal project, but it was a lot of fun to create.

The plugin uses asynchronous javascript calls to PHP functions to get every message from the server, separate out the messages for other chatrooms and then post all of those that are left. I definitely recommend checking out this plugin, and it is also on my github if you want to see the code or contribute a new feature!

Blog

Speed

Search

Security