The amount of work needed to build even a basic website theme in WordPress is quite large, but as most sites require similar things they all start in much the same way.
This website is built by our partnership business Seja Design and utilises their framework. A ready-built WordPress theme is often not suitable as they can be very generic and may not customise well; this is where using the framework helps.
For all intents and purposes, the site is custom built, but the scaffolding needed to build the site is already in place, we just add in the graphical elements.
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WordPress 5.0 has just been released and at Presshost we’ve been busy updating sites as part of our Managed WordPress hosting service.
This update introduces a new editor to WordPress, replacing the TinyMCE editor that has been included since its inception and is already proving to be divisive within the WordPress community
Gutenberg, named after Johannes Gutenberg, who invented a movable type printing press over than 500 years ago, is one of the biggest changes to WordPress ever. It is an attempt to address the rise in object based editors, both for WordPress (such as Divi), or external services such as Wix.
Divi is a popular theme that makes it easy to create content within WordPress but it does it in such a way that it makes it difficult to change themes, which is traditionally one of the strengths of WordPress and is, in my opinion a reason to avoid using it.
Gutenberg feels like an attempt to emulate the ease in which content can be created in Divi, without ruining backwards compatibility, and this is not an easy task to do. As such, Gutenberg has three levels of implementation currently planned with the first version released in WordPress 5
Does Gutenberg work?
I have played around with Gutenberg on our development server prior to WordPress 5.0 and found it quite easy to use. There are a few things that do not work as well as I would have expected but generally it’s quite a good editor. It’s important to remember that this is a big change and people tend to be a little resistant to these kind of changes.
Because of this, WordPress has made available the Classic Editor as a plugin if you want to keep things the way they were.
So does Gutenberg work? For now the answer to this “yes, but…”
Where Gutenberg works
There are a number of new features included, such as more embedded content, widgets within content and the ability to save blocks to be used again.
What’s not working yet
I am finding that columns do not work as well as I would like, I’ve attempted to add them into the page and they’ve not placed themselves quite how I wanted. I’m also finding that it’s breaking the WYSIWYG functionality of the custom fields block our framework uses to get content above the title (something that’s needed quite often on business sites).
Presshost have installed and activated the Classic Editor by default…
My view is they rushed this out. They made a commitment to have Gutenberg in WordPress by version 5 and an aim to have version 5 out before the end of 2018, but there are still a number of issues that haven’t fully been addressed in development forums.
As a result, there are a lot of WordPress users who are not happy. I understand that big changes are always going to have detractors, but currently in the WordPress plugin repository, Gutenberg (which was released as a plugin for developers to try out in their WordPress sites prior to 5.0) has a 2.2 star rating, where as the new ‘Classic Editor’ plugin has 4.9 stars and has over a million downloads.
It is for this reason that we’ve installed and activated the classic editor by default on all our Managed WordPress hosting accounts.
Want to try Gutenberg? Just disable the Classic Editor in plugins.
Stuart Shearing has been building websites for nearly 20 years, the last ten focused on WordPress theme development.
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Log into your cPanel account using your user name and password.
Click on ‘Email Accounts’ in the Email section
By default, you will see a list of email accounts that have been created. Click the ‘Add Email Account’ tab
Add the address you want to the Email field, you do not need to add the @ symbol or the domain name
If you have multiple domain names enabled within your account, choose the domain name you will be using
Select a password. You can auto-generate strong passwords by clicking on the ‘Generate’ button, there is also generation options available by clicking on the down arrow to the right.
Re-type your password in the Password (Again) field. If you’ve auto-generated a password you will need to copy and paste it.
Select your Mailbox Quota. We recommend 500MB for accounts, but this can be increased or decreased as required. While you can create accounts of any size, it’s important to remember that the total email storage cannot exceed the total disk space (which includes your site files).
Click Create Account
Bonus Hint: You can quick access cPanel features by typing into the ‘search’ or ‘find functions quickly by typing here’ search boxes)
Add address from the Presshost Portal
You can also access Email Accounts directly from the Presshost portal by logging in, then going to ‘Services’ and selecting your hosting
Select the Email Accounts button from the Quick Shortcuts section, then follow the cPanel instructions above.
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This minor update corrected some file paths and SEO features.
Changelog
Correct file path for the include_html shortcode
Corrected alternative title
Adjusted errors in seja_header_title(), including the SEO override point
Removed SEO disable for keywords, as Yoast now add this as a premium only feature
Posted inframework|Comments Off on Framework 3.1.1
Framework 3.1 addressed an error where excessive bandwidth was being used in the process of auto-generating image sizes. the php call getimagesize() was being used to calculate the dimensions, however this function requires the site to open the image to make the calculations. To correct this, we set the image calculation in the settings page, with the output going to the database, rather than being requested each time the page loads.
This had the added benefit of increasing page loading speed.
Changelog
Updated font awesome 5.4.1
Noted excessive bandwidth usage due to the getimagesize call. Moved this from the definitions file and into the Seja Framework options page; now generating only when that page is opened and not every time any page is called.
removed the 'green' colour from the offline/debug sliders in options page
renamed the admin instructional 'scroll-page.php' due to a conflict when upgrading
adjustment to functions.php to correct definition flow (manually apply fix to v3.0 templates)
This has been a major update to the existing Seja WordPress framework with the goal of creating templates that are easier to update to the latest version with any 3.x template now able to be updated without breaking the theme.
There are also a number of backend improvements, including a redesigned options page, and the ability to change font colours within the template rather than editing the stylesheet.
Changelog
Final structural changes - editable files are in the root or the 'custom' directory
Moved /css/theme-styles.css to /custom/css/theme-styles.css
Moved the include_html shortcode directory to /custom/html
full css rebuild of all footer widget sizes
added three classes to the smooth scroll. Fixes the unresponsive WooCommerce tabs
added new colour classes for text and links in dynamic stylesheet
improved WooCommerce multi-column layouts + responsive versions
Full rebuild of the framework settings dashboard including larger icons and visually better form elements
new option 'Text Colour' in framework settings
new option 'Link Colour' in framework settings
new option 'Hover Colour' in framework settings
Moved the styles using these options to the dynamic styles.php file
Moved h tag and title styles to dynamic styles file
Corrected minor error with pagination style in dynamic styles file
Broke the dynamic styles file into two functions and are now called in wp_head() in two locations, by priority.
new 'scroll page' that creates a one-page-layout using the child pages below it (sort by sort-order)
new slideout shop sidebar (ideal for cart)
new 'site-offline' maintenance mode feature
new 'advertising' feature to insert content (such as adwords) into the content
corrected nesting error in title, on left/right sidebar pages
new 'no-image' svg
added default widgets to all content sidebars if none are set
Full rebuild of the seja template dashboard including larger icons and
full cleanup of CSS, initial template is now production ready by removing only the background. Coding examples that are redundant are now coded out. Full explanations in the theme-styles.css to explain what is what for editing.
This update includes a major reshuffle of files within the structure as part of our aim to make the framework easier to update without losing customisation.
Some header elements have been removed, including ones that rely on external plugins. Improvements to the parallax feature have been implemented.
