WordPress plugin – Chico Designs

Jetpack Holiday Snow Guide

Robert Stigers — Wed, 22 Nov 2017 10:38:02 +0000

The image above and video to the right are examples showing how Jetpack Holiday Snow looks

(Our site uses WP Snow Effect plugin instead)

Jetpack Holiday Snow is a feature that is included in the WordPress Jetpack plugin by Automattic. When enabled it adds a snow falling effect to your website between Dec. 1st and Jan. 4th of each year. By default the feature is disabled in Jetpack settings.

In this guide I will show you how to install and enable the Jetpack Holiday Snow feature, how to configure some advanced options.

How to Install Jetpack

To add falling snow to your website you first you need to have Jetpack installed. If you don’t have Jetpack, don’t worry it’s free and easy to install. From the WordPress admin area go to Plugins > Add New. Search for Jetpack, click install, then activate. You will need to connect it to your WordPress.com account. If you don’t have one it will guide you through the processes of setting one up.

– Click here to visit the Jetpack Plugin Page –

How to Enable Holiday Snow

Once Jetpack is installed, enabled, and connected to WordPress.com, it’s time to enable Snow. If the date is between December 1st and January 4th, then the option below will be available.

From the WordPress admin area go to Settings > General
Scroll down to the bottom and click the button next to ‘Snow’ to enable it.
If the Snow option is not available to you, you can adjust the dates for Snow Option below.

How to Enable the Snow Option, and adjust the Snow Dates

From the WordPress Admin area go to Plugins > Editor.
Where it says “Select plugin to edit”, choose: “Jetpack by WordPress.com”.
Under “Plugin Files” click Modules > holiday-snow.php
To make the snow options available in General Settings: Adjust the dates next to $first_options_day, and $last_options_day. The first number after the three zeros is the month, the second number is the day. In the image I have it set to snow option in general settings between Nov. 15th and Jan. 15th.
To adjust the dates snow will appear on the website: scroll down and edit the dates next to $first_snow_day, and $last_snow_day. The first number after the three zeros is the month, the second number is the day. In the image I have it set to snow between Nov. 15th and Jan. 15th.

* If you update the Jetpack Plugin after making these changes the snow dates will revert back to the default (Dec. 1 – Jan 4).

How to Adjust the Jetpack Snow Options

From the WordPress Admin area go to Plugins > Editor.
Where it says “Select plugin to edit”, choose: “Jetpack by WordPress.com”.
Under “Plugin Files” click Modules > holiday-snow > snowstorm.js

Make snowflakes larger or smaller
this.flakeWidth = 5;
this.flakeHeight = 5;

Increase or decrease number of flakes
this.flakesMax = 180;
this.flakesMaxActive = 180;

make the snow follow or ignore mouse movements
this.followMouse = true;
Sometimes this option results in snow gathering on the edges of the screen, so might want to disable it.

Change the snow color
this.snowColor = ‘#ffffff’;
If you have a white background on your website you might want to use an off white color like #efefef or #eeeeee

Adjust Snowflake Speed
this.vMaxX = 2;
this.vMaxY = 2;
To increase snow speed use a number above 2. For a snow that falls slower use a number below 2, such as 1.5.

* If you update the Jetpack Plugin after making these changes the options will revert back to default.

Jetpack Holiday Snow Opt-In

Only show snow if a user clicks the button to opt-in. Users can also disable the snow if they get tired of it by clicking the button again. The snow is disabled by default, and the snow status is stored in a cookie so it will remain on or off.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/jetpack-holiday-snow-opt-in/

If you have any questions about Jetpack Holiday Snow leave a comment below.

Why Use WordPress? – Is it really that much better than the alternatives?

Robert Stigers — Mon, 28 Nov 2016 15:08:57 +0000

WordPress is the most popular content management system (CMS) in the world and is in charge of over 60% of the sites that use CMS on the Internet. It powers one in every five websites on the Internet and helps 100,000 new websites come online every day.

However, many beginners to web management often ask: Why use WordPress? Is WordPress better than my standard html website? Why make the switch to WordPress? This article will give you answers as to why you should consider using WordPress for your website.

1. IT IS FREE.

Whether you’re a blogger or simply launching a new online business, the fact that WordPress is 100 percent free is extremely advantageous. Best of all, you don’t have to worry about hidden charges if your site becomes more popular than anticipated. WordPress will always be free.

2. OPEN SOURCE

WordPress source code isn’t encrypted, meaning you can alter or improve on the source code to create a site suitable for your needs. An experienced web design team can create any type of site you need using WordPress as the Content Management System (CMS). The source code is open to the public and has been subjected to peer review, individuals and teams of researchers have contributed to the security of the software by examining the coding and testing for vulnerabilities.

3. ADAPTABLE

The adaptability of WordPress is another element that can’t be topped. Regardless of what you’re utilizing WordPress for – whether as an individual blog or for a popular e-commerce website, WordPress is sufficiently adaptable to address any of your issues through its available themes and plugins. WordPress has over 3000 free themes, and more than 49,000 available plugins. A competitive marketplace with free and commercial software available means you have the ability to create anything from a basic free website to a professional business website using WordPress. With just the click of a button within the admin area, you can modify your site to look and function however you want.

4. PROTECTED AND SECURE

Since WordPress is such a popular CMS, it’s no surprise that it’s a target for hackers. Nonetheless, WordPress takes the security of its users very seriously. While you can practice some basic safety precautions, for example, not downloading a plugin or theme from an untrusted website, WordPress continuously upgrades its software to forestall hackers. In fact, WordPress has a programmed update feature in place ever since the release of version 3.7. There are also powerful free plugins available, such as Wordfence Security, that you can utilize to keep your site even more secure.

5. SIMPLE TO UTILIZE

Another remarkable advantage of using WordPress is that it is extremely user-friendly. The administrator area is straightforward to learn, intuitively organized, and easy to use. Indeed, you can figure out the basics of managing a WordPress site in a matter of minutes. There are 1000’s of videos on YouTube showing how to do practically everything on a WordPress site. There are active support forums (https://wordpress.org/support/) where you can get help from experienced WordPress users for free.

6. MOBILE FRIENDLY

It’s more important that a website be mobile friendly now, than ever before. With WordPress you don’t have to worry, since the software is built to be mobile friendly from the ground up. Practically every current theme available for WordPress is mobile friendly, including the free themes from the WordPress development team. If you have an older WordPress site you might need to upgrade the software and theme to make your site mobile friendly.

7. HOSTS MULTIMEDIA

The addition of videos, images or audio files is a wonderful way of improving the experience of your clients. Thankfully, WordPress makes it easy for you to embed multimedia into a page or post. In addition to the fact that it is simple for you to upload multimedia, you can also edit files, like images while in the Media Library Screen.

Make WordPress Lightning Fast: Complete Guide (Updated for 2019)

Robert Stigers — Sun, 16 Aug 2015 23:55:24 +0000

Welcome to our comprehensive guide to improve loading speed on WordPress websites! After you apply the changes mentioned in this article you will likely see a significant decrease in loading time. This guide should help make your WordPress site fast.

Sections

1. Introduction

2. Test your Site to Determine the Baseline Speed

3. Choose a FAST Web Host

4. Enable Mod_deflate Server Compression

5. Enable Keep-Alive Connections

6. Install CloudFlare

7. Use an Optimized WordPress Theme

8. Install WordPress Caching Software

9. Utilize Browser Caching

10. Don’t Use Too Many Extra Plugins

11. Keep your Database Clean

12. Optimize Images

13. Test to Determine the Improvement in Speed

Introduction

The latest Google search algorithm incorporates page loading speed into the rankings. If your website doesn’t load fast enough you might be losing both visitors and search engine ranking.

A study by Microsoft showed that a 2 second longer delay in page loading led to 3.8% decreased user satisfaction.

Luckily there are a few easy ways to decrease page loading speed that I will discuss in detail below, and also answer any questions you have in the comments section.

Test your Site to Determine the Baseline Speed

A lot of web developers skip the baseline speed test, but it’s important to be able to see if the changes you make to the site actually made any difference.

My favorite website speed test is: http://www.webpagetest.org, other popular ones to check out are https://gtmetrix.com and http://tools.pingdom.com/.

Test a few different pages of your site and write down some of the load time results for comparison. If you use webpagetest.org you can create a profile for free and it will save your test results so you can look at them later for comparison.

Choose a FAST Web Host

If you haven’t chosen a website host yet and want budget hosting check out MidPhase for fast reliable shared hosting for less than $5 per month.

If you are looking for high quality specialized WordPress hosting try WP Engine. WP Engine is considered by many experts to be one of the fastest WordPress hosts.

Enable Mod_deflate Server Compression

Apache HTTP Server 2.0 and newer allow you to compress content sent between the server and visitors. If you are using shared hosting there is a good chance it’s running Apache and you can use mod_deflate to compress content and speed up loading time.

If you have cPanel installed on your server you can enable server compression by going to Optimize Website, under the Software section and enabling compression on all content or specific content types.

If you don’t have the Optimize Website option in cPanel, you can still enable it on Apache 2.0 servers by adding this line to your .htaccess file:

AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/text text/html text/plain text/xml text/css application/x-javascript application/javascript

Enable Keep-Alive Connections

Keep-alive means that your server will make one connection to a visitor and transfer multiple files to them at once, rather than connecting separately for each file.

It can significantly speed up your site, and save server resources. If you are not sure if your site has keep-alive enabled or not you can use this keep alive website tester.

To enable keep-alive connections add the following code to your .htaccess file:

Header set Connection keep-alive

Install CloudFlare

CloudFlare offers a free content delivery network, improves website security, and will speed up your site.

It might be a little bit more of a hassle to setup CloudFlare than just installing a plugin, but it’s worth it, and should only take about 5 minutes to configure.

After you sign up for an account, type in your website address, continue through the process until they give you the new nameservers for your site.

Login to your domain hosting company and set custom nameservers to the ones CloudFlare gives you.

If you have questions or need help setting up CloudFlare leave a comment, or send me an email and I’ll help.

Use an Optimized WordPress Theme

Not all WordPress themes are equal. Some are much better designed than others. My favorite marketplace to look for themes is ThemeForest.net.

Almost all WordPress themes have a live demo online. Before purchasing a theme run some tests on it to make sure it’s fast and doesn’t have any error

All of the themes on Theme Forest come with lifetime updates (but some will be discontinued). To increase the changes that your theme will continue to be updated I recommend getting one of the more popular ones, like one from the top 50.

To test if a WordPress theme (or any site) has errors

1. Visit the theme demo using Chrome as your browser.

2. Right click on a blank part of the page then click, “Inspect”. An alternative to the right clicking method is to use Crtl-Shift-I.

3. A window should pop up with code and other information. If the site has
an error it will show a red circle with an X in it. If a site has a warning it will show a yellow triangle with exclamation point. The example image shows 3 errors and 1 warning.

Three free tools to test a theme demo website

They do pretty much the same thing, but you might want to check them all out to decide which you prefer.

I personally like Web Page Test the most, but have heard others say they like GT Metrix.

Web Page Test – http://www.webpagetest.org/
GT Metrix – https://gtmetrix.com/
Pingdom – http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/

Install WordPress Caching Software

I recommend using W3 Total Cache, a free WordPress plugin. Once installed it creates a menu item in the admin area of your site called Performance.

Under Performance > General Settings, enable page cache, and browser cache. Under Performance > Browser Cache I recommend using the same settings as in the image.

These options should work fine with a standard shared hosting account or premium hosting account. Minify can also be used with most shared hosts, but I have had issues with objects and CSS not loading correctly on the frontend using some minify settings, so test it to make sure it doesn’t cause any issues.

To test the site browser comparability I testing the site using Chrome, Firefox, and Microsoft Edge.

Utilize Browser Caching

Browser caching is when the browser stores specific types of content on a local computer so that it loads faster on subsequent visits.

Many of the cache plugins like W3 Total Cache include the ability to leverage browser caching, but if you are not using a caching plugin for some reason you can enable it by adding this code to your .htaccess file:

ExpiresActive On
ExpiresByType image/jpg “access 1 year”
ExpiresByType image/jpeg “access 1 year”
ExpiresByType image/gif “access 1 year”
ExpiresByType image/png “access 1 year”
ExpiresByType text/css “access 1 month”
ExpiresByType text/html “access 1 month”
ExpiresByType application/pdf “access 1 month”
ExpiresByType text/x-javascript “access 1 month”
ExpiresByType application/x-shockwave-flash “access 1 month”
ExpiresByType image/x-icon “access 1 year”
ExpiresDefault “access 1 month”

Don’t Use Too Many Extra Plugins

Plugins can significantly slow down your site. Many are poorly written or have errors.

Professional WordPress developer try to install as few plugins as possible, and are selective about which ones they use.

Some plugins will load resources from an entirely different website every time a page is loaded, such as Facebook like buttons and Twitter feeds.

There is an easy way to determine which plugins are slowing down your site, install P3. P3 is a free WordPress plugin that tells you exactly how your plugins are affecting load speed.

Keep your Database Clean

The easiest way to keep the database in top shape is to use WP-Optimize.

You can enable scheduled cleanup and optimization under the WP-Optimize auto clean-up settings. Set it to automatically optimize your site every week or month to keep your database clean.

Using WP-Optimize is much more convenient than logging into phpMyAdmin and optimizing the database manually, but you can do it that way to avoid installing the plugin.

Optimize Images

There are two good image optimizer plugins I recommend checking out: WP Smush.it and EWWW Image Optimizer.

We use EWWW on out site, it seems to work with more image formats than WP Smush.it. It also works with a few gallery plugins to optimize their images.

[2019] We now recommend Shortpixel Image Optimizer over EWWW and WP Smush.it. It has the option to use webp format images, which are significantly smaller than other formats. The webp version of images for this site is about 60% smaller, and are lossless, so look exactly the same.

Test to Determine the Improvement in Speed

Now it’s time to compare your baseline speed test results with the test results after optimizing the loading speed.

It should hopefully load faster, and get better grades/ratings from the speed metrics site you use.

You can go into your plugins settings and tweak the options to try to improve the loading speed, such as configuring minify through W3 Total Cache.

Have some other ideas on making a WordPress site fast? Leave a comment below

Overview of WooCommerce – eCommerce Software

Robert Stigers — Tue, 14 Jul 2015 01:10:46 +0000

WooCommerce is a free open source eCommerce program for WordPress that can be used to setup an online store selling downloadable products, services, or products you send by mail.

It can calculate shipping rates, add taxes if applicable, and accept payments through PayPal, Google Checkout, Apple Pay, or other payment processors.

The software does all the work for you and will email you when it’s time to mail out an order!

We think WooCommerce is a good solution for small and medium sized businesses that want to sell products online.

Leave a comment if you have questions or comments about WooCommerce. If you are interested in having us setup your eCommerce store send us a message.

More about eCommerce web design

How to Install a WordPress Plugin

Robert Stigers — Mon, 13 Jul 2015 23:18:45 +0000

Some basic step-by-step information about how to install a plugin on a WordPress website

Login to your WP admin area. It should be located at http://yoursite.com/wp-admin
In the admin area go to Plugins > Add New
In the search box search for the plugin you want to add. Here are recommended plugins
Click the “Install Now” button for the plugin you want to install
It should say the plugin was successfully installed, now click “Activate Plugin” to enable it
The plugin should now be installed and enabled!

Most plugins add a link to the admin menu at the bottom, or sometimes under settings, or under tools. You should find the settings for the plugin you installed and make sure they are setup correctly. For example after installing the UpdraftPlus plugin it adds a link in the admin menu under Settings > UpdraftPlus Backups. After installing UpdraftPlus you should click that link to adjust the settings for the plugin.

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