Author Profile: Jeff Starr
Jeff Starr is a professional web developer and book author with over 15 years of experience. Jeff works with WordPress every day, designing themes, developing plugins, and securing sites. His books include Digging Into WordPress, WordPress Themes In Depth, and The Tao of WordPress.
Book Sale and Giveaway
To celebrate the new design and book update, we’re giving away 5 free PDF copies of Digging Into WordPress and having a Fall Book Sale!
Site Redesign
Well sort of.. more like a design “refresh” really. DigWP.com launched in May 2009 with its first (brown) design. Then later that year the site was redesigned for the launch of the book. The second (blue/grey) design was well-suited for the site and a natural progression from the first design, and the new design continues along the same path.
DIY Alternative to WordPress SEO Plugins
Most SEO plugins have way too many bells and whistles for my simple needs, so I wrote a little snippet that’s meant as a drop-in, DIY replacement for the big WordPress SEO plugins. If you want a lot of features and options, then try Yoast’s awesome SEO plugin or the great All in One SEO; otherwise, if you just want something simple that works, check out Basic WP SEO — a simple slab of code that you add to your functions.php file and done.
New Book! The Tao of WordPress
I’m excited to announce the launch of my 3rd book, The Tao of WordPress! Every page of The Tao of WordPress is carefully distilled, refined, and focused on WordPress. I wrote this book for beginners, students, designers, admins, enthusiasts, and anyone who wants to rock their own WordPress-powered site.
Comparing Blog Platforms
Ever wonder how WP compares against the competition? Check out this infographic/chart comparing eight of the top blogging platforms, including details about features such as plugins, themes, hosting, user-friendliness and more. Spoiler alert: WordPress wins :)
Sweet WP Infographic: Premium Themes
I found this infographic from WPtemplate.com very useful while writing my latest book. The infographic rounds up a collection of popular premium themes along with their various features and informations. Very interesting to see what’s popular in the premium WP theme market. Update: 404 link removed.
GenerateWP.com
Quick link: Check out GenerateWP.com to automatically generate code for custom taxonomies, post types, the config file, and other useful bits of WordPress functionality. Very user-friendly interface with squeaky clean code output :)
Post Format Archives Widget
Custom Post Formats enable you to customize your asides, images, and other types of posts. Doing so is a great way to bring character and definition to an otherwise amorphous collection of regular posts. Then, as your custom-formatted posts grow in number, your site will feature uniquely styled archives for each of your Custom Post Formats.
Spring SALE!
To celebrate the Spring season, we’re holding a Spring Sale on Print & PDF copies of Digging into WordPress! Save $15 on the Print version (includes free PDF) and $7 on the PDF version. Both versions include all extras, exclusive themes, and lifetime updates. Sweet bundled deals also available for Digging into WordPress and .htaccess made easy when purchased together. Contact us for details!
55 Resources for WordPress Beginners
Thanks to Devesh over at WPKube for putting together this super-useful list of resources for those first getting into WordPress. From books to blogs and blogs to themes and plugins, you’ll find plenty of awesome WP resources. Check it out!
WebHostingBuzz Winners!
Congratulations to the three lucky winners of our recent WebHostingBuzz Giveaway! John David Hunt, Rodney Weis, and Ji each will receive an entire year of free hosting at WebHostingBuzz. Thank you to everyone who participated!
WebHostingBuzz Giveaway
We’ve teamed up with WebHostingBuzz to present you with a superb hosting giveaway for 2013.
WebHostingBuzz is providing the following great prizes: three lucky winners will pick up an entire year of FREE hosting that includes 750 GB Disk Space, 15,000 GB monthly Bandwidth, a free domain name and more.
Browser Detection WordPress Plugin
There are two main routes for detecting browser identity: client-side or server-side. You can do feature-detection for client-side detection, or use PHP and the user-agent server-variable for server-side detection. That said, if you’re using WordPress, this plugin makes server-side detection SO easy.
