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SummerMember
Yoast does not always play nice with Genesis, so test extensively first.
I stopped using Yoast in 2012, and from what I've read in the support forums at wp.org, there are still issues with excessive page load times, and features being removed or crippled (without any heads-up for users) in favor of premium add-ons to replace them.
The newest update caused a lot of sites to break, from what I read as well, so one client site that has it (I inherited the setup) I haven't updated yet because of those reports.
Since Genesis has SEO tools built in, so far that has served my needs. However, I've seen speculation that those features might someday be removed, so I have begun testing out separate SEO plugins (currently evaluating SEO Ultimate, and WPMU Dev's Infinite SEO). No results to report yet 🙂
WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After DarkSummerMember@RichardPD, Just as a bit of history, the Backcountry child theme first came out in 2012. None of the Genesis child themes were HTML5 back then.
I had been waiting to see if a responsive HTML5 Backcountry Pro would come along (the Themedy team finally came out with a responsive version of Foxy News earlier this year and it's yummy), but since Backcountry is no longer listed for purchase on the available themes page, my guess is that it has been officially retired.
It also makes me wonder why the old XHTML Balance, Mindstream, Prose, Decor and Mocha child themes are still listed for sale unless they are slated to eventually have Pro versions. Personally speaking, I would have kept Backcountry around for a Pro version, and let Decor, Mocha and Mindstream head to pasture instead (if that's the actual case here).
WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After DarkJune 30, 2015 at 1:20 am in reply to: Add widget before site-banner-header in Beautiful Pro Theme #157898SummerMemberMaybe I'm overthinking this, or misunderstanding what you want to achieve, but could you just add a :before and :after to site-header-banner in CSS to get the before & after images you want?
That way you can add your decorative styling without needing to fuss with extra widgets. That's how a lot of themes do the decorations for blockquotes, so I'm guessing it would be the same for a particular header... again, unless I'm misunderstanding what you're trying to accomplish.
WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After DarkSummerMemberFWIW, I stopped using Yoast SEO with Genesis a couple of years ago, when for some still undetermined reason it was adding an average of 25 seconds (yes, twenty-five) to my Genesis site load times, and more than a few people who were having site load issues with Yoast and Genesis at the time pretty much had their concerns dismissed out of hand on the WP.org support forums.
The built in Genesis SEO has sufficed for most of my sites, but if there's even a chance that future versions won't even include that feature, then we should start planning transitions now.
Also, Genesis doesn't automatically disable itself with all popular SEO plugins; Infinite SEO from WPMU Dev is absent from their list, which I find interesting because 2 of the ones it will auto-disable itself for were ones I've never even heard of 🙂
Writing something that will trigger Genesis SEO to disable itself for Infinite SEO has been on my list this year.
WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After DarkSummerMemberUnless I'm misunderstanding your question, it shouldn't matter which version of the framework you use because that's not what creates that responsiveness. What matters in being mobile responsive or not are the child themes (I hope you weren't using the framework as the theme... that's a risky and not recommended practice).
If you never purchased an older child theme, you wouldn't be able to get access to it through the archived versions. But you might be able to use an older sample child theme to customize what you want... I'd suggest trying the current framework with a v1.9 child theme and see if that gives you the non-responsive behavior your client seeks.
I know how hard it is to talk to someone who is convinced that Google doesn't matter because their traffic doesn't come from Google. On the other hand, I've seen too many instances of people using their browser search bar as if it was the address bar... typing a site name or its domain name into the search bar then clicking on the URL that matches to get where they want to go.
The rapid rise of cluelessness about actually typing a domain name in the address bar is something I still have problems wrapping my brain around. I watched one client get mad at me because she could never find her domain on the top of the Google results. When I asked her what she was trying to do, she said that's how she gets to her website. Trying not to crack open my skull pounding my head on her desk, I asked her to type in her domain name in the address bar, after having to explain that it was different from the search bar. Then when I explained what a bookmark was and how she could use it to always go directly to her site, the understanding dawned for her, while I had a headache for 2 more days 🙂
How did basic browser knowledge and website navigation become such a mystery to so many people?
WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After DarkSummerMember@nomis, here is a recent interview with a popular WP trainer on Lynda:
http://wptavern.com/wordpress-trainer-morten-rand-hendriksen-on-common-pain-points-roadblocks-and-advice-for-new-usersThe post also includes a link to a WP class of his being free on Lynda for the next month.
My own rule of thumb is that putting everything in functions can sometimes slow down your site, because it has to load everything for every page or post your visitors click on.
By making use of templates for customizations for single posts, category archives, customized pages & landing pages, custom post types, etc, you push off those calls, and they are only made when they are needed.
I even know of Genesis child theme designers who incorporate separate custom css and custom functions files so that you can add your own customizations and not worry about losing them if you happen to want to apply a theme update. If you had put all of your customizations just in functions.php, then you'd have to do a little more work to do that update.
WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After DarkSummerMemberMy first thought is how much WordPress specific coding have you studied? If you only studied PHP coding, and not WordPress specific functions & features, you might be going down a wrong path.
I'm saying this from the perspective of someone who took on a website completion project after the previous developer abandoned the client. I could tell from the coding in the templates that the previous dev knew how to code in PHP but had zero clue about how to do things properly or efficiently for WordPress templates.
I don't consider myself a hardcore coder by any stretch of the imagination, but reading that person's code, it was obvious they were fair on clueless about WordPress and were literally making their modifications based on what code they were reading in an outdated version of the TwentyEleven theme.
So, have you taken any classes on WordPress programming at either Lynda or Treehouse or Udemy? I think that would help you make the connection between the PHP classes you've taken and the mysteries of Genesis coding & templates. (and I'm a firm believer that not everything should be done just in functions.php)
Genesis domination... that amuses me, and gave me a good laugh this morning.... thank you 🙂
WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After DarkApril 27, 2015 at 4:08 pm in reply to: Product Review/rating plug in compatible with genesis #149332SummerMemberThe dev has said that he plans to incorporate features from WP Reviews into Rich Snippets, but I have no idea what his timeline is for that. I believe they've already made the feature for anonymous visitors to leave ratings a paid add-on for Rich Snippets, but I'm only basing that on a preview snapshot of the new site, which doesn't go live until May 1.
He's also said that he will continue to support the other plugins he's discontinuing, but there won't be any further development on them, just on Rich Snippets. So I will keep using WP Reviews until the features I need Rich Snippets to have to replace it have been added.
Rich Snippets already includes Reviews as a feature, but it's not as focused or feature-rich as WP Reviews (yet, I hope)
WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After DarkApril 26, 2015 at 9:00 pm in reply to: Product Review/rating plug in compatible with genesis #149236SummerMemberI'm currently using the WP Reviews plugin available at authorhreview.com, and I love it. Best part is that visitors get to leave their own star ratings with their comments if they want to. Caveat is, the plugin author is replacing WP Reviews with a more feature-filled plugin of his, WP Rich Snippets.
Thing is, until a newer version of Rich Snippets comes out, it doesn't have all the review features of WP Reviews, and I think they're switching everything over on May 1st. My understanding is the WP Reviews plugin will still be supported, but may or may not be available for purchase after May 1st.
You can see it in action for a review on a Genesis site here: http://www.sliceofscifi.com/2015/04/20/reviewing-daredevil-season-1/
In fact, the plugin author's own websites are running Genesis.
WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After DarkSummerMemberI've set up two sites with Lifestyle Pro, and they both passed Google's mobile friendly test (you also have to remember that that test only checks out the responsiveness of that one page, not every page in your site... you have to dig into your Google Analytics to get the report on the entire site). And yes, it is possible to have a homepage pass the test will an inner page or two doesn't get a 100% rating.
Lifestyle 2.0.2 is NOT the same theme as Lifestyle Pro. You'd have to login to your SP account and download the Pro theme. Check out the current demo for Lifestyle Pro... you'll see that the font is larger & easier to read (and scale), and the menu is spaced wider so fat fingers on tiny phones can tap on them without too much end-user distress 🙂
WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After DarkSummerMemberThose update notices are coming from WP.org, not from SP, but something in the update notice code at WP is matching up on Genesis child themes with the same names.
Something similar happened a couple years ago, when the free WP theme Prose displayed as an update for the child theme Prose. Caused quite a ruckus, iirc, since a lot of people did the update.
WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After DarkSummerMemberI'm currently using Powerpress on several podcast sites, and even still have podPress active on a couple. The only other podcasting plugin I've considered trying out is Seriously Simple Podcasting, but I hadn't had a chance to try it out with a new show yet.
I've been using a variety of Genesis themes since day one, using child themes from SP, Themedy, Appfinite, and even ZigZag. No problems even when switching themes (some of those shows pre-date the existence of Genesis, having been initially set up way back when with Brian's Revolution themes!)
WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After DarkFebruary 8, 2015 at 11:08 am in reply to: What Genesis Plugins are Being Maintained? Which are Recommended? #140094SummerMemberThese days, I believe your best bet for displaying Tweets on your website is to avoid any plugin, and just use Twitter's widget, which you can embed on any page or in any Text Widget and put wherever you want.
When you say "pull in" your Twitter feeds, do you want to make blog posts out of everything you Tweet, or do you want to be able to make your blog posts appear as Tweets? For the latter, I've used WP to Twitter, and Nextscripts Social Network Auto Poster. WP to Twitter worked for me for ages, but the dev decided to make the ability to post featured images a Pro only features, whereas Nextscripts has that built in, and can be set up to autopost to Twitter, Facebook, and a bunch of other social networks all at the same time (you would need to get that Pro version to autopost to Google+ and a few other things).
As for the other plugins you listed, I don't use Akismet anymore, I don't use either of those SEO plugins, I use both Simple Social Icons and Lightweight Social Icons, and Gravity Forms 🙂
I would recommend eNews Extended, simply because they link to the various services where your mailing list might be hosted, while MailPoet uses a locally managed setup that recently had a major security issue last summer. It's fixed now, but if you're going to pay for a larger number of subscribers, might as well pay someone like MailChimp or Feedblitz, is my thinking. I also never quite understood how they got around the bulk email send concerns, since most webhosts these days frown upon doing that from your accounts (having had one former client a few years back try managing a mailing list from her account, and she was surprised when they shut down her site/account for spamming, even after I'd cautioned her against).
I could be wrong about how they do that now, but I haven't had the need to check into it recently (as in, not in 2-3 years).
Hope that helps some 🙂
WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After DarkSummerMemberSorry, Matt, I don't know what to tell you. If he's not responding directly from contacts at his website, I doubt you could get in touch with him here... doesn't look like he's posted anything here in almost 2 years, not since early 2013.
WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After DarkSummerMemberMy reply with a link keeps getting eaten by filters. Hopefully it will show up in a few days, but short version is that I was doing some digging on A Small Orange to see what they have, and discovered they were bought by EIG in July 2012, same time they bought Hostgator.
I hope your hosting experience with them continues to be good.
EIG also just bought Arvixe back in November, so that downward slide may be imminent as well.
WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After DarkSummerMemberI hope your experience continues to be good... I did some digging to find out more about them, and found that EIG had bought A Small Orange as well, same time they'd bought Hostgator (July 2012). Seems like EIG also just bought Arvixe back in November.
http://www.webhostingchoose.com/business/all-endurance-international-web-hosting-brands/
And yes, I'm in the slow process of moving some 40 domains off of 2 Hostgator accounts/servers, never to return.
(my previous version of this post seems to have been eaten by the filters again)
WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After DarkSummerMemberMy experience in October with Siteground and a high-traffic, high volume website (database is over 120Mb, 10 years worth of content) was subpar. Results did not live up to prior hype and praise/anecdotes from other web pros. However, with a smaller website your mileage may vary.
WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After DarkSummerMemberThey didn't used to have service this uneven and performance this spotty. Everything points to the decline happening after they were bought by EIG, and had their data center moved to Provo UT. Before that move, I was getting really fast website response times, and relatively prompt tech support responses, and responses that weren't canned for the first 3 questions.
When I was previously with Media Temple, their tech support seemed to always be on the ball. I just couldn't get past how long it was taking initial DNS lookups to resolve when going to sites on their old Grid Service setup. That problem seems to be gone now, thank goodness. I just hope them being bought by GoDaddy last year doesn't result in any GoDaddy-like hosting service fiascos, LOL.
And I also seem to have spoken too soon about this problem at Hostgator being resolved. After 4 days of normal behavior, the sites on that problematic server are experiencing the gateway timeout error again. Nothing changed on my end, since this entire week, I've been working on sites that aren't on that account.
Maybe it's time to open a second MT account and move everything off HG.
WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After DarkSummerMemberHad the same problem with one of my Hostgator accounts for nearly the entire month of December. Just started suddenly one day, sites getting slower and slower, then the cherry on top was too-frequent-for-comfort errors of "Gateway timeout: cannot connect to remote host". I would receive those errors after about 4-6 page visits while working on sites, and it happened with every single site on that account, and the timeouts wouldn't resolve for 10-15 minutes at a time... not great when you're trying to build a new site for a client (a brand new site, with no plugins, so nothing to optimize).
For two weeks, Hostgator support kept telling me to optimize my WordPress installations (never mind the fact that all of them had been on there for nearly 2 years without any problems, and none of the sites had been updated within the prior month). We won't go into how it took them 5 days to respond to my initial trouble ticket about this, and we also won't go into how this problem was across the board on one account, but non-existent on a separate Hostgator account with almost double the number of WordPress installations on it.
Their response delay gave me enough time to bite the bullet and go back to Media Temple, whom I'd left almost 3 years ago because of dissatiscation with the degrading response times I was getting with their Grid service at the time. Since, they've made improvements across the board to the Grid service, I moved about 5 websites from the recalcitrant Hostgator account and wonder of wonders, those websites stopped having the slow response and timeout problems, and weren't triggering any resource usage flags at MT.
Even after moving some sites from the problematic Hostgator account to the working Hostgator account and having performance improve with that move as well, they never once looked deeper than problems with my sites. One tech, after 5 weeks, finally recommended that I look at the high number of processes that were having to be killed on the server. Problem is, I don't have access to any data that tells me that something one my sites was running into CPU usage problems... I was repeatedly checking resource usage graphs and reports that I could access via cPanel, and never once did they report what this one tech was telling me.
There was one IMAP account that looks like it started hanging, but that email address had been active on the server for well over a year. Not sure if there was a client update or a server update that caused it, but it looks like my clients Apple Mail client was getting stuck in not closing connections after downloading messages (we won't go into how he's not interested in switching off Apple Mail despite me hounding him about it for several years) 🙂
I had him switch from auto-polling to manual polling, and after 4-5 days the problems with slow response and gateway timeouts seem to have stopped... but it shouldn't have taken 5 weeks to figure out that that might have been a cause in the first place, especially when it hadn't been an issue for the previous year.
That said, I'm still going to move a few more accounts to Media Temple, and shut myself down to one Hostgator acct rather than two, and I'm definitely canceling my affiliate account with HG, after this bad experience and an earlier one when I gave them specs on a big website and was told that one type of account could handle it, only to have that site hit all resource limits and have limit locks put on it within 6 hours of landing on that server... on a Friday night (I say this because I had unfortunately learned earlier in the year that HG pretty much doesn't respond to trouble tickets on weekends anymore... at least none that I've submitted since the end of 2013).
That incident led to me moving that site to Siteground over that weekend, which led me to a month-long torture-fest with Siteground, which has forever soured me on trusting their server performance. Their tech support is responsive and pleasant, just a bit restricted in what they can do at times. For smaller sites, I'm guessing they're great... but I won't be going back there either.
WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After DarkSummerMemberIf you're only going to display Tweets the account has sent, I recommend avoiding any plugins, and just go with Twitter's widget, which is designed to display various Twitter activity. It's configured at Twitter, and easily embedded in a text widget.
Start here: https://dev.twitter.com/web/overview
Read more here: https://dev.twitter.com/web/embedded-timelines
WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After Dark -
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