How to Create a Custom Three Part Form Using Gravity Forms

In this post, we’re going to take a look at how you can use Gravity Forms to accept author applications for your news site.

If you are running a news site using a theme like DW Focus, there’s a good chance that you rely on contributions from other authors to maintain a decent volume of content. Furthermore, if you pay for content submissions there is also a good chance you’re inundated with email applications from potential authors.

Wouldn’t it be easier if we created a form that allows a potential author to apply for a writing position by submitting their personal contact details and answering a few specific questions. All of the applications could be emailed to the appropriate person and stored in the database for review.

I think you’ll be surprised just how easy the process of creating a simple three-part form can be. It’s something that can be accomplished even if you’re using the most basic version of Gravity Forms. Continue

Introducing DW Store – Multipurpose WooCommerce theme

Update Aug 26, 2015: DW Store stable version 1.0.0 is now available for download.

Finally our first-ever multipurpose WooCommerce theme DW Store is live! Early this month, I had chance to highlight the 6-built-in styles when introducing the first sneak peek of this theme.

Today, I will walk you through detailed features that illustrate the DW Store’s effectiveness when used to create a fashion shop, a clothing store, an electronic shop or even a gift store or a pharmacy shop.

Our ultimate goal in DW Store is to provide a drag-n-drop-based theme that helps you get your store up and running seamlessly, with native WooCommerce shop functionalities. And truly you can create a hugely complex e-commerce solution that’s elegant and fast with DW Store.

Now, lets start with the navigation layer first, before diving into the page builder, multiple blog pages, enhanced shop functionalities perspectives. Continue

DesignWall Giving Awesome Giveaway – Survey Winner Announcement

DW Survey Giveaway

Thank You to Everyone Who Entered!

Last month, we launched a short survey calling for feedback and suggestion to improve our products and service. Our ultimate goal is to decide what types of features are built next, so we can better meet your need.

We had nearly 100 feedback entries in the first two days after we started the survey. A big motivation to our team indeed! We expect to hear many comments from you, both old and new members, but did not foresee such an incredible number of submissions that fast!

Great thanks to you all for your feature request and ideas. Your valuable inputs help us shape the upcoming improvements in a more solid way.

What we’re currently working on

Deciding what new possible features (or updates to existing features) isn’t easy, as a single change need line up with the big-picture of the whole theme or plugin. Continue

All New DW BrickStore – Responsive WooCommerce theme

UPDATE July 23, 2015: [New features] DW BrickStore blog and product pages now have infinite scroll feature added.

UPDATE July 16, 2015: DW BrickStore update version 1.0.1 has just been released, with 3 new page layouts added: classic homepage variant #3, Lookbook and Typography.

Changelog detailshttp://bit.ly/1TO3Siw

Today we’re proud to announce DW BrickStore, a brand new eCommerce theme to join our portfolio. DW BrickStore is a lightweight, flexible premium WooCommerce theme.

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Say hello to new DW Page update 1.1.0

DW Page 1.1.0

Our team is happy to announce that the updated version of DW Page 1.1.0 is now available.

NOTE: DW Page 1.1.0 is re-developed from scratch, it differs from the older DW Page, thus we highly recommend you proceed fresh installation when using DW Page 1.1.0.

If you are new to DW Page, here is a brief about this theme: DW Page is a clean and modern one page WordPress theme, packed with 6 beautiful design theme styles, bonus template pages and number of rich-featured plugins.
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How to Use Caching to Increase the Speed of Your WordPress Website

When someone visits your website, you have mere seconds to grab their attention and keep them engaged in what your site has to offer. The faster your website loads when visitor arrives, the better. If your overall site performance is low however, you risk alienating a portion of the traffic your site receives.

Your WordPress website shuttles lots of information between many different computers, near and far, to deliver content to your readers. Would you like to know a great way to quicken the retrieval time of your content, increase your site’s overall speed and performance, and even lessen the traffic that flows around the internet on a consistent basis?

If so, you are in the right place. The fastest, most efficient way to optimize your WordPress website is through a concept called caching,  and in this article we will explain how you can make use of this to improve the speed of your website. Continue

The differences between WordPress Discussion Forums and Question and Answer Boards

If you want to add an interactive section to your website, where your visitors can post content and have other visitors respond to that content, then there are a few different solutions that could help you achieve this.

One popular option could be to add a discussion forum to your website, while the other option could be to add a question and answer section. While these two modes of discussion do share many similarities, they are also different in enough ways to make them better suited than the other, for use in certain scenarios.

In this post we will help you decide whether a discussion forum or a question and answer section would be a better addition to your website. We will also cover two of the best plugins available for adding either option to your WordPress website. By the end of this article you should be ready to get started and add the right type of discussion area to your website.

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WooCommerce joins Automattic – The next wave of ecommerce?

WooComerce

Today, you all may hear of the big news in WordPress community from WooCommerce acquisition by Automatic, the parent company behind WordPress. The news was officially announced by WooThemes co-founders, Mark and Magnus and from Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg. Big congratulation to WooThemes team with their new chapter.

From WordPress user’s perspective as well as a web developer, we might have concern how this acquisition will impact the future of WooCommerce plugin and WordPress community. Would it remain community-oriented and free as before? Or even any change to the name WooCommerce under the new home?

It is too early to predict specific changes in WooCommerce roadmap in coming months and years. However, in the short term, a few things have been clarified by Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg.
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How to Set Up a RSS to Email Campaign for a WordPress Blog

Do you have an email mailing list working alongside your blog? If not then you definitely should think about setting one up. But, how do you going about doing so?

Thankfully there are plenty of options available when you are ready to start your email list or newsletter. You can compose the email content yourself, hire writers to do so, or maybe you can’t even think about starting an email campaign because your daily to-do list just won’t handle another task to accomplish.

If that last scenario sounds like something you can relate to, then this post will show you how you can start emailing out a list of your most recent blog posts to your subscriber mailing list, at regular intervals – all on autopilot.

By the end of this article, you will know how to set up an RSS to email campaign for your WordPress blog. This post will teach you how to use the RSS feed from your blog to create email campaigns, helping you to see why you can’t afford not to be working with an RSS-email combination.

Let’s begin by talking about why starting an email newsletter for your WordPress blog is such a great idea.
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How to install WordPress locally on Your Computer

Building WordPress themes and plugins locally is a huge time saver. Creating a local development environment is nothing complicated. As you probably already know, it is simply a web server running on your computer, as opposed to a remote one, which is usually a hosting plan you purchased.

Coding WordPress themes and plugins entails a lot of back and forth testing, as well as browser refreshing. Since there are no latency issues to deal with on a local server environment, you work through this process a lot faster than on a live server, where you have to wait for your network connection.

Moreover by developing on a local server, you give yourself ample room for mistakes. That is, you can make as many mistakes as possible and cause no harm whatsoever. This is different with a live environment since it typically hosts other websites and some mistakes may be unforgiving – especially those that may affect the security of the live server.

Furthermore, if you want to test out any themes or plugins, before adding them to your live website, having a local installation of WordPress to experiment on has its obvious benefits.

If you like the sound of setting up your own local server environment to install WordPress on your computer, then this article will highlight some of the best options. You will also find a walk through guide to setting this up with my service of choice.

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30+ Go-to WordPress Resources You Should Follow in 2015

In today’s world, if you want your business to be competitive, you need to know which techniques are being employed by your competitors. When it comes to web design, the situation is almost the same. Web development doesn’t stand still. Every year new trends and styles are being implemented, new tricks are being tested, and thousands of new ready-made themes are being released. For many, it’s hard to follow each and every resource that posts valuable information on web design.

When it comes to WordPress, keeping track of the latest developments in this field can seem to be a major undertaking. Improvements, new themes, plugins, and lots of other things are being added literally on a daily basis. In order for you not to get lost and keep a list of the most reliable go-to resources always in handy, we will share, in this blog post, 30 must-follow WP resources. These include blogs, websites offering free WordPress themes and podcasts worthy of your attention.

So, let’s get straight to the list.

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How to Create a Regular Static Website Using WordPress with Optional Blog

Although WordPress started out as a tool for creating blogs, over the years new features have been added to the software which has seen it become increasingly used for building regular websites. The types of the website built in this way could include a business site, a portfolio, or an online store, to name just a few.

One of the great things about the flexibility of WordPress is that these websites can still include a blog if necessary, it’s just that the blog posts aren’t front and center, or the main attraction of the website.

So if you need to create a regular website as opposed to a blog, read on for our guide to setting up a static website powered by WordPress. Continue

How to Make Your WordPress Blog Content More Socially Shareable

We all know social media can be an effective way to get more traffic to your website and grow your audience. But with so many different options out there, it can be hard to know what we should be doing to make our website as social media-friendly and shareable as possible.

In this post you will find some actionable advice on using social media to promote your blog posts and other website content more effectively. While most of the content here is platform agnostic, WordPress users will get the most benefit from this article thanks to the wide range of social media integrations available for this platform. Continue

Customizing the WordPress Admin Area to Make It Your Own

There are a number of reasons why you might want to customize the admin area of a WordPress website. One of those reasons could be to make the dashboard area easier to use from your perspective as a site administrator. The other reason could be to improve the user experience for your co-authors or clients.

While the admin interface looks fairly clean and manageable on a fresh installation of WordPress, it doesn’t take long for the sidebar menu and toolbar navigation systems to start getting cluttered. This can not only make it difficult to find the items and pages you are looking for, but it can easily overwhelm new users who are just logging into the back end of a WordPress website for the first time. Continue

Its Time to Take Another Look at Jetpack

At the recent Pressnomics event, WordPress creator and Automattic head honcho Matt Mullenweg suggested that the Jetpack plugin, from WordPress.com, was partly responsible for the success of the WordPress software to date.

Matt has also mentioned that Jetpack and its social and mobile-friendly modules would be a key player in helping WordPress move from its current market share of 23% of all websites, up to the 50% mark and beyond. Continue

WordPress 4.1 Compatibility: Themes Updates

WordPress 4.1 “Dinah” has just been released last month with lots of new features and improvements. This major update involves a new default theme, distraction-free writing experience and plugin recommendations. Not staying behind, we’ve started updating some of our WordPress themes to be fully compatible with WordPress 4.1. This update comes with some bug fixes and improvement in the theme installation as well. Continue

Checklist for Choosing the Perfect WordPress Theme for Your Website

New WordPress themes are launched every day and the number of options on offer for giving your website a makeover shows no signs of slowing down.

While choice is a good thing, too much of it can lead to decision fatigue, increasing the chances of you making an impulse buy and ending up with the wrong choice for your project. With so many WordPress themes on offer, this could easily happen.

So to help you with the task of finding the prefect theme for your next project, use the advice and list of items to look for and consider below in order to filter out many of the themes vying for your attention. This should make the task in hand much more manageable and likely to have a satisfactory outcome. Continue