Day: September 8, 2021

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Automattic Acquires Social Image Generator Plugin, Plans to Integrate with Jetpack

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Social Image Generator plugin

Automattic has acquired the Social Image Generator plugin, a commercial product that automatically creates social share images for WordPress content from a set of fully customizable templates. The plugin launched in February 2021, with a starting price of $39/year but is now closed to new sales. Daniel Post, the plugin’s creator, is joining Automattic to continue developing it as a new addition to Jetpack’s social media tools.

Automattic is always on the prowl for companies that are doing something interesting in the WordPress ecosystem. The Social Image Generator plugin expertly captured a new niche with an interface that feels like a natural part of WordPress and impressed our chief plugin critic, Justin Tadlock, in a recent review.

“Automattic approached me and let me know they were fans of my plugin,” Post said. “And then we started talking to see what it would be like to work together. We were actually introduced by Chris Coyier from CSS-Tricks, who uses both our products.”

The Social Image Generator plugin has always been a commercial-only product, which tends to limit a plugin’s reach within a market that has been so heavily trained on the freemium model. Its acquisition will undoubtedly get it into the hands of more WordPress users.

“I briefly considered building a freemium plugin but I decided to focus on paid licenses to make sure I could provide great support to all users and, frankly, to see how well it would be received compared to a freemium plugin,” Post said.

Current customers will be able to continue using the plugin “without any changes in the near term,” according to the announcement on the Jetpack blog. Those who have strong opinions about the long-term future of the plugin are encouraged to schedule a session with Jetpack Customer Research to open a dialogue.

“I look forward to the future functionality and user experience improvements that will come out of this acquisition,” Jetpack General Manager James Grierson said. “The goal of our social product is to help content creators expand their audience through increased distribution and engagement. Social Image Generator will be a key component of helping us deliver this to our customers.“

I would not be surprised to see this plugin available on one of Jetpack’s paid tiers in the near future, alongside the Publicize module’s other paid features (scheduling social media posts, tracking and viewing sharing history, and re-sharing existing content). Social Image Generator makes WordPress content more engaging on social media, has built-in support for WooCommerce, and can be extended for use with other plugins. It’s a strategic acquisition where Automattic gains an engineer as well as a new way to make Jetpack subscriptions more compelling.

“We are still figuring out our exact approach, but the initial plans are to integrate the Social Image Generator features with the existing Jetpack social tools like Publicize,” Post said. “The ability to see exactly what your social media post will look like before publishing it right from your WordPress site is incredible, and a big reason why I’m so excited about this acquisition.”

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7 Things Every New Website Design Needs To Have

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Introduction

A website design using WordPress or another platform has the potential of thousands of plugins and features.  While that is definitely a good thing, it can be difficult to choose the right ones. WordPress does not come with every feature you require in your site design. That is why we put this resource together.

Here are the seven things every website design needs:

 

1)  A well-designed logo

While a quality logo might not be the most important factor in your website design, it will still create a strong first impression. If people like your logo, then they are more likely to come back to visit your site again later on. A unique logo shows that you put some thought and effort into your site design.

 

2)  Unique content

Creating original content is extremely important for your site design. Without it, your website will not be able to stand out from the competition. Write articles about the latest news in the industry or advice on how to do something. Not only will your users love you for it, but Google prioritizes sites that add value to their users. You can also write about trends that are currently popular at the moment. If you are not confident in your writing skills, hire a writer. Provide your audience with unique content by writing about topics they are interested in.  If you are able to do this right, then they will continue visiting your site to learn more. Content is the king when it comes to having a successful website design.

 

3)  Easy social media sharing

Nowadays, it is more important than ever to have social media sharing buttons on your site. People are always looking for new ways to interact with others online so including these features is crucial for any website design. If people cannot share the content they enjoy on various platforms, then you’re missing out on potential word of mouth traffic. You can also implement social media buttons so that people can follow you on various platforms. The more followers you have, the bigger your audience gets. This enables you to grow your site design and attract even more customers in the future.

 

4)  A great testimonial page

If you want more customers, then you need to show them that you are confident in your product or service. You cannot do this if there are no customer reviews on your site.  Showcase your success by adding a testimonial page and allow people to read about how great your company is.  This will show your audience that you are dependable and trustworthy. It might even convince them to purchase from you if they have been thinking about it for a long time.

 

5)  Clean, simple design

Your website design should be easy to navigate. It should be a clean and simple design. This can be difficult to achieve especially if you do not know what you want your website to have or do. If there are too many popups, ads, social media buttons, or other elements on your page then people might get confused as to where they should look first. Ensure that your site is easy to navigate so that people can find the information they want without any obstacles getting in their way.

 

6)  Responsive web design

If your site is not responsive then it will be difficult for people to interact with you on mobile devices. This can quickly become a huge problem because more of us are relying on our phones these days. Your site needs to provide the same user experience regardless of what device is being used to view it.

 

7)  SSL Certificate

Nowadays, an  SSL certificate is crucial. It helps protect all of your private information. It will encrypt any sensitive data that is sent through your site. That way, no one will be able to get their hands on it and use it for their own purposes. I know that finding new customers can be tough but you would not want someone else using your website design to steal them instead!

 

Conclusion:

A website design can be successful if it includes 7 basic things: a well-designed logo, original content that engages the users and keeps them coming back for more, social media sharing buttons to allow people to share your content on various platforms, testimonials of satisfied customers who have used your product or service in order to show confidence in what you are selling, an easy-to-navigate site design that is simple yet elegant. The last thing every website needs is an SSL certificate that will help protect any sensitive information being sent through it. If you want assistance with creating a great website design then let us know! Our team is here waiting to partner up with you so we can help create a stellar plan together.

 

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12+ Social Media Feed Plugins for WordPress

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Best Social Media Feed Plugins for WordPressModern-day advertising took a giant leap since the popularity of social media platforms. It provides a large set audience, various features to express and spread awareness about the brand and ease to market their products. With over 3.78 billion social media users, marketers see this as an opportunity to spread brand awareness in front of […]

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Don’t attach tooltips to document.body

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Here’s Atif Afzal on using a <div> that is permanently on the page where tooltips are added/removed and how they perform vastly better than plopping those same tooltips right into the <body>. It’s not really discussed, but the reason you put them that high-up in the DOM is so you can absolutely position them exactly where you need to on the page without having to deal with hidden overflow or relative parents and the like.

To my amazement, just having a separate container without even adding the [CSS] contain property fixed the performance. The main problem now, was to explain it. First I thought this might be some internal browser heuristic optimizing the Recalculate Style, but there is no black magic and I discovered the reason.

The trick is to avoid forced recalculations of style:

[…] The tooltip container is not visible in the page, so modifying it doesn’t invalidate the complete page render tree. If the tooltip container would have been visible in the page, then the complete render tree would be invalidated but in this case only an independent subtree was invalidated. Recalculating Style for a small subtree of 3 doesn’t take a lot of time and hence is faster.

Looks like popper.js was used here, so you have to be smart about it. We use toast messages on CodePen, and it’s the only third-party component we use at the moment: react-hot-toast. I checked it, and not only do we tuck the messages in a <div> of our own, but the library itself does that, so I think we’re in the clear.

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