Whiteboarding: An effective & modern way to collaborate

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Interactive whiteboards have brought a new technological evolution. Their presence is not necessarily new, but recently their advantages in meetings and presentations have come to the forefront of modern businesses.  Over the past decade, interactive whiteboards have witnessed a significant improvement in its adoption within businesses and educational institutions. Today, schools and businesses are utilizing […]

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Useful SQL Queries To Clean Up Your WordPress Database

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After years of usage, your WordPress database can contain weird characters, be filled with data you don’t need anymore, and so on. In this article, you will learn about SQL queries to clean up your WordPress database. Two things to note: First, any of these queries should be preceded by a backup of your whole […]

Convert Classic Content to Blocks With the Bulk Block Converter Plugin

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Organic Themes released the Bulk Block Converter WordPress plugin last month and updated it in the past week. The plugin allows users to convert classic content, written in the old editor, to the new block format.

Unless end-users have the Classic Editor plugin installed, their old content is placed into the classic block in the newer block editor. WordPress provides an option for transforming this content into individual blocks from the block-editor interface. However, this must be done on a per-post basis.

“Going back and converting each post and page with a classic block to individual blocks can be a very long and tedious process,” said David Morgan, co-founder of Organic Themes. “The Bulk Block Converter plugin quickly scans all your posts and pages for classic blocks, and allows you to quickly convert them all to individual blocks within one interface.”

Originally, Organic Themes built the plugin for internal use at their company. “We developed the plugin to help us convert the content of our theme demos to blocks more efficiently,” said Morgan. The company had to convert over 40 theme-demo sites with an average of 50 posts and pages per site. They built this plugin to avoid a long and painstaking process. Then decided to share it. “We thought the tool could be very useful for other users migrating to Gutenberg.”

For users with a lot of old content, Bulk Block Converter could be the key to moving it all to the new block editor system. Based on the conversions I ran on a couple of test installations, it worked flawlessly.

How the Plugin Works

Screenshot of the Tools > Block Conversion plugin screen in the admin.
Bulk Block Converter admin screen for converting content.

The Bulk Block Converter plugin adds a new “Block Conversion” sub-menu item to the WordPress “Tools” menu in the admin. Once on that screen, it provides a “Scan Content” button. When clicked, it checks all of your posts, pages, and other custom post types for classic content. It then builds a list table of all the content.

From that point, you can choose between converting each post individually or running a bulk conversion of all posts. I always recommend being cautious with such plugins by converting and checking a couple of individual posts before trying bulk conversions.

The process for converting posts was snappy during my tests. In just a few moments, I converted all of my old content over without issue.

Like any plugin that modifies content in this way, it is prudent to store a backup of your site before converting the posts. This is also a one-way conversion process. Once a post is transformed, there is no going back.

iOS 13.4 Includes CarKey API, Enables NFC Car Keys

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Apple has recently announced the beta version of iOS 13.4 and developers have noticed an exciting new API that may portend all-new iOS features. The new CarKey API that has been found in the latest release is expected to allow iOS users to unlock their cars using NFC (near-field communication).

254: Design Tools

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Show Description

Klare and Chris talk about the design tools used at CodePen, and why we landed on the apps that we did.

Time Jumps

  • 01:06 We use Figma!
  • 02:33 What about Invision?
  • 07:57 Our flow typically is...
  • 16:31 Sponsor: WordPress
  • 18:04 What is auto layout?
  • 27:41 What about time?

Sponsor: WordPress.com now has SFTP and Database Access

I’m the type of developer who likes to hack on my theme! Me too, dear reader, me too. In the past, that may have been a reason not to choose to put your site on WordPress.com. No more. If you’re on the Business or eCommerce plans, you have direct access to your site’s database (via phpMyAdmin) and files (via SFTP). You can also install plugins, giving you as much control over your WordPress site as you’d likely ever need.

Show Links

CodePen Links

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5 Ways Website Design Can Affect SEO

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Search Engine Optimization campaigns are essential to make a business more successful. Even though you may have a great idea to attract more people through different marketing strategies, your website’s design might be standing in the way. Having a great design might look attractive, but you need to rank higher to leave a long-lasting impression. […]

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Facebook Messenger Adds One-Time Notification API

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Facebook has announced the release of a new beta API that will provide businesses with a method for offering its customers simple follow-up information. The new Messenger One-Time Notification API is designed for situations where customers may want to be notified about simple updates like price drops of merchandise or changes in the availability of products.

CSS4 is a Bad Idea

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Louis Lazaris, reacting to the idea of CSS4:

The reason “CSS3” worked is because it was real. It was the successor to “CSS2.1”. Everything after CSS2.1 was considered to be under the umbrella of “CSS3”.

The gist is that CSS4 isn't real, so won't work, and we don't need it anyway. Perhaps I overestimate the power of marketing, but I'd wager Louis underestimates it a bit. When an idea takes hold, basis in truth or not, it has tremendous power and money follows. See: politics and pet rocks.

Amelia Bellamy-Royds pointed out that there is a real thing we could point to, and those are "CSS Snapshots" that the working group produces that could be marketed as yearly versions. Like we have ES2019, we could have CSS2020.

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Freshly Designed Assets Modal

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When you're working in the Pen Editor, you have complete access to both all the files you've uploaded (Asset Hosting is a PRO feature) as well as a slew of free design resources we make available to you.

Click that Assets button in the footer, and the Assets modal will pop up. We've just redesigned this area to be more useful and more in-line with other areas of the site, like our recently redesigned Pen Settings.

The biggest bit of feedback we were working from is that, for PRO members, it was too hard to access your own files. In fact, in some screen sizes and configurations, the Your Files section could have been totally off-screen and it wasn't obvious you could scroll to it. In this new design, Your Files is front-and-center when you open the modal, and all the other free resources are still there and easy to click over to.

Let us know if you have any feedback!

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Jaxsta Announced Music Credentials API

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Jaxta is an online music credentials resource that was founded in 2015 with the aim of ensuring that music creators get the credit that they are due. The company now operates a massive database of music credits and has announced an API to expose this data for third-party use.