Understanding Gutenberg Blocks, Patterns, and Templates

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Developers suffer in the great multitudes whom their sacred block-based websites cannot reach.

Johannes Gutenberg (probably)

Long time WordPresser, first time Gutenberger here. I’m a fan even though I’m still anchored to a classic/block hybrid setup. I believe Johanes himself would be, too, trading feather pens for blocks. He was a forward-thinking 15th-century inventor, after all.

My enthusiasm for Gutenberg-ness is curbed at the theming level. I’ll sling blocks all day long in the Block Editor, but please, oh please, let me keep my classic PHP templates and the Template Hierarchy that comes with it. The separation between theming and editing is one I cherish. It’s not that the Site Editor and its full-site editing capabilities scare me. It’s more that I fail to see the architectural connection between the Site and Block Editors. There’s a connection for sure, so the failure of not understanding it is more on me than WordPress.

The WP Minute published a guide that clearly — and succinctly — describes the relationships between WordPress blocks, patterns, and templates. There are plenty of other places that do the same, but this guide is organized nicely in that it starts with the blocks as the lowest-level common denominator, then builds on top of it to show how patterns are comprised of blocks used for content layout, synced patterns are the same but are one of many that are edited together, and templates are full page layouts cobbled from different patterns and a sprinkle of other “theme blocks” that are the equivalent of global components in a design system, say a main nav or a post loop.

The guide outlines it much better, of course:

  1. Gutenberg Blocks: The smallest unit of content
  2. Patterns: Collections of blocks for reuse across your site
  3. Synced Patterns: Creating “master patterns” for site-wide updates
  4. Synced Pattern Overrides: Locking patterns while allowing specific edits
  5. Templates: The structural framework of your WordPress site

That “overrides” enhancement to the synced patterns feature is new to me. I’m familiar with synced patterns (with a giant nod to Ganesh Dahal) but must’ve missed that in the WordPress 6.6 release earlier this summer.

I’m not sure when or if I’ll ever go with a truly modern WordPress full-site editing setup wholesale, out-of-the-box. I don’t feel pressured to, and I believe WordPress doesn’t care one way or another. WordPress’s ultimate selling point has always been its flexibility (driven, of course, by the massive and supportive open-source community behind it). It’s still the “right” tool for many types of projects and likely will remain so as long as it maintains its support for classic, block, and hybrid architectures.


Understanding Gutenberg Blocks, Patterns, and Templates originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.

Anti-Hotlinking Script for WP on Apache (.htaccess) – Linkspam Prevention

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Never published this before, so this is a DaniWeb.com Exclusive :)

If your WP-Site has a lot of K-Links, you should consider using this script.

It definetly works. For now...

Negative SEO through spamming Backlinks can be a huge problem for the visibility of a webpage.

You can not defend your site against all kinds of attacks, but on one of the most common, you can significantly decrease the negative effects:

"K-Links" (new version: C-Links), where Image Hotlinking is used to generate Links, targeting mainly Wordpress Instances.

Examples:
k-links.png

this is why they're called "K-Links/C-Links". They always end with "-k.html" oder "-c.html"

The basic Anti-Hotlinking-Script can help in reducing the amount of traffic, when hotlinking is abused to burn your bandwith.

But i have never seen it recover any visibility losses in the SERPs.

This is the basic "Anti-Hotlinking-Script":
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\\.)?daniweb.com [NC]
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\\.)?google.com [NC]
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\\.)?bing.com [NC]
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\\.)?yahoo.com [NC]
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\\.)?duckduckgo.com [NC]
    RewriteRule \\.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif|avif|webp|svg)$ /nohotlink.html [L]
</IfModule>

---

content nohotlink.html:

<body>
    <h1>Hotlinking not allowed</h1>
    <p>Too view our images, please visit our <a href="<https://daniweb.com/>">Website</a>.</p>
</body>

It integrates the "Whitelist" directly into .htaccess, which is not optimal.

I had a case, where this caused problems, because the Whitelist was huge (1000+ Domains).

So i found this solution with "RewriteMap", which i integradted into this Script to put the whitelist inside a .txt file.
This also was easier for the client, as he might needs to add entries to the whitelist and like this does not have to edit the htaccess everytime.

I have also set the link inside the HTML to rel="nofollow".

I did get some nice results with this!

Even if there are still other DoFollow-Links on the Hotlinking Site, the presence of this one nofollow-link seems to reduce the toxicity of each one.

Important: Dont link the actual Canonical URl from your Main Page from nohotlink.html!
If your Domain is https://daniweb.com for example, you link to http://www.daniweb.com (with "www" and "http").

I experimented a lot with this and set the Canonical of the nohotlink.html to the Main Page, tested with noindex, nofollow robots tag, but it was all a mess.

If anybody is as deep into this stuff as i am, i will be happy to discuss.

Feel free to share your thoughts!

Disclaimer: Please use at your own risk, only if you know, what you are doing. Don't make me responsible, if you make mistakes. They are yours, not mine.

Disabe Emoji Autoload for Faster WordPress Sites

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Website speed is critical to the success of any online venture, which is why we’ll discuss how to disable Emoji Autoload in WordPress in this guide. Not only does site speed have a direct impact on user engagement and conversion rates, but it also influences how search engines rank your site. One often overlooked factor affecting website speed, particularly in WordPress, is the Emoji Autoload feature. Let’s delve into this feature and discuss its implications on site performance.

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What is Emoji Autoload in WordPress?

Emojis, those fun little icons we often use in our digital conversations, are universally supported on almost all devices and browsers. To ensure emojis display correctly across all platforms, WordPress introduced the Emoji Autoload feature in version 4.2. This feature, which is part of the core WordPress functionalities, automatically loads a JavaScript file (wp-emoji-release.min.js) on every page of your WordPress site, impacting the site’s loading speed.

While this ensures a consistent emoji experience across all devices, it also adds an extra HTTP request to your site on every page load. In the world of web performance, each HTTP request can add to your site’s load time. For websites that do not rely heavily on emojis, this feature can slow down the site unnecessarily.

Why You Should Disable Emoji Autoload

Optimizing your WordPress website for speed involves minimizing unnecessary HTTP requests, including those made by features like Emoji Autoload. By disabling the Emoji Autoload feature in WordPress, you eliminate one such HTTP request from every page load, thereby enhancing your website’s speed. Remember, in the speed race, every millisecond counts. As per the HTTP Archive, among the top contributors to page bloat are HTTP requests.

How to Disable Emoji Autoload

Disabling Emoji Autoload is straightforward and involves adding a short code snippet to your theme’s functions.php file. Remember, before editing any theme files, ensure you have a recent backup of your site and preferably use a child theme to prevent issues when updating your theme.

Here is the code snippet to disable Emoji Autoload:

remove_action('wp_head', 'print_emoji_detection_script', 7);
remove_action('wp_print_styles', 'print_emoji_styles');

This code stops the emoji script from loading on your site, thereby eliminating the associated HTTP request.

The code snippet is made up of two functions:

  • remove_action(‘wp_head’, ‘print_emoji_detection_script’, 7); – This line tells WordPress to stop printing the emoji detection script into the <head> of your website.
  • remove_action(‘wp_print_styles’, ‘print_emoji_styles’); – This line does the same for the emoji styles, preventing them from being printed on your site.

When adding these two lines to your functions.php file and saving your changes, you effectively disable the Emoji Autoload feature.

Wrapping Up

Optimizing your WordPress site for speed involves many tweaks and adjustments, and disabling Emoji Autoload is just one of them. It’s a small change that can contribute to a faster, more efficient website, particularly if emojis are not a critical part of your site’s content. After making these adjustments, it’s crucial to assess the impact on your website’s performance. You might consider using a tool like Lighthouse to monitor your website’s page experience.

Bonus💡: How to Monitor Website Page Experience with Lighthouse

How to Limit Post Revisions in WordPress

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Optimizing your WordPress workflow often involves tweaking a few settings and functions. One of these features is post revisions. This built-in functionality can be a lifesaver, especially when you want to revert changes or restore an earlier version of a post. However, having an excessive number of revisions can be overwhelming and may clutter your database.

We’ll guide you through the steps to limit post revisions in WordPress, without turning to specific plugins.

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Understanding WordPress Post Revisions

Post revisions, a core feature of WordPress, allows you to undo changes and revert to previous versions of your posts or pages. For every draft in progress, WordPress automatically generates a temporary revision (known as an auto-save) every 60 seconds. It supersedes older versions with these new auto-saves.

Alongside auto-saves, WordPress creates permanent revisions each time a user hits save, update, or publish. These permanent revisions are stored in the WordPress database and can be managed from the post-edit screen.

Why Would You Limit Post Revisions?

Limiting post revisions does not necessarily mean you’re capping your site’s performance. WordPress intelligently excludes post revisions from the database calls on the front end, only including them on the post-edit screen or while browsing revisions.

However, having a large number of post revisions can cause your WordPress database to become bulky, and although it won’t affect your site’s performance, it may make you feel a bit disorganized. Keeping your database clean and neat is good practice and can make your backend operations smoother.

The Manual Approach

Now, let’s jump into how you can limit post revisions manually in WordPress without the use of plugins.

Restricting the Number of WordPress Post Revisions

WordPress enables you to control the number of revisions retained for an article. To set a limit, you’ll need to add a specific line of code to your WordPress site’s wp-config.php file.

define( 'WP_POST_REVISIONS', 7 );

In the above code snippet, replace “7” with the desired number of revisions you wish to store for each post. Remember to save and close the file after making your adjustments.

How to Completely Turn Off WordPress Post Revisions

If your objective is to entirely disable post revisions, WordPress allows for this as well. By incorporating the following line of code into your wp-config.php file, you can turn off the post revision functionality:

define('WP_POST_REVISIONS', false );

Specifically, this command will deactivate the post revisions feature on your website. However, it’s crucial to understand that WordPress will continue to preserve one auto-save and one browser-stored revision despite this change.

Wrapping Up

Fine-tuning how post revisions are handled in WordPress can lead to a tidier database and a more streamlined content production process. It’s worth noting that manipulating core files requires a basic level of comfort with code or additional guidance. For related WordPress management topics, feel free to check out our guide on managing widgets in your WordPress dashboard.

WordPress Dashboard: Removing Unwanted Widgets

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Your website’s command center, the WordPress dashboard, arrives with several widgets that enhance functionality. However, not all of these may be beneficial for every user. As plugins introduce more widgets over time, your dashboard may start to feel crowded and less straightforward to navigate. WordPress offers the ability to remove these unnecessary widgets, either manually or programmatically. We’ll guide you through both of these methods, aiding in decluttering your dashboard and promoting better website management.

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Understanding Widgets

Widgets are elements you can include in your WordPress site’s sidebars or other widget-ready areas. WordPress includes default widgets, and plugins may introduce more. All these widgets can be managed through the Appearance » Widgets screen in your WordPress dashboard. However, an excess of unused widgets can lead to a messy widget screen. To make your dashboard more navigable, consider disabling those you don’t need. For an in-depth look at managing widgets, you can explore the WordPress official documentation.

Manual Widget Removal from WordPress Dashboard

For the quick and temporary cleanup of your dashboard, WordPress allows you to hide widgets that you don’t frequently use. Follow these steps to hide widgets:

  1. Log into your WordPress Dashboard.
  2. Locate the “Screen Options” button at the top right corner of the screen and click on it.
  3. Uncheck the boxes beside the widgets you want to hide.

While this method doesn’t eliminate the widgets entirely, it does make them invisible from your view. Other users can still enable these widgets from the Screen Options panel.

Programmatic Widget Removal from WordPress Dashboard

For a more lasting cleanup, WordPress provides a way to get rid of dashboard widgets completely, preventing other users from turning them back on. This involves adding a code snippet to your theme’s functions.php file or to the site-specific plugin you’re using. Here’s the code snippet:

function clear_dashboard_widgets() {
global $wp_meta_boxes;

unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['side']['core']['dashboard_quick_press']);
unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['normal']['core']['dashboard_incoming_links']);
unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['normal']['core']['dashboard_right_now']);
unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['normal']['core']['dashboard_plugins']);
unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['normal']['core']['dashboard_recent_drafts']);
unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['normal']['core']['dashboard_recent_comments']);
unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['side']['core']['dashboard_primary']);
unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['side']['core']['dashboard_secondary']);
}

add_action('wp_dashboard_setup', 'clear_dashboard_widgets' );
}

The function above targets and removes the widgets listed. If there are certain widgets you wish to retain, simply remove the corresponding line from the code.

To customize this further, you can add the following function to the functions.php file to restrict the dashboard widget removal to only non-admin users:

if (!current_user_can('manage_options')) {
add_action('wp_dashboard_setup', 'clear_dashboard_widgets' );
}

Concluding Remarks

Having a neat and organized dashboard is a significant step towards more efficient WordPress management. Discarding unnecessary widgets tailors your dashboard to your exact needs, fostering a more effective and enjoyable user experience.

Aside from decluttering your dashboard, there are other optimization steps you can take to bolster your website’s performance and security. For instance, hiding your WordPress version can contribute to creating a more secure WordPress environment.

We hope these tweaks will help you maintain a clean and efficient dashboard, helping you focus on what truly matters: creating outstanding content.

WordPress 6.1 Retires Default Site Tagline in Favor of Empty String

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WordPress’ default site tagline, “Just another WordPress site,” is now a thing of the past, though not yet fully retired to the realm of nostalgia. The recent 6.1 release resolved a ticket that lead developer Mark Jaquith opened 15 years ago to encourage people to change their taglines. The tagline has now been changed to an empty string for new installations. This was added as a note of interest in the 6.1 release post, which was the first place many learned about it:

“The site tagline is empty by default in new sites but can be modified in General Settings.”

For those who are sentimental about the tagline, rest assured that it has been preserved as placeholder text in the admin.

“I do think the easier solution is to replace the ‘Just another WordPress site’ value with a placeholder,” WordPress Core Committer Jb Audras said in the discussion on the ticket. “By doing this, we keep this sentence which is in my opinion part of the WordPress history —by doing so, it would at least appear on the Settings screen, so we keep this signature sentence somewhere on the admin— but the value is empty by default for new installs.”

This is the solution he committed, which landed in 6.1. The commit message identifies the reasoning behind the change:

Administration: Change default site tagline to an empty string.

This changeset replaces the default “Just another WordPress site” tagline with an empty string for new installations. The reasoning is:

  1. Not all themes display the tagline;
  2. Not everyone changes the default tagline;
  3. When people don’t see the tagline in their theme, they may not realize it is still visible in some places, like feeds.

The string “Just another WordPress site” and the related multisite string: “Just another {NETWORK} site” are now only used as a placeholder for the tagline admin option.

The advent of block themes was also another factor, since the Customizer was where users often managed their taglines in the past. Contributors concluded that the increasing use of block themes might result in more people who have the default tagline on their sites without even knowing about it. The conclusion was it is better to make it an empty string than to add a bunch of admin prompts to update it.

This is a welcome change to how taglines are presented, and it was past time to update it. Although most WordPress professionals had become accustomed to it, more casual users often searched for how to get rid of it, sometimes without knowing it could be customized. The message also wasn’t doing WordPress any favors, unless it was originally written to imply WordPress’ ubiquity on the web – a claim that was aspirational at the time it was first committed to core. In that case, it has long since served its purpose. An empty string ensures that the only taglines showing up for new installations are ones that admins intentionally wrote for their sites.

Full Post vs Summary (Excerpt) in WordPress Archive Pages?

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Are you wondering whether you should use an excerpt instead of full posts in your archive pages?

A summary helps provide a quick glimpse to your visitors about your content. Users can read through the short excerpt and decide if they’d like to view the entire blog. However, using the full post may get more eyes on the content because it doesn’t require extra action on the user’s part. But which is better?

In this article, we will compare full post vs summary (excerpt) in your WordPress archive pages.

Full post vs summary in your WordPress

What is an Excerpt and How to Add It in WordPress?

An excerpt is a short summary of an article that you can display on the archive pages in WordPress. The excerpt also has a link that users can click to read the whole article.

If you have limited space on your WordPress site, then excerpts are great for showing descriptions of your content.

By default, WordPress will use the starting 55 words of a blog post and show it as an excerpt. However, you can also manually add an excerpt.

Adding Excerpts in WordPress Posts

First, you’ll need to add a new post or edit an existing one. Once you’re in the WordPress content editor, you can click the ‘gear’ icon at the top right corner to open the settings panel.

Next, scroll down to the ‘Excerpt’ section and add your text in the ‘Write an excerpt (optional)’ field.

Add an excerpt in WordPress

When you’re done, simply publish or update your blog post.

Adding Excerpts in WordPress Pages

If you need to add a summary to a WordPress page, then you’ll notice that there’s no option to add an excerpt. However, you can simply add the following code to your website:

add_post_type_support( 'page', 'excerpt' );

To add the code, you’ll need to install and activate the WPCode plugin. For more details please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, head to Code Snippets » Add Snippet from your WordPress dashboard, and then select the ‘Add Your Custom Code (New Snippet)’ option.

WPCode Add new Snippet

Next, you can enter a name for your code snippet.

After that, simply paste the snippet in the ‘Code Preview’ area and select the ‘PHP Snippet’ from the Code Type dropdown menu.

Add code snippet for excerpt pages

From here, you can scroll down to the ‘Insertion’ section and select where you’d like to add the snippet on your site.

Next, click on the ‘Location’ dropdown menu and choose the ‘Run Everywhere’ option under ‘PHP Snippets Only.’

Run the snippet everywhere

After entering the code, you can click the toggle at the top to activate the snippet and then click the ‘Save Snippet’ button.

This will add an ‘Excerpt’ meta box in the settings panel in your WordPress editor, where you can easily provide a short summary for your page.

Save and activate code snippet WPCode

Please see our tutorial on how to add excerpts to your pages in WordPress for more information.

That said, let’s see the advantages of using a summary vs a full post in archive pages.

Benefits of Using Summary vs Full Post in Archives

When optimizing your site for a better user experience, choosing between excerpts and full posts in archive pages can play a huge role. You want users to easily browse the website, find what they are looking for, and improve search engine ranking.

With summaries, you can provide an improved user experience. It helps users find the content they want to read. Plus, it keeps your page organized and allows you to display multiple posts on a page. This would be very difficult if you show full posts in archives.

That said, here’s a closer look at why we recommend using summary (excerpts) vs full posts on your WordPress site’s archive pages.

1. Improves Page Load Time

Did you know Google now uses your site speed as a ranking factor? The search engine will rank fast-loading websites higher than the ones that take a lot of time to load fully.

By using excerpts on your archive pages, you significantly improve the page load time.

Imagine an archive page that shows 10 posts per page. If each of those 10 pages is 500+ words long with 5 images each, then your user has a lot to scroll through. The page will also load slower than normal.

By using excerpts, you can significantly improve the user experience.

Here’s a preview of how a short summary appears on WPBeginner when you view the archive pages.

Preview summary on WPBeginner

Users can load and browse through our category, tags, date, and other archive pages quickly and easily. As for search engines, you will see a boost in rankings for archive pages and improvement in WordPress SEO with faster page load times.

2. Prevents Duplicate Content

By showing excerpts on your archive pages, you can prevent being flagged for duplicate content in search engines.

For example, WordPress by default has category, tags, date, and author archives. Publishing full posts in archives will make each article appear at full length on several different pages on your site.

Even though search engines are quite smart in finding canonical URLs for each post, they can still flag the site for duplicate content which will affect your search engine rankings.

3. Increases Pageviews and Reduces Bounce rate

Using summaries or excerpts can reduce the bounce rate and increase pageviews. Users can click through to the full post in order to read the entire article.

If you just have full posts displayed in the archive pages, then people will not see any other elements that are on the blog page itself, such as a popular posts widget inside the post or page content.

By displaying the full post, users might just leave your site after looking at a single page instead of clicking around.

A summary makes your archive page more engaging and allows your readers to see find more content easily.

Disadvantages of Using Summary vs Full Post in Archives

1. Short Excerpts Provide Poor User Experience

If you don’t set an excerpt for blog posts, then WordPress will automatically create a summary using the first 55 words in the article. This is too short, and sometimes your sentences will be cut in half, resulting in a poor user experience.

You can always change the excerpt length in a WordPress theme, but that doesn’t fix the problem entirely.

One solution is to write a custom excerpt in the content editor before publication. Another solution is to write short, catchy introductions that will most likely make the user interested and can easily work as excerpts.

2. Hidden Content

Some users prefer to read everything on one page rather than having to go to a different page to read the entire article. This is useful if you have short blog posts that don’t contain many images.

These users are likely to stay on your site longer, even if they don’t click on any other pages, which is also a metric that Google uses to determine search engine rankings.

Should You Use Full Post or Summary in Archive Pages?

If your articles are short and do not contain a lot of images, then you can get away with displaying full posts on your archive pages.

However, in most cases, we always recommend using a summary or excerpts for your archive pages. Most WordPress themes come with a built-in option that allows you to choose between full posts vs excerpts from the settings.

Excerpts provide a better user experience and make your site look clean and organized. You can boost user engagement, increase pageviews, and show multiple articles on your archive pages.

We hope that this article answered the question of whether you should use a full post or summary in your WordPress archive pages. You may also want to see our guide on how to move a WordPress from HTTP to HTTPS and WooCommerce made simple.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post Full Post vs Summary (Excerpt) in WordPress Archive Pages? first appeared on WPBeginner.

Why Do WordPress Themes Have to Be So Hard to Use on the Backend? (Hint: They Don’t!)

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Whether you’ve designed websites with only a small handful of WordPress themes or have used dozens of them over the years, we can all agree on one thing: Many WordPress themes that are visually stunning on the frontend of a website end up being ugly as sin and difficult to use on the backend.

Why does it have to be that way?

It doesn’t. If a WordPress theme looks and feels great on the frontend, there’s no reason why its backend doesn’t as well. BeTheme is proof of this.

BeTheme is one of the top 5 best-selling WordPress themes of all time, with more than 260,000 sales and a 4.83-star user rating. In this post, we’re going to show you some of the ways in which this WordPress theme backend is going to make your life easier as a web designer.

Upgrade your workflow with a WordPress theme backend that doesn’t suck

After you install BeTheme, you’re going to notice something is different. Gone is the drab and oftentimes cluttered and unintuitive backend of WordPress. In its place, you’ll find a clean, attractive, and useful theme dashboard and tools.

Don’t worry. WordPress and all of its content management tools are still there. But when you’re inside of BeTheme, you’ll find yourself in a space that is at once visually appealing and so easy to use you’ll wonder why the rest of WordPress isn’t built this way.

If you haven’t been inside of BeTheme before (or even lately), join us as we walk through some of its best and most useful backend features:

1. Dashboard design

Your BeTheme dashboard will appear directly under the main WordPress Dashboard link. So there’s no need to sift through the sidebar trying to figure out where your theme settings are.

It’s not just convenient access that makes the BeTheme dashboard great. Click on BeTheme or the Dashboard link and you’ll discover:

  • Navigation bar that takes you to the most commonly used BeTheme tools
  • Status and plugin updates
  • Step-by-step website creator
  • New feature announcements
  • Latest pre-built websites
  • Theme registration information
  • Popular BeTheme integrations

Everything in the dashboard is here for the express purpose of helping you get more out of your WordPress theme. Whether it’s streamlining your website setup or discovering new features to use, the dashboard is there to help.

2. Dark/light mode

The research on dark mode and the benefits associated with it is inconclusive. That said, enough people have shown a preference for dark mode (which is why popular devices and apps offer the option now), so it could demonstrate big benefits on an individual basis.

The most common benefits that users report are reduced eye strain, better sleep, and longer lasting device batteries when using dark mode.

As a web designer, you’re working in front of a computer screen all day. If you find dark mode to be beneficial for any of these reasons, then you should find yourself a WordPress theme backend like BeTheme’s that enables you to toggle on dark mode.

3. Step-by-step website creator

When you first install a WordPress theme, it’s not always clear where you should go next. For instance, you know that your theme comes with demos, but where do you go to find them? Some themes bury their demos or pre-built websites inside their settings panel, so it can take some digging around.

BeTheme removes all the guesswork.

You’ll find the Setup Wizard under BeTheme as well as in the dashboard. Click on it and the step-by-step website creator will help you:

  • Name your website.
  • Choose your preferred editing mode.
  • Select a page builder to work in.
  • Pick the perfect pre-built website for your industry/niche.
  • Remove existing content and replace it with your new site.

This whole process takes less than 30 seconds to complete — from the moment you click the setup wizard button to the time it takes to load your new site and page builder into WordPress.

4. Pre-built site previews

BeTheme has over 650 pre-built websites, with new ones being added to the collection all the time. You’ll find them under the Websites link in the dashboard or under Pre-built websites under the BeTheme sidebar menu.

As a web designer, you’ll quickly become acquainted with the options that are available — and you may even find favorites you prefer to start with.

That said, you want to make sure you’re always designing websites using the latest and greatest design trends and styles. Because of this, BeTheme places previews of its newest pre-built sites in your dashboard.

Having the newest themes front and center will be useful in a number of ways. For starters, you’ll know when you have new sites to design with. Even if you choose not to use those sites (because you already have one you like, for instance), seeing the latest styles and features will be a good source of inspiration. Either way, this will enable you to utilize the latest design trends in your website designs going forward.

5. Plugin manager

The Plugins area of BeTheme isn’t the same thing as the Plugins area in WordPress. While there is some overlap, the purpose of the BeTheme plugins manager is to give you a place to:

  • View your actively installed plugins.
  • Update plugins that need it.
  • Install and activate recommended plugins for your pre-built website only when you need them.

It’s the last point that’s important to take note of. You won’t see any of these plugins in the WordPress plugins manager until you’ve installed them.

These recommendations come directly from BeTheme and can help you get more out of your theme and pre-built site. On the flipside of that, not installing them can also help you cut back on unnecessary plugins which will allow you to keep website performance high.

6. BeTheme support

WordPress might be the most powerful and popular content management system in the world. However, it’s a mostly community-driven platform when it comes to themes, plugins, and even providing support.

You shouldn’t have to dig through forum after forum on the WordPress.org website to find help or get answers to your questions. You shouldn’t need to leave your WordPress admin if you can help it at all either.

You won’t need to go far to get support for BeTheme.

Manual & Support are available from the BeTheme sidebar as well as the dashboard. From the support center, you’ll have access to self-support options like FAQs and Documentation. You can also submit a ticket for direct assistance.

7. Theme options

Many popular WordPress themes give users the ability to customize the theme settings. With BeTheme, in particular, you can set brand colors, choose custom fonts, establish global layouts, and configure things that are important for the user experience and SEO, like responsiveness, accessibility, and performance.

The one thing that can be annoying about these theme options is that the only way to modify them is from the main WordPress dashboard. So if you happen to be working on a page and realize the global button design hasn’t been configured or you’re dissatisfied with the default sidebar design, you have to save your changes and go to your theme’s backend.

With BeTheme, you don’t have to disrupt your workflow. You can modify your Theme Options right from where you are — be it the BeTheme dashboard or from inside the BeBuilder.

8. White label mode

The last area of the BeTheme WordPress theme backend you should know about is called BeCustom. You won’t find this under the dashboard, but you will find it under BeTheme on the sidebar.

This tool gives you the ability to white label BeTheme in certain areas. Here are some of the things you can do with BeCustom:

  • Swap out Be’s branding for your design business’s own.
  • Disable features that your client won’t need or that you don’t want them to have access to.
  • Create a custom WordPress login and change the look of it, simultaneously making it more user-friendly and secure.
  • Customize the “Welcome” message on the dashboard.

White labeling allows you to do a number of things.

First, by adding your own branding, it’ll give you a chance to reinforce your name with clients long after you complete their site. While BeTheme may be a name that designers know and trust, your clients will benefit more from seeing yours in there.

In addition, white labeling helps you make WordPress more user-friendly. If you want your clients to feel confident in owning and managing their websites after handoff, removing features they don’t need and making the WordPress theme backend more attractive will help.

Make your WordPress design projects easier to manage with BeTheme

What doesn’t BeTheme do?

For starters, it’s a multipurpose WP theme with hundreds of pre-built websites.

Secondly, it’s the fastest, most powerful page builder for WordPress, giving users control over every element within the UI.

And now BeTheme has become the best way to manage a web design project within WordPress.

WordPress Announces 10 Style Variation Selections for Twenty Twenty-Three Theme

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WordPress’ design team has announced the winners of the challenge to create a style variation for the upcoming Twenty Twenty-Three (TT3) default theme. Organizers received 38 submissions from 19 contributors (some submitted multiple variations) hailing from eight countries.

Given the wide range of colors and typography combinations, TT3 is gearing up to be a vehicle for a diverse set of styles from WordPress’ community of designers. Submissions included creative variations for all kinds of design moods – dark with high contrast, bright yellow with a smaller universal type size, a gradient aubergine background, and many more.

Automattic design director Channing Ritter published the selections that made the cut to be shipped with Twenty Twenty-Three:

“These variations were selected in an effort to feature the most drastically different set of variations possible — so in many ways, we were looking at what would work best as a collection versus selecting our favorite standalone submissions,” Ritter said.

The selections are not in their final form. Contributors will continue iterating on them, under the direction of design team leaders, until the WordPress 6.1 beta period begins on September 20.

“Some of the changes suggested may be a bit aspirational, but let’s continue pushing to see how opinionated we can make each of these variations,” Ritter said.

Submissions that were not chosen to ship with TT3 may still have a path towards inclusion via an official child theme of the default theme. Contributors discussed how this might work and have closed the issue in favor of creating a separate project for it after TT3 has launched.

“I particularly like the idea of continuing to create style variations beyond those that are bundled with TT3,” Automattic-sponsored contributor Sarah Norris said. “I think this is a great opportunity to introduce people to block themes and building variations, with the help of the community and experienced block-themers. It also provides a space to test Gutenberg PRs, in a similar way to how emptytheme is currently used, but with more opinionated settings enabled.

“I’m not sure about this being part of the current TT3 project, and in my opinion, it would be best to start this initiative soon after TT3 has launched.” 

In the meantime, contributors plan to refine the selected variations, and the child theme project can proceed without affecting the theme’s current timeline.

Check out the announcement to see each of the selected variations in more detail.

WordPress To Drop Security Updates for Versions 3.7 Through 4.0 by December, 2022

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WordPress’ Security Team announced it will be dropping support for versions 3.7 through 4.0 on December 1, 2022. To give some context for how old these versions are, in 2013, WordPress 3.7 introduced automatic background updates and 3.8 updated the admin with a new design based on the MP6 plugin.

WordPress’ official policy is that the security team only provides support for the most recent version, but as a courtesy has extended backporting security fixes to older versions that are able to receive automatic updates.

“Until now, these courtesy backports have included all versions of WordPress supporting automatic updates,” 10up-sponsored Security Team member Peter Wilson said. “Versions WordPress 3.7 – 4.0 have reached levels of usage, namely less than 1% of total installs, where the benefit of providing these updates is outweighed by the effort involved.”

More than half of all WordPress sites are on the latest version – 6.0+ (54.3%), and security updates will still be available to more than 99% of sites on older versions after this change. Wilson said the decision to drop support for 3.7 through 4.0 was based off the information reported on the statistics page.

WordPress version stats – 9/7/2022

“The effect of this imbalance means that the Security team spends most of the time preparing backports for the vast minority of WordPress installations,” Wilson said. “By dropping support for these older versions, the newer versions of WordPress will become more secure as more time can be focused on their needs.”

Over the next three months, versions 4.0 and older will receive their final updates and will also display a non-dismissible notice in the dashboard, advising users to upgrade to the latest version as their sites will no longer receive security updates.