Growth hacking is very prevalent in the world of startups, especially for companies in their early stages. In fact, for a while growth hacking was a buzzword like “content is king” in blogging. The term describes an approach to find ways to rapidly and efficiently grow a business. Since its main focus is building a user base the same principles can also be used to grow websites. Fortunately, WordPress and growth hacking go together like peanut butter and jelly. For that reason, in this article, we want to dive deeply into this topic. Below we will talk about what growth […]

It’s no secret that I am a fan of the WordPress REST API. I use it all the time on new projects, but adding REST API support to my main project — Caldera Forms — has been difficult. Modern WordPress development requires writing PHP code that allows for the same actions to be performed in response to a traditional admin/ front-end HTTP request, a REST API request or WP-CLI request, using the same internal PHP API. In the past, I don’t think following this philosophy mattered much. Settings were changed on admin pages and content was displayed on the front-end. […]

With more than 40k plugins in the WordPress repository alone, selecting plugins for your site may be daunting. We realize how challenging this can be, so in celebration of Torque’s Plugin Madness, we put together four white papers on plugins for site maintenance, optimization, editorial, and marketing. Download The Best Plugins For Site Maintenance  Download The Best WordPress Plugins for Site Optimization  Download The Best Editorial Plugins for WordPress  Download The Best WordPress Plugins For Marketing The white papers highlight all 64 plugins that competed in this year’s plugin madness, each of which was nominated by the WordPress community. The plugins were […]

Whether you are a president of an educational institution, a school principal, or a blogger who writes about education, you know how important it is to impress the viewers of your website. For bloggers, retention of users means a more productive blog while managers of schools and universities benefit by attracting more students. To help you make a good impression, I have hand-picked a collection of ten beautiful and responsive WordPress themes designed specifically for education-related websites and blogs. All of them focus on quality design, practical functionality, and simplicity – exactly what you need. School This theme was designed […]

If you’re a plugin developer with multiple plugins in the repository, it can be hard to make sure they’re all up to date. If you aren’t regularly monitoring all of your plugins, you might get a notice like this: This plugin hasn’t been updated in over 2 years. It may no longer be maintained or supported and may have compatibility issues when used with more recent versions of WordPress If a WordPress plugin isn’t updated regularly, it may be considered abandoned. Abandoned plugins can be a security threat and will eventually stop working as it loses compatibility. Plugin abandonment can happen […]

Last week the long-awaited WordPress.org plugin directory was rolled out. While this re-design has been in an open beta for months. Many users and developers felt taken off guard by the launch, which happened without warning. In a comment on the announcement post, Kevin Hoffman summed up much of the community’s frustration about what was supposed to be a user data and feedback driven re-design he said, “In many of the discussions leading up to launch, user data and feedback were promised to be the decision-makers, although it did not exist at the time. Much of the early feedback (regarding […]

The new Plugin Repository went live earlier this week. After several iterations, the team released the finished product earlier this week. In general, the entire repo looks cleaner, and provides more intuitive user experience. The homepage has a big search box right at the top, making it much easier to navigate. The new site features new navigation that draws attention to “Featured Plugins” and “Popular Plugins.” It even includes a new “Beta Plugins” section, where developers can test out their new product and get feedback. The plugin profiles also changed. Now, instead of toggling between tabs to see developers and reviews, just scroll down […]

Learning how to make WordPress faster is an essential skill for every website owner. Website performance is a big part of usability and a sluggish site one of the best ways to drive away visitors and lose search rankings. We have already published a detailed article on how to make your WordPress website faster. In it you learn why speed matters, what factors influence page load speed and what you can do to improve it. In this article, we want to go a step further. Below, we have listed advanced techniques to improve the performance of your WordPress website. Some […]

Torque had a great time at WordCamp Miami. The community came out to celebrate all things WordPress and soak up some Florida sun. It was a great place for community and togetherness. We learned a lot, meet new people, and ate local food. Here are some of our favorite community tweets from the weekend. [<a href=”//storify.com/shaptora/wordcamp-miami-2017″ target=”_blank”>View the story “WordCamp Miami 2017” on Storify</a>]<br data-mce-bogus=”1″><br data-mce-bogus=”1″>

Workflow is an important part of any WordPress developer’s job. However, some people can get stuck in the way they’ve always done things, and that can be very limiting. Some developers employ what’s called Cowboy Coding. Cowboy coding is an undisciplined approach to software development that gives programmers complete control over the development process. In this context, cowboy is a synonym for maverick — a loner who does things his own way. While that’s the official definition, this is how I define it: Non-agile No design No testing No requirements Unmaintainable code No feedback from users No schedule or deadlines No […]