Category: WordPress

Adding finishing touches and making adjustments

What did you do to your site this week? Most of my work was in adding actual contents and blog posts in the “off-topic/rewind” category of my WordPress site. I had assistance from an open classes meeting where Professor Graham helped fine-tuning my “contact” page to get it to the way it looks right now, which I’m very happy with (Thank you!).

How happy are you with it? I’m happy with certain aspect of my WordPress sites. A good example is the home page and the contact page. My blog post content I’m also happy with, but I know at the same time the presentation and layout of the blog post templates can be much improved. The way the footer looks can be improves by setting widgets to align horizontally in a grid, but I was unable to achieve that at the moment.

What would you change if you could? I probably would like to change and definitely work on the custom template layout for the “Web Development” page. Given the time constraints and having to balance other things in my life (like another class, taking care of errands, etc.), I think what I have to submit as a WordPress page is decent, but I also know that it can be much, much improved upon.

What’s one new thing you learned about WordPress development this week? There’s so much I want to learn and accomplish, but with so little time I just have to decide where to focus most of my effort and cut my losses. Do I think my WordPress is “good enough” to submit? Sure. Do I prefer to have it look “much better” and be more “perfect”? Absolutely. Do I plan to continue working with WordPress so I can feel more confident about my skills and knowledge in WordPress? Definitely.

If there’s anything I learn about WordPress development this week, I imagine it kind of emulates the “real world”. You could be working on a website for a client or your employer and you desire to have it look as perfect as possible and spend all this time and energy (and stress) trying to achieve that. But in the real world with real deadlines and other aspect of life that also needs your attention, sometimes it’s just has to be “good enough” and presentable to the client or employer. Changes can be made at a later time if you would like and are allowed to do so. Otherwise, “good enough” is good enough. 🙂

Also, as a last note. I learned that this WordPress class was not long enough. It’s a compliment. I really enjoyed this WordPress course, and I’m sure other students in this class also agrees with me. I’m kind of disappointed that it’s coming to a close. I intend on continuing to learn by working with WordPress and seeking tutorials in my spare time. Thanks Professor Graham for a fantastic class!

The performance results for my website before making improvements:

And after making improvements to my website’s performance:

Were you able to improve? Why or why not? Yes, I was definitely able to improve the performance of my website.

First, I went to https://geoffgraham.me/wordpress-how-to-clean-up-the-header/ and copied the helpful script there into the functions.php of my child theme folder.

Second, I went to the Dashboard view of my website and started to deactivate and/or removed plugins that I didn’t need for now to see if that would perhaps improve performance. I deleted the following plugins:

• No Right Click Images
• Insert Headers and Footers
• Hello Dolly

and, although I’m keeping the plugin All-in-One WP Migration, I deactivate this plugin to see if that makes a difference. I will activate this plugin when I’m importing and exporting WordPress site, but other than those times, I think deactivating the plugin might make some improvement to website speed.

To assist me in web page caching, I went with the plugin W3 Total Cache by BoldGrid. It’s an SEO and Performance Optimizer plugin.

What issues did you run into along the way? What did you learn about web performance as a result?

The issue I ran into was that I’m not familiar with DevTools. But in it’s place to go along with WebPageTest and Lighthouse, I used Google’s PageSpeed Insights as recommended in this article: https://theeventscalendar.com/how-to-perform-a-backend-audit-of-your-wordpress-website/

What I learned about web performance is that there is plenty of room for improvements. From the results, I was able to improve Compress Transfer and Cache static content from two letter grade “F” to two letter grade “A” on WebPageTest.

For Lighthouse, I was able to improve the Performance of my website from a score of 73 to a score of 91.

And for Google’s PageSpeed Insights, I was able to improve from 63 to 85. There is still room for further performance improvement, but so far for me it has been a leap in the right direction. My website loads approximately 1 second faster now than before I made performance improvements, which I think is quite substantial in the internet world. A page load speed can make or break a website and could mean the difference between gaining an audience/customer and losing them to a competitor’s website if my website took too long to load.

How is your content coming along? Do you need to refine the design?

I think my website is coming along fine. It’s just a matter of spending more time to add more content. For example, in my blog feed I got “Web Development” covered since it’s the assignments we do each week, but for the “Off-Topic” section of the blog, I need to add some content. I have some ideas of what I would like to post in that section of my blog site. Any content that is workplace safe and family-friendly would be acceptable. I also plan on working on the Portfolio page to list the various web design projects I’ve worked on so far in the Web Development program (freecodecamp, Codepen.io, etc.).

Which one did you choose? I chose the following plugins:

• All-in-One WP Migration by ServMask
• WP Content Copy Protection & No Right Click by wp-buy
• WP Forms Lite by WP Forms

Why did you choose it?

Well, All-in One WP Migration was a plugin I found when I was dealing with the dilemma of figuring out how to take my WordPress site from local server to live server. Surprisingly enough, a search on YouTube came up with a video posted from Local By Flywheel that recommended All-in-One WP Migration. I figured, well if the same company that I’m using for my local WordPress software is recommending it, then this plugin got to be at least decent. So far, it’s been great. It has over 2 million active installation, 4.5 out of 5 stars (based on 6,281 reviews), and it was last updated 2 weeks ago, so I know they are proactive in making improvements to the plugin.

For WP Content Copy Protection & No Right Click, that came about after I was wondering how I can prevent my images from being saved or downloaded. I wanted to protect my content. It has over 100,000 active installation, 4.5 out of 5 stars (based on 253 reviews), and was last updated 3 weeks ago.

And finally, I decided to go with WP Forms so I can create a Contact Form on my website. I chose this one because it was a familiar name. I had been proactively searching YouTube the last week or two for WordPress tutorial and the WP Forms name had been brought up a few time (either as a video sponsor or a recommended plugin in a YouTube tutorial). It has a 5 out of 5 stars rating based on 6,512 reviews, over 3 million active installation, and it was last updated 3 weeks ago.

What other plugins did you consider? How did they compare to the one you chose? I’ve considered No Right Click Images by Keith P. Graham to protect my images and contents. And for forms, I also considered Ninja Forms by Saturday Drive.

No Right Click Images has a 5 out of 5 stars, but there’s only 32 reviews so far. It does have over 20,000 active installation and was last updated 2 weeks ago. For me, I thought WP Content Copy Protection & No Right Click was the better fit for my WordPress site.

Ninja Forms was reasonably comparable to WP Forms; it has 4.5 out of 5 stars based on 1,051 reviews and has over 1 million active installation. I just decided to go with WP Forms out of curiosity and because more people had reviewed WP Forms and also due to WP Forms having about 2 million active installation over Ninja Forms. I may try out Ninja Forms later on to see what it has to offer. If for nothing else, it’s because the author has a very cool “New Retro Wave” name. Saturday Drive, kind of makes you want to get behind the wheel of an ’80s sports car complete with flip-up headlights and a four speed automatic transmission with “Overdrive”, playing Synthpop/Vaporwave through the four way speaker sound system as you drive along scenic Pacific Coast Highway, near the beach just as the sun is about to set in the Pacific Ocean and the city lights around you just lit up.

What other plugins did you try? I actually did try out No Right Click Images initially, but I found that it didn’t necessarily protect my images as it can still be saved if a visitor were to save the web page for offline viewing or print the web page. It did deliver what it promised as a visitor cannot right click any images to save it, but when a web page is printed or saved, it didn’t prevent an image from being saved that way.

How was you experience browsing through the plugin directory?

Overall, it was pretty good. Overwhelming variety and selection to choose from, but at the end of the day, I just selected what I needed for my website. Looking for plugins was simple from the Dashboard view. Just go to Plugins, click Add Plugins, start searching for a plugin that fits your need.

After you find one, click Install Now and Activate. You can keep track of the plugins you have by clicking on the Installed Plugins tab.