The Caveena Solutions Blog
A while back I made a post stressing the importance of providing users with all available options when offering a choice. A few days ago I was filling out an online form and was presented with these options:
That’s when it hit me that society (for the most part) has started to recognize gender identity beyond the usual Male or Female. It just blew my mind to think that such grand debates have finally come down to the everyday level of implementation. Trippy.
Over the past few months I’ve been using a lot of what I call Page Builders, WordPress plugins that come with a set of modules which you drag-and-drop into a grid-based layout. I haven’t used, nor could I possibly use, all the available Page Builder plugins but here is what I have played around with:
- Themify Builder (as part of one of their themes.)
- Elegant Themes Page Builder plugin.
- Elegant Themes Divi Theme (note that the page builder included in Divi is different from their Page Builder plugin. Elegant Themes is investing development into the Divi builder.)
Of course, there are a lot more Page Builders than these. You also have Visual Composer., Startup Framework, Qards… the list goes on.
I am not going to be reviewing the Page Builders I have used. Rather I want to share my thoughts on them after having gained some experience using them.
After the recent security hole in Yoast SEO we now find an SQL Injection vulnerability in the popular WooCommerce plugin. Update now.
It goes without saying but if you are using the ever popular WordPress SEO by Yoast (and why wouldn’t you be? It’s an amazing SEO plugin for WordPress) then you need to update to version 1.7.4 immediately. A security vulnerability was discovered in the plugin which would allow bad things to happen.
Source: iThemes.
I’m not sure if this is a brand-spanking new feature or if I just missed it but using JetPack you can now update WordPress Plugins across all your websites through your WordPress.com My Sites Dashboard. What’s even more interesting is that you can set plugins to auto-update.
Right now this feature is limited only to Plugins — no updating Themes or the base WordPress installation.WordPress already auto-update (unless disabled) so I doubt this will ever be offered. I wonder if we’ll eventually see the option of updating Themes through WordPress.com.
There are already a few services out there that’ll help you manage all your WordPress websites. Here are a few that I know of in alphabetical order:
More information can be found on the Site Management support page. And be sure to turn on the JSON API.
I can’t change anything when I try to manage my sites on WordPress.com.
You need to enable site management on your Jetpack-connected site from the dashboard by either opting in as mentioned above, or by enabling it under the JSON API settings in Jetpack → Settings → JSON API → Configure and checking the box for the “Allow remote management of themes, plugins, and WordPress via the JSON API” option and saving your changes.
On the 27th December I opened up Bloglines to see what new updates awaited me. That’s when I saw this:
Notice how the grey bar displays the message “Doc are you telling me you built a time machine?” Hopefully recognize that line from the first Back to the Future movie. Bloglines displayed this because the website in question had scheduled a post for publishing on the 29th December. You can even see the post date on the screenshot itself. Somehow scheduled post made it’s way to the RSS feed eventhough at the time it was not visible on the website. Indeed, trying to navigate to the post yielded a 404 error.
When you sit in front of a computer typing on a keyboard you gotta let off a little steam. Sometimes we hide comments in code or have our website respond to the Konami Code. And sometimes we reference pop culture.
Caveena Solutions would like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas! Here’s hoping you enjoy spending time with your friends & family.
We were planning on giving our website a Christmas theme (much like we did for Hari Raya and Chinese New Year) but we unfortunately got extremely busy. As we march towards the end of the year it seems that clients everywhere want their websites done by the start of 2015. That and the general busy-ness that is associated with this time of year got the better of us.
And no, it had nothing to do with the recent spate of decorational controversies in Brunei.
With the final few days of 2014 in sight, we hope that the last 365 days have been kind to you and your loved ones. Let’s all try a little bit harder in 2015.
This comes courtesy of Reddit which linked to an old Mozilla’s Bug-Tracker thread. 39 comments in total, not a very long read.
TL;DR Vendor-prefixed CSS Properties will eventually be removed. To future-proof your code, make sure to include the W3C standard property at the end of the declaration.
-webkit-transition: all 600ms ease; -moz-transition: all 600ms ease; -ms-transition: all 600ms ease; -o-transition: all 600ms ease; transition: all 600ms ease;
I have to take my hat off to those who replied to the thread. They did it with such patience, courtesy and professionalism. Kudos to them.
OK, it seems we need to review Form User Interface 101: when providing users a choice of items, ensure the list is exhaustive.
Case in point: I was filling in the registration form for Brunei’s upcoming Century Run when I came to the field labelled Higher Education Institution. The choices were presented as a select menu. See if you can spot what’s wrong:
The list only contains Brunei institutions of higher learning with no catch-all option for foreign universities. And since this was a required field I had to select something. So congratulations Universiti Brunei Darussalam, for the purposes of The Century Run I am unofficially an alumni! You lucky guys, you 🙂
In late 2014 I participated in the BSB International Marathon organized by the Brunei Athletics Association. How did I do? I’m glad you asked 🙂 I placed 33rd out of the 127 runners in my category and covered 5km in 32 minutes 28 seconds, a personal best.
Despite the issues that plagued the marathon, I think a hearty “Congratulations” is in order to the Brunei Athletics Association. I’m sure they will take the lessons learned to heart and do even better next time. That said, there are a few website matters we can scrutinize and draw reminders from.
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