The post Calculating Interest appeared first on Shawn DeWolfe Consulting.

WordPress already includes JQuery. Here’s how to include your own. In the header.php file of your theme before wp_head(), include this:

<?php wp_enqueue_script(“jquery”); ?>

So it looks like this, instead:

<?php wp_enqueue_script(“jquery”); ?>
<?php wp_head(); ?>

Now you can call your own jQuery include:

<script type=”text/javascript” src=”/web/path-to-theme/”<?php” bloginfo(“template_url”); ?>/jQuery.js”>

This should handle most cases, but if you want to be really safe, set “no conflict” mode in your own jQuery. That cleans up collisions between competing JavaScript functions.

var $j = jQuery.noConflict();

$j(function(){

// some function code

});

The post jQuery & WordPress: how to avoid common conflicts appeared first on Shawn DeWolfe Consulting.

What’s a theme that you loved that is now dead or so buggy you can’t use it?

The post Help Us Find Dead Themes appeared first on Shawn DeWolfe Consulting.

About the Blogdrops Theme

What is the reason the Blogsdrop theme became so popular?
Blogdrops: a highly responsive magazine theme, developed and released in 2013. Used for personal blogs, food blogs, magazines, and news websites as well– by many considered to be a beautiful journal and magazine template by being fully adaptable, so it looked great on all devices. With Pinterest being all the rage, “masonry” styling caught on as a way to break from the grid and table layouts that can sometimes fail to give content the space it needs. BlogDrops included the masonry homepage and infinite scrolling. The theme included features like a full-width template, author, blog, and archive templates. Back then, Theme Forest sold it: https://themeforest.net/item/blogdrops-infinite-blogging-theme/3937660

The Blogdrops theme featured:

• Advanced theme admin panel,
• Responsive layout,
• *Infinite scrolling – loading posts,
• Mansory homepage,
• Alternative homepage – blog,
• Custom colors for each homepage post,
• jQuery homepage sliders – part of mansory layout,
• Unlimited color schemes – using colorpickers,
• Font selector/custom typography – 55 fonts available (web-safe fonts and Google webfonts),
• Homepage alternatives
• 7 Posts formats: standard, video, audio, gallery, image, link, quote,
• Custom archive post,
• Video ready – custom metaboxes,
• Logo and favicon upload,
• Social networks section,
• Dropdown menu,
• Author template,
• Translation ready,
• WordPress 3.5 + ready,
• Smooth tabless design.

Countless color schemes:

– you can set your own color using colorpickers for:

• background – body, slider, and alternative container section,
• text color – main body, slider section,
• link (+ hover) color – main body, footer section,
• texture overlay – main body,
• borders – main body
• element color

Templates:

• Full Width template,
• Redirect,
• Error 404,
• Blog template,
• Archive template,
• Author template,

Widgets & Shortcodes:

• Advanced shordcode generator,
• 12 custom widgets:
• 2 types of Featured posts (custom widget),
• 300px Ads (custom widget),
• 4×125px Ads (custom widget),
• Latest comments (custom widget),
• Flicker Photos (custom widget),
• Latest Tweets (custom widget),
• About Us Info (custom widget),
• Search form (custom widget),
• and more..

It allowed the user to upload 7 types of post formats. These include standard, image, video, gallery, audio posts, quotes, and links to other websites. The layout of this WordPress theme was highly customizable. From the margins to the borders, color, widgets, menus, and all kinds of other editable options. These features made this theme very web-friendly and very user-friendly.

BlogDrops Features

There were a lot of features offered by WordPress for this elegant magazine theme. Some of those features are listed below.

• Responsive Design – a very user-friendly interface that handled the jump to mobile well.
• Styling Options – There were a multitude of options available for customization.
• Twitter Feed – It also allowed the user to quote any tweet by an account and place them on your pages using its widgets area.
• Built-in short-codes – It contained a set of predefined codes that can be used to edit the layout of the theme.
• Post Formats – It supports multiple post formats, thus being considered one of the better WordPress themes available at that time.
• Translation ready – It offered translation services from the get-go.
• Color options – Color layouts in whatever shade of whatever family of color the owner wants.
• Templates – It came with an error 404 and redirect template as well as blog and post templates.
• Ad spaces – It came ready-made with  4x125px ad spaces available.

Despite being a great theme in 2013, it now requires a lot of fixes.

Why Can I Not Buy The Updated BlogDrops Theme?

In short, its code relied on the functionality of PHP version 5.6. BlogDrops is built for WordPress. WordPress runs many websites– more than 35% of the Internet is run by WordPress. WordPress needs programming languages to work. The most important: PHP.

In December 2018, at WordCamp US, a change to support for the PHP version on WordPress CMS was announced. WordPress founder, Matt Mullenweg suggested for 5.6 to be the minimum version until the middle of 2019, and for it to be bumped up again to the 7.0 version of PHP in the second half of the year. Here we are in 2020 and all of those WordPress installs out there running old code are broken.

Many of the applications running PHP were using a version below PHP version 5.6. At the end of 2018, PHP 5.6 hit the end of its life. Service providers (aka web hosts) updated their servers to use more recent versions of PHP. Applications that needed PHP 5.6 failed. One of those applications: the theme called BlogDrops.

What changed when PHP 7.x came in?

Nerds may be the only people who care, but this is a list of changes to PHP for versions newer than PHP 5.6. Applications that use these functions and references hit the incompatibilities in the code when run under PHP 7.0:

The BlogDrops theme relied on the use of the version of the programming language PHP, version 5.6. PHP 5.6 has long since lapsed and almost all ISPs ended support for 5.6 in 2019.

All WordPress themes require the use of PHP, however, PHP releases newer versions when security threats arise. When PHP 5.6 became a security concern, PHP 5.6 hit its end of life, meaning it would not be supported after 2019.

Despite PHP 5.6’s level of adoption, the newer versions of PHP with their key coding differences caught on. The performance of PHP 7.x beat older versions of PHP hands down. Here’s the sticky part: that old PHP code was heavily leaned on by developers. The replacement in code and concepts isn’t easy to accomplish. This leaves old functions (those supported by PHP 5.6) that are no longer available in PHP 7+. When PHP encounters old code, it fails. When it fails, your WordPress blog stops working.

Replacing the Blogsdrop theme

An outdated theme is a liability. If a theme loses the support of its publisher, updates won’t be coming. In the case of the BlogDrops theme, there was no route to updating the theme and making it work on more recent installs of WordPress and more up-to-date servers.

The easiest approach: replace it with the Divi Extra theme and use the Masonry layout to replicate the layout of items in the same way the Blogdrops themes did. We can quickly identify and fix WordPress issues. Our excellent code detectives can uncover whether the problem lies in the set-up, plugins, themes or the server itself..

When we were tasked with making repairs to the Sheila Karrow site (https://www.sheilakarrow.com/). Shawn DeWolfe Consulting is licensed to use Divi for our clients. Our people have 20+ years of PHP coding experience. We can convert and update website content from themes like Blogdrops to work with Divi (a theming platform from Elegant Themes). While we could go line-by-line and make all of the repairs to the BlogDrops theme to make it PHP 7.x compliant, converting the site over to Divi gave the site longevity, a feature rich theme and one with lots of support down the road. Content management systems split content and display. In the Sheila Karrow site, all of the good content remained and we could adapt to show off that content through the Divi theme. By going for the Divi Theme, our sites look great in their mobile and tablet variants.

Our process for a site updated from Blogdrops:

• First, we grab a copy of your website.
• We try to make it work with the new version of PHP (PHP 7.4)
• Then, assess if the breaks in your site are easy to fix. If these happen in custom code, we can fix them. If they happened in commercial plugins and themes, we work with the client to upgrade those.
• What we cannot fix, we replace. We can put in current era substitutes.
• When the fixes, replacements and new elements are ready to go, we can replace your old site with a new version of the site. The site gets back its functionality but retains its content, graphics, page set-up, etc..

The post How To Update The Blogdrops Theme appeared first on Shawn DeWolfe Consulting.

1. Product Hunt: [https://www.producthunt.com/ ]

An awesome community, Product Hunt is an excellent place to collect up-to-date news about products and apps. In the year 2013, Ryan Hoover created this prosperous and supportive community directly related to the tech industry. Definitely opt for Product Hunt and get your latest apps or products featured.

• Expect genuine feedback on your latest apps or products.
• You will positively get to know the constructive help related to the issues in your apps.
• Downside: your app announcement could get buried. If you make it to the front page, you get tons of attention. If you’re on page two, you’re in the middle of nowhere.

2. BetaList: [https://betalist.com/ ]

This is one of the highest operational platforms for obtaining pre-launch signups. Your startup project or a new app gets distributed to a very large base of reviewers.

• Excellent for technology-based startups or apps
• Gives the entire lists of latest and trending startups and allows early beta access to a few
• They mainly concentrate on private beta startups that are ready to launch

This is an excellent way to get connected to those passionate people who might possibly show some positivity to your to-be-launched product.

3. Hacker News – Y Combinator: [https://news.ycombinator.com/ ]

Hacker News is created and run by Paul Graham and Y Combinator (launched in 2005, it is an American startup accelerator; responsible to launch more than 2000 companies) is a unique social news website concentrating on Entrepreneurship and Computer Science startup incubators!

• Their tag line is anything and everything that satisfies individuals intelligent inquisitiveness
• News site with technology connected topics
• Entrepreneurs who share their experience during creating their apps, products, etc.

4. CrunchBase [https://www.crunchbase.com/ ]

It was originally founded by Michael Arrington, in the year 2007 is a robust collection of data related to the industry information – right from current industry trends, acquisitions, mergers, etc. Today, CrunchBase comes under the TechCrunch portfolio and is in full control of maintaining the CrunchBase database.

• A unique platform to find concrete data about most of the renowned public and private limited companies.
• The information like funding, core investors, mergers & acquisitions, founders, top management details, etc.

5. Betabound [https://www.betabound.com/ ]

A fully dedicated website for beta testing opportunities on the internet for your products that are in their beginning stage! Once you are confident, you can just announce your beta products and search for the initial adopters.

• Main focus is on Computer and Electronic Products
• Betabound also focuses on beta testing of Apps, Software, Websites and Games

6. The Museum Of Modern Betas (MoMB): [http://momb.socio-kybernetics.net/ ]

As the name is interesting so is the list as quoted by the founders – Highly awaited apps in the web world, which are not publicly released. Even if it looks a little thin when you go there, it’s worth checking out. MoMB is fully devoted to collecting most of the web-based applications that are offering a beta invitation.

7. PreApps [https://www.preapps.com/ ]

• PreApps has successfully helped various startups, first-time launchers, or novice apps in the past 9+ years.
• The Main aim is to successfully release the app that is matching its business goal i.e. the final users.
• Helps in launching your app successfully, systemically get excellent downloads and users with a perfect marketing strategy.

PreApps concentrate mainly on different types of apps on various platforms like Android, Windows, or iOS

8. Startup Tracker: [https://startuptracker.io/ ]

Founded by Jeremiah Smith, Startup Tracker does not list any kind of startup or prelaunch apps. But its main feature is you can get an in-depth knowledge of the latest and new startups. Hence we thought of including this website detail, which will be helpful.

• You can connect to abreast your knowledge of the upcoming and latest competing apps or startups.
• You can just highlight any business name and get the complete information on the status of that startup.
• Its unique “Discover” feature will not let your app go out of sight

9. Startup Genome: [ http://StartupGenome.com ]

Founded by JF Gauthier, Startup Genome is the global leader voice in ecosystem development. The list includes public-private partnerships and more than 100 governments in more than 35 countries across the globe.

The main motto is to enhance startup ecosystem performance by providing local leaders an absolute clarity, to gain momentum and strategy to direct their actions.

Their entire team is the perfect group of data scientists, policy experts, community builders, and entrepreneurs, throughout the globe.

10. Start-up Lithuania: [http://www.startuplithuania.lt/]

Lithuania provides the best possible conditions to get your business running at a very rapid pace. As it is, Lithuania has an excellent startup environment with very simplified Startup Visa rules. Its strategic location is blended with sturdy logistics support and different international markets

* We have a few new products under development. Shh!– don’t tell anyone!

The post 10 Product Discovery Sites appeared first on Shawn DeWolfe Consulting.

This isn’t scientific. This is your opinion. We’re going to try to stay positive, share the good feedback and fore front the highly rated design houses in Canada.

The post Who’s The Best For Web Design In Canada? appeared first on Shawn DeWolfe Consulting.

In 2011, WooThemes hired developers Mike Jolley and James Koster to create what became Woocommerce. Woocommece rose quickly in popularity. By 2014, it ran 17.7% of all e-commece sites. In May 2015, WooThemes and WooCommerce were acquired by Automattic, operator of WordPress.com and core contributor to the WordPress software. The estimate that Woocommerce systems now transact over $10 billion in online sales.

WooCommerce plugins allow for:

• Customer accounts and guest checkout
• Email templates
• Search engine optimization
• Related products
• Reporting

Best of all: if there’s functionality that hasn’t been created yet, we can build it for you with a custom WordPress / Woocommerce plugin.

Businesses have long felt that ecommerce was a nice to have. In 2020, that all changed. We understand the position that businesses are in. We have rolled out flexible solutions. For example, we can digitize and entire inventory and offer all of the products for sale. With one client, we digitized only products with good profit margins or uncomplicated shipping needed. We cherry picked the best parts of a business’ offerings to allow the online system make the best return on its investment.  We have worked to arrive at the best payment gateway. We also work with merchants to iterate their site: many start small and build; maybe opt for high per-transaction fees until the volume allows for a solution with lower per-transaction fees.

We find that WordPress is turnkey and Woocommerce is both powerful and flexible. When it comes to the operating costs, Woocommerce scores well on that front:

• Site Hosting – $10 – 30 / month (we work with a shortlist of vetted web hosts).
• Domain Name – $10 – $30 / year (we like Namecheap — link in the site footer)
• Theming – We offer our clients themes build on a Divi foundation. We can also deploy a premium theme. They cost $80 – 100 per year.
• Additional Plugins – these vary from client to client, but they usually run in the $300 / year range for licensing.
• Payment gateway – this varies widely. We like low barrier solutions like Paypal as well as their related product Braintree. Over 20 years of ecommerce deployments, we worked with most of the providers.

Don’t take our word for it about Woocommece. Ecommerce Companies has compiled a list, Best eCommerce Solutions, and Woocommerce is profiled there next to the competitor options.

The post Woocommerce: Taking Your Store Online appeared first on Shawn DeWolfe Consulting.

Everyone talks about shifting to digital, but so often it’s nothing more than talk. Just like anything else, it’s not enough for something to be a good idea for people to do it; they usually need something to push them into making the change. While COVID-19 has forced a lot of people to shift to online and remote work, the pandemic didn’t create the benefits of joining the digital economy. They existed long before people started self-isolating and will continue long afterwards.

Perhaps the biggest advantage of shifting to digital is that it’s asynchronous. Think of it as the difference between a text and a phone call. Phone calls only work when both people are available at the same time, but you can send a text on your schedule and let the other person respond on theirs.

How Shifting to Digital Benefits Your Clients

You can’t make a major change to your business unless you can get your clients’ buy in, and that means showing how shifting to digital helps them. Obviously, the digital shift is perfect for serving clients in the age of social distancing. They can order securely online and have the article waiting for them when they’re ready to pick up. That’s one advantage, but not the biggest–the biggest advantage of digital service is that it lets you serve customers on their schedule rather than yours.

A good website is always open so your clients can order products and services when they want to rather than having to wait for you to open up. They can also get email records of every transaction so that it’s easy for them to see where their money is going.

How Shifting to Digital Benefits You

The best changes are good for everyone, and shifting to digital is no exception. It not only helps your customers by making you more available to them, but it also helps you. By decoupling the order and fulfilment steps it lets you take orders for products that are on their way and then fulfill the customer’s entire order once you have everything in stock. That saves you money by making order fulfilment more efficient.

Digital also makes it easier to work on customer follow-up and retention as you have their email address and can use that to contact them. Communications and tracking are so much easier in the digital realm than they are with brick and mortar businesses.

Publicity

As a final boost, you can also often entice customers to post about their experiences with your product on social media such as Pinterest or Instagram. Having customers show off your product line can give you a kind of viral publicity that no amount of money can buy.

We do digital deployments, getting small businesses online. We’re not alone. Design Rush has a list of eCommerce web design companies that offer these services. To connect with us, Reach out, online, to SDC to start your migration today!

The post Why You Should Shift to Digital Now appeared first on Shawn DeWolfe Consulting.

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COVID-19 is virulent. It may not be a matter of if someone gets it as much as when someone gets it. The game now is to use social distancing to diminish the speed of the spread. If this continues to be a spread of a moderate speed, health care will not be overwhelmed. Workplaces will have absenteeism but the 4% drop in worker productivity could be spread out instead of hitting in a crippling cluster. Social distancing is the enemy of productivity: businesses need their stores full of customers, their theatres full of ticket holders, and their workplaces fully staffed. If those elements become impossible, businesses need to adapt or die.

Some strategies for using technology to cope:

• Open an online store. Shift from personal shopping and in-person visits to parcel delivery. There are many ways to make an online store affordable – even prosperous.
• If you’re running a food service, shift from restaurant dining to delivery. The delivery services can be pricey, so consider how to take online food orders and satisfy them with your own delivery person.
• If your business or your location has a special ambiance, use webcams to broadcast the visual / audio element of the same experience. Youtube offers streaming services to pipe out a continuous feed of webcam footage to the world. Failing that, shoot videos of your special place and post them – it would be like a video postcard. Some museums offer virtual tours.
• Replace in-person meetings with Zoom and Skype. They are confidential. They allow videos, audio, screen sharing and group meetings. People may need to get their “webcam game” upped, but it allows for face-to-face without being in each other’s cough-zone.
• Publish help and how-tos via Youtube or Loom. You likely know about Youtube, but Loom is awesome for anyone trying to share knowledge. In response to COVID-19, Loom just halved their rates. (I got a 1-year Pro plan today for $48USD/year.) It’s a massive tool for sharing information with clients and contacts.
• Find safe DIY projects to keep boredom to a minimum and mitigate shortages. With employee illnesses due to increase, there will be supply chain issues. While hand sanitizer is gone from our shelves, see below for a recipe for how to make some from more common ingredients that are still on the shelves.
• Evangelize telecommuting. Share the word of remote tools like Skype, Zoom, Google Docs, etc. Telecommuting offers so many benefits to our communities and bumps up our own quality of life. It may now also literally save our lives. If your employer or client resists telecommuting, talk up the virtues. If they reject telecommuting, consider not working with them.
• Allow employees to work flexible hours. Families are going to see their kids staying home from shuttered schools. If they can have the 9-3 to manage kids, see if they use other hours of the day to carry out for you. While not ideal, 6-day 6-hours/day schedule would create almost the same productivity and leave employees free to manage their non-work priorities.
• Relax employment perks. Vacations are sometimes a ‘use-it-or-lose-it’ affair. I think few people are getting on planes or cruise ships this year. Some employers are banking and bumping employee vacation time to let people take time off when getaways are viable. If getaways are dashed, let your staff work and bank their time off for next year.
• Share your COVID-19 strategy. If your strategy could benefit other employers, share how it’s implemented to make it easier for them to reproduce. On that note, if any of these tips help: share them. Attribution would be welcome, but it’s more important we get a big body of knowledge out there for winning strategies on how to survive this and keep our businesses afloat.

DIY Hand Sanitizer

Tools

• Measuring cup
• Measuring spoons
• Whisk
• Empty spray bottles (for WHO formulation)
• Empty lotion or sanitizer containers (for gel formulation)

Ingredients

• 1 cup of 99% isopropyl alcohol
• 1 tablespoon of 3% hydrogen peroxide
• 1 teaspoon of 98% glycerin
• ¼ cup, 1 tablespoon, and 1 teaspoon (or 85 milliliters) of sterile distilled or boiled cold water

Here’s the WHO article on hand-sanitizer.

(two weeks lost out of 52)
Image from https://pixabay.com/illustrations/covid-19-coronavirus-sars-cov-2-4908690/

The post Diminish The Impact Of COVID-19 For Business, Employees and Customers Through Technology appeared first on Shawn DeWolfe Consulting.