Get involved with the WordPress community and commit to the Five for the Future initiative to give back to WordPress what it gives to you as a business.
And it doesn’t have to mean doing anything with code – just being able to write documentation, translate a language or edit a video is all it takes to take part.
And, you can learn so much from that contribution aspect too.
David Artiss, courtesy of Themeisle
Blog
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What is your #1 tip for businesses going digital?
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How to get free AAA games for PC and Mac
There are open-source and free-to-play games available that cost nothing (up-front anyway), such as Fortnite. However, what about those AAA games, that have an up-front costs. How can you get those for free?
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How to update the firmware on a UniFi Travel Router
When travelling, whether for work or pleasure, having a compact travel router can be a real benefit.
The idea is that they connect to the local Wi-Fi, or Ethernet, and then create it’s own, Wi-Fi signal for your devices. Apart from it being more secure, you can set it up with the same SSID as your home network, which means that all your devices just connect automatically.
Also, when a hotel provides Ethernet connectivity, that’s often faster and more stable than the Wi-Fi, but then you’d need to connect each device physically to make use of it – the travel router solves this too.
I use a UniFi Travel Router, and I would highly recommend it. It’s well built and has lots of features, including dual-ethernet connectivity and VPN support.
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WordPress plugins and the removal of features
A recent discussion on Reddit was about shaming plugin developers who offer free features and then take them away (with the assumption being that they make them part of the paid-for version).
Now, I don’t agree with shaming, but I don’t think it’s a great policy. As a site owner, if I’d spent some time looking for the best plugin, implementing it and integrating its features, only for the developer – out of nowhere – to put one of the features I use behind a pay-wall, I’d be less than happy. My choice now would be to go back and find another plugin, which may not even be possible if important data was not transferable between plugins, implementing it, etc., or to pay. It feels like blackmail in a way.
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Mole and eMon – the forgotten support software at Boots
Back in the early/mid-1990s I’d been working on the IT (then IS) Help Desk at Boots the Chemist, supporting store’s POS (Point of Sale) systems. After a few years, my existing development chops were recognised and I was moved away to a more technical support team, where I would be helping to create support tools, as well as make fixed and minor enhancements to the POS system.
My manager was very supportive of us all and allowed us to find our own path, in terms of what we’d spend our time doing. In my case, as the only person in the team with direct experience of working on the Help Desk, I wanted to do what I could to assist them.
So I wrote Mole.
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Should we all be using online wish lists for gifting?
[It is estimated] that $35 billion is being thrown away, around the world, in the form of poorly chosen Christmas gifts
BBC’s 50 Things That Made The Modern Economy – Santa Claus, December 17th 2018For a number of years now, I’ve asked people buying me birthday and Christmas gifts to use my online wish list and I’ve converted a lot of them to doing the same.
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