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WordPress

By Jeff Cohan, September 19, 2020

How To Add Custom Contextual Help Content To The WordPress Dashboard

custom contextual help

In this article I explain how to add custom contextual help content to the WordPress dashboard.

If you’re a WordPress developer, you can make your clients more self-sufficient and effective by adding custom contextual help content. And that can make you more valuable to your clients.

Even if you’re not a WordPress developer, this article may be of interest.

Read more…

Written by Jeff Cohan · Categorized: Techniques · Tagged: WordPress

By Jeff Cohan, August 12, 2020

WordPress Manual Excerpts: Why, When, & How to Use Them

WordPress Manual Excerpts

Your blog’s landing page (aka Blog Archive) is like a magazine’s table of contents. Both have the same purpose: to grab the reader’s attention and to steer him or her to content of interest.

WordPress supports three methods for displaying blog post summaries on archive pages: automated excerpts; excerpts defined by the placement of the WordPress more tag within the body of a blog post; and manual excerpts. Which method should you use? In this article I explain why manual excerpts are always my go-to method.

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Written by Jeff Cohan · Categorized: Techniques · Tagged: WordPress

By Jeff Cohan, June 17, 2020

How to Build Stunning WordPress Photo Galleries Quickly and Easily With FooGallery PRO

FooGallery PRO

Photo (image) galleries are common and popular elements for many Web sites; for some, they’re downright essential. In this article I focus on how FooGallery PRO allows you to create galleries quickly and easily using “Media Tags” as the datasource for a gallery.

I’ve been using and liking the free version of FooGallery for years. Working on several client Web sites with multiple image galleries, I looked for more efficient ways to create and maintain those galleries. The datasource feature of FooGallery PRO is a game-changer. Read on for an explanation of how this works, with detailed instructions and screen captures.

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Written by Jeff Cohan · Categorized: Techniques · Tagged: FooGallery, Images, Photo Gallery, Plugins, WordPress

By Jeff Cohan, June 15, 2020

How to Hide the Mai Lifestyle Pro Banner Area With Code

Mai Lifestyle Pro Banner

Mai Lifestyle Pro, a popular Genesis child theme, supports banner areas after the header. Banner areas with banner images — much like featured images — can add interest to a post and provide subliminal context. However, the default behavior of the banner area presents a potential problem. Namely, if you want to display the banner area on only some posts, there’s no quick and easy way to hide the banner area from the posts on which you don’t want it to appear. But there’s a solution, involving just a few lines of code.

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Written by Jeff Cohan · Categorized: Snippets · Tagged: Genesis, Mai Lifestyle Pro, WordPress

By Jeff Cohan, April 13, 2020

Strong Testimonials – Problem with v2.40.2

Strong Testimonials Plugin

Warning! Strong Testimonials is my go-to WordPress plugin for displaying testimonials. I use it on my own site and on many client sites. Today, after updating WordPress to version 5.4 — and updating Strong Testimonials from 2.40.1 to 2.40.2 — on one of those sites, the WordPress dashboard crashed. The error message: By downgrading back […]

Written by Jeff Cohan · Categorized: General · Tagged: Plugins, WordPress

By Jeff Cohan, May 30, 2019

7 Lessons I’ve Learned from Live Chat

Live Chat widgets

I’ve installed Live Chat on the Web sites of a number of clients. Most of those clients — especially those who hadn’t used Live Chat themselves as “consumers” — initially pushed back when I suggested they offer this particular form of customer service.

They had lots of common preconceptions. Now that I have a fair amount of experience as a Live Chat “agent” under my belt (I provide Live Chat support on behalf of most of these clients), I can tell you that most of those preconceptions were misconceptions.

Read more…

Written by Jeff Cohan · Categorized: General · Tagged: Customer Service, Live Chat, WordPress

By Jeff Cohan, April 2, 2019

I Built a WordPress Plugin for Downloadable Files

If you’ve ever embedded a PDF file or other downloadable file in WordPress posts or pages using the standard “Add Media” button, you probably know what a pain it can be if and when — but most likely when — that file needs to be updated.

You can’t just upload the newly updated file to the Media Library and expect “voila” to happen.

Even if the updated file has the same filename as the original, WordPress will rename it on upload rather than replace the old one with the new one. (I’ve tried a plugin that offers this replacement functionality, but it wasn’t user-friendly and fell short in other ways.)

So I made my own plugin.

Read more…

Written by Jeff Cohan · Categorized: Case Studies · Tagged: Plugins, WordPress

By Jeff Cohan, December 21, 2018

Automatic “Visit Web Site” Links on WordPress Portfolio Posts

If your blog includes articles about Web sites you have built, here’s a simple way to automagically and uniformly show “Visit Web Site” links at the end of all such posts. Sure, you could do this the old-fashioned way (hard coding the link), but there’s a better way. (Hint: You get to use that “Custom Fields” feature.)

Read more…

Written by Jeff Cohan · Categorized: Techniques · Tagged: WordPress

By Jeff Cohan, December 9, 2018

How to Reuse Content in WordPress with the amr shortcode any widget Plugin

Whenever you’ve entered identical content in more than one place in your WordPress Web site, have you wished there was a better way? Well, there is. In fact, there’s a plugin for that: the amr shortcode any widget WordPress plugin. This has become a standard plugin for all of the sites I build. Read this post to find out why and how it’s used.

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Written by Jeff Cohan · Categorized: Techniques · Tagged: Plugins, Shortcodes, WordPress

By Jeff Cohan, November 27, 2018

Dynamic Linear Gradients for Background Images in Genesis

Many Genesis child themes natively implement what I call dynamic linear gradients over background images in homepage sections. The effect is that as the visitor scrolls down the home page, the background image gradually changes appearance, typically getting increasingly darker. This blog post shows you one way to implement dynamic linear gradients over background images in Genesis themes that don’t natively support the effect.

Read more…

Written by Jeff Cohan · Categorized: Techniques · Tagged: Genesis, WordPress

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Recent Articles

  • How To Add Custom Contextual Help Content To The WordPress Dashboard September 19, 2020
  • WordPress Manual Excerpts: Why, When, & How to Use Them August 12, 2020
  • How to Build Stunning WordPress Photo Galleries Quickly and Easily With FooGallery PRO June 17, 2020
  • How to Hide the Mai Lifestyle Pro Banner Area With Code June 15, 2020
  • Sharing Blog Posts on Social Networks: How and Why June 11, 2020

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Web Sites | WordPress Support | Web Applications.

Formally trained in liberal arts and education (I have a B.A. in Government from Harvard and studied Secondary Education at Rutgers Graduate School), I have honed my skills in the communication arts and sciences as a teacher, trainer, instructional designer, writer, photographer, calligrapher, helpdesk manager, database programmer, and multimedia developer.

(I've also been a group counselor, waiter, bartender, bicycle messenger boy, computer salesman, carpenter's helper, financial analyst, and school board president.)

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Systems since 1983.
Web sites since 1994.
PHP since 2001.
WordPress since 2007.

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