Developers Aaron Jorbin and Andrew Norcross created the BRAD plugin after our own Brad tweeted this:

I REALLY wish this was easier to spot on WordPress installs. So many sites are launching with privacy enabled https://t.co/X12J8tdYVy

— Brad Williams (@williamsba) July 13, 2017

Boom. Aaron and Andrew combined their talents and BRAD was born—their effort to prevent WordPress websites from accidentally excluding themselves from search engines. Learn more about how and why Aaron and Andrew developed the plugin at The Daily Jorbin.

When Brad innocently tweeted his dismay with sites launching with privacy enabled, he certainly didn’t expect to inspire the creation of a plugin, much less have one named after him.

“It’s funny because years ago Scott Basgaard and I worked on a patch for WordPress Core to make the Privacy Enabled option more obvious,” explains Brad. “It was eventually accepted into Core and looked great, but somewhere over the years, and many many releases since then, the notice was made less obvious again.” Sounds like BRAD is the solution to that.

Overall, Brad loves BRAD.

“Aaron and Andrew are both great guys, and amazing developers, so it was awesome to see them go from idea to release in less than 24 hours. You really do have to love the WordPress Community.”

But don’t get the wrong idea. It’s not as though having a WordPress plugin named after him has gone to Brad’s head. Okay. That’s a lie. Brad thinks he’s immortal now.

“I think I’m reaching Highlander status,” he declares. At the very least, Brad is grateful, and he plans to repay Aaron and Andrew through gifts of whisky and coffee.

“They know who gets what,” he says. Are you launching a new site and want to ensure that it’s not excluded from search engines? Download and install BRAD today. Use the link below.

BRAD

Follow Aaron and Andrew on Twitter: @aaronjorbin and @norcross. Aside from installing BRAD, use the checklist below (created by WDS Lead Frontend Developer, Greg Rickaby) next time you launch a new website.

• Turn off the “Block Robots” setting under Settings –> Reading
• Check robots.txt to ensure it’s also not blocking robots
• Manage redirects (old pages to new pages, and www -> non-www)
• Make sure the SSL certificate is set up for both WWW and non-WWW
• Make sure any Webhooks are set up (WooCommerce, Stripe, Gravity Forms, etc…) and pointing at the new URL
• Optimize images
• Check accessibility
  • Total Validator
  • WAVE extension
  • Screen Reader testing
• Set your favicon
• Run the site against: https://www.webpagetest.org/
• Run the WordPress SEO (Yoast) Configuration wizard and input social media links, logos, and turn on Sitemap
• Set up Google Analytics
• Ensure that Website Feature Documentation is up-to-date
• Create a screenshot for your theme
• Set up your RSS Feed

The post Meet BRAD appeared first on WebDevStudios.

Tomorrow, Wednesday, August 10th, at 12 PM ET, Brad and Ryan Ashby, Director of Partnerships at WP Engine, will be chatting about how digital agencies can get more business. They’ll cover how to create a unique, effective pitch, how to be successful in your market, and how to make potential and current clients know that you’re trustworthy and reliable. They’ll also share how to make yourself stand out in a sea of other agencies, and make sure you stand out in the crowd. 

If you run your own agency (or heck, even your own one-person operation), you’ll definitely want to catch this. WebDevStudios was built from the ground up, is fully bootstrapped and we’ve learned a lot of lessons the hard way; get some insights from Brad and make it easy on yourself!

Wanna go? All you have to do is register right here!

The post WP Engine Webinar: Pitch Perfect: Agency Secrets to Winning More Business appeared first on WebDevStudios.

In case you missed it, we have a treat for you!

You can watch it right here and now:

A few highlights:

“A lot of the reasons that WordPress has become so popular–there aren’t really restrictions. You can use it for whatever you want.”

“A lot of people think WordPress can’t handle a large load of traffic. It’s not true. WP can handle millions and millions of hits. Really, the only limitations of what WordPress can handle depends on what your hosting can handle.”

Wondering which enterprise companies use #WordPress (externally and/or internally)? Here are just a few. #WebDevinar pic.twitter.com/yB4vblkS9A

— WebDevStudios (@webdevstudios) July 18, 2016

“WordPress is a platform that people can understand how to use. Your team will want to use the tools you provide them and manage the content and manage the media because WordPress makes it easy…If your platform is hard to use, your team won’t want to use it.”

Thank you to all that attended and to those who sent us questions!

We’ll be hosting another webinar, featuring our Director of Products and Pluginize go-to, John, so keep an eye out for more details on that in a few weeks!

Have more questions about the above webinar or topics you’d like to see addressed during one of these? Drop ’em in the comments and let us know! We want your feedback!

The post Why Enterprise Companies Should Use WordPress: Webinar Debriefing appeared first on WebDevStudios.

There are a lot of questions about how this works–how WordPress can scale, why WordPress is the best choice over, say, a proprietary content management system that they’ve had built in-house, and what WordPress is really capable of. We’ve also encountered a lot of misconceptions about what WordPress is and what it can do.

On July 18th, our CEO, Brad Williams, is going to share why WordPress is the best choice for enterprise companies, and talk about our experiences working in the enterprise space. He’s going to share some myths and talk about the realities of WordPress for large, international companies, too!

Whether you’re thinking of bringing your company site over to WordPress, or you’re part of the WordPress community and want to know what concerns enterprise company executives have about WP, you will definitely want to get in on this.

This webinar is completely free, and we’d love for you to join us:

Click here to sign up!

If you have any questions you want answered, please tag them on Twitter with #WebDevinar. Whatever we don’t get to during the Q&A portion of the webinar, we’ll answer in a follow up post.

We look forward to seeing you there!

The post Upcoming Event: Why Enterprise Companies Should Use WordPress appeared first on WebDevStudios.

Our CEO, Brad Williams, has shared his experience growing our company and working with WordPress in the enterprise space live, and now we’re bringing this to you–no travel expenses required!

On July 18th, we will be hosting a webinar featuring Brad discussing why enterprise companies should use WordPress.

We’ve worked with many enterprise companies who have made the move, and our experiences have taught us, firsthand, about the unique apprehensions and proliferation of myths regarding what WordPress can or cannot do for them. Brad is going to be talking about those myths and sharing about why open source platforms are the future for massive companies like Microsoft, Skype, Campbell’s Soup, and more.

Want to get in on this? We know you do!

Here are the details:

Why Enterprise Companies Should Use WordPress

Date: July 18th, 2016
Time: 1 PM – 2 PM ET

[SIGN UP HERE]

The webinar is totally free; all you have to do is sign up! For those of you who can’t make it day of, we will be providing a recording of the talk as well–just make sure you put your info in beforehand so we can send it out to you afterward.

We hope to see you there (and psst…if there are any questions that are pressing now and that you’d like to see addressed, drop them in the comments)!

The post Upcoming Webinar: Why Enterprise Companies Should Use WordPress appeared first on WebDevStudios.

Although I find it hard to believe that any of our regular readers are unfamiliar with WordCamp (come on, now!), for those of you that are completely green: WordCamps are events held all over the world where WordPress nerds unite to share their skills, insights, and learn a whole lot from a bunch of other smarties.

Both Brian and Brad will be there, so you’d better grab them and say hello–and you won’t want to miss Brad’s presentation, either. Check out the details for that, as well as a few other presentations that caught our eye below:

Saturday, April 30th

9 AM – Tips For Training & Educating Your Client On WordPress – Jen Witkowski

Putting the finishing touches on a shiny new WordPress site can give you the feeling of accomplishment. But unless the client has worked in WordPress before, your job isn’t done. Your next step should be to educate the client about WordPress and train them on how to update their site. In this session we’ll review some training tips that Jen has learned over the past years, and discuss how to approach educating your client about WordPress in away that encourages them to do their own research before calling you.

10 AM – WordPress Accessibility – Adrian Roselli

With recent announcement that all code submitted to WordPress core (as well as themes) must meet WCAG 2.0 AA, proper accessibility techniques are more important within WordPress than ever. Adrian will review some basic and fringe accessibility techniques you can use for your personal and client projects, as well as for contributing to WordPress core.

10 AM – “Hidden” WordPress Features – Michelle Ames

There are WordPress features you may not know.

If you are like many, there always seem to be things you wish you could do with WordPress, but maybe can’t figure out. This session will provide you with some great tips and tricks for you to make working with WordPress even easier. From changing the number of posts on the dashboard page, to adding a target to link to on the menu dashboard, there are many things that are easy to accomplish — if only you know where to look. Not only are there screen options on almost every dashboard page, but there are help pulldowns, too, helping to answer questions before you might even need to turn to help in a forum. We will also cover shortcuts for use in the editor window, and a quick and easy way to save your favorite plugins to find at a click to upload to your site.

2 PM – What You Need To Know About SEO – Tamara MacDuff

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has changed. It needs to be considered part of your company’s online strategy not just a one and done type of thing. SEO is a living strategy, just as the algorithms are and your website should be. Everything depends upon each other for success now more than ever. Learn the Top 5 Things You Need to Know for SEO Success on Your Website, How to Find Out What people are talking about, What is SEO & How Social Media impacts your SEO.

3 PM – Build a Better Editing Experience with Advanced Custom Fields – Jeseph Meyers

A quick but thorough dive into building page templates and custom features using the Advanced Custom Fields plugin. Learn how to create easily editable custom content areas and add additional options to the WordPress admin dashboard. Say goodbye to page builder plugins and say hello to Advanced Custom Fields.

4 PM – Help Me Help You: Scoping Your WordPress Project – Brad Williams

Learn how you can help the freelancer or agency you are hiring to create your new website. What can you provide to get a more accurate estimate and project plan? How can you help keep costs down? What to look for when interviewing a developer or designer for your project.

Session descriptions pulled from the WC Buffalo website (with some edits for clarity)

Will we see you there? You can follow @WordCampBuffalo or keep your eyes on #wcbuf for more updates or just vicarious living, too. See you soon, WC Buffalo!

The post Oh Heyyy, WordCamp Buffalo 2016! Get Ready for WDS! appeared first on WebDevStudios.

Like PressNomics, Prestige is a tech conference that focuses on business and career development, rather than tech itself; most of the presentations are focused on discussing how to run a business in the tech industry, rather than on improving technical skills.

One of the biggest benefits of conferences like this is, of course, the presentations from well-established professionals who know their stuff, but also, the conversations that happen in between the formal scheduling–the hallway chats, brainstorming over meals, and networking amongst other like-minded pros in the industry.

At the last Prestige, in Las Vegas, Brad gave his classic presentation on how to go from freelancer to agency by hiring the first employee, filled with true blue business trial and error based advice and WDS history. Since then, he’s given the talk a few other places, and now you can actually watch it on WordPress.tv.

This time around, both Lisa and Dre are there to talk business–when to go, when to stay, and what to consider when building a career. These presentations are pretty exciting for us, particularly since they share the personal trajectories of these professionally incredible people. If you want a little insight on how to make your business life better, you better get yourself there!

Check out the details below about both of their presentations, as well as a few other things you won’t want to miss:

Saturday, August 1st

9 – 9:45 AM – The Whole Person Concept: Finding Balance in Our Work, Our Lives, & Our Successes – Lea Newman

Busy, busy, busy…we’re all SO busy!

In all the hustle and bustle it can sometimes feel like a challenge to keep all of the “balls in the air”. That juggling act impacts not only our lives and interpersonal relationships, but also our businesses as well. How can you focus on growth when you’re constantly putting out fires? In this session we will talk about how to assess where you are in the various areas of your life, where you want to be, and some strategies on how to create success and balance between them all.

1 – 1:45 PM – Technology’s Dirty Little Secret – Nancy Lyons

When we think of technology, it often conjures thoughts of apps, gadgets, software we hate, or software we love. But those are just things. To understand what technology’s really about, we have to look deeper.

The dirty little secret about technology is that it’s all about people: People are the ones who build it. People are the ones that use it. People are what we need to keep front & center in every facet of our technology businesses. 

Contributing quality work in the tech space starts with leadership setting the tone of a company through their hiring policies, vision, and values. It includes discussion of how individual team members affect work culture and products through everyday user advocacy. Together we’ll explore the hard business value — and profitability — of soft, squishy terms like emotional intelligence, intellectual curiosity, collaboration, and vulnerability.

4 – 5 PM – Knowing When to Pull the Ripcord: Moving On to Your Next Big Thing – Dre Armeda

Successfully pivoting your career doesn’t always come naturally. Understanding where you fit within an organization, knowing what specific strengths you contribute towards the company goals, and having a firm grasp on the overall vision are key elements for underwriting your exit strategy.

Prestige co-founder Kiko Doran will interview Dre Armeda on his four year history with Sucuri, from the initial founding of the company through his departure and move to WebDevStudios in 2014. They’ll discuss enterprise stabilization, pivot points, risk assessment, and other factors that allowed him to successfully move on to the next big thing.

Sunday, August 2nd

10 AM – 12 PM – BRANDING WORKSHOP // Clarity Breeds Opportunity: Brand Communication Tactics to Boost Referrals, Attract Clients, Expand Possibilities – Jen Bourn

Your brand is your core business asset. It is the reputation you have in the market, the perception your audience has about your business, and the feelings and thoughts they associate with your products or services. With a strong, clear brand, decision-making is easy, your value is clear, and you can charge your worth with confidence and certainty.

In this hands-on workshop-style session, you won’t be sitting back and relaxing, you’ll be neck deep in your brand, gaining clarity and getting things done. You’ll walk away with a deeper understanding of your brand, a powerful, refined marketing message, and new tools you can add to your business and use with your clients.

1 – 1:45 PM – Taking the Leap: Switching Careers to Follow Your Passion – Lisa Sabin-Wilson

In 2014, when Matt Mullenweg shared the results of a 33K person survey, he found that a full quarter of the participants (25%!) were making their living from WordPress. 

Now rewind a decade. Back in 2004, when Lisa Sabin-Wilson left a completely unrelated, non-tech career as a Registered Nurse to become a full time WordPress entrepreneur, she didn’t have survey numbers or case studies to give her a confidence boost that her decision to switch careers would eventually pan out. At the time, WordPress was barely over a year old – what was she thinking??

A crucial component in making a drastic (and successful) career change is empowering your decision making. During her session at Prestige, Lisa will share her story of taking the major leap to WordPress, along with the steps she took to move in the direction of success. She’ll cover formulas for evaluating financial impacts, quantifying transferrable skills, and determining true readiness for change in a way that sheds light on a decision many freelancers and entrepreneurs face – finding the tipping point where they can ultimately say “Ok this is it- Dear current career: I QUIT!”

Session descriptions pulled from the Prestige Conference website.

As per usual, if you can’t join us in Minneapolis, follow @PrestigeConf and the hashtag #PrestigeConf to get your fix! Otherwise, we’ll see you there!

The post Prestige Conference, WDS is Coming Your Way! appeared first on WebDevStudios.

By now, we assume you’re familiar with the Professional WordPress books written by Brad Williams, David Damstra, and Hal Stern. The third edition of Professional WordPress was released in January, and since then we’ve done two giveaways of the book (and a few other small goodies). To kick off a bright and beautiful season, though, we wanted to go bigger. Like the sun.

This time around, we’re giving away a copy of Professional WordPress (signed by Brad, naturally), and in addition to that, we’re also giving away a one year membership to the Apple Developer Program. Yup, you read that right! We are mighty privileged to be a part of this community of developers and designers and WordPress lovers, and we wanted to give something back that’s extra sweet for you folks.

Let’s keep this short and sweet and simple: As per usual, click through to the Rafflecopter to enter! As we did last time, if we beat 250 entries, we’ll give away some rad Maintainn t-shirts and stickers and other goodies as second and third place prizes.

Good luck!

The post Summer Reading List Must: Professional WordPress appeared first on WebDevStudios.

Although I find it hard to believe that any of our regular readers are unfamiliar with WordCamp (come on, now!), for those of you that are completely green: WordCamps are events held all over the world where WordPress nerds unite to share their skills, insights, and learn a whole lot from a bunch of other smarties.

This is a big one for us since Philly is where WebDevStudios HQ is located! This is the fifth WordCamp Philly, and not only will a bunch of WDS folk be there, but there are some other special events taking place that we hope those of you attending will participate in. Rami, Justin, and Brian will be speaking, and Brad, Corey, and Jaimie will all be attending as well, so make sure to grab them and say hello!

Here’s what you won’t want to miss:

Saturday, June 13th, 2015

8:15 AM – Yoga for Desk Jockeys – Erica Varlese

Those of us who spend forty hours (or more) a week at our desk tend to be pretty bad at getting up and getting moving. Even though we all know we’re supposed to take breaks to stand up and stretch, it often doesn’t happen. Erica will be going over stretches you can do at your desk to keep your neck and spine happy and healthy, and help you learn how to combat some of the health issues that folks who live at a desk often experience.

11:10 AM – WordPress in Education – Panel including Brian Messenlehner

WordPress is versatile, to say the least, and it is often used in the Education field. From large public school systems to universities, educational institutions are finding ways to use WordPress to accomplish not only their educational mission, but for administrative and organizational purposes as well. Our panelists will discuss the varied ways that WordPress implementations are accomplishing these goals in many educational settings.

We’re pleased to welcome the following speakers, each of whom brings their experience and insight to a challenging and exciting field:

• Susan Walker, web developer and ‘unofficial “Department of WordPress”‘ for Rutgers University’s Camden Computing Services
• William Earnhardt, Web Architect for ITS Digital Services at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• Cameron Barrett, manager of 70+ WordPress sites at Newark Public Schools
• Charlie Reisinger, IT Director at Penn Manor School District in beautiful Lancaster County Pennsylvania
• Brian Messenlehner, Co-Founder of WebDevStudios, worked with the Newark Public Schools to migrate and consolidate the district’s websites into a single WordPress multisite network

11:50 AM – WP3D: Using WordPress to power 3D environments – Rami Abraham

As browser compatibility with WebGL grows in support, rich 3d interfaces are more in demand with each successive year. Moreover, even if a browser has no support for WebGL, we can degrade gracefully, and show the user an alternate site view with no more hassle than enqueueing modernizr.

This talk will initially showcase a few examples of using 3D environments in WordPress.

Rami will go over helpful tips about WebGL and the relevance to WordPress, and discuss frequently-used JavaScript libraries that make our lives easier, followed by how to use them properly within WordPress. He’ll also provide an example – along with links to more thorough guides – on how to pull in data from WordPress into JavaScript as globals, and make it available for use in your 3D application.

This will be followed by briskly picking apart a basic WebGL ‘Hello World,’ looking at each component:

• The _s theme
• A custom page template
• The 3.js library
• Custom js for the page template
• WP ajax functionality

If all goes well, attendees will conclude the talk having a good understanding of the features and caveats of 3d application development in WordPress.

1:25 PM – Keynote: Why WordPress Works This Way – Aaron Jorbin

We’re pretty excited about this keynote–Aaron has spoken at every previous WC Philly except one, and it only makes sense that he’d be a keynote speaker too!

WordPress’ biggest strength is not the user experience, hundreds of contributors or widespread adoption; it is its philosophies. Successful projects share this common trait: A unified system for making decisions. Let’s look inside the philosophies of WordPress core and how those influence the decisions that it makes. This will help you understand the principles that guide WordPress. From there we’ll look at how defining philosophies in your own projects will make them better, too.

4:15 PM – Designeveloper – A Practical Designer’s Guide to Next-level Your Developexpertise – Justin Sternberg

Bridging the designer/developer gap is a challenge not often accepted. Designers who are comfortable in PHP and in the ‘back-end’ of WordPress are rare enough that we’ve coined the term ‘unicorn’ to describe them. Justin’s personal favorite is ‘designeveloper’ (yep, it’s even on his Twitter bio). Justin’s transition began from a house painter and part-time graphic designer to a web designer for WebDevStudios. Over the course of his four years at WebDevStudios, he made the transition from a web designer to a developer and now even, a developer lead. I aim to give some practical insights and resources to help make that designer/developer transition and learning curve a little less scary. Maybe…even a little exciting.

Session descriptions pulled from the WordCamp Philly website–with some minor adjustments for clarity.

The Novice Track

WordCamp Philly is also offering a novice track, which will provide a classroom-like setting for WordPress newbies, complete with teachers and TAs to answer all your burning WordPress questions and help you get started on your future with WordPress knowhow.

——————————

Lastly…

Make sure to follow WordCamp Philly on Twitter, and if you can’t join them in person, you can always join them in spirit by soaking up the info via the hashtag #WCPhilly.

The post WordCamp Philly 2015 is Nearly Here! appeared first on WebDevStudios.

So! Happy April! As we did last time, we’re giving away one copy of Professional WordPress (signed by Brad Williams) and one extra little nifty gift. After all that Apple Watch hubbub, we thought to ourselves that sure, new toys are nice, but that doesn’t mean we should lose an appreciation for the basics. So we decided to take it back in true nerd fashion: this time, instead of a Raspberry Pi, we’re throwing in a binary wristwatch.

If you aren’t familiar with Professional WordPress, make sure to give Brad’s interview about the book from our last giveaway post a peek. You can enter to win using the Rafflecopter below!

Last time, we had so many entries that we decided to pick second and third prize winners who received some of our awesome Maintainn t-shirts and STICKERS (who doesn’t love a good sticker?!). If we break 250 entries again, we’ll do the same. 

You have until Thursday at MIDNIGHT (Pacific time) to enter (and entries involving posting a tweet can be done on MULTIPLE DAYS!), so GET ON IT and get yourself an incredible book (and some other neat goodies, too)!

Click here to enter the contest and GOOD LUCK!

The post It’s That Time Again…Win a Copy of Professional WordPress! appeared first on WebDevStudios.