Acquisition of WooCommerce: How Would It Affect the Future of WordPress eCommerce?
Few days ago, WordPress’ parent company Automattic acquired WooThemes, the leading WordPress theme and plug-in provider best known for its flagship product WooCommerce, the world’s most popular eCommerce plug-in for WordPress. Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg and WooThemes co-founders Magnus Jepson and Mark Forrester officially confirmed that Automattic has acquired the entire “Woo” brand including all its themes and plug-ins. Although none of them have yet shared the actual value of the deal, but sources say this cash and stock deal is worth around $30 million. In his interview with VentureBeat, Mullenweg said that Woo acquisition is six times larger than anything the company has done till date. He also clarified that WooCommerce is now the third major line for Automattic after Jetpack and WordPress.com, which the company is best known for. 17 Acquisitions Made by Automattic Yet However, this is not the first time when Automattic has acquired something. In the past too, it has acquired several people, products, services and businesses. Let’s take a look back at all Automattic’s acquisitions. Gravatar Gravatar, which stands for Globally Recognized Avatar, is a free service that provides globally unique avatars for users, developers and site owners. Created by Tom Preston-Werner, Gravatar was acquired in October 2007 by Automattic. BuddyPress BuddyPress is popular open-source social network software created by Andy Peatling. In March of 2008, Automattic hired Peatling as a full-time employee and acquired the BuddyPress. Intense Debate A feature-rich commenting system, created by Jon Fox and Isaac Keyet, was acquired by Automattic in September 2008. Polldaddy Founded by David Lenehan in 2006, Polldaddy is a polling and survey software that was acquired by Automattic in October 2008. Blo.gs Founded by Jim Winstead in 2002, the ping-update service was first bought by Yahoo! in 2005 and later transferred to Automattic in 2009. After the Deadline A grammar, style and spell checking service created by Raphael Mudge and acquired by Automattic in September 2009. Since June 2012, ATD is available as a module in Jetpack. Plinky Plinky, created by Thing Labs, is a service that lets users easily create inspired content. Automattic acquired Plinky in June 2010. Code Garage A popular WordPress backup and security service that was founded by Peter Butler in 2010 and eventually joined Automattic in December 2012. Simperium In January 2013, Automattic acquired Simperium, a data syncing service founded by Fred Cheng and Mike Johnston in 2010, along with its popular note-taking app called Simplenote. Poster A blogging app for iOS that was developed by Tom Witkin and bought out by Automattic in June 2013. After the acquisition, the app is no longer available for purchase. Lean Domain Search In July 2013, Automattic acquired Lean Domain Search, a domain name generation and registration service founded by Matt Mazur in 2012. Cloudup A free file-sharing service founded in 2010 by Guillermo Rauch and Thianh Lu. In September 2013, Cloudup joined the Automattic family to improve media library and co-editing features of WordPress.com. Longreads Founded by Mark Armstrong in 2009, Longreads service is dedicated to help users discover and share the best long-form stories online. In April 2014, Longreads joined Automattic. Scroll Kit Acquired by Automattic in April 2014, Scroll Kit is a powerful visual editor founded in 2011 by Cody Brown and Kate Ray. Parka In August 2014, Automattic acquired Parka – the company behind popular security tool BruteProtect – to make WordPress more secure than ever. Sam Hotchkiss, who calls himself open source traveler, founded Parka in 2013. Code For The People A UK based WordPress development company with six employees was acquired by Automattic in November 2014. According...
Read More10 Useful Tips For Creating A Stunning Responsive Web Design
With the flourishing mobile and web technologies, the user behavior is also changing. It has been observed that today, almost everyone possesses a smartphone or any other Internet-enabled device, and most of the mobile users prefer accessing the Internet via their handy devices. This has certainly added to the overall mobile traffic on the web (in fact, it has crossed the traffic generated from desktops). All these changes have encouraged web designers to opt a responsive design and efficiently target mobile users. With responsive website, you can ensure that your site appears great on any device and display the content in a legible fashion, without compromising on the overall quality. Many websites have already adapted responsive design, if you are still missing it, you are most probably lose a huge chunk of your business. Thus, it is recommended to go responsive and heighten your business visibility. Here are a few golden rules that can help you embrace an outstanding responsive website with a flair and boost your business values. 1. Use Optimized Images Showcasing large images on web portals can influence your desktop viewers, but it can dramatically impact the UX of your mobile users. Therefore, one must tweak images to make them appear visually appealing, while consuming minimal area on the screen real estate. For this, you will need to plan an image size by considering the screen size of the targeted device. You may have to design different images for desktop users and mobile users. 2. Integrate Compressed Data To efficiently reduce the number of bytes that a page sends across the network, you can use compressed files; and gzip offers a great solution for this. By doing so, you can improve your site performance with an optimized loading speed, as it helps make an ideal usage of the server resources. It, thus, allows users to seamlessly navigate through your website. Moreover, while compressed files can leverage your site performance, it is also advisable to minimize your CSS and JavaScript files by eradicating the extraneous white space and break lines. 3. Reap the benefits of Media Queries Media queries in CSS3 offer great benefits that facilitate web content to respond appropriately by taking several aspects of a targeted device into account. It works proficiently to identify a few attributes of the targeted device like its resolution, orientation, width and height. Then, on the basis of this info, it implements the suitable CSS rules. Thus, media queries augment responsive design and play a significant role. 4. Try To Avoid Navigation Menus By avoiding the main navigation menu, you can efficiently target small-screen mobile devices. However, you can rather offer an intuitive icon with text to indicate users that there is a menu. Like, it is viable to create a highly interactive drop-down menu to display the navigation menu. This helps make a great usage of the screen real estate, while ensuring an easy accessibility on any device. Thus, it is always recommended to replace a menu featuring multiple options with a drop down menu. 5. Invest in a viable hosting solution Your server quality greatly impacts your site performance, and for this reason, it is advisable to kick around and choose an effective and proficient hosting package. There is a slew of hosting services and service providers available in the market. Each hosting package comes with an array of advantages and a pricing structure. To make it certain that your chosen service is the best suitable for your project, one needs to invest time and efforts in researching the available hosting services and their features. A great way...
Read MoreA Detailed Guide on Creating Responsive Images Using CSS
Are you looking out to build a fully-responsive WordPress website? Are you worried about tweaking your website imagery for varied screens? If your answer is a “Yes” to both these questions then you’ve reached the right post. What all has been covered in this post? This is a tutorial which explains you the simplest technique for creating responsive images which need to be included in your WordPress posts/pages. A brief on the method that will be explained in this tutorial The method that will be explained here purely relies on CSS height and width properties. That means, it would work well on virtually all devices and browsers. The only concern is that the web design layout needs to be a responsive/fluid layout. Fundamental concept used for the method All the variations covered in this tutorial will be based on a fundamental concept wherein CSS will be used for assigning a percentage-length unit to the width property and a value of auto to the height property as shown below: img { width: 100%; height: auto; } Since the <img> element available within the container has a width property of 100%, the image’s width will always be equal to its container, no matter what is the viewport’s size. This will make the image fully-responsive. Also, since the value for height is set to auto, the image will scale proportionally. Creating a Basic Responsive Image For creating a basic responsive image, you need to have a div which acts as the container of the <img> element. The HTML associated with the same is displayed below: <div class=”container”> <img src=”image03.jpg” width=”840″ height=”420″ /> </div> In the above HTML, container has a width property of 84% ensuring that the image has both, left and right margins. Also, the image has a max-width of 840px, making the layout not wide enough for display on large screens. Also, the CSS associated with the creation of a basic responsive image is shown below: div.container { width: 84%; max-width: 840px; margin: 0 auto; /* this will center the container */ } img { width: 100%; height: auto; } Here, you need to note that the <img> element will be responsive irrespective of the fixed height and width HTML attributes specified in the markup. Creating a full-width Responsive Image In order to have responsive images which are 100% of the viewport’s size(i.e. full-width), you simply need to remove the container’s max-width property i.e. 840px and allot it a new width of 100% as shown below: .container { width: 100%; } img { width: 100%; } Creating responsive images which display side-by-side in columns There are situations wherein we want the images to be displayed in the form of thumbnails on a grid. Hence, in order to achieve responsive images in columns, all you need to do is simply reduce the CSS width property and allot <img> elements a particular display property value i.e. inline-block. Here’s an explanation of some layout schemes for display of responsive images: Two-column Responsive Image Layout In case of a two-column responsive image layout, you can simply set the CSS width property to about 46% i.e. roughly half of the container’s width. Why I haven’t set it to 50%? Reason is simple. Just to give the images proper margins on the sides. The HTML for this is shown below: <div class=”container”> <img src=”image01.jpg” width=”840″ height=”420″ /> <img src=”image02.jpg” width=”840″ height=”420″ /> </div> CSS for the same is shown below: img { width: 46%; display: inline-block; } Three-column Responsive Image Layout In case of three-column responsive image layout, the concept is exactly similar to the...
Read MorePHP Development: 7 Best Practices You Will Find Befitting
If you’ve just started working as a web developer, then you will apparently want to use a programming language that is learnable and can make the development process faster. PHP is one such great programming language that is widely-used for developing websites as well as web applications. Over the last few years, PHP has matured to a great extent and keeps on adding several new and exciting features. However, there are some ground rules of PHP (i.e. best practices) that as developers you should be aware of. This post will help you learn about some of the most important PHP best practices that are worth considering. 1. Go Through the PHP Manual If you’re a novice PHP designer or developer, then it’s imperative for you to become familiar with the PHP manual. Getting acquainted with the manual will help you gain resourceful insight into PHP and related topics. The manual mainly comprises of several articles containing helpful comments. So, rather than visiting forums and community to seek answers to any PHP related issue, you can save some time and refer to the PHP manual directly for getting the needed help. 2. Don’t Forget to Experiment With PHP Frameworks PHP without a doubt is a great language, you can use for web development. In fact, it offers a wide number of libraries and tools to help you meet your varied web development needs. But, the problem is that as soon as you’ll begin working on a project using PHP only, you’ll probably need to look for third-party resources (ideally code or libraries). And nothing can be worse than writing code on your own. This is where PHP frameworks come in handy. There are several PHP frameworks available over the Internet, using which you can easily create PHP based websites and web apps without having to become a PHP expert. Have a look at the below given image to know about some of the best PHP frameworks: 3. Adopt an Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) IDE’s provide developer with powerful and highly useful tools, helping them to write code in a quick and efficient manner. Additionally, the tools come loaded with rich set of features including syntax highlighting, error warnings, and shortcuts more. And thereby, helps developers (especially beginners) to make less mistakes, at the time of writing code. Some of the IDE’s, you can use are PHPEclipse, Aptana Studio etc. 4. Utilize the DRY Approach DRY (also referred to as Don’t Repeat Yourself) is a popular approach that is used for curtailing redundancy in the code. This is not a PHP-specific programming concept, and can be used for many different languages like C#, Java, etc. Let’s have a quick look at an example to understand more about this approach: $mysql = mysql_connect(‘localhost’, ‘admin’, ‘admin_pass’); In case we use the aforementioned code in multiple places, and somewhere we have added the wrong parameters, correcting them will probably take a lot of your time. Now let us make use of the DRY approach: $db_host = ‘localhost’; $db_user = ‘admin’; $db_pass = ‘admin_pass’; $db_name = ‘WordPress’; $mysql = mysql($db_host, $db_user, $db_pass); Using the DRY approach as explained above will also prove useful – in changing the database configuration – when we transfer our project from one server to the other. 5. Preventing SQL Injection Occurrence in Scripts When a user input some details on a web page, an SQL attack (also called as an SQL Injection) occurs if the data that the user entered is not validated. And because of poor input validation, the attacker (ideally one having access to your database) may create...
Read MoreBest Performing Magento E-Commerce Sites You’ll Love to Explore
As an avid Magento fan, I’ve come across a large number of websites which have leveraged the best potential of this absolutely stunning e-commerce solution. I won’t sound wrong in saying that the current e-commerce industry has been extremely influenced by the emergence of Magento. Both, Magento Enterprise and Community websites have been successful in delivering excellent user experience to a global customer base. In this post, I’ve listed out some of the best e-commerce websites built on Magento. So, let’s get to know about these sites in a better way. 1. Chopard This is a Magento Enterprise-based e-commerce store offering a wide range of products such as: watches, jewellery and other accessories. The fully responsive design of this Magento e-commerce store makes it a good fit for a wide range of mobile devices with different screen sizes and resolutions. 2. Vashi Vashi is yet another brilliant example of Magento Enterprise-based e-commerce store. Serving as your online diamond expert, Vashi allows you to choose from a wide collection of engagement rings, wedding rings and other stunning jewelery. This e-store derives its name from a famous TV Diamond expert named Vashi who’s been advising the celebrities on the red carpet. He has also featured on a majority of television shows talking about diamond jewelery. 3. Pepe Jeans The very popular apparel brand named Pepe Jeans has its official website designed using the Magento Enterprise edition. Backed by a rich combination of black and white colors, the official website of Pepe Jeans is fully-responsive, which means it looks great and functions excellently on all mobile devices and other hand-held gadgets. 4. Atlantic Supplements A Magento Community edition-based e-store, Atlantic Supplements is an e-store offering excellent supplements for people hailing from different age groups. Atlantic Supplements offer you with only the most trusted brands at UK’s lowest prices. As a fully-responsive Magento e-store, Atlantic Supplements can easily fit the screens of different mobile devices. 5. eLuxe eLuxe is also a Magento Enterprise-based e-store offering absolutely awesome Women’s Designer Clothing, Designer Handbags and Accessories. The e-store has been segregated into different sections viz: New Collections, Clothes, Beauty, Accessories, Promos and many more. 6. Winterson A Magento Community-based e-store, Winterson offers a rich collection of luxury pearl jewelery including pendants, bracelets, earrings, rings, necklaces and a lot more. A London-based company, Winterson comes with a rich heritage of pearls which have been a vital part of the company’s business since 50 years from now. Equipped with an in-built blog section, Winterson is a website worth visiting. 7. Escape Studios A fully-responsive, Magento Community edition based e-store, Escape Studios offers you a good collection of tutorials which allow you to dig deep into the world of visual effects, VFX and a lot more. You can choose to place an order for an online course by paying a marginal sum of cash. Irrespective of whether you’re an amateur or a professional, Escape Studios enables you to grab a better understanding of the graphics world. 8. Gant A Magento Enterprise edition based e-store, Gant offers an excellent collection of clothing and apparels for men and women. The site is fully-responsive and loaded with eye-catchy photographs of real people. Whether you’re looking for that perfect sweater or want to get a good nylon hoodie for yourself, Gant is the e-store for you. 9. Matthew Williamson Built using Magento Enterprise edition, Matthew Williamson is the official e-store featuring the enticing collection by Matthew Williamson- a popular fashion designer holding a BA degree in Fashion Design and Printed Textiles. The online shop offers different varieties of dresses, tops, bags, knitwear,...
Read MoreMobile Website Designing rules you’ll find hard to ignore
With mobile-friendly website design and development being one of the hottest topics of discussion in the web world, it doesn’t come as a surprise that companies and clients are shifting their focus towards development of websites that target audience coming in from smartphones and other hand-held gadgets. As a website builder, it’s essential for you to pursue a well-rounded approach that can enable you to deliver a website that offers a brilliant user experience on a variety of smartphones, tablets, netbooks etc. Keep on reading this blog as I’ll be making you familiar with some of the must-know rules for designing an awesome mobile-friendly website. 1. Keep things simple ; Irrespective of whether you’re a designer, a developer or a website owner, the thumb rule for building a perfect mobile-friendly site is keeping things simple. Avoid including too much content in your site, rather focus on the usability aspects such as navigation, features etc. It is better to keep the file size small as it would reduce the load time by a considerable amount. Plan the proper placement of elements within your site. Doing this will make your visitors return to you on a repetitive basis. 2. Get to know the target audience for the site Doing business over the web is something that can help you scale new heights of success instantly. If you are supposed to design a website for the mobile users then ensure to get the vibe of the targeted audience. Make it a point to analyze the data and the kind of devices that are being used by your visitors. Doing this will enable you to plan a strategy for designing the website in a better way. 3. Single column layouts must be included within the website design Unlike the variety of layout options that are available for designers who need to design a website for the desktops, the professionals who have been assigned the task of designing a mobile-friendly website have a single option when it comes to layout designing- single column layouts. Sticking to the single column layouts eliminates all the frustration that’s otherwise caused to users who have to scroll through multiple columns for finding the desired information. 4. Utilize Responsive Web Design Testing your website functionality in a limited number of web browsers won’t work for you. You need to utilize cutting-edge web technologies such as CSS3, HTML5 and web fonts for creating a mobile-responsive website that can be easily accessed via a wide spectrum of mobile devices. You can find ample number of online videos and tutorials that are focused on guiding web designers with the steps that need to be followed for creating a mobile-friendly website. 5. Social Media Integration can serve as a plus point Mobile users are very open to the idea of sharing stuff via a variety of social networking websites such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ etc. This appears as a great news for web designers who need to design websites for the mobile visitors. Thus, it is better to have social sharing links on your web pages to enhance your social media presence. 6. Defining the context is vital As an aware online entrepreneur, it is mandatory for you to define the things that must be first popped up each time a user visits your website via his/her mobile device. Here, you need to be very careful about choosing the right set of features and content that need to be incorporated into your website. Some of the interactive features that aid in creating a direct communication between you and visitors include: a phone...
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