The Makers Will Save Us

One of the things that has always excited me the most about WordPress is the spirit of independent makers – designers, developers, innovators, etc. I feel like we’re seeing a resurgence of that lately as Core evolves and brings new opportunities for innovation. This week I’m highlighting some of the tools from makers that I think are going to change the way we use WordPress by bringing some stability to our own processes. 🙌

Quality Assurance is not my strong suit, as you may have seen from at least one large error in the first two issues of this newsletter 🤣. So an app like WPAudit.Site is a regular tool in my web developers toolkit to make sure I’m always covering all the major parts when launching a new website. Created by web developer Aurooba Ahmed on a flight home from WordCamp US after she was so inspired by the sense of community that she felt compelled to give back immediately. ❤️ Love stories like this! The site was created a few years ago but I’m surprised how many folks haven’t seen it. Also, Aurooba was recently interviewed on the Matt Report and suggested that there might be some pretty awesome updates coming to this site – so get it bookmarked now and stay tuned!

Tired of clicking through or remembering what to hover over to get to where you want to in the WordPress Admin side? Then check out this plugin by WordPress & Laravel developer Ross Wintle which also comes as a premium Chrome Extension. The main feature is an Alfred / Spotlight type of tool to get to any section of the admin side. I’ve been using this for the past few months and it has sped up my administration considerably. The kicker is that you can either install it on the website OR just use the Chrome Extension without having to install anything - great for client sites that you don’t want to add anything else to. Want to try it out? You're in luck! I've spun up an InstaWP that you can try out yourself! Keep in mind, The default keyboard shortcut to activate the command palette is:

Once you get into the InstaWP instance, you can customize the keyboard combination used in the settings in your user profile. Have fun!

Ya know what sucks? Losing a domain because it wasn’t renewed properly. Working with nonprofits I see this ALL THE TIME. The scenario usually goes, someone that used to work there 12 years ago registered the domain with an old email address and now no one gets updated emails from the domain registrar about important renewal info. This changes all that! Writer and web developer Jonathan Williams has created a dead simple system to help you ensure someone is watching your client’s domains for their renewal windows and making sure they don’t expire. Of course you can also use it for yourself but I feel like there’s a great client services opportunity here to show clients you care about them even beyond the normal website maintenance or one off project.