Just one day removed from our beloved day of celebration, I bring you the May the 4th edition of the MainWP WordPress Roundup.
“You were the chosen one!” Obi-Wan Kenobi yelled at Anakin Skywalker. Maybe you remember the scene in the movie Star Wars: Episode III, Revenge of the Sith.
“You were supposed to destroy the Sith, not join them,” he cried. “You were supposed to bring balance to the force, not leave it in darkness.”
We celebrate our love for Star Wars every year on May the 4th with the phrase “May the 4th be with you.”
So, just one day removed from our beloved day of celebration, I bring you the May the 4th edition of the MainWP WordPress Roundup.
The force has restored balance to the galaxy
WP Tavern – WordPress restores tabbed interface in Plugin Repository
Last month, WordPress launched a new look to their plugin repository. Unfortunately, there became a disturbance in the force and the balance of the galaxy had shifted.
The outpouring of negative community feedback on the new design overshadowed many of the helpful improvements. Removal of the tabs was by far the most unpopular design choice in this iteration, as many found it to be confusing and inferior in terms of navigating the information efficiently. Users, developers, and contributors on the redesign felt their feedback was roundly ignored throughout all phases of the design’s beta and testing period.
While tabs are back, there does seem to be a few quirks left which the team at WordPress is working on.
MainWP Love
Just as there has been much love for the beloved Princess Leia, we have found some love for MainWP in the past month.
Donna Fontenot Cavalier – MainWP: The Wordpress Plugin That Saves My Bacon Every Day
WordPress developer Donna Fontenot Cavalier is adamant about WordPress saving her bacon. She gets big points for using bacon in her title.
Site maintenance for more than a handful of sites is nearly impossible without some sort of site management tool. There are several tools in the space, but my choice is MainWP. There is both a free version as well as a premium version that enables a lot of extra functionality.
Cavalier talks about the various features she loves including Managing Core, Plugin, and Theme Updates, Quick Site Management, Extremely Useful Plugin Manager, Client Reports Emailed Automatically, and the Data Remains In Your Hands. She explains how each person can choose what features they wish to use:
There are so many other features that make MainWP a “save my bacon” kind of tool, such as managing backups, and security, and themes, and content, but what you’ll need on a regular basis may be different than what I need.
Cloud Ways – Manage Multiple WordPress Sites From One Dashboard
Author Mustaasam Saleem from Cloud Ways does a nice review of MainWP for their community. Saleem gives an overview of MainWP features and some of the cool things you can do with site management.
There are some WordPress plugins that can manage Multiple WordPress sites from one dashboard. In my opinion, managing WordPress sites with MainWP can be the best alternative here.
Saleem even does a good overview of how to set up MainWP. He includes lots of screenshots to guide you through the process and highlight features.
David Waumsley – Making A Better Website Business With Beaver Builder.#3 – The Blueprint Plugins
David Waumsley reveals plans for the new Death Star.
Okay, maybe David doesn’t reveal plans for a Death Star, but he does go over the blueprint for setting up a new WordPress web building service.
The article is the number 3 in a series of posts on Beaver Builder. In this post, he talks about his blueprint for plugins and how they handle the licenses. I noticed one that is familiar.
Look closely and you will see that this post revolves around setting up a Site Care plan for their customers. Therefore, if you are looking for (cough, cough) a blueprint for setting up your own site care, this post is one to bookmark.
Two of the plugins he uses is MainWP Child and MainWP Child Reports.
Reason: These connect the site to MainWP which we use to manage client sites on the Care Plan. This is a post for a later date.
The landing page for their Site Care service can be found here.
Our Hero’s Journey
WPMUDev- 20 Lessons I’ve learned as a freelancer
The long journey of the Jedi to Rey
Becoming a Jedi is hard. There is lots of training and patience to be had. It takes multiple mentors to help you become wise to using the power of the force.
Becoming a freelancer is hard too. Brenda Baron shares some fantastic lessons in this introspective article. Baron shares her journey with readers and even some of the dark times. All in all, it is a good article to inspire freelancers with 20 various tips to help.
Baron has lots of good advice and some gentle reminders including this one,
So, as you embark on your WordPress freelance journey–whether as a writer like me or a developer, designer, marketer, or something else altogether–know this: many people have walked in your shoes.
She is right. There are a lot of people who have walked in your shoes and many are willing to offer guidance.
Conclusion
Don’t let Lord Vader cloud your judgment or halt your progress. You have a team of rebels helping you along the way like Princess Leia, Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Rey, and Finn. You also have mentors along the way such as Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda.
So, may the force be with you in your journey as a young WordPress Jedi.
1 thought on “WordPress Roundup: The May the 4th edition of the MainWP WordPress Roundup”
Wow Todd, thank you so much for this inclusion. What an honour.
I’m looking forward going into more detail (later in the year) on how the whole business will actually (and does now) revolve around MainWP.
Cool post from Donna Fontenot Cavalier too.
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