Tutorial: How To Delete Your WordPress Site

There may be a day when you realize that the WordPress.com blog address that you signed up with, may not be the one you want to stay with. If that is the case, you have a few options.  You can:

• Change your domain name and keep all your current content.
• Take out all of your posts, or at least the ones you don’t want, but keep the same name.
• You can make your site completely private so that no one can see it.
• You can transfer your site to someone else.

If you really want to completely delete your WordPress.com site, there is a way. You need to understand though that
it will be permanent!

Interview with Dave Martin: Automattician

Dave Martin is the Creative Director and Growth Lead at Automattic. In his own words he is…

A husband and a father. Those titles mean more to me than anything else. I live in North Carolina with my wife and 3 kids. I have a lot of passions, most of them related to the web. I’m a designer, a developer, and I love startups.

Describe your role in Automattic. What have you done there in the past?

I currently hold two titles, both Creative Director & Growth lead. That may come off sounding fancy but when it comes down to it, they are both really just support roles. My job is to make sure that our 30+ designers and growth explorers are happy, and that they have everything they need to do great work.

I started off at Automattic 5 years ago as a UI designer. In the 5 years that I’ve been there I’ve jumped around to six different roles. Prior to Automattic, I had a habit of jumping around to new companies every 2 years or so – I can thank my A.D.D. for that habit. Fortunately, Automattic has been supportive of me swapping teams whenever I get antsy.

I recently wrote about how the hiring process at Automattic works for WP Tavern.

WordPress Plugin: MailChimp for WordPress

MailChimp is a Plugin that allows you to add sign-up forms and sign-up checkboxes to your website.

You can use the sign-up forms anywhere in your website where you would use a short-code, widget, or template function.  You can use the sign-up checkboxes in places like your contact page in order to boost your email or newsletter subscribers.

WordPress.com Theme Submissions Suspended

It used to be that you could only submit a new theme for WordPress.com if they had invited you to. That all changed at the beginning of 2014 when WordPress.com announced that they would add a submission form to their site for anyone who would like to sell their themes.

How Theme Developers Feel

There have been mixed feelings about how well that has gone. Theme sellers are excited to have the opportunity to submit their themes freely, but at the same time, allowing so many people to submit themes is slowing down the approval time for the themes. That can cause some frustration among sellers.  Theme creator, Mike McAlister said on his own review of how WordPress.com submissions were going:

I’m not talking about weeks long, I’m talking about months long. Each Array theme review has taken at least a month, usually longer. Our latest theme for WP.com, Camera, took 4 months from the day I submitted it to the day it was released.

There have been other complaints with the new submission process as well, especially for people who design commercial themes. They are saying that WordPress.com is not spending enough time promoting the commercial themes. Some of them are abandoning their desire to sell to WordPress.com and are returning to other buyers like Themeforest.

What Automattic Says

Right now, this is what the theme submission page at WordPress.com says.

When contacted about why it took down the theme submission option, Automattic said: While theme creators may be upset by the take down of the open theme submission form on WordPress.com, it should be helpful for them to realize that WordPress is working on getting the system updated so it won’t take so long for their themes to be approved. Automattic did not give a date on when their form will be available again.
Hat tip: WP Tavern

Hello Security

Hello Security is a new plugin developed by Michele Butcher that displays security tips and reminders in the WordPress back end. It’s a fork of Hello Dolly and Butcher’s first plugin submitted to the plugin directory.

Hat Tip-WP Tavern

2015 WordPress Revenue Statistics

This morning, WordPress developer Scott Bolinger published a compilation of 2015 WordPress business revenue statistics based on publicly available transparency reports and figures submitted by business owners. The resource includes each company’s business model, description, and monthly/yearly revenue.

Hat tip-WP Tavern

WordPress Words: Widgets

Widget is a fancy word for tools or content that you can add, arrange, and remove from the sidebar(s) of your blog. Widgets make it easy to customize the content of your sidebar(s).
WordPress.com Support Page.

Example:

Sample of WordPress Widgets

About Widgets

You can benefit greatly by using widgets in your WordPress blog. To define them further, they are small boxes that contain a specific type of information or application for your users. You can install widgets into any area of your WordPress blog that has widget areas available. Some themes have more widget areas than others. You can add widgets to sidebars, footers, posts, and more. You can also make customized extra widget areas in your blog.

To learn how to install widgets into your WordPress sidebar, start with this video tutorial…

References

• Support-Widgets – WordPress.com
• Glossary – WordPress.org
• How To Add Dynamic Widget Ready Sidebars In WordPress – wpbeginner.com
• Watch This Video: Removing WP Widgets – youtube.com