In May, just like every month, I searched through the official WordPress plugin index to find the most functional and appealing new plugins for you. I don’t do this entirely selflessly, however, as I myself find it very exciting to test new free WordPress plugins for my diverse projects. This month was very generous and brought a couple of interesting plugins to light.

1 – Posts For All Pages

Posts for all Pages allows you to have your posts displayed on other pages than just the index.php. You can let it help you show all posts of a particular category on any page you want to. This allows for the creation of multiple blogs based on certain categories in not time.

• Developer: wpyb
• Work in Progress: yes
• Last Updated: 05.20.2016
• Cost: Free from WordPress.org
• License: GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
• Known Compatibility Issues: unknown
• Developer Homepage: Unknown
• Download on WordPress.org

2 – Engaging Convo

Engaging Convo is an innovative comment plugin which provides unusual features. For instance, your visitors can mark an area in your text and start a debate on it directly there. Thus, there’s no reason to scroll to the end of an article, just to be able to leave a comment. Additionally, it is possible to create multiple comment sections for various post areas, and the different sections can be accessed guided by the color in which the text segment is highlighted. Find a demo of the plugin on this page.

• Developer: lazharichir
• Work in Progress: yes
• Last Updated: 05.21.2016
• Cost: Free from WordPress.org
• License: GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
• Known Compatibility Issues: unknown
• Developer Homepage: Unknown
• Download on WordPress.org

3 – Social Icon Widget

This widget brings you appealing icons to link to your social networks in the sidebar.

• Developer:mostafiz
• Work in Progress: yes
• Last Updated: 05.19.2016
• Cost: Free from WordPress.org
• License: GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
• Known Compatibility Issues: unknown
• Developer Homepage: Unknown
• Download on WordPress.org

4 – UTM Switcher

The UTM Switcher is a useful plugin for online shops and all digital sellers. You can determine precisely from where your visitors came to certain pages, and then optimize them with customized content, like individual phone numbers e.g.. In digital marketing, it can be tough to find out which advertisement channel brings the best results. It could be Adwords, paid ads on Facebook, advertorials on blogs, and so on. This plugin helps you to find out which channel’s results are the best.

• Developer: punchrockgroin
• Work in Progress: yes
• Last Updated: 05.18.2016
• Cost: Free from WordPress.org
• License: GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
• Known Compatibility Issues: unknown
• Developer Homepage: Unknown
• Download on WordPress.org

5 – TS Collections

TS Collections lets you activate or deactivate plenty of features with just one click. The following things can be influenced:

• Move all JavaScript into the footer, including jQuery.
• Force ASYNC for all JavaScript files, except for jQuery.
• Automatic linking of Twitter usernames.
• Mark comments with long URLs as spam.
• Set the minimum comment length to 20 words.
• Allow PHP in the text widgets.
• Remove the automatic URL linking in the WordPress comments.
• Remove the URL field from the WordPress comment form.

Plugin Details:

• Developer: rktaiwala
• Work in Progress: yes
• Last Updated: 05.18.2016e
• Cost: Free from WordPress.org
• License: GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
• Known Compatibility Issues: unknown
• Developer Homepage: Unknown
• Download on WordPress.org

6 – Universal Icons

This convenient plugin allows you to display icons before or after a widget’s title. Supposedly, this works with any widget.

• Developer: rktaiwala
• Work in Progress: yes
• Last Updated: 05.18.2016
• Cost: Free from WordPress.org
• License: GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
• Known Compatibility Issues: unknown
• Developer Homepage: Unknown
• Download on WordPress.org

7 – WallpaperChanger

The WallpaperChanger enables you to make wallpapers switch automatically, depending on the time of day. This means that your website can have one background in the morning and a different one in the evening, without you actually doing anything. This helps to set your site apart from others.

• Developer: taniafi786
• Work in Progress: yes
• Last Updated: 05.18.2016
• Cost: Free from WordPress.org
• License: GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
• Known Compatibility Issues: unknown
• Developer Homepage: Unknown
• Download on WordPress.org

8 – Disable Blogging

Disable Blogging should be especially interesting for developers that often develop and sell pure business websites without a blog. The plugin deactivates the entire WordPress blog functionality. On top of that, all blog-relevant entries in the WordPress dashboard can be removed.

• Developer: Fact Maven Corp.
• Work in Progress: yes
• Last Updated: 05.18.2016
• Cost: fee via WordPress.org
• License: GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
• Known Compatibility Issues: unknown
• Developer Homepage: Unknown
• Download on WordPress.org

9 – Pay-to-view

Pay-to-view’s goal is a fair web. This also includes the display of ads, as the owners of most websites need to earn money. However, advertisements are often annoying from the visitor perspective. Thus, the plugin displays a message for every visitor with an active ad blocker, asking them to pay one (1) cent per viewed page, to be able to enjoy the website without ads. If a visitor that uses an ad blocker is not willing to pay the cent, the plugin deactivates the ad blocker. The costs are charged at the end of each month. Every website owner has to decide whether he want to use this solution or not, as he might lose a couple of visitors. But one cent per viewed page really isn’t much.

• Developer: AFairWeb
• Work in Progress: yes
• Last Updated: 05.18.2016
• Cost: Free from WordPress.org
• License: GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
• Known Compatibility Issues: unknown
• Developer Homepage: Unknown
• Download on WordPress.org

10 – Addonist WhatsApp Share

WhatsApp is becoming more and more relevant on mobile and thus also in online marketing strategies. That’s why it sounds like a good idea to make your articles shareable via WhatsApp as well. This could result in a wider spread broadcast of your content. Thus, the plugin adds a share button for WhatsApp to the posts. In the pro version, you can also add the button to WooCommerce products.

• Developer: addonist
• Work in Progress: yes
• Last Updated: 05.18.2016
• Cost: Free from WordPress.org
• License: GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
• Known Compatibility Issues: unknown
• Developer Homepage: Adonist WhatsApp Share Pro
• Download on WordPress.org

Conclusion

This month was very generous regarding new and exciting plugins. I like the comment plugin “Engaging Convo”. I was also impressed by the “UTM Switcher”, which I might use myself after I’ve integrated a shop into my website. Which plugin is your favorite of this month?

Find other recent plugins here:

• April 2016: Ten Free WordPress Plugins
• March 2016: Ten Free WordPress Plugins

(dpe)

After months of hard work, I’ve finally gotten my side project, Melody Jams, into the App Store. It’s been quite the adventure, and I’m thrilled to see it in the store. Seeing it live makes me reflect on the process that got us there: our failures and successes, some of the crazy stuff we figured out and what our hopes and dreams are.

To give you some context, I worked with five other people completely remotely. Most of us still haven’t met in real life. In spite of that, we designed, programmed, animated and submitted the app in four months. It works on iPhone 4s through iPhone 6s+ and iPad 2 through iPad Pro. We also tested it with over 30 kids, ranging from nine months to nine years old, in that timeframe.

The post The Making Of Melody Jams appeared first on Smashing Magazine.

In this tutorial, we’re going to learn how to create guides for responsive design, in Adobe Experience Design CC (Adobe XD).

The Steps (1-12)

1. Create a new document 1920 x 1080 from the Start Screen.

2. Create a shape that is 100% height, and 1170 pixels in width. This shape is going to represent the maximum site width that we will be designing for, and should be centrally aligned to the artboard. Give this rectangle a grey colour for now. Go to Object > Lock to lock this layer in position, so that we don’t select it by mistake when working through the steps to follow.

3. Create a thin vertical rectangle, that is 100% height and 15 pixels in width. This is going to form our site margin, and should be positioned on the inside left edge of the main rectangle. Duplicate this shape, and also position a copy on the inside right edge of the main rectangle. Give these shapes a slightly different shade of grey, so that we can easily distinguish the different shapes/elements, whilst working on the layout.

4. Create another vertical rectangle that is 100% height, and 67.5 pixels in width (70 pixels if you design your grid without the left and right margins). Colour this new shape black, and position this alongside the shape created in Step 3.

5. Create another vertical rectangle that is a different shade of grey to the two shades already being used by the other shapes, and position this alongside the shape created in Step 4. The three rectangle shapes should all be lined up alongside each other, with no gaps in between.

6. Using Shift to select these three shapes (excluding the main rectangle). Next, click on the Repeat Grid button in the Property Inspector on the right-hand side.

7. Your shapes should now have a set of green guides around them, allowing you to drag the slider on the right, until it touches the edge of the right margin that we created in Step 3.

8. When using the Repeat Grid Tool, Adobe XD automatically creates a gutter (spacing) in between the different objects that are being repeated. By selecting and clicking inside this space (the gap in between objects) you will see some pink guides appear, that allow you to adjust the gutter spacing. For this tutorial, reduce the spacing here to zero, so that there are no gaps between our shapes.

9. Once the gaps have been reduced, select the green right slider again, and drag this out to the right, until it lines up with our right-hand margin as before.

10. Double-click the Repeat Grid group, select the first 30 pixel shape that we created, and adjust the colour to white. You will see that all of the other clones of this shape also change in colour.

11. Use your mouse to drag over all of the shapes that we’ve created (the main rectangle should still be locked), and in the Appearance menu on the right-hand side, adjust the opacity to between 2-5%. Lock these layers, as we did with the main rectangle in Step 2. Keeping the opacity of the responsive grid less than 5%, allows it to still be visible enough to work on, but doesn’t interfere too much with any design elements that are being created, and you can even set the guides to 0% opacity to hide them completely.

12. Start designing an awesome and responsive site!

Download Adobe Experience Design CC (Adobe XD).

Read More at How to Create Responsive Guides in Adobe XD

Losing track of where you are? Miss a deadline, because you thought it was one days from now instead of today? The good news is you probably aren’t a victim of senility. The bad news is your sedentary work routines may be killing you. Not quickly; in tiny increments, similar to slow-creep weight gain.

Fortunately, this slow-death process is not only reversible, but by taking the right steps, you’ll soon be feeling better than ever. Your productivity will noticeably improve, and 5 or 10 years down the road you’ll still be in top form.

A web designer’s work may not appear to be physically demanding, but sitting all day and staring at a screen, and fighting to meet deadlines, can eventually take a toll. Here are three areas you can work on to not only prevent bad things from happening, but will help you to keep your energy levels high, and your mind crystal clear.

Take Care of Your Diet

Better than chips, and salmon will keep your mind sharper too.

Sitting most of the day is bad enough. When combined with poor dietary habits, it can turn you into a professional couch potato in no time at all. Think about what you eat while at work – and then think about how you spend your time at home. If you spend your evenings on the couch, munching on chips, it’s high time to make some changes.

Here are three good ways to improve your eating habits:

• Watch what you eat (think nutrition).
• Schedule your meal times (and stick to the schedule).
• Organize your refrigerator – keep it well stocked with fruits and vegetables (and salmon!)

Not only does junk food contain ingredients that are not always good for your body, these foods can lead to nutritional deficiencies if they make up an appreciable part of your diet. Any deficiency in vitamins or minerals can literally cause you memory loss –and make you more susceptible to illness.

Settle for 8 Hours of Work a Day

If your boss insists that you to be at your desk 10-12 hours a day, you might consider looking for work elsewhere. Working long hours may be the norm if you’re working for a startup, but even then, you can accomplish just as much in 8 hours as you can in 10 or 12 if you go about it right. You’ll save wear and tear on your heart as well.

Check the statistics. Those extra 2 or 3 hours a day increases your risk of incurring cardiovascular problems by 60%. It’s just not worth it. The best way to limit your work days to 8-hour sessions, and perhaps the only way, is through self-discipline. You may also have to learn how to say no on occasion.

Working 9 to 5, or the equivalent, has these advantages:

• You will do higher quality work than you can by working extra hours.
• Your productivity will go up.
• You can take pride in your self-discipline and your ability to say no.
• You’ll feel better.
• You’ll have more free time.

There’s probably a number of non-productive things you can cut out to get down to an 8-hour workday, and a workday that includes the breaks you need to relax and clear your mind.

Sleep

If you’re regularly in bed by 10 and up at 6, you’re likely getting enough sleep. If, for whatever reason, that isn’t the case, you need to think about making some changes.

Not enough sleep, combined with a sedentary lifestyle and poor dietary habits, can turn you into an old-timer long before you’re ready for it, plus the effects on your body this combination can cause, can be difficult to reverse.

You may not have to make major changes in your lifestyle, unless getting more exercise, working fewer hours, and eating better, are areas where you need to improve in addition to getting enough sleep.

Here are three not-to-difficult-to-follow rules you should try:

• Turn off your PC and set your laptop and digital devices aside at least an hour before bedtime.
• Learn a short relaxation routine or two that you can regularly practice just before going to sleep.
• Avoid caffeine and any sugar snacks late in the day.

If you’re on the road a lot, you may have to work a little harder at doing what needs to be done to get enough sleep. The reason is simple. You sleep better in your own bed. When you’re in unfamiliar surroundings, your brain sometimes freaks out a bit. It is more vigilant, and a hyper-vigilant brain is not conducive to falling asleep easily, or sleeping soundly.

Do What You Need to Do to Keep Your Body in Tune

Make it a goal to regularly follow practices that are necessary to keep your energy level high, keep cobwebs from forming in your brain, and keep you healthy and fit. When you’re feeling sharp and alert, you’ll find yourself going about your web design work more efficiently and productively.

Consider making these ideas habit-forming:

• Pay attention to your diet. Getting enough of the proper nutrients such as magnesium and omega 3 fatty acids keeps your mind sharp. Other vitamins and minerals will keep you healthy, and your energy level high.
• Don’t let working overtime or long hours become a habit. Organize your tasks so you can make an 8-hour day a reality. Your performance will actually improve.
• Look forward to a relaxing end of the day, followed by a good night’s sleep. Cut out late snacks, especially those containing sugar, and avoid late-day caffeine intake.

Read More at Forgetting Your Design Work Tasks? Increase Your Productivity with These Tips

In this final post of our series on CSS Modules, I’ll be taking a look at how to make a static React site with the thanks of Webpack. This static site will have two templates: a homepage and an about page with a couple of React components to explain how it works in practice.

In the previous post we set up a quick project with Webpack that showed how dependencies can be imported into a file and how a build process can be used to make a unique class name that is generated in both CSS and HTML. The following example relies heavily on that tutorial so it’s definitely worth working through those previous examples first. Also this post assumes that you’re familiar with the basics of React.

In the previous demo, there were problems with the codebase when we concluded. We depended on JavaScript to render our markup and it wasn’t entirely clear how we should structure a project. In this post we’ll be looking at a more realistic example whereby we try to make a few components with our new Webpack knowledge.

To catch up, you can check out the css-modules-react repo I’ve made which is just a demo project that gets us up to where the last demo left off. From there you can continue with the tutorial below.

Webpack’s Static Site Generator

To generate static markup we’ll need to install a plugin for Webpack that helps us generate static markup:

npm i -D static-site-generator-webpack-plugin

Now we need to add our plugin into `webpack.config.js` and add our routes. Routes would be like / for the homepage or /about for the about page. Routes tell the plugin which static files to create.

var StaticSiteGeneratorPlugin = require('static-site-generator-webpack-plugin');
var locals = {
  routes: [
    '/',
  ]
};

Since we want to deliver static markup, and we’d prefer to avoid server side code at this point, we can use our StaticSiteGeneratorPlugin. As the docs for this plugin mentions, it provides:

a series of paths to be rendered, and a matching set of index.html files will be rendered in your output directory by executing your own custom, webpack-compiled render function.

If that sounds spooky hard, not to worry! Still in our `webpack.config.js`, we can now update our module.exports object:

module.exports = {
  entry:  {
    'main': './src/',
  },
  output: {
    path: 'build',
    filename: 'bundle.js',
    libraryTarget: 'umd' // this is super important
  },
  ...
}

We set the libraryTarget because that’s a requirement for nodejs and the static site plugin to work properly. We also add a path so that everything will be generated into our `/build` directory.

Still inside our `webpack.config.js` file we need to add the StaticSiteGeneratorPlugin at the bottom, like so, passing in the routes we want to generate:

plugins: [
  new ExtractTextPlugin('styles.css'),
  new StaticSiteGeneratorPlugin('main', locals.routes),
]

Our complete `webpack.config.js` should now look like this:

var ExtractTextPlugin = require('extract-text-webpack-plugin');
var StaticSiteGeneratorPlugin = require('static-site-generator-webpack-plugin')
var locals = {
  routes: [
    '/',
  ]
}

module.exports = {
  entry: './src',
  output: {
    path: 'build',
    filename: 'bundle.js',
    libraryTarget: 'umd' // this is super important
  },
  module: {
    loaders: [
      {
        test: /.js$/,
        loader: 'babel',
        include: __dirname + '/src',
      },
      {
        test: /.css$/,
        loader: ExtractTextPlugin.extract('css?modules&importLoaders=1&localIdentName=[name]__[local]___[hash:base64:5]'),
        include: __dirname + '/src'
      }
    ],
  },
  plugins: [
    new StaticSiteGeneratorPlugin('main', locals.routes),
    new ExtractTextPlugin("styles.css"),
  ]
};

In our empty `src/index.js` file we can add the following:

// Exported static site renderer:
module.exports = function render(locals, callback) {
  callback(null, '<html>Hello!</html>');
};

For now we just want to print Hello! onto the homepage of our site. Eventually we’ll grow that up into a more realistic site.

In our `package.json`, which we discussed in the previous tutorial, we already have the basic command, webpack, which we can run with:

npm start

And if we check out our build directory then we should find an index.html file with our content. Sweet! We can confirm that the Static Site plugin is working. Now to test that this all works we can head back into our webpack.config.js and update our routes:

var locals = {
  routes: [
    '/',
    '/about'
  ]
};

By rerunning our npm start command, we’ve made a new file: `build/about/index.html`. However, this will have “Hello!” just like `build/index.html` because we’re sending the same content to both files. To fix that we’ll need to use a router, but first we’ll need to get React set up.

Before we do that we should move our routes into a separate file just to keep things nice and tidy. So in `./data.js` we can write:

module.exports = {
  routes: [
    '/',
    '/about'
  ]
}

Then we’ll require that data in `webpack.config.js` and remove our locals variable:

var data = require('./data.js');

Further down that file we’ll update our StaticSiteGeneratorPlugin:

plugins: [
  new ExtractTextPlugin('styles.css'),
  new StaticSiteGeneratorPlugin('main', data.routes, data),
]

Installing React

We want to make lots of little bundles of HTML and CSS that we can then bundle into a template (like an About or Homepage). This can be done with react, and react-dom, which we’ll need to install:

npm i -D react react-dom babel-preset-react

Then we’ll need to update our `.babelrc` file:

{
  "presets": ["es2016", "react"]
}

Now in a new folder, `/src/templates`, we’ll need to make a `Main.js` file. This will be where all our markup resides and it’ll be where all the shared assets for our templates will live (like everything in the and our site’s

What’s popular regarding typography right now? Extensis, a provider of app solutions for font management, has conducted a survey in the creative scene and has come to impressive results. All the survey results, for which about 2,000 creative people from different branches were asked, can be downloaded for free in the PDF file Typographic Trends.

Fonts are Still Used for Printing

Jim Kidwell, who created the survey Typographic Trends for Extensis, has invited participants from the company’s customer database. That’s a smart approach as these are exactly the people that deal with fonts and typography every single day. Furthermore, that’s why it’s not surprising that 40 percent of the participants come from the graphic design sector, followed by print, advertising, and publishing.

An interesting aspect is that over 90 percent of participants use fonts for print, about 80 percent use it to design logos and two-thirds for the embedding in PDF files. The usage of fonts on websites is only about 55 percent, even though web fonts have been supported by all browsers for a couple of years now, and the supply of free and paid web fonts is rather large.

The survey doesn’t tell you whether the reason is the popular subscription model, which is commonly seen with commercial fonts, or not.

Typographic Trends: Serif Heavy Fonts are Very Popular, Fonts Without Serifs are Welcome in the Future

But which fonts are especially popular amongst graphic designers and advertisers? Here, serif heavy fonts are very popular amongst over 90 percent of the participants. This goes well alongside the trend that we noticed in graphic and web design. Whenever a design is supposed to be trendy, serif fonts are used.

Art nouveau fonts, as well as fonts with double or more additional lines, were rated especially bad. The negative rating is probably due to the limited readability of these fonts.

As every trend dies out at one point, Kidwell also asked which fonts are currently overused. Fonts in chalkboard style are some of the top answers here.

When it comes to which fonts the people want to see in the future, fonts without serifs, being the complete opposite of the still very popular serif fonts, are in the top position.

Typography: a Very Emotional Matter

The survey Typographic Trends didn’t only allow the participants to answer via multiple choice. They were also able to communicate their thoughts on the presented font styles. Kidwell has published a collection of these thoughts and comments as well.

Kidwell has published ten participant’s opinions for every single one of the 14 fonts that represented one style each. The opinions include interesting views, as to why someone especially likes or dislikes a font. Here, it becomes evident that typography is a highly emotional issue for designers.

One participant can’t contain himself when it comes to chalkboard fonts, and comments the following: “… please destroy all of these fonts.” Many creative people will be this passionate about fonts, especially when it comes to very unpopular ones.

Mainly Purchasing Fonts From the Big Suppliers

Another fascinating segment of the survey deals with the question where and how the participants purchase fonts. Here, it becomes apparent that there are three large main suppliers that have the edge over the competition. MyFonts, Fonts.com, and Adobe are by far the most popular providers. If you keep in mind that MyFonts, and Fonts.com both belong to the Monotype group, the font market is basically shared between two large companies.

Smaller providers only have minuscule shares which, for the most part, lie below five percent.

Most of the participants license entire families, just when they are needed. It is very rare that entire libraries are licensed, or that only open source fonts are used. The fact that about 6 percent of the asked people don’t license fonts at all is left open for you to judge.

Conclusion

On a total of 31 pages, there are plenty more interesting results on fonts, and how they are used at the moment. The survey Typographic Trends also answers the question which font designer is currently at the top in the eyes of the participants. You can get the results of the study Typographic Trends on the Extensis website. All you need to do to download the file is enter your email address.

(dpe)

Some are funny, some are bland, and some you may not even understand. We’ve put together a list of 28 CSS puns that we think you’d love, we did. Comment below and let us know which one you like best! Heck, Let us know if you have some that are even funnier than the ones we’ve collected, we’d love to hear em!

Get it? Because you disappear in the bermuda-triangle…

#BADA55 is a real color!

It’s okay no one is mad about this one…

Wife is always right or els the titanic does not float!

So much padding it broke the internet!

Just keep swimming…

I had to look deep into my morals before adding this one.

Ugh, machines make us do all the work!

What web designing does to us…

Yo mama so fat… This one had us laughing for a while.

Get it? The Wall of China!

Warning: little people are not leprechauns, do not attempt to capture them!

Never to be found..

You won’t like him when he’s angry…

It doesn’t take much…

Ha! 6ft under.

One of my favorites!

Who doesn’t love good transformer movie?

If you can build it that is!

You know, because it’s leaning..

I think I might be a hobbit… it’s time for an adventure!

And then there was nothing…

Oh the things I would do with an invisibility cloak…

You know its going to be fun debugging when you see that!

Always strive for awesomeness!

This one may take you a minuet… it did for me.

If this one doesn’t get you signing then you might be a robot…

Don’t forget to comment below and let us know which one you like best! Share your jokes with us as well, we want to see them!

Read More at 28 CSS Puns to Brighten Your Day

Josh Buchea has collected “A list of everything that goes in the of your document”. Over 100 tags alone!

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