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What Things To Keep In Mind When Choosing a Theme

May 30, 2022October 17, 2022 by Muhammad Maaz Faisalin Designing, Web, Web Development, WordPressLeave a Comment

When it comes to choosing a theme for their websites, most newcomers are overwhelmed. There are thousands of themes available, both free and paid. Each theme appears to be superior to the others. How do you pick the best WordPress theme?

As a result, I’ve compiled a list of 7 Things to Consider When Choosing a Theme.

1. DO choose a theme that supports the latest version of WordPress:

My #1 recommendation has nothing to do with layout or fonts—all it’s about is usefulness and security. For three very good reasons, the theme you pick must be compatible with the most recent version of WordPress:

Your WordPress site’s functionality may not work as you want it to if your theme isn’t fully compatible with the current WP version.
Your site’s functionality will suffer if the plugins you use require the most recent version of WordPress and you are unable to upgrade because of your theme.
If you choose a theme that does not support newer versions of WordPress, you may decide not to upgrade WordPress, which can result in security holes, data breaches, site defacement, and other problems.

2. Strive for Simplicity:

Many WordPress themes have a variety of colors, complex layouts, spectacular animations, and so on. You may require those items on occasion, but in most circumstances, you will not require all of them. Look for a theme with a design layout that will assist you to achieve your aim. It must look excellent without sacrificing usefulness or simplicity.

Make certain that the presentation style of the theme is not excessively complex. The goal of web design is to help users discover the information they need while also supporting site owners in achieving their objectives.

3. Responsive is Not Optional Anymore:

Responsive themes automatically alter their layout to fit multiple screen sizes and devices.

Mobile and other handheld devices produce a large amount of online traffic. Depending on the content of your website, this figure might be as high as 50% of the total number of visitors.

Most WordPress themes are already responsive by default. But there are still sellers who are selling fixed-width layouts that are not mobile-friendly at all. Make sure that the theme you are choosing for your website is mobile-friendly.

4. Supported Plugins:

If you are looking for a WordPress theme, you should also consider its compatibility with plugins because WordPress plugins are what give WordPress its true power. You can accomplish anything with your WordPress site thanks to these plugins.

5. Page Builders:

Page builders are WordPress plugins that let you construct page layouts with a drag-and-drop user interface.

Many premium WordPress themes have pre-installed page builders. Some of these page builders are only available to the theme creator.

Using a page builder like this to construct landing pages might result in a lot of needless code. If you ever change the theme, those pages will need a lot of cleaning up.

You should select themes that have one of the most popular page builder plugins. You may also buy these page builders individually and use them with different themes.

6. SEO Friendliness:

Your theme is critical to the SEO friendliness of your site. A good-looking theme might also produce poorly coded HTML, which can harm your site’s search engine performance.

It may be tough for beginners to evaluate the source code of a theme on their own. Therefore, many premium theme developers will tell you that their sites are SEO-friendly.

7. Ratings and Reviews:

The ratings and reviews left by users are other good measures of a theme’s quality. Customer reviews will appear if the theme is offered on a third-party marketplace.

The rating area for free themes is located directly below the download button. It will display the number of user reviews and ratings. If you click on 5 stars, it will display all the reviewers that rated the theme 5 stars.

Want to make a career out of programming in 30 days?

January 22, 2022February 17, 2022 by Taree6205in C/C++, C#, HTML/CSS, Javascript, Web, Web DevelopmentLeave a Comment

Want to make a career out of programming in 30 days? Here are the things you need to know and the path you need to follow.

What are Computer Programming Languages?

Programming languages are just like human based languages, they are a set of languages that humans can use to communicate to computers, the portion of the language that computer understands is called a binary when the commands given to computer is translated to binary is called compiling, every language that exists taking the example of python to C have their own unique features although some times there are things that are in common.

These languages that are a piece of machine intelligence allows computers to process large and complex bulk of information in no time for example, if a person is given a list of random human names and is asked to place them in alphabetical order, chances are that it will take a good amount of time and will include number of errors.

MAKING A CAREER OUT OF PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES:

Programmers are a type of architects, digital architects you can say to be precise who give their time and effort to create new and amazing technologies and it is a fantastic profession, and you have probably found yourself thinking, sitting on your couch, wondering how to become a programmer.

Take a deep breath and give it a thought about all the online things you have done today like all tech-savvy people out there, you have probably checked your emails, scrolled through your social media and browsed through your favorite websites, but have you ever imagined that the virtual world that you visit every day and go by in seconds is the result of hours long full of fatigue programming work.

Programming is a fantastic career path with great potential for growth, especially since so much of our lives are now lived online and here are some statistics to prove you that

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the profession will grow by a full 13 percent between 2018 and 2028 twice the average rate of growth expected for all other occupations.

According to PayScale, the majority of programmers feel happy about their success, confident in their skills, and secure about their financial futures; the profession enjoys a 4.5 ranking (out of 5) for satisfaction.

Perhaps you also wish to be a part of this community. If yes, here are the 5 steps you can follow in becoming a successful programmer:

Decide Which Industry You are Interested In
Identify the Languages You Need to Learn
Start Learning Independently
Start Your Own Projects
Begin Looking for Jobs

Top 10 programming languages:

1. Python

Python is greatly regarded as a programming language that is easy to learn, due to its simple syntax, and a toolkit, in fact, it’s the first language that many students learn in the field of programming.

2. JavaScript

JavaScript is the most popular programming language for building interactive websites.

3. Java

Java is the programming language most commonly linked with the development of client-server applications, which are used by large businesses with masses of data around the world.

4. C#

Microsoft developed C# as a faster and more secure variant of C. It is fully combined with Microsoft’s .NET software framework, which supports the development of applications for Windows, browser plug-ins, and mobile devices.

5. C

Along with Python and Java, C forms a “good foundation” for learning how to program, As one of the first programming languages ever developed, C has served as the foundation for writing more modern languages such as Python, Ruby, and PHP.

6. C++

C++ is an extension of C that works well for programming the systems that run applications, as opposed to the applications themselves. C++ also works well for multi-device and multi-platform systems. Over time, programmers have written a large set of libraries and compilers for C++.

7. Go

Also referred to as Golang, Go was developed by Google to be an efficient, readable, and secure language for system-level programming. It works well for distributed systems, in which systems are located on different networks and need to communicate by sending messages to each other. While it is a relatively new language, Go has a large standards library and is taking over the market rapidly.

8. R

R is heavily used in statistical analytics and machine learning applications. The language is extensible and runs on many operating systems. Many large companies have adopted R in order to analyze their massive data sets, so programmers who know R are in great demand.

9. Swift

Swift is Apple’s language for developing applications for Mac computers and Apple’s mobile devices, including the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. Like many modern programming languages, Swift has a highly readable syntax, runs code quickly.

10. PHPs

PHP is widely used for server-side web development, when a website frequently requests information from a server.

How to undo the last git commit?

December 13, 2021November 5, 2022 by Muhammad Jawaid Shamshadin BitBucket, Git, Source ControlLeave a Comment

There are situations where you just committed a change in git and just after that realized you made a mistake in the last git commit. If you haven’t pushed that code then the last local changes can be undone with the following command.

git reset --soft HEAD~1

What this does is that it uncommits the last git commit and puts that back in a staged state. That means if you run the git status command then you will see those changes in your working directory. Now you can make further changes to that revision and then commit again.

See the complete documentation about git-reset on the official site.

Why database should be taught before programming in universities?

August 22, 2021August 4, 2022 by Muhammad Jawaid Shamshadin .Net, Android, AngularJS, ASP.Net, C/C++, C#, Database, HTML/CSS, Javascript, jQuery, MS SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, PHP, Ruby, Web Development, XMLLeave a Comment

Database Programming — Learn Database before Coding

Often students from the initial semester ask me how do we store our data in our programming projects? When students join university to learn about computer science and technology they are usually taught programming first in courses like introduction to programming. As part of the coursework, students are required to work on a project. The majority of the projects, in fact almost all projects involve data handling and that data needs to be stored somewhere, usually in databases.

Problems Students Face

As a novice students don’t know how to store data. One option is to store data in plain text files if filing is taught to them but in that case, their project becomes too complex for them. In my opinion, file format is an advanced topic for students that have just started learning how to program. So, students get stuck on where and how to store data. They create variables and arrays to store data in memory but that is not very useful until they have the option to store their data somewhere permanently that they can retrieve later. Otherwise, every time they run their project they have to feed data from the beginning.

Teach Database Before Programming

If universities modify their courses and add database in the first semester and replace programming courses with it then it would be easier for students to get started in computer science degree. Introduction to databases is a relatively easier course than programming and students will know what a database is, how to store data in the database, and how to retrieve it later using SQL. Then in the next semester if they do a programming course then it will require only one lecture to teach them how to access a database from your code and how to store and retrieve data. That will make their projects more valuable and make more sense to them and they can take it to an advanced level in forthcoming courses.

Your Take?

What is your opinion? Please, let me know in the comments.

Click here to read more about Databases.

Creating Git branch in detached HEAD State

August 22, 2021August 5, 2022 by Muhammad Jawaid Shamshadin BitBucket, Git, Source ControlLeave a Comment

Recently, I came across a situation where I checked out a git branch and it showed me this message related to detached HEAD state:

You are in 'detached HEAD' state. You can look around, make experimental changes and commit them, and you can discard any commits you make in this state without impacting any branches by performing another checkout.

I guess this happened because the branch that I was checking out was rebased. Otherwise, it usually happens when you checkout a commit with its hash. But in my case, I was checking out a branch. Anyway, this is a special state called “detached HEAD”. While you can commit changes in this state, those commits don’t belong to any branch and will become inaccessible as soon as you check out another branch. But what if you do want to keep those commits?

The answer, unsurprisingly, is to use the “checkout” command again and you can use the same branch again:

git checkout <branch> #now you're in detached head state
# do some work and stage it
git add --all
git commit -m "add some work while in detached head state"
git branch <branch>
git checkout <branch>

Pretty easy, right?

Missing Hibernate option in Windows 10/11 Power Options?

August 22, 2021August 6, 2022 by Muhammad Jawaid Shamshadin Microsoft, WindowsLeave a Comment

Is Hibernate option missing from the Power Options in the Control Panel like in the screenshot below?

Here is a way to restore the missing Hibernate option back to the Power Options.

How to fix it?

Click the Cortana Search box on your taskbar, type cmd, right-click on the Command Prompt and select Run as administrator.

Once the Command Prompt is launched, type in the following command to enable the Hibernate feature.

powercfg /hibernate on

Next, run the following command to change the hibernation file type to full.

powercfg /h /type full

Reboot your computer. You should see the Hibernate option show up in the Power Options now.

Enjoy!

Click here to read more about Windows

Google Chrome: How to change the look & feel?

July 11, 2018August 25, 2022 by Muhammad Jawaid Shamshadin Google, WebLeave a Comment

This is a quick post about how to change the look & feel of the Google Chrome browser.

Just open a new tab and browse to:

chrome://flags/#top-chrome-md

There you will see different options.

Each option has a different UI. The refresh option is for Material Design. So, if you are a fan of MD then you should try this one.

Click here to read more tech articles.

Mounting NFS Share on Windows 10 & 11 with Write Access

July 4, 2018August 6, 2022 by Muhammad Jawaid Shamshadin Linux, Microsoft, RedHat, Technology, Windows5 Comments

It is easy to mount a drive from Linux NFS share on Windows 10 & 11 machines. To do that make sure you have NFS Client (Services for NFS) installed from Programs and Features. Following is the command to mount the NFS drive. Note that this command will run on cmd (Command Prompt) and not on PowerShell.

mount \<IP_ADDRESS>\<PATH_TO_DIR>\ drive:

For example, if the IP address of the NFS share is 10.235.0.10 and the directory you want to share is /var/www and you want to mount it to your Z drive, then you can run the following command.

mount \\10.235.0.10\var\www z:

But when you mount the drive you can browse the files using your Windows Explorer but you cannot create new files or edit any files.

How to enable write access on NFS share?

To get write access on NFS share you have to make a small change in the Windows registry before mounting the drive. Follow these steps.

Open regedit by typing it in the search box end pressing Enter.
Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\ClientForNFS\CurrentVersion\Default.
Create a new New DWORD (32-bit) Value inside the Default folder named AnonymousUid and assign the UID found on the Linux directory as shared by the NFS system. This is the UID of the user that has the write access to that directory on the Linux system.
Create a new New DWORD (32-bit) Value inside the Default folder named AnonymousGid and assign the GID found on the Linux directory as shared by the NFS system. This is the GID of the group that has the write access to the directory on the Linux system.
Restart the NFS client or reboot the machine to apply the changes.

Now run the mount command and you will get the write access.

Click here to read more about Microsoft Windows.

And click here to read more about Linux.

Mark parent category menu active on single custom post view in WordPress

March 29, 2018August 8, 2022 by Muhammad Jawaid Shamshadin HTML/CSS, PHP, Web, Web Development, WordPressLeave a Comment

Recently I developed a theme for one of my clients and I had to highlight the menu item of the parent category in the main menu when one of its associated single custom posts was viewed. For that, I had to add an action in my functions.php file for nav_menu_css_class. It returns the ‘active’ class, which WordPress adds to the parent category menu item in the main menu. You can see the code at Gist here or below.

<?php

add_action('nav_menu_css_class', 'add_current_nav_class', 10, 2 );

function add_current_nav_class($classes, $item) {
    // Getting the current post details
    global $post;

    // Getting the post type of the current post
    $current_post_type = get_post_type_object(get_post_type($post->ID));
    $current_post_type_slug = $current_post_type->rewrite['slug'];

    // Getting the URL of the menu item
    $menu_slug = strtolower(trim($item->url));

    // If the menu item URL contains the current post types slug add the current-menu-item class
    if (strpos($menu_slug,$current_post_type_slug) !== false) {
        $classes[] = 'active';
    }

    // Return the corrected set of classes to be added to the menu item
    return $classes;
}
?>

Adding above code in you functions.php file will do the trick.

Click here to read more on WordPress.

Why we moved from OpenShift to Google Cloud

March 7, 2018August 12, 2022 by Muhammad Jawaid Shamshadin Cloud Platform, Google, Linux, OpenShift, RedHat, Web, Web DevelopmentLeave a Comment

The good old days

When OpenShift was in its version 1 it was great from the customer’s point of view with a low budget. OpenShift v1 had free offers to deploy apps and add a custom domain to it. There was no SSL support but it could be handled via the CloudFlare solution, making the overall solution a great one.

Then there comes OpenShift v2

RedHat then launched OpenShift v2 and added a restriction that gears will be shut down after a certain period of inactivity and also removed the support for custom domain.

That was the time that we had to move to some other cloud platform that could support our apps with low resources and without investing anything. Because all good things in life are free.

Google Cloud to the rescue

So we came across the Google Cloud platform offering and we had $300 credit in a free trial for 6 months. That was more than enough for us to start with. And in fact, they have micro virtual machine instances that are free for life with 30GB storage. That is more than enough for small apps to run for free that are under experiment or don’t have any monetization plans.

So, we migrated several of our apps from OpenShift to Google Cloud and started leveraging free credits provided by Google.

Just this week we consumed all our credit and our trial expired. Our virtual machine instances were shut down, but it didn’t take long before we enabled billing on our project and downgraded our instances to micro ones which are free. That gave us such a relief that our apps are still running although with low resources but it is fine as they are not our revenue-generating apps and are just experiments.

Click here to read more about Google.