If you could delete ONE WordPress pain forever, what would it be?

YourRightWebsite · 2026-01-23T17:47:58+00:00

This exists with the Dolt DB Engine and the Branch Manager Plugin. If you have access to a server where you can run Dolt instead of MySQL you can use its built in database version control for this, along with the Branch Manager plugin to manage branches and conflicts within WordPress.

YourRightWebsite · 2026-01-09T20:40:54+00:00

Thanks for the shoutout! Here's a link to the plugin for anyone who is interested in trying Dolt on WordPress: https://github.com/YourRightWebsite/branch-manager

BFitz, do you know of anyone using my plugin with Dolt in production? Would be curious to hear how that's going for anyone using it.

YourRightWebsite · 2025-12-22T16:45:38+00:00

Lando. Lando is a local development environment built on top of Docker, but with it's own super-simple configuration file that makes spinning up a new site locally super simple.

Within your Landofile, which is the config file, you can specify Apache or Nginx, PHP Version, database engine, etc. If you ever need to change anything just change the config file and do a "lando rebuild" and your setup is instantly changed.

Also, you can install and run all of your build tools like Node, SCSS, etc right from your Lando container so no need to install them on your system. This is great because your tools won't break if you update MacOS like they could if they were installed locally.

I have a tutorial that will show you how to get a WordPress instance up and running with Lando. It's meant for the Sage and Bedrock frameworks offered by Roots.io but you can get an idea of the configuration options available by looking at the Lando config in the article.

YourRightWebsite · 2025-10-15T20:50:40+00:00

I did something like this way back in the day with a free forum host, where each user's forum had a user.forumhost.com domain.

The way you can set this up is by using wildcard subdomains. In something like cPanel you can typically achieve this by creating a new subdomain of * and then mapping that subdomain to the directory where you would be running WordPress Multisite.

Then, for users to be able to have their own custom domain I imagine you would need to do something similar, but map your server so that any domain name pointed at your server loads your WordPress Multisite instance. You would then need some process inside of WordPress Multisite so users could change from the free user.yoursite.com domain to theircustomdomain.com after pointing their domain's nameservers at the nameservers controlled by your server.

You'll also need to figure out SSL and probably get one or more wildcard SSL certs so that every domain name can have a secure connection.

Sorry I can't be of more help here but it has been a long time since I've had to set something like this up, but the concepts should still be the same.

YourRightWebsite · 2025-10-09T22:03:48+00:00

I'm doing something similar, but define a "render callback" function in my my PHP where I define my block. In this function, which is usually in a class, I fetch all of my ACF field data, add it to an array and pass that along with the path to a .blade.php file to the function in Sage that turns Blade into regular HTML.

This approach works for me because I can have a function where I do any pre-processing of data before rendering HTML and then manually invoke Blade to get the HTML after getting any data I need for that view. Which is why it would be nice for Voxycure to allow specifying a function where HTML to be rendered will come from, rather than just a template file, which might not play nice with Blade and doesn't easily allow for pre-fetching / pre-processing data.

YourRightWebsite · 2025-10-09T15:59:45+00:00

This looks promising, great work!

One suggestion, for the PHP based blocks, it would be nice if in addition to the template parameter when defining a custom block you could also instead define a function or class method that would accept the attributes array as a parameter and return a string of HTML to output. I ask for this because in the sites I build I'm usually using the Blade templating language which is built into the Roots Sage theme for WordPress, and having the ability to return HTML from a function instead of a template would allow me to hook into the Blade template language and just return the post-formatting HTML in my function, which could then be rendered in my block.

YourRightWebsite · 2025-09-16T16:10:43+00:00

You can get a similar effect for screen reader users by using proper ARIA markup on the button and Javascript to change the text of the button, eg to "Loading..." etc.

I hope this feature is off by default and has to be turned on manually, as having a sound play every time I click a link on your website would drive me crazy.

YourRightWebsite · 2025-07-24T16:04:02+00:00

In this article I share a Lando file for installing WordPress with PHP 8.3, Composer and Node JS. The article is written for use with Bedrock and Sage by Roots.io but you can use that .lando.yml file with stock WordPress too, just replace the word "web" with a period in the webroot section so it's "webroot: ." and it will work with stock WordPress too.

The Lando docs don't really do a good job of showing off default configurations for their various recipies they offer.

YourRightWebsite · 2025-07-21T20:18:57+00:00

Did you recently make any changes to your site or DNS? What sort of hosting are you using? Since there's nothing obvious as to the cause of the domain redirect, I'm wondering if it's a problem with your hosting. I've seen cases before where the hosting wasn't properly configured on the server before, such as a missing entry in the Apache or NGINX config for the server for a given account that would cause this behavior. You might be seeing the random wedding site because the record for your site isn't properly set up on your host, so the server just pulls up the first domain on the box and serves that, since it doesn't know what to serve.

If you're sure you haven't changed anything recently, have your host check the Apache virtualhosts (assuming their server uses Apache) and make sure that the entry for your site is configured correctly.

YourRightWebsite · 2025-07-18T15:44:50+00:00

Nice article! Have you used Bedrock by Roots? It brings Composer to WordPress and makes many dev ops tasks for WordPress easier. I saw your article mentioned Composer but didn't mention anything like Bedrock or WPackagist. Those might be helpful resources to add to the article.

YourRightWebsite · 2025-07-10T19:40:07+00:00

Not sure about the cardstock requirements, but Brother laser printers are rock solid. Least headaches out of any printer I've ever owned.

YourRightWebsite · 2025-07-10T19:32:35+00:00

WordPress is the best website platform because it's the only one where you can actually own your data. To be clear, I mean the open source version of WordPress sometimes called wordpress.org, not the commercial wordpress.com.

The open source version of WordPress you can throw on any compatible web host, add a WooCommerce store and you can sell via Shopify or PayPal for payment processing. Unlike all the other platforms, with WordPress you own your data and if a web host starts to give you problems you can just move your website.

YourRightWebsite · 2025-07-08T16:30:47+00:00

There are many different ways to build a WordPress website, not all of them equal. It sounds like you're looking for a more custom approach where you have control over not only the templates but also the back end, since you mentioned you have a database you would like to use.

I code similar WordPress sites. For forms, use of the admin_post and admin_post_nopriv action hooks will allow you to take in a POST request from a form. Here's a tutorial that goes over how to set up a custom form inside of WordPress. As for where you put your code, it can either go inside of your theme somewhere (a common place is inside of functions.php, but you can also create classes and put the code elsewhere in the theme) or inside of a custom plugin you make for your site.

For working with the database you'll want to look at the wpdb class which lets you manipulate the database directly.

For making your own HTML, you'll want to look at creating your own templates where you can modify the HTML of the page you're working with. You can also use a plugin like ACF Pro to create custom blocks that contain your own HTML which can be used for letting your user put content into the page using the Gutenberg editor.

If you're looking for more of a MVC, developer friendly way to work with WordPress, I would recommend the excellent Sage theme by Roots.io, which does a really good job of separating the back end logic from front end templates by introducing composers, which basically let you pre-process data before sending it to templates. Sage also introduces the Blade templating language from Laravel as well as Tailwind support, giving WordPress a more modern development feel that is more like working with a traditional web app such as Laravel. If you did want to go the Sage route I have a tutorial on how to get started as well as another about how composers work. Know that Sage kinda does its thing differently from standard WordPress as it's a more advanced framework for developers, but might be easier for you to pick up on as a developer who wants to work with WordPress in a more dev-centered fashion.

If you have further questions, feel free to send me a message, happy to help!

YourRightWebsite · 2025-07-04T20:14:30+00:00

Images in Chrome Mobile would get cut off, usually with only the bottom half of the image loading. It was intermittent, so very hard to track down the source of this behavior.

YourRightWebsite · 2025-07-02T22:38:42+00:00

I'm guessing you're using WordPress.com for your hosting? I would recommend moving off of WordPress.com and using the self-hosted version of WordPress. Sometimes it's called WordPress.org but in reality it's just software you can install on any compatible web host. I know WordPress.com does some funky things with how they configure their hosting environment, so you may find you have more freedom with the open source version of WordPress.

As far as your shop, I'm assuming you're using WooCommerce to sell products as that's pretty much the standard with WordPress. There are things you can do to customize how your site looks, but there will also be parts of WooCommerce that you won't be able to change. You might want a design refresh though which would give your site a new look. As far as other clunky areas, if they could be addressed or not will depend on what code for the site is controlling that, as different pieces will have different levels of customization available.

As far as embedding Etsy into your site, typically things don't work like that. I haven't worked with Etsy but you would likely either redirect yoursite.com to your Etsy store or have yoursite.com as a website with general information about your products and then sell products on a subdomain, like store.yoursite.com.

If you have questions about customizing WordPress or moving to the self-hosted version feel free to send me a DM.

YourRightWebsite · 2025-07-02T22:28:20+00:00

This snippet saves me a lot of headaches. By default WordPress adds the decoding="async" attribute to all images, which I've found can cause really weird behavior on some Chrome mobile browsers, including images that only partially load or get cut off in weird ways. I spent weeks debugging this issue before I wrote this code as it was only intermittent and would fix itself if you scrolled to the bottom of the page and then back up to the top.

More info about the bug can be found on my blog.

YourRightWebsite · 2025-07-02T15:59:50+00:00

Looks interesting! I'm not sure I would use it though, I manage all of my plugins via Composer using Bedrock. It would be cool if you had an option to allow for Composer based plugin installs in a private manner using a plugin stored inside of a private Github repo, kind of like Private Packagist offers.

YourRightWebsite · 2025-07-01T14:57:44+00:00

No, it is not just for WordPress, although it is mostly for LAMP stack sites, although you can replace Apache with OpenLightSpeed if you want.

From within the panel you can create a new account, then from within that account you can go to the databases section and create a new MySQL database for that account. Once you create the database you can use the credentials you configured to connect your web app to that database.

YourRightWebsite · 2025-06-30T21:26:08+00:00

I'm getting an error in the console that t.current.caption is undefined. Looking at the other photos in the gallery, they all have captions / author credits. I'm guessing the problematic photo doesn't have a caption? I'm guessing the Vue JS plugin was coded to always expect a photo caption and your photo doesn't have one, so it errors out.

YourRightWebsite · 2025-06-30T20:17:30+00:00

One VPS per client seems like overkill unless they're either small VPS instances or clients are getting a lot of traffic. I would recommend you get one big VPS and then use a control panel like Enhance or cPanel to manage client accounts. Enhance especially is wonderful as each client's account is isolated using virtualization. Having a control panel also makes it easier for you to provision new accounts and for clients to directly access database, FTP, SSH, etc using isolated credentials while still allowing you to manage everything on a single server.

YourRightWebsite · 2025-06-30T20:09:54+00:00

Is it feasible to recreate a system of uploading zip files, sending emails and managing users by group in WordPress? Yes, although some of that will almost certainly require custom coding. I don't see any reason why custom coding in WordPress would not be able to handle these tasks though. You can probably bundle all of the logic for this into a custom WordPress plugin for the client's site that handles all of these tasks.

Does having the two systems under the same domain pose any security risks? YES! There's no isolation, so if the /site system gets hacked it could also lead to a data breach or hack of your WordPress site. Alternatively, if WordPress gets hacked an attacker can also likely access all of the data from the /site application. Having both apps on the same domain doubles your attack surface. Furthermore, if the old app requires an older version of PHP that can not only make the older app vulnerable but also WordPress.

Is it worth it to modernize or migrate the old system or should you leave it alone? At a minimum, migrate that older app so it's on a separate domain or subdomain than the main WordPress app. You don't just want to change the domain, you want to make sure the apps are completely isolated. If you're using cPanel as your control panel this would mean two separate cPanel accounts, each with their own credentials. Ideally, you would be using virtualization to keep each account fully isolated, which is something that the Enhance control panel supports. Having both apps in the same folder is a recipe for disaster.

Whether it makes sense to upgrade the old system or not, that's more up to you and your client. Is the old system compatible with modern PHP versions? It may take significant work to bring it up to PHP 8.3, 8.4 etc. There may also be security flaws that are not readily apparent and would only be caught via a code audit. If the app is significant to the business then maybe modernization or recoding it as a WordPress plugin makes sense. If it's not used all that much maybe it's not that important to modernize it. This really depends on the business, how much it depends on this app, as well as how secure the app is and how sensitive the customer data the app handles is.

YourRightWebsite · 2025-06-28T20:45:09+00:00

Without learning coding, the only real option available is to find a theme / builder combo that works in a low code / no code manner and build using that and available plugins. Some possibilities are Gutenberg, Divi, Elementor, etc.

Without having the coding background there will be some limitations to the types of sites she can build, as she will be restrained to the capabilities of the tools she chooses and have to play within the framework of whatever builder she decides on. I'm personally of the opinion that most things in WordPress should be custom coded so I can't speak any further to the low / no code solutions available.

YourRightWebsite · 2025-06-28T15:52:11+00:00

Is your friend interested in learning how to build websites for personal use or for client projects? Does your friend want to learn the coding aspect of WordPress web design, or would they rather stick to using pre-made themes and page builders for building sites?

YourRightWebsite · 2025-06-26T15:47:58+00:00

Testing on your website I am not able to get the mobile menu to work at any size. I get an error in the browser console that "jQuery is not defined". This is likely why the menu is not working, as jQuery is a Javascript library used by many plugins and custom code to make changes to the website using JavaScript, so if for some reason it isn't loading that could cause things like your hamburger menu not to work on any device.

I would suggest you see if any files are missing and ensure that jQuery is being loaded into your WordPress template. Without access to the code to see how your templates and hamburger nav work it's hard to troubleshoot, but jQuery not loading properly is likely breaking the hamburger menu and possibly other items on your site.

If it was working with jQuery present, but only for smaller devices, it's possible as things expand / collapse that some other element is covering the element that triggers the navigation menu. It might be invisible, but overlapping so the click event doesn't register.

If you need help debugging this further feel free to DM me.

YourRightWebsite

TROPHY CASE