Wordpress - build your own website - howto, tips & links - beginners to advanced - Page 39

driver8 · 07-09-2018, 11:07

Very niche freebie this month - a plugin to make your own online community, like a discussion board or mini-Facebook. Use with bbPress.

Youzer - Buddypress Community & bbPress Forums & User Profiles

Best to treat this as a demo, cos if you use it long-term you'll need the updates (and support).

AdamBrunt · 11-10-2018, 21:32

OK, looking for some newbie-ish advice about whether WordPress can do what a client wants their website to do. The website currently exists and runs on Joomla but the client is looking to move away from that solution (primarily for financial reasons)

Some background info - the client is a kind of support / marketing group for professional life coaches; coaches sign up to the site and are allowed to post a bio effectively advertising their services. The client runs courses/events which the coaches can sign up for (this all handled currently by having links from the site to EventBrite). The coaches are allowed to also advertise their own courses / events on the site (though these are not necessarily with EventBrite). The client sends out mass emails to the coaches (or groups of coaches) on a regular basis.

So can WordPress do the following:

Allow users to sign up and have their own login to the site which gives them control over, say, just one page on the site. Ideally they want this to be a paid subscription (with the payments all handled online)
Link to EventBrite ideally without leaving the site - potentially letting the coaches book a place at the event without leaving the client's site
Create mass emails to any/all of the signed up coaches via MailChimp

From my Googling, so far, it looks like it can do all the above [ and more

]. It's just a case of finding the right extension/plugin, right ?

Finally, to do the above (and anything else they might want at a later date) I am guessing I am looking at a level of customisation that is going to need the self-hosting route rather than through something like wordpress.com ? If so, anyone got any good recommendations for a WP host ?

TIA for any help.

driver8 · 12-10-2018, 10:37

Hi Adam. I've not created a site like this, but I did look into similar about a year ago ... it's doable, quite complicated, and there are a mix of freemium/paid solutions.

Here are the Membership Plugins that I bookmarked - they all seem well-reviewed and currently maintained. Maybe research/summarise these (and others?) to find the best fit for you. Be sure to read the reviews and also look at the support side. You might also have luck with specific Eventbrite plugins.

Definitely self-hosting - Vidahost/TSO has fallen out of favour, but SiteGround and A2 are consistently well-reviewed. Signup for 2-3 years for the best rates, but be sure to check the renewal amount too.

AdamBrunt · 12-10-2018, 12:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by driver8

Hi Adam. I've not created a site like this, but I did look into similar about a year ago ... it's doable, quite complicated, and there are a mix of freemium/paid solutions.

Here are the Membership Plugins that I bookmarked - they all seem well-reviewed and currently maintained. Maybe research/summarise these (and others?) to find the best fit for you. Be sure to read the reviews and also look at the support side. You might also have luck with specific Eventbrite plugins.

Definitely self-hosting - Vidahost/TSO has fallen out of favour, but SiteGround and A2 are consistently well-reviewed. Signup for 2-3 years for the best rates, but be sure to check the renewal amount too.

Thanks driver8, that's a great help.

Complicated isn't a problem - I write back-end website code for a living. I just haven't dabbled in WordPress for years; it has certainly come on along way from the 'this is blogging software no more no less' days.

I will also check out those hosts suggestions as well.

Also, just found a couple of 'Joomla to WordPress' migration plugins which will come in very handy as well.

driver8 · 24-10-2018, 13:18

Hey guys. Anyone know about FTP accounts and WP ? (I've googled, to no avail).

Looking in cPanel for my shared hosting account, I have FTP accounts relating to each website, eg:
- username: company12@company.com path: public_html/company12
- username: outsource@company.com path: public_html/outsource

Where the path is the WP install folder.

Are these needed for WP ? Or maybe a legacy, now not required ? I'm unsure if I manually created them, or if they are part of the original WP install (6 years ago, now).

Googling, I can find old (5yrs ago) refs to defining FTP accounts in WP-CONFIG.PHP, but mine don't have this (they only have refs to database login).

So can I safely delete these FTP accounts ?

JonLaidlow · 24-10-2018, 13:21

My Vida/Tsohost account came with an ftp account that looks remarkably similar to that. I've only ever once *had* to use it and that was after a borked update blocked access to the wordpress admin panel.

So long as you have an ftp account that gets you access to the whole I don't suppose you need any for each site... clients certainly won't need them.

Chris Locke · 24-10-2018, 13:41

It looks like you have one main cPanel account, with sub accounts in their own directory. When you log in via FTP with these sub accounts, they'll only be able to access their own directory (and those under it). You'd only need to do this to manually edit a config file. Other stuff in Wordpress (upload themes, media files, etc) can be done through the main admin panel.
If all this is maintained by you, then you only really need the main FTP account, but again, its not needed if you can use the cPanel file manager.
Be VERY careful with FTP. Ensure passwords are extremely secure, and usernames are long. Don't have an 'admin' or 'user1', 'tom' or other simple usernames. FTP can be brute forced extremely easily. Personally, unless you're actively using them, I'd remove all FTP accounts. They're not needed for the general use of Wordpress.

driver8 · 24-10-2018, 13:59

Great, thanks guys.

I'm guessing I created them a long time back, when I wasn't sure what I was doing.
I see the other thing to be careful of, is not to select the option to delete the account's files ... as you could delete your website or even empty the whole PUBLIC_HTML !

Chris Locke · 24-10-2018, 15:15

> not to select the option to delete the account's files

Do you mean the 'delete' permission for FTP accounts? I think (but could be wrong) when you modify a file via FTP, it deletes it first, so if a user doesn't have the delete permission, they can't delete the file to replace it with the new one.
Anyway - you have backups, right?

File AND database, right?

driver8 · 25-10-2018, 07:54

No, not the delete permissions - when you choose to delete an FTP profile it gives 2 options - delete profile, or delete profile + associated files. The 'associated files' seems to simply mean the profile's folder, so if the FTP account has root access, it will potentially delete everything (even though you may not have used the FTP profile to actually upload any files in the first place).

Backups - yes, I use ManageWP (free tier), as well as daily cPanel backups (with Siteground). But the main site is 25gb due to a huge image archive.

Chris Locke · 25-10-2018, 09:37

Aah, not seen that before. Guess it depends on your control panel and/or version. That sounds a dangerous option though!

driver8 · 16-11-2018, 08:58

3 surprisingly good-looking WP themes for free at Envato (although the magazine theme hasn't been updated lately).
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Chris Locke · 16-11-2018, 10:20

Not bad, but was tempted to get 'Avada' as that was advertised when browsing those themes.
(demo) https://avada.theme-fusion.com/beer/our-story/

Seems another one of those 'one theme to build them all' which looks good...

driver8 · 16-11-2018, 11:19

err... AVADA has been around for years, and is is Envato's best selling theme of all time !

Chris Locke · 16-11-2018, 11:31

lol... I'm new to the party....

driver8 · 20-11-2018, 18:13

Envato's Cyber-Monday sale is on, with masses of top-selling and highly rated themes and plugins at half price. One week only.

Chris Locke · 21-11-2018, 16:02

Argh! decisions, decisions! Too many to choose! 'Total' looks a good price for another 'does everything' template...

Wordpress 5 is out next week (27th to be specific). So beware if you update, as some plugins may not immediately work with it. The primary change in it will be the editor. Its going the way of page editors and you edit via blocks rather than just text and markup code.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.i...mate-Guide.pdf

Chris Locke · 22-11-2018, 10:35

@Driver8 - whats your theory on 'builder' templates (Avada, Total, etc) - worth getting, or better to get a specific template catered for a specific theme? Any themes you'd recommend getting? Have seen 'Mesmerize' which I saw on the standard Wordpress install gallery, which looks quite customizable...

driver8 · 22-11-2018, 14:33

Hi Chris. I started out a few years ago choosing the 'best fit' theme for each project, but that's such a pain as you need to know & re-learn all the different quirks, plus maintaining/updating them over years is confusing! And after a week spent customising, the whole "swap themes" idea is a bit of a myth (beyond the simplest of personal blog sites).

So I signed up with Elegant Themes (lifetime) and have stuck with their Divi theme+builder ever since. It's not perfect, but you get to know its quirks, and there's an enormous user community. Getting a page or an element to look and work nicely in any theme is easier then getting it to look and behave in a very specific way (so depends on how demanding your client is!).

> If you're only making the occasional site, then you could buy the same Envato theme licence each time (or buy a couple now in the sale!) I don't think you'll be disappointed with any of the top sellers, although personally I would want a page builder included (I think most of them do).
> If you plan to make 5+ sites then consider Divi (or similar).
> If your site is very niche, consider a specific theme, eg: directory listing, community, digital downloads, online Woo store, hotel/B&B.

If you want to stay free for now, try a free (freemium) theme plus a free (freemium) builder. This combo is highly regarded: OceanWP plus Elementor and should be able to create any site into the future (maybe with some paid addons & plugins). Along free lines, I have also got bookmarked Astra and Vogue themes, and Visual Composer page builder.

Hope this helps.

Chris Locke · 22-11-2018, 14:48

Thanks! Was looking at OceanWP earlier, as it looked quite good. Will have another fiddle with it. SOme parts of Elementor doesn't seem to work with Edge that well (nor IE) which are the only two browsers I can use while at work, so will have a proper look tonight.