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Thursday, April 16, 2020

Choosing the Best Free WordPress Backup Plugin

In this video, I'll share some options for the best free WordPress backup plugins. I'll tell you about the pros and cons of each and I'll help you choose the best plugin to backup your database and site.

This video is part of my course Essential WordPress Plugins. You can watch the entire course for free here on Envato Tuts+.

WordPress

Essential WordPress Plugins

Rachel McCollin

Why You Need a Backup Plugin

There’s a good reason to install a backup plugin before anything else on a WordPress installation. This is because anything could happen. The site could crash or it might get hacked, for example, but having a backup plugin in place means that the data can be easily restored to fix the site.

It’s really important to set up the backup plugin before you do anything else with a WordPress website.That means before you create any content, before you install any plugins and before you change the theme! With the plugin in place, your WordPress database will be backed up regularly, so you won't lose any work.

A backup plugin is the most essential plugin that you can install. Not having a backup plugin risks the loss of content. Thankfully, there are some great free WordPress backup plugins.

Finding Free WordPress Backup Plugins

Go to the WordPress website and click Plugins. Now you can search for backup to see the different plugins that are available.

Some of these are not really backup plugins but include backups as part of their functionality. For example, JetPack is a WordPress plugin that costs extra money, but comes with a lot of features.

Some options are really designed for the purpose of migrating or duplicating a WordPress site rather than specifically backing up a site.

What you really want from any backup plugin that you install are two things:

regular scheduled and automated backups
a simple restore process

Regular Backups

The frequency of this depends upon how often the WordPress site is updated. If it is, for example, updated on a daily basis, then daily backups are recommended.

If the site is updated once a week, then a backup once a week is probably more appropriate.

A backup plugin will let you do that and will enable backups in, say, the early hours of the morning when you’re unlikely to be working on the site and when it is less likely to interrupt visitors to the site.

Simple Restore Process

Ideally, you should choose a plugin with a big button that you can click for an easy restore.

You’ll generally find that when it comes to options for backing up and having a simple restore function, free plugins are not as good as premium plugins.

If you’re running a business site, or another site that is critical, then I recommend you just pay for a good, premium plugin.

In this tutorial, I’ll show you a free backup plugin that you can later upgrade to unlock premium features: UpdraftPlus.

There are other free backup plugins, but they may involve a little more work to restore a WordPress site. Remember, restoring a WordPress site is likely to be something that you do under pressure!

Restoring has to be easy as you’ll often be up against the clock and you may not be thinking straight due to the pressure.

Premium WordPress Backup Plugins

On CodeCanyon you'll find some great premium backup plugins. The biggest difference that you get with a premium plugin is the ability to use third-party services. This gives you more flexibility when it comes to backing up.

It's important that you don’t back up your data to the same server that serves the website! Always have an off-site backup. Cloud services like DropBox or Amazon S3 are great for this.

At CodeCanyon you can find plugins that backup to DropBox, Google Drive, Amazon S3 and others.

There are also some very well known backup options available from other sources.

1. BackupBuddy

One of the best known is BackupBuddy from iThemes, it’s a really easy-to-use and flexible plugin. The downside is that it isn’t WordPress multisite compatible so that has to be a consideration for anyone running more than one WordPress site.

2. Snapshot Pro

This is designed to be compatible with a WordPress multisite set-up. This is one of the backups that makes it the easiest to restore.

3. VaultPress

This backup plugin is provided by WordPress.com. If you go for JetPack then this is essentially what you’re getting. VaultPress is arguably the most powerful WordPress backup plugin as it’s incredibly reliable, it comes from WordPress themselves and it gives lots of options to backup different parts of a site at different frequencies.

It is quite expensive, though. If the site is crucial to the business and you want to ensure that you have the most reliable way of backing up the site, then you’ll certainly want to consider VaultPress.

Free WordPress Backup Plugins

In this tutorial, however, I want to look at free plugins so as not to exclude anyone who can not afford a premium plugin.

My Recommendation: UpdraftPlus

I recommend the UpdraftPlus plugin.

To learn how to install and configure it, check out the next lesson in my free course! I'll show you how to install and configure the UpdraftPlus backup plugin for backing up a WordPress database and webs

WordPress

Essential WordPress Plugins

Rachel McCollin

The Best WordPress Themes and Plugins on Envato Market

Explore thousands of the best WordPress themes ever created on ThemeForest and leading WordPress plugins on CodeCanyon. Purchase these high-quality WordPress themes and plugins and improve your website experience for you and your visitors.

Here are a few of the best-selling and up-and-coming WordPress themes and plugins available for 2020.

by Rachel McCollin via Envato Tuts+ Code

WHAT?! Is Twitter about to Clone one of Facebook's most Essential Layouts?

“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery”... we have been hearing this saying since our childhood. However, it’s time that we see it come to life. Recently, it was revealed that Twitter is considering making an interesting change to its DMs' layout on the web app. What’s interesting about the...

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by Ali Siddiqui via Digital Information World

Coronavirus Scammers Take Advantage of Fiverr and Other Platforms

During the times that we are currently living in, situtaions where everyone is scared for their safety and often don’t really know what it is that is actually going on, people that try to take advantage of others by trying to scam them in some way, shape or form are actually enjoying themselves...

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by Zia Muhammad via Digital Information World

Web Developer Workflow Tools: A Beginner’s Guide

Workflow Tools Every Web Developer Should Know About

Here's a primer for the tools all web developers should get to know, from basic Bash commands to web browser add-ons that will debug your web apps and automate navigation tests, plus continuous integrations pipelines.

Keep in mind this article is intended to cover the tools that the largest number of web developers will share a need to learn, not a comprehensive listing. So don't get too mad if your favorite tool isn't here! (For example, I intentionally left out WYSIWYG website builders 😉.)

Command Line

The command line is an interface that allows you to interact with the operating system through a console, and it can go a very long way to facilitate and even automate tedious and routine tasks.

You shouldn't be afraid of getting your hands dirty with the console. The time you'll spend learning some basic scripting will most definitely pay off.

Bash Tools (Linux, macOS)

Bash is the most popular shell for the "Unix-like" operating systems such as Linux and macOS.

Your mastery — or at the very minimum, a basic knowledge — of the Bash shell can save you a lot of time. Things like locating and renaming files, finding and replacing text strings, can literally take just a few seconds with commands like locate and grep with sed, respectively.

Become proficient in Bash by reading the Bash Quick Start Guide.

PowerShell (Windows)

PowerShell is the "bash-like" task automation and configuration management framework from Microsoft. It comes with a command-line similar to that of the [Command Prompt](https://ift.tt/1GmS2n8 (CMD)), but it also includes modules and a proper scripting language. But keep in mind that scripting is PowerShell in nothing like scripting in Bash. Except for a few exceptions, the commands have entirely different names, meaning that you'll need to learn these separately.

PowerShell 7 (under development) is intended as a successor to PowerShell Core 6, which was introduced as a successor to PowerShell 5. Who knows, folks at Microsoft might figure the naming thing out by version 8 or 9. 🤷‍♂️

Cygwin (also Windows)

You missed the Bash on Windows? Miss it no more! For those of you used to the power of the Bash shell but working regularly on a Windows environment, there's an alternative.

Cygwin is a POSIX-compatible environment that runs natively on Microsoft Windows, where the installation directory behaves like the root and follows a similar directory layout to that found in Unix-like systems.

Code Editors

You almost certainly know what a source-code editor is, but you might not know about some of their power features, such git integration.

There are integrated development environments (IDEs) such as NetBeans and Eclipse — but they're bloated with features we mostly won't care about anyway.

As web developers, we're more inclined towards cross-platform tools. Let's take a look at a few of them.

Atom

Not surprisingly, as it's developed by GitHub, Atom has the finest embedded Git control of any text editor, specifically aimed for GitHub repositories.

But that's not all. The "hackable text editor for the 21st Century" is incredibly easy to customize (see the docs), and a rich packages and themes ecosystem has flourished around it. Be sure to check out the blog and discussion forums to see what's been cooking, as there are plenty of regular updates.

Sublime Text

Sublime Text is the oldest product in this list (it's been around since 2008), and the only one that's not free. It's still very popular, and was the first editor to introduce many of the features we considered a given today in any decent code editor, such as "goto anything", "goto definition", and "multiple selections", among others.

It also has a companion Git client with a very sleek interface, Sublime Merge, introduced in 2018.

Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code (not to be confused with Visual Studio is another very popular code editor right now, which includes power features such as:

IntelliSense, which provides smart completions based on variable types, function definitions, and imported modules.
Inline debugging to analyze coding issues right from within the editor.
Version control with Git commands built-in (learn how to use version control).
Extensions and customization which run in separate processes, ensuring they won't slow down the editor (learn more about extensions).
Cloud integration with Microsoft Azure to deploy and host sites, store and query relational and document based data, and scale with serverless computing.

Read our Visual Studio Code power user's guide to become a VS Code pro, and dive even deeper with the book Visual Studio Code: End-to-End Editing and Debugging Tools for Web Developers.

The Runners Up

Although not so popular, Brackets is worth mentioning, as it’s primarily focused on web development, with a very interesting feature called Live Preview, which gives real-time connection to your browser to instantly visualize changes to CSS and HTML on screen.

Notepad++ is a drop-in replacement for Windows Notepad, very minimalist and lacking some power features we mentioned such as Git integration, but it's still a powerful, lightweight application to edit code.

Command Line–Based

As for commaind line–based editors, you've got Emacs and Vim … and endless flame wars about which one is better!

Browser Tools — Debugging, Debugging, Debugging

The web development tools shipped by some browsers aren’t quite website builders or IDEs, as they neither assist in the direct creation of a web page nor are a replacement for a code editor. Rather, they help to test the user interface (UI) of the project you're working on.

Back in the day, you’d need a number of extensions to make for a decent debugging environment, but nowadays most browsers have great built-in tools to help web developers.

Some tools you can expect to find:

A DOM inspector to edit HTML and CSS code directly on the document object model (DOM), view event listeners, and set DOM mutation breakpoints.
A console to view and filter log messages, inspect JavaScript objects and DOM nodes, and run JavaScript code in the context of the active window or frame.
A debugger to control the execution flow stepping through code, and set watches and breakpoints.
A network monitor to inspect requests and responses from the network and browser cache, including asynchronous XMLHttpRequest (XHR) — all of which can be very useful to identify bottlenecks.
An accessibility inspector to access the page's accessibility (a11y) tree, allowing you to check what's missing or otherwise what needs attention to make your site available to as many people as possible.
Performance measurement to profile execution time and system resources required by the site and walk JavaScript call stacks.
Memory measurement to track memory consumption and compare heap snapshots at different stages of the code execution.
A storage manager to handle cached data, cookies, web storage, and even IndexedDB structured data.
A service worker manager to handle and debug service workers with updates, unregisters, and start/stop of individual workers.
An emulator to test for different screen resolutions, and even different location coordinates.

Chrome DevTools

Google Chrome comes with a comprehensive and incredibly well-documented set called DevTools.

In fact, it's a good idea to visit Google's Tools for Web Developers, as you’ll find plenty of useful resources.

Firefox Developer Tools

Firefox first introduced the DOM inspector in version 3, and ever since then its Developer Tools are a state-of-the-art set that comes with extra goodies such as Eyedropper, taking screenshots, and rulers, to name a few.

Likewise, the Mozilla Developer Network (MDN) is a mandatory resource for web developers.

Safari Developer Tools

Because of its lack of features and poor support to web developers, Apple Safari is a pain to work with, and, like Internet Explorer back in the day, it would be nice not to have to deal with it. But you just have to.

It does ship Web Development Tools that aren't nearly as comprehensive as the aforementioned ones, and all the documentation you'll get is what someone may have written over a lunch break. (Yes, that's all there is.)

Others

Even Microsoft Edge, the successor of infamous Internet Explorer, has a decent set of Developer Tools!

And if you fancy good old Opera, check this Stack Exchange answer to see how you open its developer tools.

Learn the Chrome and Firefox DevTools with Browser Devtool Secrets.

JavaScript Tools

Since the arrival of Node.js (the runtime environment that executes JavaScript code outside the web browser), JavaScript has been used not only to enhance user interfaces but to write command-line tools and for server-side scripting programs, effectively establishing the "JavaScript everywhere" paradigm.

Consequently a whole ecosystem has emerged around it, and here are some tools you need to know.

npm

The Node package manager (npm) claims to be "the world’s largest software registry", and it’s an essential tool as it is the main way to distribute JavaScript code these days.

As listed on its website, you can use npm to:

The post Web Developer Workflow Tools: A Beginner’s Guide appeared first on SitePoint.

by Lucero del Alba via SitePoint

Raspberry Pi Is Now A Key Part of Ventilators Built For COVID-19 Patients

If there is one thing that the health care industry desperately needs at the moment to fight the coronavirus pandemic, then that has to be ventilators. The world needs more this life-saving device and in order to cope up with the demands, manufacturers are shifting to designs that are not only...

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by Daniyal Malik via Digital Information World

Interested in Learning React? These Will Help

React is a really popular JavaScript framework. Like, really popular.

So?

Well, if you're a front-end developer (or soon to be 😉), React is a great way to save time in wrangling code to make amazing, responsive user interfaces.

Think single-page applications (SPAs) with changing states, reusable components, and mobile apps – even across both iOS and Android!

Heck, we even use it!

So if you haven't dipped your toe into the world of React, we think it's time you took a look. Here's some of our popular content:

React Design Patterns and Best Practices - Second Edition

We will be taking a complete journey through the most valuable design patterns in React, this book demonstrates how to apply design patterns and best practices in real-life situations, whether that’s for new or already existing projects. It will help you to make your applications more flexible, perform better, and easier to maintain.

React Material-UI Cookbook

React Material-UI Cookbook is your ultimate guide to building compelling user interfaces with React and Material Design. Filled with practical and to-the-point recipes, you will learn how to implement sophisticated-UI components. You will also learn how to apply the vast selection of Material-UI components using modern React tools and techniques.

5 Practical React Projects

Progress your React skills by building a Reddit clone with React and Firebase, a CRUD app with React, Redux and FeatherJS, a ToDo app with React, Redux and Immutable.js, a game with Three.js, React and WebGL, and a procedurally generated game terrain with React, PHP and WebSockets.

React and React Native - Second Edition

Learn how to use React and Reactive Native to build mobile, desktop and native applications with React and React Native. From composable and Native UIs through to device-specific APIs and offline development, this book has everything you need to create engaging and user-friendly React applications which run on all major platforms.

React: Tools & Resources

Enhance your React projects and workflow with a range of tools and resources such as Redux, React Router, Jest, animated components and Preact.

Mastering React Test-Driven Development

This book is a comprehensive walkthrough of Test-Driven Development (TDD) for React. It takes a first-principles approach to teach the TDD process using vanilla Jest. Readers build their own test library as they refactor out repeated code in tandem with building a real-world application. It also covers acceptance testing using Cucumber and Puppeteer.

Build Your Own React Universal Blog App

An introductory course to building your first universal React app. Starting with an introduction to React, and then getting familiar with the invaluable React toolkit - Create React App, we'll then walk you through the steps of creating a universal React blog app from scratch.

Want to use React in mobile development? Check out React Native!

React Native Blueprints

Develop real-world Android and iOS apps with React Native, building fun projects from scratch while discovering more efficient techniques. Learn to build professional Android and iOS apps with your JS skills. Use Isomorphic principles to build mobile apps that offer a native user experience.

Mastering React Native

Get up to speed with all the React Native building blocks necessary for creating expert, cutting-edge apps. Learn how to apply Flexbox, build rich animations, integrate third-party libraries, develop customized components, combine React Native with Redux, Redux middleware, a remote API, and more.

Not quite React, but some nice complimentary content:

Learning Redux

With Redux, build consistent web apps that run in different environments (client, server and native), and are easy to test, by centralizing the state of your app. Take your web apps to the next level by combining the power of Redux with other frameworks such as React and Angular.

Want to see more React content? Visit our library!

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The post Interested in Learning React? These Will Help appeared first on SitePoint.

by SitePoint Team via SitePoint

Wear OS Smartwatches Notifying Users To "Wash Your Hands"

People around the world are constantly hearing the one-liner of “washing your hands” in every other hour or in some cases, even minutes. And if they still tend to remain careless about washing their hands - that too with a Google smartwatch on their wrist, then the Wear OS is also here to send you...

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by Daniyal Malik via Digital Information World