Author: Mark Wilkinson

Image of Mark Wilkinson speaking at WordCamp London 2019.

Syndicating WordPress content using content deployment

Recently we have been working on an exciting project for TOMD (The Outsourced Marketing Department). We originally built a content deployment and content syndication system for them back in 2017 and we have recently been commissioned to improve this and add new features.

In this post, with accompanying video and presentation slides, I am going to focus on content syndication in WordPress, what it is, how it is done and why you might want to deploy content from one WordPress site to another.

Mark Wilkinson speaking at WordPress Glasgow

Talk: How to write an effective website specification document at WordPress Glasgow

Earlier this week I visited the WordPress Glasgow meetup in order to present a talk about how to write a website specification document, something which we think is an important part of any website project. You view the slides and watch the video.

What is caching and how do you implement it with WordPress?

Caching web pages can be very beneficial to your website for a number of reasons. In this, episode 8 of the AskHighrise series of videos, Mark looks at what caching is, why it can be a good thing and how you can implement caching on your WordPress website.

Passwords – making sure they are secure and why they are important

It is super important to make sure that the passwords we are using (and let’s face it we use a lot these days) are as secure as possible. In this episode, Mark looks at how to create a good, secure password and how to make sure you use different passwords for each service without having to remember them all.

Updating the WP Broadbean plugin to version 3

Find about more about how to update the WP Broadbean WordPress plugin to the new version 3.0.

How to limit the file size of media uploaded to your WordPress website

It is episode 6 of the AskHighrise series and in this episode, I look at how you can help reduce the disk space used by uploaded media on your WordPress site by limiting the size of that media.

Can you have too many plugins on your WordPress website?

In this episode, Mark talks about whether or not you can have too many plugins installed on your WordPress site, as well as how to find out which plugins are slowing your site down.

How to handle updating WordPress to version 5

If this episode of the AskHighrise series we look at the popular question of should I update to WordPress version 5 and how are we handling this with client websites.

Image of the Highrise Digital team on the live WordPress Q&A

A live WordPress Q & A Session

Late in January, we headed off to Italy for our first retreat of 2019. As part of this, we wanted to offer a live WordPress Q&A session. It didn’t quite go to plan due to some technical issues, but we did manage to record our answers to some questions.

Commercial themes and using a child theme

It is episode number 3 of AskHighrise and in this episode, I take a look at best practice when using a theme that is likely to be updated, particular commercially bought themes. In particular, we look at using child themes to help your future developers.

Remote working and my home office

Find out about my home office set up in this second episode on our #AskHighrise video series.

Highrise Digital team with a view of the Dolomites behind them

A team retreat to the Italian Dolomites

As a remote team, we feel that it’s important to spend some time together in the same location every now and again. A few times a year we book somewhere to have what we call a ‘retreat’ – to get together socially and for some work. This time we decided that we would visit the Italian Dolomites!

Introducing WP Broadbean Version 3

We are shortly releasing a completely new version of the WP Broadbean plugin. The plugin has been completely re-written from scratch and has some cool new stuff and some things current users need to know about. This post outlines the changes.

Editing content on custom post type archive pages

In this first in a series of AskHighrise, were you can ask us questions, I answer a popular developer question about allowing clients to edit the content of their custom post type archive pages.

Webinar: Integrating Broadbean with WordPress

Are you a recruitment company that uses WordPress? Do you also use Broadbean to post your jobs to multiple destinations and track candidates across those platforms? Would you like to able to post jobs you write in Broadbean to your WordPress website? If so, this webinar is for you as we will guide you through the process and answer your questions.

Highrise ACF Blocks Plugin

Introducing the Highrise ACF Blocks Plugin, providing developers with a suite of customisable Gutenberg blocks including all front-end markup. Just add your own styling and you are good to go.

WordCamp Edinburgh 2018

This weekend was WordCamp Edinburgh and our co-founder Mark represented the Highrise Digital team as well as giving a talk.

Talk: Transitioning to a block based editor in a pre-Gutenberg world

Watch my WordCamp Manchester 2018 presentation of transitioning to a block-based editor in WordPress in a pre-Gutenberg world.

Talk: How to write extensible WordPress code

When developing WordPress plugins and themes it makes sense to allow to them to be extended and modified. To do this you need to write extensible code. I recently presented a talk to the WordPress Cheltenham meet-up group about how to write extensible WordPress code. Watch the video and view the slides in this post.

WordPress hooks, actions and filters explained

Wouldn’t it be great if you could alter the way WordPress works to suit any project you are working on?

In this article, I am going to show you exactly how you can do this, by introducing what I think is the most powerful feature of WordPress – hooks. Also known as actions and filters, we will look at what they are, how to use them and why they can really change the way you develop with WordPress.

Making use of video messages for better communication

How using video messages can provide better communication when working remotely.

Why we no longer host client sites and the advantages it brings

For a while now, to keep things simple for clients we have offered to host client sites on our servers. Increasingly over the last few months this has become more and more a problem for us. In this article I will outline why we took the decision not to host client sites anymore, and what benefits this will being our clients.

Getting the most out of WordPress users

WordPress allows us to have multiple website users as well as users who access to different things. In this post we look at how users can be setup and the security implications of different user levels.

Getting the most out of Google Hangouts Meet video conferencing

Being a remote team, we make a lot of use of video calling, including video calling with our clients. To do this we tend to use a Google product called Meet. This article explores how to get the best out of using Google Meet.