<div class="rss-widget"><ul><li><a class='rsswidget' href='http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WordpressTavern/~3/sjW4ILyokwc/my-approachable-wordpress-story' title='Chris Lema recently published a great article that in my opinion, really shines a light on the positive aspects of the WordPress community as a whole. Chris calls it “Approachable WordPress”. In his story he describes how easy it is to approach anyone in the WordPress community, regardless of their popularity.  WordPress Celebrities Chris’ story reminds me of my trip to Dallas in 2008 where I attended my first WordCamp. This event was a huge milestone. It’s where I met Mark Ghosh of Weblogtoolscollection.com, which at the time, was the most popular website dedicated to WordPress. It’s also the first opportunity I had to meet other people within the WordPress community face to face. Attending WordCamp Dallas was like going to a family reunion. All of the attendees were friendly and enjoyed being in each others company. The highlight of that event was that it was the first time I had the chance to meet Matt Mullenweg, the co-creator of WordPress. It was such a surreal experience as I had placed Matt up on the pedestal of Hollywood celebrity. I didn’t think I’d be able to get anywhere close to the guy. After all, he helped create the software that was taking over the web. I remember when he showed up on Saturday afternoon as his family drove him to the event from Houston, TX. If I remember correctly, he had his wisdom teeth pulled and that’s why he wasn’t feeling well. After arriving, I introduced myself to him. Turns out, he knew exactly who I was because of my writing on Weblogtoolscollection.com. During the event, I conducted a one on one interview with him, dined with him, conversed with him as much as I could, without having to go through any bodyguards. It’s this experience with Matt Mullenweg at WordCamp Dallas that really opened my eyes. Since then, I’ve attended a number of WordCamp events and have been able to recreate that experience with multiple people within the WordPress community. I wanted to share that story as well as Chris Lema’s because the message behind both is true. In fact, Chris says it better than I could. Want to talk to the guy behind WordPress 101 – hit me up, I’ll introduce you. Want to talk to the guy behind the Matt Report – hit me up, I’ll introduce you. Want to talk to the dudes that are the baddest podcasters in town – hit me up, I’ll introduce you. Who do you want to meet? Here’s the amazing thing – you don’t even need my intro. Ping them directly on Twitter and watch – they’ll reply. That’s Approachable WordPress '>WPTavern: My Approachable WordPress Story</a></li><li><a class='rsswidget' href='http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WordpressTavern/~3/567vpGG8oQk/cart66-launches-wordpress-managed-hosting-for-e-commerce' title='Cart66, previously known as PHPurchase, was one of the very first WordPress e-commerce plugins on the scene. Over the years the company has experimented with different WordPress e-commerce products but this week marks a major milestone. Cart66 Hosted has launched the first fully managed WordPress e-commerce platform. In partnership with the folks at Pagely, the Cart66 Hosted platform provides fully managed WordPress hosting plus its flagship e-commerce product, Cart66 Cloud. This hosted solution was created to make security and PCI compliance something that customers don’t have to think about. Store owners can concentrate on selling, instead of trying to wading through all the technical aspects of managing an online store.  The Cart66 Cloud handles everything related to the secure storage and delivery of digital products, customer order history, storage of customer credit cards, payment gateways and all the e-commerce features you would normally get by installing a dozen different plugins and add-ons. The Rising Cost of WordPress E-Commerce Cart66 is delving into an area of e-commerce products and services that hasn’t yet been fully explored by other companies. The all-in-one approach is unique, given that most of the leading WordPress e-commerce solutions have business models centered around creating dozens of commercial add-ons or high cost bundles. Each piece of that puzzle adds up, especially when you include the costs of hosting, PCI compliance, backups and anything else server-related. Even with conservative estimates on all of these requirements, the price tag and responsibility of hosting and securing an online store will be fairly considerable for the average small business. There’s also quite a steep learning curve for hosting your own WordPress e-commerce site. It’s not easy and will require store owners to study up on everything related to site maintenance and security. Many prospective store owners would gladly opt for a WordPress-powered store but have trouble grasping the whole concept of hosting, much less installing SSL certificates or getting a dedicated IP address. No matter how easy a WordPress e-commerce plugin is to use, if the user cannot get WordPress operational in the first place, he’s out of luck. The only other option for someone in this position is to pay a developer thousands of dollars to set up and build his store for him. Cart66 has identified a segment of the market that has been overlooked. What do you think about hosted e-commerce? Is this a product that’s long been needed in the WordPress market? '>WPTavern: Cart66 Launches WordPress Managed Hosting for E-Commerce</a></li><li><a class='rsswidget' href='http://wordpress.tv/2013/11/06/david-lockie-becoming-a-successful-wordpress-freelancer/' title='    '>WordPress.tv: David Lockie: Becoming A Successful WordPress Freelancer</a></li><li><a class='rsswidget' href='http://wordpress.tv/2013/11/05/mario-peshev-wordpress-org-themes-directory-behind-the-scenes/' title='    '>WordPress.tv: Mario Peshev: WordPress.org Themes Directory – Behind The Scenes</a></li><li><a class='rsswidget' href='http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WordpressTavern/~3/hPHwIqThAv0/the-future-of-wordpress-widgets-a-better-ui-with-real-time-previews' title='Widgets make WordPress stand out as one of the most user-friendly CMS options available. The ability to easily place content blocks and features into a widgetized area has made website customization possible for millions of people who don’t know how to code. As mobile browsing has increased over the past few years, widget design is now moving to accommodate use on mobile devices. Due to the popularity of widgets in general, new designs must also accommodate users who have dozens of available widgets. Better Widgets Shaun Andrews’ Widgets Area Chooser plugin is on its way into the core for WordPress 3.8, but he’s not done improving widgets. Andrews is on a quest to make WordPress widgets better. To that end he has a couple of plugins that are currently in development. Better Widgets is one that he created in order to add more incremental updates.  Right now, if you check out the plugin’s page, all you will see is a vague description:  “This makes widgets better. Trust me. Or don’t.” Since this is a plugin for continuing improvements to widgets, you’ll just have to install it and check it out.  Better Widgets offers a new layout, which briefly made an appearance in MP6 and includes separate scrollable areas for available widgets. It also provides better feedback when saving widgets.  Andrews may add a search filter to the plugin somewhere down the road, which would help users to quickly filter when searching a large number of widgets. He is also looking at adding the ability to drag widgets over closed sides, which would then automatically open so you could drop them in, similar to how dragging files around works in OS X. This is one plugin to watch for future updates if you want to be on the cutting edge of WordPress widget development. Widgets in the WordPress Customizer The widgets team is also working on an experimental plugin that allows users to edit and preview widgets in the WordPress Theme Customizer. The Widget Customizer plugin is being developed as part of the ongoing Widgets UI Refresh effort and the team hopes to have it ready to present for consideration in WordPress 3.9.  Widget Customizer gives you real-time previews of the edits you make to a widget before making them live. With this plugin turned on, no changes are live until the Save &amp; Publish button is clicked. All widget-related actions are previewable before publishing, including:  Adding a new widget Editing existing widgets Reordering widgets Dragging widgets to other sidebars Removing widgets from the sidebars  If you want to test it out, install Widget Customizer on a test site.  The plugin’s description advocates the new feature by stating, “No longer do you have to edit your widgets blind!” Editing a widget and then having to navigate to the front-end to see what you did is in essence blind editing. Once you try the Widget Customizer, you may never go back to the old way of editing widgets. The Better Widgets and Widget Customizer plugins are paving the way for the future of WordPress widgets. If you’ve ever been frustrated with widget management, you can breathe a sigh of relief, because some very nice updates are underway. Would you like to see real-time previews added to the core? What do you wish you could change about widget management?  '>WPTavern: The Future of WordPress Widgets: A Better UI With Real-Time Previews</a></li></ul></div>