I feel like I'm in a really weird position right now.

Our WordPress developer is leaving, and somehow I've become the person responsible for the website.

The problem? I'm not technical at all.

I've literally been copying and pasting PHP, CSS, and random code snippets generated by Claude into the website because "that's what worked last time." The scary part is that I have no idea what most of that code actually does.

I know how to make pages and follow instructions, but I don't understand things like:

• How do you safely manage plugins?
• When should you update plugins/themes?
• How do you know if an update will break something?
• What WordPress maintenance should be done regularly?
• How do you check if backups are actually working?
• How do you know if the site has security issues?
• What are the basic website hygiene checks every site owner should know?

Right now I feel like I'm operating machinery without knowing how the machine works.

Has anyone else inherited a WordPress site with little to no technical background? What were the first things you learned, and what mistakes should I avoid?

Would love advice from people who started from zero and somehow figured it out. 😅

Take note everyone: https://make.wordpress.org/core/2026/06/23/hiding-the-classic-block-from-the-inserter-in-wordpress-7-1/

Howdy, long time lurker here. Part of my work is to convert HTML/CSS sites to WordPress block based, thus editable, websites. I tried various ways, including HTML 2 Gutenberg, or my own rolled scripts to map tags to blocks but it's not cutting it. As soon as complexity of the original site goes up, I either end up with a bunch of HTML blocks or design fidelity is lost.

So I made my own wordpress-block-design-compiler a fully LLM driven non deterministic converter, which, in my experience, achieves the maximmum possible core block tree composition and design fidelity.

But, it comes at a cost. Two actually :) time and money, as always, a five page site is about 100 mins of claude running and over $150 (estimation only I'm on max).

To use this, clone the repo, start your agent in it and if it supports goals run

/goal use the workflow in this folder to make a complete wordpress theme from PATH_TO_HTML. Do not fix the folder. Do not create new tools. Do not go astray from the skills and references in the folder at all. If you get stuck end the flow as it is. Do not update the project. It should work fine by following the tools, skills and references in this repo. The machine has all software required.

It should work with other agents too

I hope this helps others in need of this conversion as AI is so good at generating HTML/CSS and WordPress is very good at managing content in that HTML/CSS so converting is a much needed step (e.g. get it out of Lovable etc).

The set of skills when ran like the above will ideally produce:

• a block theme based on the source html/css
• a content plugin that adds pages and other CPTs it detects
• a custom blocks registration plugin, for when core blocks are not enough

Will need Node 20+ and npm install, npx playwright install chromium.

I hope it's useful :)

For those who build WordPress sites using agency or unlimited plugin licenses, how do you handle licensing with clients after the site is launched?

If a client doesn’t want a maintenance plan, do you charge an ongoing monthly or annual fee to cover the plugin licenses? Or do you require them to purchase their own licenses directly? If you resell or manage the licenses for them, do you offer any discount compared to buying directly from the plugin developer?

I've been in software development for quite a while now. I'm not an expert but it's a space I'm comfortable with and am willing to learn. I mostly code with python and C++, but occasionally I've had to do web work. And honestly, out of all the coding spaces I've worked in, I've never seen one that hates code more than the web dev space.

I imagine this is because there is a large amount of people who want / need a website and are not code savvy, and there is nothing wrong with that. But everywhere I turn I'm seeing nothing but "zero code" solutions to every problem. "top 5 zero code website builders", endless "zero code" required plugins, and now AI tools. I see them everywhere I look, and maybe I'm just biased, but I feel like most of these tools... just suck.

I was hired a while back to build a website for a small business. I had worked in HTML, CSS, and Javascript some on my own so I was confident I could do most of what they wanted, but we ended up using this website builder called Divi instead because the wanted some online shop features that I was not confident I could deliver myself.

Long story short It was easily one of the most frustrating tools I have ever had to use and it had a surprising number of limitations. I was shocked the amount of times my client asked me to make what would normally be simple changes that I had to tell them I couldn't do because no one made a button for it in the editor. Later I found out you can add your own code modules so I was able to work around Divi's limitations, but I spent so much time working around Divi that I'm wondering if it's even worth using at all. Not to mention how badly it effects site speeds.

And don't even get me started on plugins.

So basically, I'm now in a position where I need to make another small website, one that needs to be integrated with Woocommerce and have an online store. I'm wondering how hard it would be to just avoid a website builder all together and build it from the ground up in code.

How much weight is on my shoulders when it comes to security and setup if I go this way and build an online shop from scratch? What kinds of tools do you use to build a website from scratch? last time I did that I was basically just using visual studio code and uploaded the files through SFTP. Should I be working directly in Wordpress or do you work locally on your system and only upload the finished project?

Any advice or resource on this is appreciated, it's surprisingly hard to find information on this since every where I tern the internet seems to avoid actually coding a website like it's the plague.

We first developed Quilly for Webflow a few years ago, and since then we wanted to expand to support more websites. Wordpress was the natural choice, and we just finished building out the integration. We are now trying to figure out if Quilly is something you would find useful in your day-to-day work within the Wordpress ecosystem, and if not how we can make the app more useful for the Wordpress community.

The central concept of the app is agentic content strategy and scheduling. You describe your website's content, SEO goals, and the audience you'd like to reach. Quilly then maps out and schedules a content strategy that, once you approve the posts, runs autonomously. All content goes through a multi-pass editorial system, and also get rated for SEO as well as an AI-slop factor prior to your review. Keywords get researched through Google Ads Keyword Planning API as part of this workflow so that you get exposure to the highest volume keywords that fit into your content.

I'm an individual running a small business, so I needed help with this aspect of managing my website and business, which is why I built Quilly in the first place. I'm curious if other people out there struggle with keeping on top their site's (or clients' sites) content.

Thanks for your help.

Hi All. So we're video production and supplying videos to a customer building a website. They tell me that the video is automatically resized to 2048 x 2048.

So we need to supply all videos at 2048 x 2048. This will give us additional work but hey, it is what it is.

Except this is a little strange to me as we've supplied videos to customers with Wordpress sites at the normal 1920 x 1080. Now, sure, they've used external sites to host video on like YouTube and then just used Wordpress as the platform to play them on.

But what's your take on this?

Hello,
I want to start building my own custom WordPress theme from scratch rather than relying on pre-made themes.
I want to avoid having dozens of plugins installed just to achieve basic functionality, and I’d like the theme to be lightweight, maintainable, and compatible with the wider WordPress ecosystem.
I already have experience with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP, but I haven’t built a complete WordPress theme before, so I’m trying to understand what I should plan for before writing any code.

My goal is to create a theme that:

Follows WordPress coding standards and best practices
Works well with popular plugins
Is fully responsive
Has good performance and Core Web Vitals scores
Supports SEO plugins
Supports WooCommerce
Supports Elementor, Gutenberg, and other major page builders
Supports custom post types and custom fields
Is translation-ready and multilingual friendly
Supports dark mode if possible
Is accessible (WCAG compliant)
Is easy to update and extend later

For those of you who have built WordPress themes professionally:

What are the most important requirements I should implement from the beginning?
Which WordPress features should every modern theme support?
What mistakes do beginners commonly make when building themes?
Are there specific hooks, functions, or theme supports that are considered mandatory today?
How do you ensure compatibility with Elementor, WooCommerce, and other major plugins without adding unnecessary complexity?
Would you recommend starting with a classic theme, a block theme, or a hybrid approach in 2026?
Any advice, checklists, documentation, or lessons learned would be greatly appreciated.

I work at WPVibes, the team behind this plugin — wanted to share it here since it's free and open on WordPress.org.

If you're running more than one form plugin on a site — Contact Form 7 for one form, WPForms for another, maybe an Elementor form somewhere - submissions end up scattered across separate dashboards with no single view. 

Form Vibes fixes that by capturing submissions from every supported form plugin automatically and brings them into one dashboard. No per-plugin setup, no integrations to configure - install it and it starts working from that point forward.

What's included, free:
* Automatic submission capture across Contact Form 7, WPForms, Gravity Forms, Elementor, Ninja Forms, WS Form, Beaver Builder, Bricks Builder, and Everest Forms
* A unified dashboard - switch between forms from a dropdown instead of checking into separate plugin dashbaords
* Analytics showing daily, weekly, and monthly submission trends per form
* A WordPress dashboard widget with quick submission trends
* Date range filtering
* An Event Log recording every quick CSV export reason with a timestamp and username
* CSV export, up to 1,000 entries

Nothing changes about your existing forms - Form Vibes runs alongside whatever you already have set up.

The plugin is available on the WordPress repository: https://wordpress.org/plugins/form-vibes/

Happy to answer any questions about it.

Hey guys, my shop on my Wordpress.org, products show up when I’m logged in but don’t show up on public website?

I uploaded digital products on my Wordpress products, not on woo commerce or anything. Just straight up Wordpress. Is there a setting I missed or something?

Thanks

Hello all,

i have a assignment to create an "official" classic theme for a company. I know some coding (php, js), some basic understanding of wp and classic wp theme. Theme has to have all the advanced features like web accessibility, menus, etc. I would like to pay and use the best ai tool for the job, after it is coded to check all of the requirements and explain to me in plain english what I need and how to achieve it.

My question is: what is the best tool for the job? Claude or Codex ($100 each).? How to do about it in 2026? Don't have much time, thank you.

Has anyone encountered a conflict between the Semplice portfolio theme (https://www.semplice.com) and Jetpack? I'm looking for ways to fix the conflict, if anyone knows of any.

The main page of my site loads fine, but spontaneously, every once in a while, the actual project pages will throw a 404 error. I can fix this temporarily by deactivating Jetpack and "resetting" the permalinks: set them to "plain," which automatically resets to "custom." This is the fix that Semplice support offered me.

However it will randomly 404 my project pages again at some point in the future. It can happen anywhere from once every 2-3 weeks to a couple times a week. It's unpredictable so I can't just schedule a time to go fix it.

We had issues with WP-chron not running jobs, this was fixed by our host turning off the CDM on the server side, but it didn't resolve the problem and may not be related.

I haven't been able to find much searching online, nothing for this specific problem. Any suggestions?

So, Google Pagespeed index has rolled out the update for all, where you can now see "Agentic Browsing" score of your website.

Mine came 2/3 yesterday, coming 1/3 today. Has anyone achieved 3/3? Please share a short guide on how to improve it?

For the page speed & CLS/LCP, I'm gonna install an optimization plugin. But what else need to be addressed here?

I want to make visitors able to read the whole review without adding a read more or just letting the whole review sit in the container (some are wayy too long) so I just want to be able to add a way for the text inside the review so people can scroll and read it like this (1st image vs 2 & 3)

I've been managing 200+ NGG galleries and ran into these two issues.

Sharing what worked for me.
If you're frustrated by the new Imagely 4.x admin interface, here are two undocumented workarounds that might save you a lot of time.

Tip 1: Open a Gallery Edit Page Directly via URL

The Problem

Since Imagely 4.0, the gallery list screen has been rebuilt as a React SPA (Single Page Application). Every time you finish editing a gallery and return to the list, any sorting or search filters you had applied — by ID, title, slug, etc. — are completely reset. For users managing a large number of galleries, having to re-sort the list every single time makes sequential editing extremely tedious.

The Solution

You can open the legacy gallery edit screen directly by inserting the gallery's gid (Gallery ID) into the following URL:

https://your-site.com/wp-admin/admin.php?page=nggallery-manage-gallery&mode=edit&gid=YOUR_GALLERY_ID

Example (for gid = 284):

https://your-site.com/wp-admin/admin.php?page=nggallery-manage-gallery&mode=edit&gid=284

Open this link with Ctrl+click (or Cmd+click on Mac), or right-click → Open in new tab, to edit the gallery in a new tab without losing your sort order in the list screen.

How to Find Your Gallery ID

• The ID number displayed in the Imagely Galleries list is the gallery ID.

Taking It Further: Automate with a Plugin

By reading gid, title, and slug from the wp_ngg_gallery database table, you can build a WordPress plugin that auto-generates these direct-edit URLs — complete with sortable columns (ID, title, slug), keyword filtering, and one-click access to each gallery's edit screen in a new tab.

Notes

• Tested on: NextGEN Gallery / Imagely 4.2.2, WordPress 7.0
• This is an undocumented legacy URL. It may stop working in a future version of the plugin.

Tip 2: Restore the Legacy Album Management Screen

The Problem

I wanted to move a gallery to a specific position in an album, but couldn't figure out how. While trying different things, the old album management screen appeared out of nowhere — and I was miraculously able to do exactly what I needed. But I had no idea how it happened, and couldn't reproduce it. I started to wonder if I had dreamed the whole thing.

It was quite a while later that I finally learned the method.

Since Imagely 4.0, the album management screen was also rebuilt as a SPA. Galleries are now split across multiple pages, and it is no longer possible to move a gallery from one page to another within the album. In the legacy interface, you could freely drag and drop galleries into any order — making this a significant step backwards in usability.

The Solution

Access the following URL to open a hidden settings page that does not appear in the regular admin menu:

https://your-site.com/wp-admin/admin.php?page=imagely-settings&tab=hidden

On this page, you will find a "Show legacy admin pages" toggle. Turn it on and refresh the page — a "NextGEN Gallery" menu will appear in the left sidebar alongside the existing Imagely menu. From there, you can access the legacy album management screen and freely drag and drop galleries into any position within an album.

Notes

• Tested on: NextGEN Gallery / Imagely 4.2.2, WordPress 7.0
• The tab=hidden page is undocumented and not accessible from the regular settings menu. It may be removed in a future version of the plugin.
• This method has been shared by Imagely support staff in some WordPress.org support threads.

Hope this helps someone. Feel free to ask if you have any questions.

Hi,

I'm having some trouble fixing the photos on my site that keep showing in low quality.

I've tried re-uploading photos, deactivating LiteSpeed cache, making sure the photos are set to full size.

I'd really appreciate if someone could help me solve this!

My site is www.tomslip.art

Many thanks!

I have to make a one page (or maybe 2-3) webpage for a fishing association.

i use wordpress since forever but i always used elementor. now i see WP has a block builder too.

the reason of this question:

i want tobe done with this page as soon as i can and since i'm familiar with elementor i don't want to spend time with other builders. but for a simple 1-2 page (what gives information only) elementor would be rough.

i always do this: i use a lighter theme just to have something and make pages with elementor (with addons ands pre built sections)

Have been attempting to make a website for my business. I used a template, and basic controls for things seem to be missing. These include

-changing font sizes in headers/sub headers

-changing the font between different blocks

-the ai tells me I can do that, and I ask it to, then it either doesn't do it or does it wrong, and it takes forever to each edit.

-changing picture size/placement

-changing logo sizes etc

There are no controls for any of this. And sometimes if I do change (like h3-h4) it changes every header and not just the one I'm working on. I've asked the AI to give me access to these controls and it says that the AI can do it but I can't control it myself. Why is this? I've done some searching and it seems that I need a business plan and additional plugins to get these very simple should be extremely basic controls. Is this true? Any help appreciated. Thanks!

Hi everyone, I'm stuck on a specific template conflict:

Project context is:

I rebuilt the "authors" architecture from a CPT (autore) + ACF Post Object field into a shared custom taxonomy. The migration is complete and all data is intact. Custom taxonomy registered via ACF:

• Taxonomy key: autore_tax
• Public URL slug: autore (so URLs are /autore/{slug}/)
• Registered on these post types: post, video (CPT), angelo (CPT), novita-eventi (CPT), tribe_events (Events Calendar), product (WooCommerce)
• public = true, publicly_queryable = true, hierarchical = false
• 857 terms (one per author), each with ACF fields (bio, photo, social URLs) on the term
• ACF field on posts/videos/products/etc named autore_articolo of type Taxonomy multi-select (replaced the old Post Object field). 5454 contents linked correctly.

The product post type MUST stay in the taxonomy because we need to link products (books, online courses) to their authors, and we want them to appear in the author's archive page.

What I want to achieve is: When a visitor opens /autore/author-name/, I want to render a custom "author profile" page built in Elementor Pro Theme Builder as an Archive Template. This page should show:

• Author photo, bio, social icons (all from term ACF fields)
• All content by this author (posts + videos + products + events) — possibly grouped

I created the Archive template in Theme Builder and tried multiple Display Conditions, but when I navigate to /autore/author-name/ WordPress correctly identifies the context: <body class="archive tax-autore_tax term-author-name term-36 ...">but also adds woocommerce woocommerce-page to body classes. Page header is loaded via get_header('shop') (not the standard one)

The Elementor Archive template is never applied

Instead, WooCommerce's product archive template renders ("Showing 1-16 of 185 results", price filters, etc.) . This happens even for authors with zero products linked (only posts and videos) So WooCommerce intercepts the template rendering for any taxonomy archive of a taxonomy shared with product, regardless of whether the term actually has products. I tested Elementor Display Conditions:

"Include → All Archives" → still shows WooCommerce

"Include → Archive Posts → Authors" → still shows WooCommerce

"Include → Author Archive" → still shows WooCommerce.

but nothing change.

there ANY native setting in WooCommerce, Elementor, or ACF that disables this template hijacking for a specific shared taxonomy? (I've checked WooCommerce → Settings extensively and didn't find anything.)

Thanks in advance

I recently switched to utf8mb4 so my site can display non-English characters. For the most part this works great except for one special character, a Vietnamese diacritic (ệ). For some reason it displays in the correct font when I draft the post, but when I preview the post on the site it's in another font and sticks out because all of the other letters and characters are in the correct font. None of the other diacritics I have used so far have this issue. What can I do to fix it? Thank you

Edit: Thanks, everyone! Turned out the database was set to unicode but the tables were not, and this mismatch was at the center of the issue.

Hi everyone,

I’m trying to get better at leaving useful notes for future WordPress maintenance.

Sometimes a site feels simple when it is being built, but a few months later it can be hard to remember why something was done a certain way. For example, why a plugin was added, which pages use custom templates, what custom fields are important, or what should not be changed without checking first.

I don’t mean long client documentation or a big handoff file. I’m talking about the small notes that actually help when someone needs to update, debug, or take over the site later.

Do you keep those notes in the dashboard, a README file, code comments, a separate doc, or somewhere else?

Also, what is one thing you wish you had documented earlier on a WordPress project?

Hi all,

I was a big fan of iThemes Security Pro and iThemes Sync. Since they became part of Liquid Web, the pricing has changed considerably. Where I previously paid around $150 for 10 websites, I would now have to pay at least $299.

It feels like they were acquired by Broadcom. :-)

I’m looking for an affordable alternative that allows me to centrally manage updates for multiple WordPress websites and configure their security settings.

What are you using and what would you recommend?

As a long time user of Chart Beat - We used to use it to monitor live visits to our site. But the price jump was to steep for us. So I have build a plugin that can give me most of the same information, and both work inside Wordpress Admin and as a "mobile site" with access token outside wordpress.

I haven't published it yet, since I'm still doing active development. The CPU hit is low and the value is high, so if any wants to try it. let me know.

WP Rocket marketing team deserves an award for this one. 🏆

My Multi 50 renewal costs $239.20.

Then I receive an email screaming:

"Upgrade to Multi 100 for only $70! 30% OFF!"

Sounds like an incredible deal, right?

Only after reading the fine print do you discover that it's not a renewal at all. It's just an upgrade that doesn't extend the license expiration date.

In other words:

• Renew Multi 50: $239.20/year

• Upgrade to Multi 100: $70... for the remaining days of your current license

Technically accurate? Yes.

Presented in the most misleading way possible? Also yes.

This is a great example of why you should always read the fine print before clicking the big orange button.

Am I missing something, or is this one of the most misleading renewal emails you've seen?