I had a couple of reservations about purchasing Jakub Sanecki’s new book, “Creating Templates with Artisteer.” Since English is not Jakub’s first language I was concerned about the book’s readability, and I wondered how much knowledge I might gain from the book since I have been using Artisteer for about four years. After reading the book I can say that my first concern was unfounded — the book is well written and very readable. With regard to my second concern, I don’t think the book is an essential addition to the reference library of experienced Artisteer users. However, the book is a very good introduction to Artisteer and I wish it had been available four years ago when I first purchased the program.

Recently there have been widespread reports of WordPress sites being hacked. Because WordPress doesn’t limit login attempts, hackers can use “brute force” hacking attempts by trying millions of username and  password combinations.  The installation of the “Limit Login Attempts” plugin will help keep your WordPress site(s) safe.  The plugin blocks an Internet address from making further attempts after a specified limit.  There is also a provision to have the site administrator notified by email after a specified number of unsuccessful login attempts.  Thanks to Zach Swinehart for this tip.

 
UPDATE:  Since I installed the plugin on this blog there have been almost 100 failed login attempts.

I have used both Artisteer and Weaver II Pro to develop WordPress sites and both have worked fairly well for me.  Lately I’ve been hearing about TemplateToaster, a program that looks a lot like Artisteer.  If anyone has used TemplateToaster to develop WordPress themes, I’d appreciate your opinions.

I use WordPress to develop new sites and I am gradually upgrading older sites to WordPress. I have used free and commercial WordPress themes and generated my own themes using Artisteer. I recently started using the very versatile Weaver II Pro theme. WordPress has met my web development needs but there has been one downside: WordPress plugins, themes, and WordPress itself are frequently updated and it has been a pain to update each site individually.

 

I recently discovered InfiniteWP, a free WordPress tool that allows you to manage an unlimited number of WordPress sites from a single location. The free version supports updating all your sites with the latest versions of WordPress, plugins from the WP plugin repository, and themes from the WP theme repository. It also supports updating plugins and themes not in the repository.

 

InfiniteWP consists of a stand-alone application installed on a host (the installation is very similar to installing WordPress) and a plugin that you install and activate on each site you want to manage. For those concerned about the application installation, the folks at InfiniteWP will provide installation for $39.00. I installed InfiniteWP on eight sites and it seemed to be slow on several sites. The company’s tech support worked with me for several days and finally solved the problem, all at no cost.

 

InfiniteWP has been working flawlessly for several weeks and the tech support is great.  I highly recommend it to anyone who is managing multiple WordPress sites.

I used WordPress for a number of years as a blogging platform, but my sites were developed with HTML and CSS using Dreamweaver. Other developers suggested Drupal or Joomla for web development; I looked at both programs and decided that Joomla was not for me and Drupal seemed to have a pretty steep learning curve. I watched WordPress evolve into a program that was ideal for web development, and it was a program with which I was already familiar. I started using WordPress for site development and it has improved the development process and provided my clients with a better end product.

 

There are thousands of WordPress themes, both free and commercial. I am a long way from having tried them all but I have used a number of free and commercial WordPress themes and developed my own themes using Artisteer.  The best themes I have used so far are Weaver II (free) and Weaver II Pro ($29.95/$49.95). Weaver themes can be customized in almost every way imaginable and they are responsive (automatic and integrated support for mobile devices). I’m still finding new features in Weaver II and I have yet to find something that can’t be done. I almost neglected to mention the extensive and well-written documentation and the excellent support forum with quick responses from knowledgeable users and the author himself.

 

I think both amateurs and professional developers will enjoy working with Weaver themes. Give them a try and let me know what you think (please,don’t waste your time with something like “…you are a most wonderful writer. I ask that you continue your good works.”