WordPress
News & projects by AETHYX MEDIAE and WordPress
…and think you should too!
WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems (CMS) in the world, powering more than 40% of all websites on the internet. It’s no surprise that so many people and businesses choose WordPress to build their online presence, as it offers a wide range of benefits that make it a great choice for both individuals and the web as a whole.
In this blog post, we’ll explore why WordPress is good for you and the web:
- Easy to use
WordPress is incredibly easy to use, even for those with little to no technical experience. The platform’s user-friendly interface allows you to create, publish, and manage content without having to write a single line of code. Whether you’re a blogger, business owner, or website developer, you’ll find WordPress to be intuitive and easy to work with. - Customizable
One of the best things about WordPress is its flexibility and customizability. With thousands of free and premium themes and plugins available, you can create a website that looks and functions exactly how you want it to. Whether you’re building a blog, eCommerce site, or portfolio, WordPress makes it easy to customize your site to suit your needs. - SEO-friendly
WordPress is built with SEO in mind, which means it’s optimized for search engines right out of the box. The platform is designed to be fast and lightweight, which is important for improving your website’s search engine rankings. Additionally, there are many SEO plugins available that can help you optimize your content for search engines, such as Yoast SEO. - Secure
WordPress takes security seriously, which is why the platform is updated regularly to ensure that it’s secure against the latest threats. Additionally, there are many security plugins available that can help you further secure your site, such as Wordfence and iThemes Security. - Open source
WordPress is an open-source platform, which means that anyone can use, modify, and redistribute the software for free. This has led to a large community of developers and users who contribute to the platform, which helps to keep it up-to-date and secure. - Accessibility
WordPress is committed to making the web accessible to everyone, which is why the platform is designed with accessibility in mind. This means that people with disabilities can access and use your website with ease, which is important for reaching a wider audience. - Support
WordPress has a large and active community of users who are always willing to help each other out. Whether you need help with a specific issue or just want to connect with other WordPress users, you’ll find plenty of support in the WordPress community.
In conclusion, WordPress is good for you and the web because it’s easy to use, customizable, SEO-friendly, secure, open-source, accessible, and has a large and supportive community. If you’re looking to build a website, WordPress is a great choice that will help you create a site that looks great, functions well, and reaches a wide audience.
As you’re now probably convinced about the facts, let us help you in setting things up and make your personal web going: https://aethyx.eu/eshop/. Become a part of our network and be another happy customer! Because that’s why we’re here, AETHYX MEDIAE is helping you being a part of the future. Contact us now!
Best wishes and hope to hear from you soon,
the aethyx staff
Dear readers and customers,
on August 11 WordPress 5.5 was released, code named Eckstine, after US Jazz musician Billy Eckstine. Being only the second major release in 2020, it brought new features such as lazy loading for graphics as well as automatic update features for plugins and themes.
As the upgrade process itself was a success and went through everywhere without much hassle as we were used to WordPress updates in the near past, using and maintaining the web projects afterwards wasn’t.
In fact, several plugins just broke and we couldn’t use the software as we were used to: hovering the main menu on the left didn’t work anymore. Our editor was missing the buttons for all tags. All in all it was a messy user experience and it just felt wrong. Plus, we didn’t know exactly what and where things broke after the update.
There are only two things you can do at the moment:
1) downgrade(!) to 5.4.x
2) install a plugin which is called Enable jQuery Migrate Helper. [via]
What the latter does is check your site for outdated jQuery functions. After activation, your website/web project should function like normal. Only addition is a red coloured box which specifies outdated jQuery functions in use on your site. In our case it was constantly this one: jQuery.fn.live() is deprecated.
What we are doing now is editing the code for those plugins and themes where this error is shown. All updated code will then be found available in our WordPress plugin repository. We created this back when we migrated to PHP 7.x. It will now be updated for jQuery converted plugins as well. We are realisitic here: being in WordPress development since 2005 (15 years is a veryyy long time in WWW terms), we don’t expect some of our older plugins in use to be updated ever to run updated jQuery stuff. This is, in all its fame and glory, the “power” of OpenSource after all.
We apologise for the inconvenience if there should be any. So far on the frontend side, what you see as users, you should see no negative consequences.
Stay sharp and good luck updating to 5.5,
the aethyx staff
Dear readers & customers,
bit by bit we’re starting to remove all of our advertisments from our websites.
Firstly, we never made any revenue from these. We’re serious right here.
Secondly, we never were convinced that concepts such as “Google Adsense” or “Adshot” are here to suit small indie publishers.
Thirdly, the “DSGVO” is doing its thing to make it harder for us small publishers to support big advertisement corporations as these never did comply with EU regulations and thus their code snippets are illegal, buggy & not up to date.
Fourthly, but not least: these are too old concepts and are rests of a TV and radio era. We from AETHYX MEDIAE never supported that, by the way, and thus don’t think it will be too much of a hard step for us.
As we’re living and working remotely from anywhere on this planet in the 21. century, there are more agile and end-user friendly ways of supporting websites.
Following is a list of payment options we support.
From the beginning we supported “Flattr” for example, a Swedish microdonation service which started in 2010. Through this service alone a user/reader/fan can tip our websites in an instant.
All of our websites support “Bitcoin” since 2014, a decentralised cryptocurrency from 2008/2009 which will some day (with other derivates) take over traditional, state-backed currencies. We added a button on every website we built where a user receives our donation address by a simple click of this button. Keep in mind this protocol is not officially supported by the W3C (WorldWideWebConsortium) and thus is not working in every browser or smartphone. In this case just copy our Bitcoin address please from your browser address bar and make your donation.
It’s more easier using the “Ethereum” button, if you want to spend Ether: firstly we designed and implemented this button ourselves, find the project and source code here. Secondly you will be redirected to “Etherscan.io” directly and may use an official link or a QR barcode directly to make donations.
So far these will be our current, one and only future ways of making money out of our projects.
For small indie online publishers “Google Adsense”, etc. never were an useful option. Our most popular blog project for example, gizmeo.eu, accumulates 15 readers per day at the moment and thus it never, since 2010 as this medium started, accumulated any kind of valuable revenue. So f*** that! ^^
We are heavily dependent of donations and strongly advise you to donate if you read and/or use our websites, apps & source code repositories!
Please take into consideration: as an indie publisher we never may guarantee that a medium exists for long if no one is interested in it. To this date we did so much to develop the new media ecosphere further but never got anything back to make a living. As we’re also pretty long in this game, since 1999/2000, we don’t think this will be the future we may support any longer.
GRANDS. DON’T. COME. FOR. FREE.
Keep rollin’ & take care,
the aethyx staff
Dear readers & customers,
PHP 5.x which was made public in 2014 is nearing EOL at the end of 2018.
This fact lead to the circumstance that we have to code hard to make all of our plugins and themes PHP 7.x compatible until 2019.
Right now we’re exactly doing this and have already had some success in it.
So we are sharing our WordPress plugin repository with the world, in which you’ll find all of the plugins we use on our sites and we could successfully port to PHP 7.1:
https://gitlab.com/aethyx/opensource/tree/master/WordPress%20plugins.
Right now you already find three updated plugins. This repository will grow in the near future, so stay tuned.
We’re probably the only ones still maintaining these plugins. Some of them are very, very old. No wonder, as we’re using and developing for WordPress since 2005 already.
Feel free to share, test and contribute.
We’re giving back to the community here. This is how open source works in the end and we’re happy and proud to be a part of that.
Happy coding & maintaining,
the aethyx staff
Dear readers & customers,
for us at AETHYX MEDIAE it’s time to celebrate this month:
as of August the 8th 2018, we counted the 1,000,000th visitor at our oldest project, cipha.net!
It’s amazing in regarding the fact that we installed this counter back in 2006, when we ported the project from Greymatter to WordPress. Unfortunately, because this was an indie underground project, we never had the mood, time or resources to count visitors from 2001 on, when the project went live, to the aforementioned date.
What’s interesting too is: the number mentioned and the counter which you can still see live in action on the website on the lower right corner, these are really visitors, not page views. In this day and age both KPIs (key performance indicators) are confused very often. What a pity, the web is 27 years old now…
In page views, we are nearing the five million mark: right now it’s showing us 4,915,471.
We still want to thank anyone who still visits this intergalactic anthology antiquity!
As you may have read on our Where? page, we shut down the blog and released all of its content in eBooks, in 2017 also in books on demand via Amazon.
To be honest and that’s what impresses us even more here: cipha.net isn’t our first project to reach the infamous one million visitors mark.
The first project which achieved this milestone for us was zockerseele.com, our video game blog. It happened on April the 11th, 2011.
The counter here was implemented right from the start in 2005, shortly after we aquired the URL and published the system along with its first entry. So what we see here as counter data in the first sidebar is really what’s rolling in since the project was born.
zockerseele.com will also be our first project to reach the 2,000,000 visitors milestone. Right now we’re at 1,955,981. And due to financial and time problems we almost update nothing there anymore. In page views, zockerseele.com is even more impressing: 17,655,816. Never in our dreams would we have imagined to do a “no budget web project” with such figures…
We don’t know when but the party will be joined by gizmeo.eu, our gadget blog, as the counter there is somewhere in the 250,000s. As you may have read between the lines above this may take ages.
But hey, that’s how indie projects work! <3
Today we’re going to celebrate a little: if you like join us in Lisbon, most of the time you’ll find us roaming the streets around Bairro Alto or Costa da Caparica. We’re even sometimes visiting the small beaches in Cascais when we’re drunk, haha! Well, due to the fact that we have to get there by train this doesn’t happen very often. Of course we can’t guarantee that we’re still alive when you see or meet us but we’re living the indie dream and touching is explicitly allowed! <3 Just be prepared for a incalculable reaction. 😉
AETHYX MEDIAE.
We’re:
The Million Makers.
Nice to meet you!
Time to book us: info@aethyx.eu.
Sincerely,
get drunk already,
the aethyx staff