by Foster D. Coburn III | Jun 2, 2025 | Makeover, WordPress
I recently made a big change to the way Collections pages are displayed on our Seamless Textures Unleashed site. I wrote an in-depth post on Graphics Unleashed about the visual changes and how we feel it improves things for visitors. In this post, I’m going to talk about the actual construction of the pages and what changed.
All of the Web sites we build use the Divi theme and page builder, so I’ll be discussing tools specific to Divi as well as some that are just WordPress tools.
One of Divi’s built-in post types is called a Project and it isn’t really significantly different than a Post other than the name. Previously each of the collection pages was built as a Divi project and you can see an example of Volume 1: Wood project below.
While I was able to duplicate an existing project and modify it for a new collection, there wasn’t technically a template in place. If I wanted to change the layout of all collections, they would each need to be modified one by one. That makes for a long and tedious process when there are currently 47 unique collections (and growing).
If my goal was to truly rebuild these collections, it was important to build a custom post type that contained the data I needed for each collection. This required plugins like Advanced Custom Fields and Divi Machine. For those unfamiliar with that set of plugins, I have done several videos where I used them for other custom post types. I recommend you watch Basics of Custom Post Types and Divi Machine for a comprehensive overview. For more details on how the tools were used to update Portfolios on this site; watch Create a Custom Post Type for Portfolios Part 1, Create a Custom Post Type for Portfolios Part 2 and Create a Custom Post Type for Portfolios Part 3.
Using techniques described in those videos, I created a custom post type named Collections with each piece of data needed for a collection. This involved a title, images, a short description, links to a PDF, an embed shortcode for the PDF and product SKUs. Below is a screenshot of the field group for Collections.
For the Flipbook field, I use the 3D FlipBook: Dflip Lite plugin to generate a shortcode for each of the collection PDF files so they can be embedded in the collection template via the field shown above. We use the WP Easycart shopping cart and the Pro ID and Lite ID are the number assigned to the Pro and Lite collections by WP Easycart.
Then using the Divi Theme Builder, a template was created to display the data from the fields. An archive template was also created to show all of the collections. Below you’ll see a screenshot of the new page for the Volume 1: Wood collection.
Now if I decide to change the layout of collections pages, I simply need to go into Divi Theme Builder and modify the template. All of the collections (47 and counting) will immediately be updated to the new layout at once. A side benefit of the new setup is that I’m less likely to miss something when adding a new collection as I did find a few things I missed in the old method.
Lastly, a quick pitch. Our seamless textures work great for many design tasks including Web design. So check out the collections and add a few to your design toolbox. As an added incentive, I’ve put everything on sale for 50% off during the month of June 2025.
by Foster D. Coburn III | Feb 20, 2025 | WordPress
When you compare WordPress against other platforms for building Web sites, one of the more important features is that there are literally thousands of options for hosting sites. If you find the current WordPress host isn’t meeting your needs, you can move the sites to a host that does provide what you need. I’m going to share how we recently moved a block of our own sites and those of clients from one host to another.
Five years ago we chose WP Engine for our own sites and for client sites we host through our WordPress Gold and Platinum Care Plans. We purchased a block of site hosting at WP Engine and we have paid a year at a time to get the best pricing. At the time this decision was made, WP Engine was considered one of the premier WordPress hosting options.
Over time we became frustrated with the speed of their servers and occasional downtime due to server errors. Because we paid a year at a time and moving a number of sites would be a major project, we started looking for a better hosting provider over a year ago. By late summer, we felt we had found a great option and the plans started to be put in place for the migration.
Then in September, all hell broke loose when Matt Mullenweg started a war with WP Engine. Soon after the war started, we experienced some issues on our WP Engine sites because they weren’t able to update plugins and themes hosted in the WordPress repository. Not to mention the attempted theft of the Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) plugin. Thankfully the courts stepped in and solved the WordPress repository problem as well as blocking Mullenweg’s theft of ACF. While this solved things for now, things could certainly change again and we want to part of it.
This craziness solidified our plan to move away from WP Engine. It also meant we wouldn’t even consider any hosting offered at WordPress.com, Pressable or WordPress VIP since they are controlled by Matt Mullenweg. We preferred to find a smaller company that is outside of the drama while providing powerful hosting at reasonable costs.
Our search led us to Bigframe Digital. We heard the opinions of WordPress pros we trust and also directly asked a series of questions to the team at Bigframe Digital to verify they were the right choice for us. Before I go any further, I’ll disclose that the links provided to Bigframe Digital are affiliate links for which we’ll receive a small commission. While you can directly sign up with them, I’d encourage you to consider our Gold and Platinum WordPress Care Plans that include hosting with them and much more.
We worked with Alex Vojacek at Bigframe Digital to develop a migration plan that would make the process as smooth as possible. With any migration, the DNS settings need to be changed from the old server to the new server. This process can be fraught with problems depending on where the DNS settings are stored. Alex suggested we move the nameservers for all domains to Cloudflare. There are paid plans at Cloudflare, but they also offer a free plan that is extremely powerful.
Moving the nameservers for our own domains was very easy and there was no site downtime at all. We then worked with each of our clients to get their nameservers migrated. On each domain controlled by Cloudflare, we put in firewall rules based on the Web Agency Hero Cloudflare WAF Rules V3. There were a few other settings we adjusted to provide the best combination of speed and security. A huge benefit of having nameservers at Cloudflare is that you also have access to their Content Delivery Network (CDN) at no extra charge.
The Migration
We purchased a hosting plan in early January 2025 and started migration of sites almost immediately. Rather than trying to do them all at once, we felt it was better to do 2-3 at a time. This allowed the sites to be migrated at off hours and then to be tested after migration to verify all was working well. The first sites migrated were smaller sites that don’t change often. Once those were completed, we moved on to ecommerce sites where any downtime can be a problem. After a month, all sites have been migrated and we have given 30 days notice to WP Engine that we wish to cancel hosting with them.
I’d love to say the process was flawless. It wasn’t. We did discover some weird issues with some of the sites after migration. After researching, we found that none of the issues were with the migration itself. One that affected several sites was due to a security setting at Cloudflare that was blocking some JavaScript from properly loading. A quick change to those settings solved the problem immediately. The most frustrating problem came from shipping software used by an ecommerce site that did some things in a non-standard way which caused security settings on the Web servers to completely block it. Getting the shipping software to behave properly could take a lot of time so instead the security settings on the server were adjusted to allow just that software to access the ecommerce store.
In Closing
I am thrilled to have our hosting at WP Engine done. The last few months there were very problematic. It was been an absolute joy to work with Alex at Bigframe Digital and I have no doubt we’ll purchase more hosting with them in the future. Our sites are so much faster on the new servers. And should issues arise (they always do), I have full confidence that Bigframe Digital will work with us to get them resolved in a timely manner.
by Foster D. Coburn III | Jul 13, 2023 | maintenance, WordPress
As long as I’ve been using computers, I’ve heard that I needed to back up my data. The same is true of a WordPress Web site. Think about the amount of time and the expense that has gone into building your site. If something were to go wrong, do you have an easy way to return the site to a time when it was working? Should the site become infected with malware, can you easily return the site to a time it was free of the malware? If true disaster struck, do you have a way to resurrect the site? It isn’t uncommon that a potential client with an existing site comes to me and they have no backups at all!
In this post I’ll cover three types of backups to perform on your WordPress site. There is not a single right answer as it is a good idea to use all three types.
Hosting Company Backups
There are probably thousands of companies offering WordPress site hosting. Many of these plans include some form of backup performed by the hosting company. It is common that they backup your site daily and some even offer the option for you to manually backup at a specific time. Performing a backup right before installing the latest version of WordPress, a theme or a plugin is a good idea. Should something go wrong with the update, you can quickly restore the backup you created.
Even if you don’t do a backup right before installing an update, having a daily backup means you can quickly roll back to the site you had less than 24 hours ago. If you realize malware appeared at a certain date, you can restore the backup from a time before the infection (assuming it was in the time period of backups the hosting company retains).
It is extremely important that you choose WordPress hosting that includes backups for the reasons already listed and likely many more that I didn’t list. In our WordPress Maintenance Plans, all of the hosting we provide includes backups as part of the hosting.
While having backups as part of your hosting is a very good thing to have, it should not be the only backup of your WordPress site. I’ve run into two situations where other methods of backup were needed and there is a third I thankfully haven’t encountered.
In the first instance, the client had their own hosting plans and let the payments lapse. The hosting company gave them a grace period and even that passed without payment. So the hosting company deleted the site. They had no backup and the site had to be re-built from scratch. Not only did this mean a bigger expense, but it also meant being without a site for a period of time.
The second instance was even more severe as the data center housing thousands of servers was destroyed in a fire. The company I was working with had a site that contained massive amounts of data and would have taken enough time to rebuild that it could have driven them out of business. Thankfully they had a backup and had everything back online in a week or so.
While I have no direct knowledge of another instance, it is also something that should convince you to have alternative methods of backup. What happens if the hosting company goes out of business and takes your site (and others) with it?
On-Site Backups
The next type of backup is an on-site backup where a WordPress plugin is used to backup the site. This is extremely important if your hosting plan doesn’t include backups, but is also a good idea as a second-layer of safety when you do have backups as part of hosting.
The first thing you’ll need is a good backup plugin. Check out 6 Best WordPress Backup Plugins (in 2023) for a rundown on the top options. We use UpdraftPlus for our on-site backups and it also happens to be the top choice in that article.
Off-Site Backups
Of course an on-site backup is still not a solution should there be a problem with the hosting or hosting company. It is just a very large piece of data on the server. If you are going to create an on-site backup, you should take one more step and have those backups sent off-site.
One of the reasons I really like using UpdraftPlus is that it makes it easy to have that on-site version of the backup sent to your favorite cloud service. I’ve used this feature to send backups to both Amazon Web Services (AWS) and to Dropbox. Those are only two of the many options they offer.
Should any of the disaster scenarios (discussed earlier) happen, restoring the site can be as simple as spinning up a new WordPress instance and restoring the backup stored off-site.
In Closing
You shouldn’t consider the three types listed as something where you should choose the “best” option. That’s because the best solution is to implement all three types of backup. If you aren’t sure if you are getting the backups you need or aren’t comfortable with implementing them, I encourage you to consider one of our hosting and maintenance plans and we’ll take care of it for you!
by Foster D. Coburn III | Jan 11, 2023 | Tutorial, WordPress
We’ve been fans of the Divi WordPress theme since purchasing a lifetime license back in November 2015. In the seven plus years since that purchase, we have used Divi on all sites in the Unleashed family as well as the numerous sites we’ve built for clients.
While building all these sites, we have gained expertise in Divi and now we want to share things we’ve learned with everyone else. To do this, we have built the Divi Unleashed site which is dedicated to sharing our Divi knowledge. The site launched today with three videos. Over time, we expect to add many hours of video training. For now, we’d like to share the three videos with you so you can begin your Divi learning journey.
Learn about the Divi Unleashed Web Site, Foster Coburn’s journey to Divi, what you can expect to learn and how you can get a free Divi child theme.
Learn why you should use a child theme with Divi, how to install the Divi Unleashed Child Theme and the features it adds to Divi.
You’ll see how to load a logo file in Divi Theme Options and then how to display the logo using Dynamic Content in the Divi Menu module.
What’s Coming
Our goal is to add a new video each week that either teaches a general Divi skill or explains a specific task in Divi. Of course we are open to suggestions from you, our viewers, as to what we should add to our list. We hope you enjoy these videos as a start and we’ll get back to work creating more videos.
by Foster D. Coburn III | Jan 5, 2023 | WordPress
For as long as there have been multiple products in a specific category, there have been comparisons made. There is no doubt these comparisons help us choose the right product for our needs. I can’t imagine these comparisons ever being created without at least a small amount of bias. But today I’m here to talk about one such comparison that is loaded with bias and includes information that I simply can’t trust.
Before I talk about this comparison, I want to roll back the clock about 20 years for a comparison where I was involved. Adobe was creating a comparison of Adobe Illustrator and CorelDRAW. They reached out to me because I was the CorelDRAW guru at that time. Prior to publication, I was provided their view of how the products compared and I gave them feedback where I didn’t think it fairly represented CorelDRAW’s capabilities. Yes, I was compensated for that. At least I felt like Adobe wanted to put out an accurate comparison even though it would obviously favor their product.
Comparing WordPress Page Builders
I freely admit that I’m a die-hard proponent of Elegant Themes and their Divi theme. It contains the Divi page builder. I use the Divi theme on all sites I build for clients. In some instances I use something else only because a client already has a site built while I suggest we makeover the site with Divi. I say this to admit my bias towards Divi in this comparison.
Now let me link to the article that has me up in arms. Elementor vs Divi vs SeedProd (Compared) – Which is the Best? was published in April 2022 and my post is written nine months later. As I mention issues I have with the comparison, I’m not talking about features added in that time frame.
The most egregious error is a massive conflict of interest that isn’t adequately disclosed. The wpbeginner.com Web site and the SeedProd page builder are owned by the same company. Given that information, it is no surprise that they conclude that SeedProd is the best choice. Even if that is their conclusion, it doesn’t explain why they include inaccurate information.
Am I the only one who has noticed this? Not at all. Below is an embedded tweet thread all about this.
User Numbers
In their overview, they talk about active users of each product. They specifically mention the Divi Builder plug-in which leaves out the Divi Theme. It also ignores the fact that some users build multiple sites with their tool of choice. So it is best to compare the number of sites using a specific technology. I used BuiltWith to get an idea of the number of sites built with each tool. Below are what I found and my numbers are linked to a page with details.
According to their article, Elementor has five million active users, Divi (Elegant Themes) has 806,000 customers and SeedProd is used by over 1 million professionals. Clearly their numbers are far different than the actual usage stats measured by an independent party.
Integrations
As we move down the various categories compared, we get to integrations. This is the section that compelled me to write this post. The write-up on Divi ends with “Sadly, it doesn’t integrate with third-party email marketing tools or CRMs.” which is blatantly incorrect. I use the Email Optin Divi module quite regularly and it can integrate with 20 popular email marketing providers (see graphic below). This isn’t anything new, it has been around for several years.
Pricing
Pricing screenshots are shown for each of the products. With Elementor and SeedProd, all of the plans are annual. So the price may be lower for the initial purchase, but it will be far higher after 2-3 years when compared to Elegant Themes lifetime access. My own story is that I bought Lifetime Access for a total of $198 (coupons lowered the price) in November 2015 and I still use it today on a large number of sites.
While making a decision on the “winner” in this category can be subjective, the statement they make is laughable. “SeedProd offers affordable pricing plans compared to Elementor and Divi. Plus, you get more features and integrations with SeedProd, making it excellent value for money.”
In Conclusion
I’ve made it clear that Divi is my tool of choice. Maybe you prefer a different page builder or none at all. Elementor and Divi are generally considered as two of the top options. If I didn’t currently have a page builder I use, I’d also put Beaver Builder and Oxygen in consideration. One tool I wouldn’t consider is SeedProd and the deceptive marketing displayed by their post means I will never consider it nor recommend it.
