Author Archives: Mark Reyes

About Mark Reyes

Web Developer based out of Southern California.

Go Phish

Welcome to the Season 2 Finale of the allwebSD podcast. I’m joined today by Security Engineer, Developer but more importantly one of my best friends and brothers from another mother. I’ve grown up with this guy since my high school days. I will not tell you when I went to high school cause I don’t want to date myself, but ya Michael Jordan was still the King…still is the King and we’ll leave it at that.

This is Edel John Marcelino of Beacon Cloud Solutions, a local cyber security company out of San Diego.

Look at it (digital data) like you would anything else…I’m sure everyone still has file cabinets full of paper files…if I lost those paper files, what would happen?

Edel John Marcelino, Engineer at Beacon Cloud Solutions

Highlighted Topics

  • Comparing data security from the past (2008) to now (2020).
  • Remember Target and Home Depot Credit Card breaches.
  • Summary of current payment processors: NFC payments, Google Payments, Apple Payments, Samsung Payments, etc.
  • Quarantine’s Top 10 Phishing Targets
  • Password Management.
  • Identity Theft Insurance – is it worth it?
  • Back up your data.
  • What the hell is a vector?

Meet Family Proud

Hey, everyone and welcome to another episode of AllWebSD. Today, I’m taking a virtual tour of a San Diego company called Family Proud.

Heads up, I’m taking a nose dive deep into cold water so if my questions seem spotty, I’m asking you now for forgiveness, so thanks.

Please welcome a member of the San Diego Tech Hub community, he is CEO and Co-Founder, Jaden Risner.

We connect patients and families to community and resources that are critical to their care in their time of need.

Jaden Risner, CEO of Family Proud

Highlighted Topics

  1. What is Family Proud?
  2. What’s the biggest challenge you have with your specific role right now?
  3. Why? What compels you daily to pursue Family Proud?
  4. If you could have a billboard with anything on it, what would it be and why?
  5. Who are the three people who have been the most influential to you? 
  6. How are you doing as a human in this COVID environment?
  7. Where can we connect with you online?

PS: He said “Instagram” 🤪

Review of WordPress In Easy Steps

Introduction

WordPress in easy steps by Darryl Bartlett, is a book which saved me when I was tasked with maintaining my company’s WordPress website. At last pass, the website was officially on PHP 7. Whereas my last freelance project used PHP 4.

Yikes 😶 .

I needed an insurance policy and I found this book to be a saving grace in helping me survive the modern day WordPress ecosystem.

Summary

The contents of this book are broken down into 11 condensed topics including: “Introduction to WordPress”, “Dashboard & Users”, “Appearance & Themes”, “Creating Content”,”Plugins”, “Creating an Online Store”, “Settings & Tools”, “SEO & Social Media”, “User Interaction”, “Tips & Tricks” and “Advanced WordPress”.

All chapters are condensed, straight to the point and are thoughtfully written. It’s not a complex read at all and each topic is fully supported with clear illustrations.

What’s Important

In order to thrive, you first must survive. And in my opinion out of all of the topics discussed you’ll want to focus on these 5 chapters first:

Dashboard & Users

You’re going to need to know the sidebar and the dashboard as a whole once logged in. The advice here breaks down the out of box WordPress sidebar and its available menu options. Find your way through the dashboard quickly and learn to add users to give them specific roles. Heads up, the more involved your WordPress development is (namely adding more plugins), the probability of your sidebar and dashboard becoming bloated would be high.

Appearance & Themes

Augmenting the look of your website will mean hitting the installed theme of your WordPress site. Here you’ll get the basics of what a theme is, how to install, upload and edit them.

Creating Content

Part of the grunt work will simply be adding or editing your site content. In this chapter, you’ll learn to distinguish between posts and pages and learn how to add text, images, video and audio.

Plugins

Most complex problems you encounter can most likely be solved in two ways: you code your way into solving the issue or you download a plugin from the open source community. Learn how to find, install, update and even edit a plugin. In my opinion, plugins are both a gift and a curse but you’re going to have to understand them, regardless. That said, I do not recommend you edit a plugin ever. That may break any licensing terms or cause undesirable side effects. Put that responsibility on the developer that built that plugin. Write a support ticket or contact them directly.

Settings & Tools

Learn the underpinnings of your WordPress ecosystem. Toggle each of the core settings and observe what they do. As important as it is to create a cool experience on the front-end, you’ll need to know what buttons to push behind the scenes to keep the entire house in order.

Conclusion

I strongly believe you could read this entire book in one focused hour. This book is a great utility to keep in arms reach when you need to quickly learn the outs of your WordPress environment. This isn’t a book to teach you WordPress on an academic level. It’s a book designed to keep the plane that’s already flying to still be at altitude.

If you’re looking to be immersed in the technical how-tos I’d recommend starting off with the source itself, WordPress.org. To add a bit of flavor, opinion and friendly guidance, follow Chris Coyier and CSS Tricks.

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