Credits

Unsplash Photos

The ZAG website uses several photos adapted from Unsplash. The Unsplash License permits their free use and modification. This gallery has links to the original images.

WordPress Plugins

This section helps to document the site for future administrators. Other WordPress users may find it helpful as well.

Code Snippets lets you run PHP code without editing theme files. I found it indispensable in my work on this site. You can toggle individual snippets on or off to test different versions or combinations.

Enable Media Replace makes it simple to manage the Media Library. Have you ever posted an image, only to later need to replace it with an updated version? If so, you’ll find this plugin to be an essential tool in your kit.

The Events Calendar Shortcode & Block replaces a quick-and-dirty kludge I used to get the Events Calender list widget in a normal page area. I wasn’t doing full error-checking and I had to override the widget with a custom version. This plugin means I don’t have to manually review every update to The Events Calendar.

Username Changer was a lifesaver when I took over the site. This plugin lets you easily revise outdated usernames. While it is no longer maintained, I have used it successfully with WordPress v5.2.4.

WooCommerce Authorship lets you change the “author” of a product. Some themes will include the product author in the product listing. This plugin let me change the field directly, rather than keeping a stale entry.

Development Tools

Arch Linux is my current distribution of choice. All of my home systems run Arch. It is secure and flexible. I even installed a complete WordPress environment on my home multimedia server to give me a development sandbox.

GIMP, the GNU Image Manipulation Program, has been my go-to application for graphics processing for decades. While it doesn’t include all the bells and whistles of Adobe Photoshop, it provides all the tools I need to adapt graphics for the ZAG website. It’s also one of the flagships of Free Software.

GVim is my text editor of choice. It’s a re-implementation of the vi text editor that I was using back in the 1990’s. While others may sing the praises of emacs, I prefer how Vim uses the same syntax as other Unix commands. For the ZAG website, I use GVim primarily for CSS, HTML, PHP, and SQL code behind the scenes.

LibreOffice is my current office suite. It is Free Software and supports open standards while including compatibility with MS Office files when I need it. I maintain the combined buyer/sponsor list in a LibreOffice Calc document.

Finally, I’d like to offer a recommendation to 3R Technology. They specialize in electronics recycling and refurbishing old systems. They were able to set me up with an amazing laptop at an extremely reasonable cost. I now do almost all of the ZAG website development on this system.