2. Dezember 2020

cubicFUSION Themes for Klaro!

„Klaro [klɛro] is a simple consent management platform (CMP) and privacy tool that helps you to be transparent about the third-party applications on your website. It is designed to be extremely simple, intuitive and easy to use while allowing you to be compliant with all relevant regulations (notably GDPR and ePrivacy).“

The tool is developed by KIPROTECT and can be found on Github.

Black & White

As I integrated Klaro on a couple of websites so far, I decided to make my work a bit easier and start building some basic clean themes for it.

I have a basic white and black&white theme so far. The download includes a testdrive folder, to showcase the themes. The white theme is also used on this website ;)

I really hate those standard consent management modals, that integrate badly into the website native design.

Klaro does a good job allowing to override its core theme and makes it a bit more pleasant. We do have to live with those modals from now on ;)

The themes are Sass-based and provide easy configuration options.

Enjoy!

cubicFUSION Themes for Klaro! @ Github

Klaro! Tweaks

Klaro is still missing some things, will collect some workarounds here for you to play with.

Missing events for consent modal open / closed …

Updates: Github Discussion
– 0.7.10 also adds custom callbacks to services (onAccept, onDecline, onInit) NICE!

Used a simple MutationObserver to do some magic for now, without diving into the core Klaro code for now. I am sure they already have an event listener or watcher setup.

var cm_event = document.createEvent('Event');

cm_event.initEvent('consentModalOpen', true, true);

document.addEventListener('consentModalOpen', function (e) {
    console.log("consentModalOpen")
}, false);
	
document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", function(e) {        

        var cm_target 	= document.getElementById( "klaro" ),
			cm_visible 	= false;	

        var observer 	= new MutationObserver(function(mutationRecords) {          

            if(document.querySelectorAll('#klaro .cookie-modal').length > 0 && cm_visible == false){	
                cm_visible = true;
                document.dispatchEvent(cm_event);
              
            }else{
                cm_visible = false;
            }
        });

      observer.observe(cm_target, {
        childList: true, 
        subtree: true, 
        characterDataOldValue: true 
      });
});

var cm_event = document.createEvent('Event');

cm_event.initEvent('consentModalOpen', true, true);

document.addEventListener('consentModalOpen', function (e) {

console.log("consentModalOpen")

}, false);

document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", function(e) {

var cm_target = document.getElementById( "klaro" ),

cm_visible = false;

var observer = new MutationObserver(function(mutationRecords) {

if(document.querySelectorAll('#klaro .cookie-modal').length > 0 && cm_visible == false){

cm_visible = true;

document.dispatchEvent(cm_event);

}else{

cm_visible = false;

}

});

observer.observe(cm_target, {

childList: true,

subtree: true,

characterDataOldValue: true

});

6. November 2020

Welcome Dashboard with Gutenberg – cubicFUSION Admin Enhancer 0.2.5

What’s new / What changed ?

Admin Enhancer is the first free plugin released under the cubicFUSION brand. The plugin is still work in progress, but a tool that is already used within some of my client projects. I am using this plugin to centralise things I love & need, when sending out a finished website or project.

NEW: DASHBOARD GUTENBERG / DASHBOARD TEMPLATES
NEW: ADMIN TOOLBAR
UPDATE: SHORTCODES

Addons included …

This version includes a new addon “GUTENBERG DASHBOARD“, that allows you to build a White-Label Admin Dashboards using the Gutenberg Editor.

It integrates with the SHORTCODES addon and allows to drop in the dashboard widgets via its own Gutenberg Block.

The Block provides settings to overwrite CSS from the admin widgets, allowing you tweak them a bit — for better visual integration. The Dashboard template itself can be tweaked using CSS and Sass via SCSS now 😉

I am also releasing the first integration of the “ADMIN TOOLBAR” addon, which allows you to tweak some of the admin toolbar and footer options (Hide WP Logo, Hide Toolbar on Frontend, Hide Menu Items ..)

Already working on 0.3 … ENJOY!

cubicFUSION – Admin Enhancer
WordPress Repository

14. Mai 2020

2020: WordPress Admin White Label Solutions ( Personal Favorites )

I am always looking for easy ways to white label the WordPress administration for myself and my clients. A nice personal touch for each project and an easy way to declutter the interface.

These are my personal favorites, that I use on a regular basis.

Admin Themes / Login Page

There are a lot of solutions out there, but many break easily and are really heavy to load. Some of these solutions I tried also break easily on new WordPress Upgrades. The first two below are currently my favorites.

Slate Pro ( Commercial )
„Slate Pro is a powerful WordPress admin theme plugin that reimagines WordPress with a clean and simplified design. White label your WordPress install with custom colors, a custom login screen, custom admin branding, and more. Slate Pro is now multisite compatible! Network activate to control the look of all sub-sites.“

Slate Pro is a clean and simple admin theme, that does not try to alter the interface completely. Small changes that make a difference. Color adjustments, logos, simple menu & widget enhancements and login page tweaks. Compared to other solutions it has been a stable experience, even after multiple WordPress Updates.

This is an install and enjoy solution!
Kodeo Admin UI ( Free – Open Source )
„Kodeo Admin UI turns your WordPress backend into a clean and modern user interface. All elements are well designed and arranged for the best user experience.“

Kodeo is another clean interface, that goes further than Slate Pro. Many areas of the admin theme have been changed. It works well with most 3rd party plugins, but I have had problems with some plugins doing their own little interface tweaks.
With Kodeo your WordPress Admin completely transforms and gives it a really modern & clean look.

This is an install and tweak solution! You might need to trim certain CSS properties to make it work for everything.
Material WP ( Commercial )
„Material Design version of the WordPress Admin Interface“

I have used this once or twice in the past. Its more of a honorable mention. The admin theme transforms the interface completely, but can feel sluggish on slower servers. It has an impressive set of options and gets regular updates.

This is again an install and tweak solution! It works with most of the 3rd party plugins and Gutenberg, but some things might need to be trimmed by hand.

Menu Editors & User Groups

When sharing the administration with your customer, you often need to make it as simple a possible for them. Depending on your setup, the menu becomes cluttered and overwhelming really fast.

I often trim menus for each user role, to make only those options accessible that are really needed.

Admin Menu Editor Pro ( Free / Commercial )
This tool has been part of many of my projects and has been a solid solution for years. You can hide & move menus, create new menus, tweak menus by user role, hide plugins and also tweak the admin toolbar with an extra addon.
Worth every penny! There is a free version available, that might just provide enough functionality for your next project.
Groups ( Free )
„Groups is designed as an efficient, powerful and flexible solution for group-oriented memberships and content access control. It provides group-based user membership management, group-based capabilities and access control for content, built on solid principles. Groups is light-weight and offers an easy user interface, while it acts as a framework and integrates standard WordPress capabilities and application-specific capabilities along with an extensive API.“

This plugin allows you to add new user groups easily and can tie into the plugin above.

User Profiles

When sharing the administration with multiple users, its always nice to add some personality to the user profiles as well.

WP User Profiles
„WP User Profiles is a sophisticated way to edit users in WordPress.“

The plugin provides other small addons, like WP User Avatars. Neat plugin to tweak admins, editors and other users.

Admin Dashboard Replacements

cubicFUSION Admin Enhancer (Free)

This is a new plugin I am currently working on. The current shortcodes addon can help you integrate dashboard widgets into the dashboard builders below.

I am also working on my own dashboard builder, that requires none of the solutions below and builds upon WordPress core functionality.
Dashboard Welcome for Elementor (Free)

“Dashboard Welcome by PowerPack Elements gives you full control over the WordPress welcome panel using Elementor.

You can personalize the dashboard with content and design built with Elementor. You can add heading, contact information, form, video, images, affiliate links, etc.

While the above plugin is free, you need a Elementor Pro License to use it!
Dashboard Welcome for Beaver Builder (Free)

“Welcome by Beaver Addons gives you full control over the WordPress welcome panel using Beaver Builder.

You can personalize the dashboard with content and design built with Beaver Builder. You can add heading, contact information, form, video, images, affiliate links, etc.”

Even though the plugin above is free, Beaver Builder is a commercial plugin!
Divi Dashboard Welcome ($22)

“Divi Dashboard Welcome gives you control over the WordPress Dashboard Welcome screen …”

The plugin requires the Divi Page Builder. Both plugins are commercial!

Enjoy
Alex

16. November 2019

Building Low Carbon Websites

I signed the Sustainable Web Manifesto a couple of weeks ago. The manifesto perfectly reflects how I have been handling my business and my projects.

I created a special „GO GREEN“ subsection to talk about the topic in more detail and give you some more context about the areas I can help you with.

We all share and use the web, just as we all share and live on this planet. This manifesto is a public declaration of a shared commitment to create a sustainable internet.
https://www.sustainablewebmanifesto.com/

CLEAN – The services we provide and services we use will be powered by renewable energy.
EFFICIENT – The products and services we provide will use the least amount of energy and material resources possible.
OPEN – The products and services we provide will be accessible, allow for the open exchange of information, and allow users to control their data.
HONEST – The products and services we provide will not mislead or exploit users in their design or content.
REGENERATIVE – The products and services we provide will support an economy that nourishes people and planet.

„If we embrace sustainability in our work, we can create a web that is good for people and planet.“

6. September 2019

Finally! GreenApe Shop goes live!

Together with my partners in crime (Dorit & Micha), we have finally opened our own personal online store.

We have been selling our single origin coffees (1st Single Malt Whisky Coffee, Basic – Single Origin Arabica, Kill me Quick Espresso -Single Origin Robusta), teas (Kräuterschorle – Kräutertee, Feuerkieker – Schwarztee) and rum (Fortune Teller – Double Aged Barbados Rum) using the Amazon Marketplace for the past 2 years.

No more Amazon

GreenApe has been a side project for the past years and I never wanted to deal with the maintenance of our own store. But its time to move on and do our own thing. Amazon has removed so many useful features over the years or added a new fee on top of other fees. Even though Amazon provides access to a large amount of customers, for small companies the fees build up quickly.

Our own

With our own store we can finally do bundles, coupons again and better optimized shipping. It will also allow me to better testdrive some new interesting features for my customers ;) Yeah its kind of my new toy or shopping lab! Its fun being able to work on untested new SEO features, structured data, merchant tools, shopping ads and tracking of all of those.

Locations

We have been selling in Germany for the past 2 years, but that might be changing in the future depending how well the new store shapes up :)

If you live in Germany, love good coffee, tee or rum … say Hi!

GreenApe – Makes Your Life Better
Homepage
Shop
Contact us

30. Mai 2019

Have you heard of GatsbyJS?

Gatsby is a free and open source framework based on React that helps developers build blazing fast websites and apps.

What they have to say …

Go Beyond Static Websites. Get all the benefits of static websites with none of the limitations. Gatsby sites are fully functional React apps so you can create high-quality, dynamic web apps, from blogs to e-commerce sites to user dashboards.
Use a Modern Stack for Every Site. No matter where the data comes from, Gatsby sites are built using React and GraphQL. Build a uniform workflow for you and your team, regardless of whether the data is coming from the same backend.
Load Data From Anywhere. Gatsby pulls in data from any data source, whether it’s Markdown files, a headless CMS like Contentful or WordPress, or a REST or GraphQL API. Use source plugins to load your data, then develop using Gatsby’s uniform GraphQL interface.
Performance Is Baked In. Ace your performance audits by default. Gatsby automates code splitting, image optimization, inlining critical styles, lazy-loading, and prefetching resources, and more to ensure your site is fast — no manual tuning required.
Host at Scale for Pennies. Gatsby sites don’t require servers so you can host your entire site on a CDN for a fraction of the cost of a server-rendered site. Many Gatsby sites can be hosted entirely free on services like GitHub Pages and Netlify.

What I have to say …

While researching some popular static site generation tools, GatsbyJS comes up often. I have played with NuxtJS and Hugo in the past, but what I REALLY like about GatsbyJS is the plugin / modular system. You can build your website with plain-old React and CSS styles, but make your development more efficient by adding node_modules.

Also being able to import any data source with ease, using GraphQL, is amazing. And when it comes to content management, you can easily hook a headless WordPress or Drupal setup into the mix and consume their REST APIs :)

I am not switching my own website to GatsbyJS anytime soon, but its another tool in my toolbox for future project consideration !

There are many tutorials on Youtube about getting started, maybe something to consider for the next freetime testdrive ;) Enjoy …

GatsbyJS @ Github

17. Mai 2019

CSS3 Animations with Special Effects.

A nice set of CSS3 Animations that can be easily used to spice up your design.

The animations can be triggered through Javascript, jQuery and the timings can be tweaked through pure CSS. The package also provides gulp, so that you can tweak every aspect easily.

Demo
Github

15. Mai 2019

A Helping Hand for Image & CSS Sprites

SPRITEOWL is a Photoshop extension that takes over the boring part of working with sprite images and CSS.
Retrieves x, y, width and height info of all sprite elements
Exports retina ready PNG files and required media queries of your Photoshop sprite file
Supports preprocessors LESS, SASS/SCSS & Stylus
Spriteowl
CSSOWL is a mixin library that works with Spriteowl.
LESS, SASS/SCSS & Stylus support
Open source
Cssowl

Two tools that can enhance your workflow immensely. Enjoy!

26. Februar 2019

VisBug – Hover inspect in the browser

Visbug is an amazing new browser extension that allows you to do a visual inspection of your website in development.

What they have to say about their tool and capabilities

Point, click & tinker
Edit or style any page, in any state, like it’s an artboard
Hover inspect styles, accessibility and alignment
Nitpick layouts & content, in the real end environment, at any device size
Leverage adobe/sketch skills
Edit any text, replace any image (hi there copywriters, ux writers, pms)
Design within the chaos: use production or prototypes and the odd states they produce, as artboards and design opportunities
Design while simulating latency, i18n, media queries, platform constraints, CPUs, screensize, etc
Make more decisions on the front end of your site/app (a11y, responsive, edge cases, etc)
No waiting for developers to expose their legos, just go direct and edit the end state (regardless of framework) and execute/test an idea

For Designers & Content Creators

A really nice tool for designers & content creators, helping them to optimize the look and feel of a website.

The extension is currently available for Chrome, but a Firefox Addon is in development.

Github
Chrome Extension

9. März 2018

Pretty checkboxes and radio buttons in pure CSS

Easily add beautiful checkboxes and radio buttons in pure CSS. Highly customizable via SCSS.

Basic
- Shapes – Square, Curve, Round
- Variants – Default, Fill, Thick
- Colors – Primary, Success, Info, Warning, Danger
- Color types – Solid, Outline
- Animations – Smooth, Tada, Jelly, Pulse, Rotate
Switch – iOS style – Outline, Fill, Slim
Responsive
No JavaScript
Custom Font Icons
SVG Icons
Image support
Toggle between icons / SVG’s / images
Lock
State – Focus, Hover, Indeterminate
Supports frameworks – Bootstrap, Foundation, Sematic UI, Bulma, …
SCSS customization
Supports all modern browsers, including mobile devices
Print friendly

  <!-- add class p-default -->
    <div class="pretty p-default">
        <input type="checkbox" />
        <div class="state">
            <label>Default</label>
        </div>
    </div>

    <!-- add class p-fill -->
    <div class="pretty p-default p-fill">
        <input type="checkbox" />
        <div class="state">
            <label>Fill</label>
        </div>
    </div>

    <!-- add class p-thick -->
    <div class="pretty p-default p-thick">
        <input type="checkbox" />
        <div class="state">
            <label>Thick</label>
        </div>
    </div>

<label>Default</label>

</div>

</div>

<label>Thick</label>

</div>

GitHub