Amazing games that are only Created with web Technologies

JavaScript and HTML5 are quite powerful these days. Increasingly more games are built exclusively with these web technologies, and believe it or not, they’re quite entertaining. A couple of years back, developers were compelled to use Flash to create a game. Right now, Flash has nearly disappeared; WebGL has taken the lead. Here are a few amazing games that were crafted with web technologies.

Sinuous

One of the coolest games built with web technology; Sinuous packs sleek graphics, fluid frame rates, and an engaging gameplay. All you have to do is avoid collision with the red dots that are present in the game. Some dots however, give you power-ups, so make sure to grab those. For some additional points, move around as much as possible and steer clear of as many red dots as possible.

HexGL

HexGL is an incredibly futuristic racing game that was built by Thibaut Despoulain. It is fast-paced, fun, and interactive. Created with WebGL, JavaScript and HTML5, HexGL brings homage to F-Zero and Wipeout. The maker of this racing game – a computer science student - made it with a lot of enthusiasm and devotion, and believe it or not, it’s not the easiest racer you ever played. Do you have what it takes to make it to the finish line?

Entanglement

Who doesn’t love a well-crafted puzzle game? Entanglement was crafted with HTML5 and it has players create lengthy paths through the insertion of all kinds of segments on specific grids. With plenty of levels at your disposal, this web tech game features lots of tricky levels you’ll surely appreciate. Compete with friends and fight for the highest score. Last but not least, relish the background music sounds as they’re quite enthralling.

Cube Slam

Superbly colored and beautifully crafted, Cube Slam is a 3D arcade classic. Built in HTML5, players must defeat Bob, and they have 3 lives to do it. First few levels are easy, but as you advance you’ll see how Cube Slam becomes increasingly more challenging. The web tech game has a multiplayer mode too; this allows players to ask friends to join in.

Elevator Saga

If you’re an avid programmer, then you’ll grow very fond of this coding game. In Elevator Saga players must transport people in the most efficient way using encoding elevator moves. JavaScript is being used for every move, so programmers should prepare themselves for the ultimate challenge.

Olympia Rising

Fight with all your powers and make your way through the infinite pits of the Underworld. In this 2D action-adventure platformer, you play Iola who navigates a wealth of Ancient Greek regions in the hopes of getting out of the Underworld and becoming a person with a normal life once again. Featuring the most fluid animations and lush graphics, Olympia Rising is a 16-bit styled web game where players must slash, jump, climb and blast their way to move onto the next stage.

Escape from XP

RIP to Windows XP! Whether you loved or hated XP, this action arcade game made with HTML5 will definitely draw your attention. Basically, it celebrates the death of the famous operating system, and surprisingly it’s quite engaging. Players are in charge of saving XP’s last developer, who’s somewhere trapped and can’t get out. A must-play for all XP fans!

Out of the numerous games built with JavaScript and HTML5, it’s impossible for avid gamers not to find something to exceed their expectations. The ones we mentioned above are fun, lively, entertaining, and challenging enough to keep players busy for hours in a row. Which one’s your favorite?

This is the guest post by Fredrick Cameron and Make Up Games 365!

Read More →

10 Remarkably Unmissable Wordpress Code Snippets

Every Wordpress website owner continuously strives to improve the website's efficiency and productivity to achieve the best possible results.

Typically, we set off on a plugin installing spree when we start to feel our website needs some extra dose of functionality to boast. We start to look for the list of best plugins for either SEO, social media, for custom widgets, having a more personalized menu, playing around with the website's style and so on. So far so good, but it is no hidden fact that too many plugins only end up bloating our websites and severely affect their performance in terms of multiple areas.

This is where the small code snippets come in handy. Wordpress, for being as user friendly as it is, lets you edit the core files of your themes with utmost ease. There are several such snippets already doing the rounds. And in this post, I will introduce you to some that can really let you refine your website thoroughly.

1. For a Login Screen that Perfectly Demonstrates Your Brand Character

The login screens are unarguably the most ignored aspects of any websites, particularly in terms of styling. We go to great lengths to make sure no one unauthorized gets their way around them, but we hardly pay attention to make this page interesting for our viewing pleasure, or for making it very relevant to our brands, especially in scenarios where we have a number of authors and editors on our website.

So, in order to give the screen a more personalized touch, you can try out this code:

function loginLogo() { echo ''; } add_action('login_head', 'loginLogo');

2. Add Extra Contact Methods to User Profiles

Contact forms have indispensable importance building a loyal list of followers is on your agenda. When you have more users signing up and creating their profiles on your website, you are actually enlisting more and more potential buyers.

But, truth be told, Wordpress makes the whole exercise extremely mundane with its old-age contact forms and methods. So, here is a small code snippet that can be used to add more contact methods to your Wordpress website, just to make things more interesting for those who are interested:

add_filter('user_contactmethods', 'my_user_contactmethods');

function my_user_contactmethods($user_contactmethods){
 
  $user_contactmethods['twitter'] = 'Twitter Username';
  $user_contactmethods['facebook'] = 'Facebook Username';
 
  return $user_contactmethods;
}

All you got to do from hereon is give the methods personalized name and labels.

3. Making More Space for the Widgets

There is already a truckload of literature dedicated to the importance of the Wordpress widgets. They way let you add more versatility to your website is unparallel and thus, making enough room for them to snug in is of very high significance.

Here is a code for you to create the space with the right frame size so that they fit in naturally:

if (function_exists('register_sidebar')) {
     register_sidebar(array(
      'name' => 'Social Widget Area',
      'id'   => 'social-widget-area',
      'description'   => 'Social Widget Area',
      'before_widget' => '
',
      'after_widget'  => '
',
      'before_title'  => '
',
      'after_title'   => '
'
     ));
    }

4. Getting Rid of the Default Widgets

Talking of widgets, there is a lot of default fluff that Wordpress swings at us, and this is how we get rid of it:

// unregister some widgets
 function unregister_default_widgets() {
     unregister_widget('WP_Widget_Pages');
     unregister_widget('WP_Widget_Links');
     unregister_widget('WP_Widget_Categories');
     unregister_widget('WP_Widget_Recent_Comments');
     unregister_widget('WP_Widget_Tag_Cloud');
     unregister_widget('WP_Nav_Menu_Widget');
 }
 add_action('widgets_init', 'unregister_default_widgets', 11);

5. For echoing Shortcode in Template

Shortcodes are a revelation on the website. And for you to echo shortcode in the template, here is the smallest code for it:

6. To Register the Menu

Registering menu on the Wordpress website is something many webmasters are eyeing. Instead of looking for a plugin for the same, here is a code that you can use:

function register_my_menus() {
  register_nav_menus(
    array(
      'header-menu' => __( 'Header Menu' ),
      'extra-menu' => __( 'Extra Menu' )
    )
  );
}
add_action( 'init', 'register_my_menus' );

7. For the If Have Posts, While Have Posts, The Post for Extracting Database Content

The following code snippet is perfect when you need to extract some content from the database:

8. For Arranging the Content in Vertical Order

When you want the content to look organized and free of clutter, aligning it vertically serves the perpose just right. Here is the code for the same:

.element {
  position: relative;
  transform: translateY(-50%);
  top: 50%;
}

9. Disable the Automatic Update of Plugins

while there is no doubt over the fact that we should continually update our Wordpress theme and all the plugins, but there is a flip side to it. Many times, updates lead to certain uninvited errors ad put our website in a fix.

Thus, it is better to keep the rein in our hands and disable the updates from happening automatically:

add_filter('site_transient_update_plugins', 'dd_remove_update_nag');
function dd_remove_update_nag($value) {
 unset($value->response[ plugin_basename(__FILE__) ]);
 return $value;

10. Displaying Notifications on Dashboard

There are several occasions when you wish to have a feature that displays some notifications or messages on the dashboard. Here is the code for the same:

function showMessage($message, $errormsg = false){
    if ($errormsg) {
        echo '
‘; } else { echo ‘
‘; } echo “$message
“; } function showAdminMessages() { showMessage(“YOUR MESSAGE HERE”, true); if (user_can(‘manage_options’) { showMessage(“Hello admins!”); } } add_action(‘admin_notices’, ‘showAdminMessages’);

These 10 snippets cover a host of facets and functions you can add to your Wordpress website. Do let us know if you find these useful for your website.

About the Author: Amanda Cline is a dedicated PHP developer for hire & she is currently serving as a senior most developer with Xicom Technologies Ltd. You can hire her for successful execution of varied web development projects, both simple as well as complex ones. Get in touch with her via Twitter or Google+.

Read More →

7 Prolific Design and Development Tools That Are In Vogue

The absolute hard work and extensive brainstorming results in high end products upon which we are so dependent.

To ensure the ultimate user experience, its imperative to integrate latest design aspects and stand up to the current market demands. Whether one is designing an app or a website, there are several different key factors that need to be considered and dealt with utmost proficiency for sure-fire results. Hence, if we will observe the complete workflow that has to be accomplished in delivering a worthy product, the designers and developers really need to make special efforts. Precisely, it can be said that from designing to deployment of an app, an app or website development is not a job of a day; rather it involves numerous days and night efforts.

However, with the advent of high quality, proficient design and development tools, expert's job have become more convenient. And thus, it is essential for them to stay updated with the newfangled tools available out there.

Here in the below list I have jotted a few of the latest tools that are highly highly admired by designers and developers.

View Source

This iPad/iPhone application is developed by Paul Hudson and it offers a great solution to review the source code different languages including, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript of any web page. It thus facilitates web development and offers custom syntax highlighting, so that users can set a desired format. Moreover, this tool can be accessed as both extension and application.

Adobe Color CC

Creativity or innovative thoughts are the finest form of entropy, it often hits mind when it is least expected. It just happens and you can get creative at any time. This handy tool is a beautiful creation of Adobe is focused to help designers create colorful themes as and when an innovative idea knock their doors. It offers an overwhelming list of features to help designers with their job.

Gerstnerizer

Grid view is quite significant for app and web designs. This tool offers designers the freedom of designing a preferred grid layout. You may create grids as simple square, triangles or complex appearing hexagons, and define desirable spacing. For creating a grid, you just need to join the available dots.

Appsee Mobile Analytics

No matter what kind of application you are developing, for optimizing an application, you will always need an analytic tool or other the task will be quite daunting. You can efficiently measure, comprehend and optimize your app UX with this advanced mobile tool. This tool works perfectly with both popular platforms iOS and Android. It offers fabulous features that help developers improve conversion rates, profits with enhanced user engagement in-app monetization and more.

Unlike traditional tools that provides numerical data, this tool basically allows developers to review their from user's perspective and visually determine how their users are actually interacting with their app. Thus, it will offer a complete picture of your app.

Font Family Reunion

To ensure that your used font will work smoothly on all your targeted platforms, you can use Font Family Reunion. With this tool, you will get a table that represents which local font will work on the major platforms. Moreover, you can type a particular font name and determine whether that font is aliased, supported or available in the targeted platform.

Chrome DevTools Tips

Google not only offers utile and high-tech products and services to the users, but also offers a great contribution to the development of quality apps and websites. Google Chrome is popular among mass as a browser only, but in deed, it facilitates developer's job with its resourceful features. This tool not only includes set of several proficient tools, but also helps developers by offering them beneficial tips and tricks to efficiently perform development. Its posts and other offerings are updated every to ensure increased productivity and efficiency to developers with the latest approaches.

FX Photo Studio - pro effects & filters, fast camera plus photo editor

Images are absolute visual elements that enhances the complete look and feel of the website. Textual content with relevant images help generate incredible user experience (UX) and enhance user engagement. Therefore, it is quite imperative to ensure a high quality image. This free app offers incredible features that help one efficiently edit and improve image quality. It facilitates a plethora of filters, fabulous effects and a blend of amazing sub features that help create professional images. Hence, this powerful app will always be a great choice for designers and developers.

These are the top-of-the-funnel tools that can augment the efficiency and productivity of developers and designers. You can bet on any of the aforementioned tools, they are curated to deliver sure-fire results. Use these tools and complete your project with utmost precision and absolute performance.

Author Bio: Jason Roiz is qualified web development professional who brings to the table a quantum of knowledge around software development services. He meets expectations for OSSMedia, a CMS development company giving proficient Magento, Drupal, Joomla and WordPress improvement administrations.

Read More →

BuddyPress - A Guide for converting WordPress site into social network

Being familiar with the commendable offerings by social media, who wouldn't want to take an advantage of the same? Yes, social media is indeed one of the most powerful online platforms for gaining the spotlight you've always dreamt of. Well, if you've settled on WordPress as your website's CMS and are planning to convert your portal into a social network then choosing from a collection of WP plugins is perhaps the route you need to take.

Over the past couple of years, WordPress community has been busy developing plugins that can serve as handy tools for WordPress users who intend to migrate to a full-fledged social network status for their existing website. One such WordPress plugin which has received immense appreciation from global WP users is BuddyPress. Today, through this post, I intend to share with you the features and strengths of BuddyPress which allows you to build a social network with your WordPress portal.

An overview on BuddyPress

Specially designed for WordPress.org powered websites, BuddyPress serves as an excellent plugin that allows you to take your site/blog to a whole new level via incorporation of impressive social network features such as: user groups, activity streams, user profiles and many more. Just like WordPress, BuddyPress is also free to download and install. So, if you're thinking about setting up an internal communication tool for your enterprise, a focused social network for a newly launched product/service or a niche social network for a particular topic of interest; installing BuddyPress plugin would help you achieve your goal faster and effectively.

Some amazing features boasted by BuddyPress

1. Over 330 BuddyPress plugins are available for download

BuddyPress has been a regular favorite among the WordPress Plugin Development community. Today, there are more than 330 BuddyPress plugins which can be conveniently installed on the WordPress dashboard to take complete advantage of BuddyPress features.

2. BuddyPress offers collaborated power of social network and protection of a private network

If you're a business owner struggling to share information about your current/upcoming projects and campaigns via emails and intranets, then installing BuddyPress in your website can turn to be the right step. With BuddyPress, you can share all the business information via a password-protected approach, offering access to team members only. To put it simply, you can serve threaded articles, comments and status updates, while maintaining complete confidentiality of every piece of data that you choose to share.

3. BuddyPress supports internal messaging

With BuddyPress installed in your WordPress blog, you can easily send and receive private emails from members who have been registered in the friends list available within your private messaging panel. All members within your friend list will have their own Inbox, Sentbox and Drafts folder and they will be notified about a newly received message via a new message count and/or email notifications.

4. BuddyPress supports user groups

BuddyPress offers you the flexibility of gathering friends by creating a private, public or a hidden group. By becoming the group admin, you can invite friends to join your group, approve requests to join a private/hidden group and also incorporate innovative features into the existing group.

5. BuddyPress offers eight absolutely stunning widgets

BuddyPress is equipped with eight handy widgets which allow you to perform vital tasks in a convenient manner. To activate a widget(s), just go to your WordPress admin dashboard-> Appearance-> Widgets. The eight useful widgets available with BuddyPress include:

• Members- This widget allows you to view the list of members as per three categories viz: recently active, popular and newest members.
• Recently Active Members- This widget when installed in your site will display the avatars of all the members who have performed some or the other activity on your blog cum social network.
• Who's Online- With this widget installed in your WP site, you'll be able to view the avatars of all the members who are currently online.
• Groups- This is a widget which allows you to view a dynamic list of newest groups, recently active groups and the most popular groups for your WordPress website/social media platform.
• Recent Networkwide Posts- With this widget activated for your BuddyPress enabled WP site, you can view a list of all the recently published posts from all the network.
• Friends- Installing this widget in your WordPress blog will let you see a dynamic list of newest friends, recently active friends and popular friends for a particular user. Do note that this widget is visible only while viewing a member profile.
• Sitewide Notices- As the website administrator, you might feel the need to share some important information with everyone who's listed in your friends list. It is here that the Sitewide Notices widget plays its role. Just install it in your site and you can easily publish notices that can further be displayed across the website.
• Log In- With this widget activated for your WordPress site/blog, you can show a 'Log In' form to all those users who've logged out of your website/blog. Plus, you can also display a 'Log Out' link for all the logged in visitors members of the website.

6. Extensive Theme Compatibility

If you're about to delve into integrating BuddyPress with your WordPress website, then you'll be delighted to know that this WP plugin is compatible with nearly all WordPress themes. The best part of BuddyPress is that you can easily override its templates just the same way as you do it for your WP theme via a WordPres child theme. With BuddyPress, you're provided with a base template file which can be further customized to enhance the visual appearance of your WordPress website as per your specific requirements.

Wrapping Up

It's hard to deny the fact that BuddyPress has indeed played a vital role in helping WordPress blogs evolve from a mere online portal to an eye-appealing and fully-functional social network. Here's hoping the BuddyPress details covered above would have encouraged you to install this very cool and trendy plugin in your WP blog/site right away.

This post is brought to you by Samuel Dawson, working as front-end developer for Designs2HTML Ltd. a leading PSD to HTML conversion company and he shares concrete information, latest trend on conversion of worpdress into social platform & tips on front-end development technologies.

Read More →

A Closer Look At Integrating Gravity Forms With Mail Chimp

As a WordPress site owner with the sole goal of lead generation, equipping your web pages with specific forms is unavoidable. Serving as the number one solution for creating fully-functional online forms, Gravity Forms plugin is a must-install for your WP site. In addition to this, if you're seeking complete peace of mind in terms of conducting email-marketing via your site then a definitive integration of Gravity forms with MailChimp( the next big thing after Gravity Forms) serves as the right approach.

What you'll find in this tutorial?

This tutorial speaks about some remarkable features of the two most recommended WordPress solutions viz: Gravity Forms and MailChimp alongwith some lesser-known benefits of integrating them. As you continue reading, you'll also get to know about the simple steps that mark collaboration of Gravity Forms and MailChimp.

A glimpse at WordPress' Gravity Forms plugin

Whether you intend to create simple contact and support forms or want to go way beyond by building surveys, reader polls etc; Gravity Forms plugin will let you do all this and much more. Some of the interesting features available with this WordPress plugin include a drag and drop interface, lead capture, advanced notification routing, flexibility to create posts via external forms and conditional logic fields. Simple go to this gravityforms and start building and publishing WordPress forms within a few minutes. All you need to do is simply select the fields for form, configure the options and embed the form within your WordPress site/blog via easy-to-use built-in tools.

Now, let me throw some light on MailChimp

Since email marketing has become a vital component of every business vertical, you can't ignore its significance even for your WordPress powered corporate website/blog. Built by some professionals in Atlanta, MailChimp is a popular web-based email marketing service that allows you to design email newsletters that can further be shared on varied social networking websites and/or integrated with the 'active' services for your website. Some of the commendable features available with MailChimp include the following:

• Greater deliverability
• Professional styling
• Fully compatible with a range of email readers and other devices
• Approved bulk mailer
• Complete adherence to privacy policy

Go to www.mailchimp.com today and sign up for a free account. Once you're done with creating the account, integrate it with your WordPress website to start with sending up to 500 million emails everyday.

A few lesser-known advantages of integrating Gravity Forms plugin with your MailChimp account

The seamless integration of Gravity Forms plugin and MailChimp account is definitely seen as a great add-on for your WordPress enriched website. Here's a list of few benefits that can be availed, post integrating Gravity Forms with MailChimp:

• Automatic addition of new subscribers to your site's email lists; each time a form is being submitted
• Ability to control opt-in and addition of subscribers only when a certain condition is fulfilled
• Automatic firing of double opt in messages for ascertaining that only legitimate subscribers are being added
• Flexibility in populating MailChimp custom fields via the form field data stored in the site's database

Finally, let's understand the process of integrating Gravity Forms with MailChimp account

With the MailChimp add-on, you get an instant access to a suite of hooks, filters and added capabilities which work as the best tools for modifying/extending the default functionality of your WordPress site. Here is the list of hooks and filters which are fired every time a Gravity form loaded with MailChimp feed is being submitted:

• gform_mailchimp_allow_resubscription

  By default, every user available in your email list has a status of re-subscribed. You can use this filter for altering the user status from 'Resubscribed' to 'Unsubscribed' on your list.

• gform_mailchimp_keep_existing_groups

  By default, all the original newsletter subscriber groups are preserved and new ones are added. If you plan to modify that an already subscribed user has his/her group updated while submitting the newsletter subscription form for the second time, then using this filter will be handy.

• gform_mailchimp_field_value

  If you modify any value for the newsletter subscription form fields, prior to sending the same to the MailChimp API then simply opt for using this filter.

  All the above mentioned hooks are fired within the settings and feed configuration page for your MailChimp account. That's it from me for now!

Summing it all up

Integrating Gravity Forms with MailChimp means integrating all your online forms(registration form, subscription form, survey form etc.) with an absolutely stunning e-mail marketing service which has more than 7 million people on-board. Doing it for your WordPress website will allow you to reap the benefits in no time.

If you too have some points popping up in your mind(regarding this post) please don't hesitate in sharing them with us via the comments box provided right under this post.

Author Bio : Sophia Phillips has been working as a professional in WordPress Theme Customization Company and loves sharing information about leveraging multiple benefits of WordPress CMS in the best possible manner. Currently, she has an impressive count of WordPress web development-related articles under her name.

Read More →