How to Restart a WordPress Site – Reset WordPress (The Fast Way)

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Recently, one of our readers asked us, “How do I restart my WordPress site?”.

This isn’t something that most users will need to do, but knowing how to reset WordPress can be very helpful in some situations.

In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to restart or reset your WordPress site, the fast way.

Restarting a WordPress site

Why Restart a WordPress Site?

Restarting or resetting WordPress is a process where you restore WordPress to the default settings. Think of it as a similar process to restoring your phone to the default “factory settings”.

It will delete all your apps and customizations, so you can start over fresh.

There are several situations where you might want to restart or reset a WordPress site:

1. You’re using a demo site on your own computer. If you’ve installed WordPress on localhost, then you might want to reset after you’ve built a site and moved it from localhost to a live server. If you’re a developer and constantly test themes & plugins on your local install, then it can help to reset it every quarter to start fresh.

2. You’ve been working on a new site and want to start over. Maybe you’ve been busy creating a blog or website, but you are not happy with the customizations. Instead of undoing everything, you can simply reset WordPress and quickly start over with a new design.

3. You’re going to rework a client’s website. If they want something very different from what’s already there, then you might need to reset WordPress on staging server to start from scratch.

4. You’re learning about WordPress, hands-on. Maybe you’ve had a go at developing your own plugins or themes, or you’ve been experimenting with a starter theme. You might want to start again with a fresh installation of WordPress.

How to Restart and Reset a WordPress Site

Restarting your WordPress site might sound difficult, but it’s really not.

We’re going to walk you through the entire reset process, step by step.

Before you begin, it’s important to create a full backup of your site using a WordPress backup plugin. This is important in case you want to restore your site from the backup after restarting it.

Restart Your WordPress Site with WP Reset

Now you’re ready to move on and restart your WordPress site. We’re going to use the free version of the WP Reset plugin for this.

First, you’ll need to install and activate the WP Reset plugin. For more details, see our instructions on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Once the plugin is activated, you need to go to the Tools » WP Reset in your WordPress dashboard and scroll down to the Site Reset section of the page.

To reset your site, you need to type the word ‘reset’ in the confirmation field before clicking the red ‘Reset Site’ button.

The button in WP Reset to restart your WordPress site

WP Reset will pop up a message asking you to confirm that you want to reset the site. Click ‘Reset WordPress’ to continue.

Confirm that you want to reset your website

You’ll see a ‘Resetting in progress’ message for a few seconds. Then, your site will be restarted.

Next, you’ll see the homepage of your WordPress dashboard with a success message at the top from WP Reset.

WPReset's message confirming that you've successfully reset your WordPress site

That’s it. You’ve restarted your WordPress site.

Optional WP Reset Functions When Restarting Your Site

The above method gives you everything you need in order to restart your site.

However, there are some other options in WP Reset that you might want to use too.

Taking a Snapshot of Your WordPress Site Before Restarting

You can use WP Reset to take a snapshot of your site. A snapshot is a restore point for your WordPress database. It lets you see what changes have been made since the snapshot was taken. You can use it to roll back changes if necessary.

Important: A snapshot is not a WordPress backup. You should still make backups to restore your website.

To create the snapshot, click on the Snapshots tab. Then, scroll down and click the Create Snapshot button:

Creating a snapshot of your WordPress site before restarting it

You’ll be prompted to enter a name or description for the snapshot. Type in whatever you want to use, then click the ‘Create snapshot’ button.

Name the snapshot you're creating

Deleting Themes and Plugins Using WP Reset

By default, WP Reset doesn’t delete theme and plugin files. It simply deactivates them. However, you can use it to delete these files too.

First, you’ll need to go to Tools » WP Reset and click the ‘Tools’ tab. Once there, simply click on the ‘Delete Themes’ or ‘Delete Plugins’ links to jump straight to those tools.

Click the link to delete themes and/or plugins

Once you click either link, you’ll be scrolled down the page to the right tool:

Click the button to delete all themes from your WordPress site (including the active one)

You can click the ‘Delete all themes’ or ‘Delete plugins’ button to delete them.

Important: WP Reset doesn’t backup your files in any way. Deleting your themes and plugins can’t be undone.

After you click the button, you’ll be prompted to confirm. Click the Delete button on the popup to continue.

WP Reset will bring up a warning before allowing you to delete all themes

You’ll then see a message telling you how many themes or plugins have been deleted.

If you delete all themes, then you’ll need to install and activate a theme manually. Your site won’t work without one. If you go to Appearance » Themes, then you’ll see a screen like this:

The empty themes page with no themes installed

Go ahead and click the ‘Add New’ button and choose or upload a theme of your choice. If you need help, check out how to install a WordPress theme.

Restoring Your Data After Restarting Your WordPress Site

After restarting your WordPress site, any posts and pages you had will be gone. Instead, you’ll see the default pages and the ‘Hello, world’ post:

The 'Hello World' default post

To restore your old data, you will need to reinstall and activate the backup plugin that you used to create your backup.

You can then follow its instructions to restore your site from the backup.

Viewing Your Restored Content

Once you’ve restored your site from backup, your content should be back on your site.

You’ll find all your posts under Posts » All Posts. They’ll have the correct time stamps, categories, tags, and comments.

Viewing the imported postsv

We hope this tutorial helped you learn how to reset a WordPress site the fast way. You might also like our ultimate guide to speeding up WordPress and our list of must have WordPress plugins for all sites.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Restart a WordPress Site – Reset WordPress (The Fast Way) appeared first on WPBeginner.

Proposal to Rename the ‘Master’ Branch of WordPress-Owned Git Repositories

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Yesterday, core contributor Aaron Jorbin proposed renaming the default “master” branch for all WordPress-owned Git repositories to “main.” The proposal comes among a flurry of related terminology changes that the larger tech community is considering around oppressive language.

Based on the ongoing discussion in the comments of the proposal, the term “trunk” has gained popularity, and the original post has been updated in favor of that term. If it moves forward, trunk would be more in line with core WordPress, which uses Subversion (SVN). It would also make sense along with the “branch” terminology already in use with both SVN and Git — tree, trunk, and branches.

“As a part of tearing down the systems of oppression that exist in the world, WordPress should remove references to master and replace them with trunk in all git repositories,” wrote Jorbin.

Amidst the backdrop of the Black Lives Matter movement and following the death of George Floyd, the tech community has been taking a deeper look into its systems and determining what changes it can make. While there are larger systemic issues at play, many are determined to remove any potentially oppressive or discriminatory terminology. The idea is not that these minor changes will create an evolution overnight but that they are small pieces of the much bigger picture — cogs in the machine that must move for the wheel to turn.

“This is a small move, but if it makes one more person comfortable contributing to a WordPress project, it will be worth it,” wrote Jorbin.

GitHub should soon be making a similar change across its platform. In response to a tweet calling for GitHub to lead the charge and rename the default “master” branch to “main,” CEO Nat Friedman said they were already working on a solution. It is unclear how this will work going forward and whether it would affect existing repositories. For now, it seems GitHub is on board.

Thus far, the WordPress proposal has been mostly met with support. However, there was some dissent.

Core contributor Zebulan Stanphill argued that language is oppressive based on context and, in this context, the change does not make sense. “Similarly, no one in their right mind is going to think you support human slavery when you use the term ‘master branch,'” he wrote in the comments of the proposal. “The term ‘master’ itself is already used far outside of the context of slavery. Think novice->pro->master. Think also: mastering the craft, remastering music, and etc.”

As harmless as the word “main” seems in most Western cultures, a comment posted by Mike Schroder (original Japanese text by Takayuki Miyoshi and translation by Shinichi Nishikawa) pointed out that it was problematic in Japanese culture. “In Japan, for example, to put ‘main’ and ‘others’ as different groups has been utilized as an excuse to justify discrimination,” said Miyoshi. “Not caring about suppressing the Ainu people and their culture at all is possible because of the assumption that Yamato folk is the main and others are secondary. I now came to a point to think we should consider that to set one thing as ‘main’ creates marginals that get oppressed.”

Language is not always easy, especially when addressing a global community, each with their own terms that are possibly discriminatory. For now, trunk seems to be a good fit while throwing a nod to WordPress’s SVN roots.

This would not be the first time that WordPress has made a move to change terminology such as this. David Artiss, a support engineer at Automattic, created a ticket seven months ago to rename “comment blacklist” to “comment blocklist.” The change, which replaced only the user-facing text, went largely unnoticed and landed in WordPress 5.4.

Jason Coleman, CEO of Stranger Studios, also opened a more extensive ticket two days ago. It calls for changes of any use of “blacklist” to “blocklist” and “whitelist” to “safelist,” even within the code and database options. Such changes would be backward compatible and not break sites upon upgrade.

Change is almost certainly coming. The big decision is going to be around what the new terms will be.

For developers who want to rename the default branches of their own Git repositories, there is an existing project with instructions and a GitHub action for doing so.

Just another +1 for subgrid

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I’d say 85% of my grid usage is in one of these two categories…

  1. I just need some pretty basic (probably equal width) columns that ends up being something like like grid-template-columns: repeat(3, minmax(0, 1fr)); to be safe.
  2. Actually doing some real layout where five minutes in I realize I’d really like subgrid.

Subgrid? It’s a nice intuitive way to have a child element on the grid inherit relevant grid lines from the parent grid.

Here’s a great recent video from Rachel Andrew covering it. Last year, we linked up her talk on the same! It’s such a clutch feature and I wish we could rely on it cross-browser. Right now, Firefox is the only one that has it. (Chrome issue, Safari issue)

In my recent video, right about at 20 minutes, I realize subgrid would make even a fairly simple layout much nicer, like removing the need for variables or resorting to magic numbers.

The post Just another +1 for subgrid appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

How to Add Facebook Open Graph Meta Data in WordPress Themes

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Do you want to add Facebook Open Graph meta data to your WordPress themes?

Open Graph metadata helps Facebook and other social media websites get meta data about your posts pages. It also allows you to control how your content appears when shared on Facebook.

In this article, we will show you how to easily add Facebook open graph metadata in WordPress themes. We’ll share three different methods, so you can choose one that works best for you.

Add Facebook open graph meta data in any WordPress theme

Method 1. Adding Facebook Open Graph Meta Data with All in One SEO

All in One SEO is a popular WordPress SEO plugin used by over 2 million websites. It allows you to easily optimize your website for search engines as well as social platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

First, you need to install and activate the All in One SEO plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you need to visit All in One SEO » Feature Manager page. From here you need to activate the ‘Social Meta’ feature.

Enable Social Meta feature in All in One SEO

Next, you need to visit All in One SEO » Social Meta page. From here, you can simply fill in the fields to enter your Facebook meta data.

Social meta page allows you to enter Facebook Open Graph meta data

You can start by providing title, image, and description for your homepage.

Below that you can set a default image to be used if an article doesn’t have an open graph image. You can also provide the width and height of the image.

Set default Open Graph image

Need help choosing image sizes? See our complete social media cheat sheet for ideal image sizes that you can use on all social media platforms including Facebook.

If your website is using a Facebook App or has a Facebook page, then you can provide your Facebook app ID in the next section. This allows you to get data for Facebook insights.

Facebook app settings

Optionally, you can also adjust settings for Twitter and run a scan to avoid duplicate Open Graph tags on your site.

Once you are done, don’t forget to click on the ‘Update Options’ button to store your changes.

Now that you have set site-wide open graph meta tags, the next step is to add open graph meta data for individual posts and pages.

By default, All in One SEO will use your post title and description for open graph title and description. You can also manually set the Facebook thumbnail for each page and post.

Simply edit the post or page and scroll down to the All in One SEO section below the editor. From here, switch to the Social tab and fill out open graph meta data. You can set the social media image here as well as title and description.

Open graph settings for posts and pages

Method 2. Set Facebook Open Graph Meta Data using Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is another excellent WordPress SEO plugin that you can use to add Facebook open graph meta data into any WordPress site.

First thing you need to do is install and activate, the Yoast SEO plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Once activated, you need to go to SEO » Social and simply check the box next to Add Open Graph meta data.

Enable Facebook Open Graph

You can save your settings or continue and configure other Facebook social options on the screen.

You can provide a Facebook app ID if you use one for your Facebook page and insights. You can also change your homepage Open Graph meta title, description, and image.

Lastly, you can set a default image to be used when no image is set for a post or page.

Yoast SEO also allows you to set Open Graph metadata for individual posts and pages. Simply edit a post or page and scroll down to the SEO section below the editor.

Set open graph meta data for post and pages

From here, you can set Facebook thumbnail for that particular post or page. If you don’t set a post title or description, then the plugin will use your SEO meta title and description.

You can now save your post or page and the plugin will store your Facebook open graph meta data.

Method 3. Manually Add Facebook Open Graph Meta Data into Your WordPress Theme

This method requires you to edit your theme files, so make sure that you back up your theme files before making any changes.

After that simply copy and paste this code in your theme’s functions.php file, or in a site-specific plugin.

//Adding the Open Graph in the Language Attributes
function add_opengraph_doctype( $output ) {
		return $output . ' xmlns:og="http://opengraphprotocol.org/schema/" xmlns:fb="http://www.facebook.com/2008/fbml"';
	}
add_filter('language_attributes', 'add_opengraph_doctype');

//Lets add Open Graph Meta Info

function insert_fb_in_head() {
	global $post;
	if ( !is_singular()) //if it is not a post or a page
		return;
        echo '<meta property="fb:app_id" content="Your Facebook App ID" />';
        echo '<meta property="og:title" content="' . get_the_title() . '"/>';
        echo '<meta property="og:type" content="article"/>';
        echo '<meta property="og:url" content="' . get_permalink() . '"/>';
        echo '<meta property="og:site_name" content="Your Site NAME Goes HERE"/>';
	if(!has_post_thumbnail( $post->ID )) { //the post does not have featured image, use a default image
		$default_image="http://example.com/image.jpg"; //replace this with a default image on your server or an image in your media library
		echo '<meta property="og:image" content="' . $default_image . '"/>';
	}
	else{
		$thumbnail_src = wp_get_attachment_image_src( get_post_thumbnail_id( $post->ID ), 'medium' );
		echo '<meta property="og:image" content="' . esc_attr( $thumbnail_src[0] ) . '"/>';
	}
	echo "
";
}
add_action( 'wp_head', 'insert_fb_in_head', 5 );

Note: Remember to change the Site Name where it says “Your Site Name Goes Here”. After that, change the default image URL with the image of yours. You also need to add your own Facebook app ID, If you don’t have a Facebook app, then you can remove the Facebook app ID line from the code.

We would recommend putting an image with your logo there, so if your post does not have a thumbnail, then it pulls your site’s logo.

That’s all you need to do. As soon as you save your functions.php file (or site-specific plugin) it will start showing Facebook open graph metadata in the WordPress header.

We hope this article helped you add Facebook open graph meta data in WordPress. You may also want to see our pick of the best social media plugins for WordPress to grow your social following, and our troubleshooting guide on how to fix the Facebook incorrect thumbnail issue in WordPress.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for more WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Add Facebook Open Graph Meta Data in WordPress Themes appeared first on WPBeginner.

BuddyPress Contributors Begin Work on Block-based Activity Post Form

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BuddyPress broke into the world of blocks last month with its 6.0 release. Group and Member blocks were the first blocks to make it into the core plugin and next up are block versions of the existing widgets. Contributors are also working on block requests based on community feedback.

Today, BuddyPress core developer Mathieu Viet shared a prototype of his early work on adding a block based Activity post form to BuddyPress. This is one of the most highly-requested features from the plugin’s community of developers, according to a recent poll.

Viet submitted a PR for a playground inside the WP Admin that allows posting to the activity stream via a custom bp/text block. It is an adaptation of the basic core/paragraph block with a modified block toolbar that removes unnecessary controls, such as alignments, text color, and strikethrough formatting. 

The custom activity posting block adds a new emoji picker control to the block toolbar, with a popover that includes categories of all the emoji WordPress supports. This is far more convenient for users than launching their operating system’s emoji picker.

Viet’s PR highlighted several major benefits to bringing the block editor to activity posting: formatting text and adding links is more intuitive, inserting emoji is easier, and users can easily schedule activities using the block editor’s DateTimePicker component.

One of the biggest benefits Viet identified is the opportunity to standardize the UI. In the same way the block editor is helping WordPress unify the UI for publishing and site design, a block-based activity form will help standardize the UI for BuddyPress plugin developers.

“Today, when BuddyPress Plugin developers extend this post form, they do not have a structured way to process, they simply use a hook: it can be a very different one from plugin to plugin,” Viet said. “Plugins are mostly using jQuery (some can tidy this a bit using Backbone), UI controls can look very different. This is really not ideal for BuddyPress users. By extending the WordPress Blocks API to make available a BP Activity Blocks API we will improve all this and we’ll benefit from the ‘WordPress Blocks’ developers interest to give our users great new BP Activity Blocks to share richer content like media, or more interactive content like Polls.”

BuddyPress’ activity component is a frontend feature, so the idea is to test the block-based activity posting form in the admin and then work through the hurdles for bringing it to the frontend.

“Bringing this block based Activity post form in this area is the goal and a huge challenge mainly due to the fact we have less control over the layout,” Viet said. “There’s one WordPress administration layout, but there are thousands of different front-end layouts.”

Viet proposed BuddyPress tackle this in small steps:

  • Making the block based Activity Post form only available from a WP admin screen
  • Making the block based Activity Post form only available into a new complete “BP Default” theme
  • Making the block based Activity Post form available from a modal
  • Making the block based Activity Post form available from a new template pack

BuddyPress only supports WordPress 4.8+. If a block-based activity form is ready for inclusion in version 7.0 of the plugin, BuddyPress will need to raise the required WordPress version to 4.9. Sites running on older versions would be able to fall back to the legacy activity posting form.

Viet credits his PR to WordPress’ developer documentation for building a custom block editor and Dave Smith’s  Standalone Gutenberg Block Editor repository.

Drive Traffic to Your WordPress Blog with Instagram

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Traffic to Your WordPress Blog with InstagramA core goal for any type of marketing is to build one’s brand authority. In a vastly competitive arena with no limit to the marketing messages audiences are subjected to consuming each day, they often turn to tried-and-tested products and services. Consumers are more loyal to brands they can trust—and so the more trust an […]

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9 Cold Email Templates to Pitch to New Clients More Effectively

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Pitching new clients is one of the most exhausting Aspects of life as a freelancer, but it is also one of the most essential. Luckily, you can make pitching easier by using quality cold email templates. In this guide, we will discuss why email templates work and what an email template needs in order to be successful. We will also provide specific email templates for pitching new clients and explain why each template works.