We’re happy to announce the launch of the TasteWP Chrome extension. It’s packed with features…

Does a site use WordPress?

When browsing the web, the TasteWP-icon will tell you if a website uses WordPress or not, without you having to click on it: it shows in grey if a site doesn’t use WordPress, and in full color if it does!

Which themes & plugins are used?

For sites which use WordPress, click on the extension icon to immediately see the name of the theme, as well as how many plugins are used:

To find out more about the theme, click on the theme drop-down…

…and it’s similar for plugins:

Try out plugins / themes with one click

In the list of plugins / themes a site is using, you’ll see a “Try out”-option:

Click on it to spin up a TasteWP instance with that plugin or theme already installed.

Also, you’ll notice that when you’re on a plugin or theme page in the WordPress directory, such as https://wordpress.org/plugins/backup-backup, you’ll see a new bar…

…which also spins up a free WordPress instance with that plugin or theme already installed, so that you can play around with it before installing it on your site.

We hope you like the extension! For any feedback, please get in touch with us .

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The post The TasteWP Chrome extension is live! first appeared on TasteWP – Blog.

TasteWP turned out to be especially useful for beginners (as they can just play around and make their first steps with WordPress) as well as teachers, as their students can perform sample tasks on the test sites.

Accordingly, we thought about how to make TasteWP even more convenient for teachers, and now launched a new module that allows them to manage & and have an overview of their students’ sites, be able to login to them, and also make their students’ sites not expire.

How to enable and use Teacher’s module

In the following video you may see how the Teacher’s module works in practice, for both teachers and students:

The first step as always is to sign up on TasteWP, which is free for people all over the world.

The second step is to contact us and let us know how many students and groups you plan to have and how many test sites you will need, so we can proceed with the arrangement from there.

Once your TasteWP account has been updated according to your needs, you will have a new area available in your TasteWP Dashboard area, called “Organization”. There are two major sections here:

• Organization Sites, with the list of all test sites that were created using your invitation codes;
• Invitation codes, with the list of all your groups and invitation codes for each group respectively.

In the Organization Sites list, you are able to manage test sites from your students: to quickly log in to the WP Admin area, to unassign sites, delete them, reset login passwords, disable plugins, download debug logs, and change the PHP version.

All of these options will significantly speed up the work with students and make it more comfortable for both sides.

In the Invitation Codes area, you can copy the code as text-to-clipboard by simply clicking on the code. You also have the option to delete any of the codes you created.

From the students’ perspective, it is super-easy to get into the group that the teacher is managing. After signing up to TasteWP, students can simply create a free test site, and then from the TasteWP Dashboard, use an invitation code by clicking on the “Use invitation” button under the Actions dropdown menu.

If a student is not happy with the current test site in the group, it can easily be deleted from the Actions dropdwon menu, and another test site can be assigned instead, with the same steps taken as for the first one.

As a teacher, you can also delete a site from your Dashboard, and a new one will be free for taking its spot.

We are looking forward to welcoming fresh WordPress beginners and introducing them to the large, ever-expanding WordPress world and WordPress community by providing them, as well experience developers, with neat WordPress test sites.

If you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to contact us. Our team will be happy to hear you out and help you out whenever we can.

The post New TasteWP module for Teachers and Students first appeared on TasteWP – Blog.

In our effort to make using TasteWP even easier, we implemented the feature that sites can be created with links alone.

To spin up a site with default settings, click on https://tastewp.com/new/.

Pre-installed plugins

If you want to have certain plugins pre-installed (& activated), just add ?pre-installed-plugin-slug=(pluginslug) to above mentioned url, where you replace “(pluginslug)” with the plugin’s slug as it’s used in the WordPress plugin directory (the slug is the last part of the url of the plugin’s profile page).

For example, https://tastewp.com/new/?pre-installed-plugin-slug=akismet will spin up a WP instance with the Akismet plugin pre-installed.

You can add up to 5 pre-installed plugins this way. Just replace the “?” with a “&” for the second and following, e.g. to pre-install 2 plugins use https://tastewp.com/new/?pre-installed-plugin-slug=(pluginslug)&pre-installed-plugin-slug=(pluginslug).

You can also use the cleaner link https://tastewp.com/try/plugin/(pluginslug) which will do the same.

Also, the link structure https://tastewp.com/plugins/(pluginslug) works, which means that when you’re on a plugin profile page in the WP directory, such as https://wordpress.org/plugins/akismet/, you can just replace the “wordpress.org” with “tastewp.com” and press enter so that you have a test site with that plugin pre-installed.

Pre-installed theme

It works very similarly for themes, just add ?pre-installed-theme-slug=(themeslug) at the end of https://tastewp.com/new/. As with plugins, the theme slug is the last part of the url of the theme in the WP theme directory.

For example, https://tastewp.com/new/?pre-installed-theme-slug=twentytwentyone will spin up a site with the Twenty Twenty-One theme installed & activated.

Url structures https://tastewp.com/try/theme/(themeslug) and https://tastewp.com/themes/(themeslug) work too.

Create templates

Constructing above urls doesn’t require login to TasteWP.

If you fancy advanced options you can create templates. To do that, login, click on “Site templates” and then on “New template” in your TasteWP dashboard.

Templates allow you to:

• Specify in more detail the site parameters, e.g. if it should be a multisite, WP/PHP versions etc.
• Upload your own plugins & theme you want to have pre-installed (i.e. they don’t have to be in the WP directory)
• Track how often your template has been used

Use cases

Setting up sites via links alone can be useful if:

• You’re a plugin or theme creator and want to give your potential users a chance to try out your products on a dummy site. For example, you could place above links into your readme.txt like this plugin.
• If you’re a WordPress teacher you can create templates for your pupils & give them specific tasks which require the pre-installation of certain plugins or a theme.
• If you’re a regular WP end-user you can browse the WP plugin or theme directory and then replace the “wordpress.org” with “tastewp.com” in the url to try it out, as mentioned above.

…and plenty of other use cases too!

We hope you like this new feature. For any feedback, suggestions & ideas, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at hi (at) tastewp (dot) com. Thank you!

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This blog will update you on all relevant news about TasteWP.

If you’re not familiar with TasteWP yet: it’s a service which allows you to spin up a demo WordPress site for testing purposes.

Get started by spinning up a site on our homepage, or by clicking this link: https://tastewp.com/new.

For more advanced set-up options, please click here.

It comes with a Backup & Migration plugin so that you can move your work to another hoster easily.

All of it is currently free. In the mid-term we’re planning to offer permanent hosting for a fee.

We’re always happy for any feedback. For that you can email us at hi (at) tastewp (dot) com. Thank you!

To not miss out on future posts you can follow our blog.