A Fresh Coat of Paint for IgnitionDeck

IgnitionDeck Updates

Happy day, folks! It’s a fun day over here at the IgnitionDeck HQ (which is really just our small team in California, Canada, and Texas)!

We have some news that doesn’t directly affect you but we sure are excited about it nonetheless! After, like, a decade we finally redesigned the IgnitionDeck website. Go on, take a look; we double-dog dare ya.

The website was way overdue for a reboot and the IgnitionDeck team has had their heads down making improvements in the plugin itself, as well as fixing bugs, and implementing a new licensing module and account management experience. Once we were through with that work we were able to take some time to build out the new ID website. We hope you like it. If you don’t, we have support tickets that you can use to tell us what you think about all of it.

What’s Under the Hood?

This is for those folks who want to know “how it’s built” or as my biz partner, Jay, is so fond of saying “I want to know how the sausage is made” (shudders).

The Theme

There’s nothing too technically crazy about the new IgnitionDeck marketing and membership websites. They were built similarly, with respect to design and underlying elements. Each website was built using the Kadence Theme, from the smart kids over at KadenceWP. It’s a great theme, one that I’ve deployed on the last six or so projects I’ve delivered from my own agency work. We’re a fan of the theme because it’s an easy way to start using WordPress’s block editor and there’s a lot of flexibility provided that just made the choice a no-brainer. The theme itself is lightweight and we are fans of how easy it is to build custom layouts in a pinch. I personally recommend it. Not only have we used the theme on our own site but our friends at Restrict Content Pro have just relaunched their website using.

My favorite part about the Kadence Theme is honestly the Hooked Elements feature. SO, so useful. I could cry 😹

I’ve worked with a lot of CI bundling and deployment tools over the years and we use Github Actions to push our updates to our web host, which is nice since we have a unified place to create issues and review code (and pull requests). That said, it’s kinda nice not having to tool around with Gulp or Webpack. No thank you.

The Hosting

We’re hosted by the good folks at Pantheon. They’re great and their hosting methodology checks all of our little technical boxes. Git-based hosting; ability to deploy from Github, multiple environments, backups, wonderful support, sanity and security by default. It’s a wonderful platform and product. If you build professional websites for clients I recommend them. You get it; we kinda gush over them!

Plugins

Kadence Blocks
Again, nothing too crazy. We kept mainly within the Kadence Ecosystem, so we’re using their custom fonts to manage fonts and their Conversions offering, which recently shipped and we’re fans. Of course, we’re using Kadence Blocks as well. OH! THAT REMINDS ME! Don’t forget, in IgnitionDeck, we recently shipped our own native blocks that can be used easily with block-ready themes and sites using the block editor (Gutenberg).

Also, we’re using Editor’s Kit and Editor Plus, which combine to add super useful features to the Block Editor; probably the main reason why I’ve taken to it so quickly.

SEO
For SEO, we’re using the long-standing champ of WP SEO tools, Yoast SEO.

Other Plugins We Like

There are a few plugins I like to roll out on every website, so here are a few of those plugins

  • Admin Menu Editor Pro – No one talks about this plugin, like, ever. It’s awesome. It lets you easily manage your admin menus and dashboard metaboxes. The OC organizer in me breathes easily when things are cleaned up and easy to navigate.
  • Google Site Kit – For Google Analytics; easy to use and setup.
  • Gravity Forms – The king of forms. If you know you know.
  • Advanced Scripts – If you’re the kind of person who likes to randomly throw code into a snippets manager then this is the one for you. It also provides a mechanism for managing CSS. Great plugin, under the radar, worth the few bucks they charge to buy.
  • ACF Pro – C’mon. If you build professional websites then you’re definitley using this.
  • Easy Digital Downloads – We now use it to help us manage our software licesning and we’re in love 🥰
  • Newsletter Glue – If you’re reading this post in your email you can thank Newsletter Glue. It’s an awesome plugin that lets you easily send emails from your WordPress, it can send your blog posts, too (like we did with this one). This plugin will make you fall in love with sending newsletters. Promise.

Why it matters

Jay, Emma, and myself, the folks currently behind IgnitionDeck, are committed to the long-term future and innovation of IgnitionDeck. We demonstrate this commitment through the continued support of our valued customers, through frequent updates to the product, and, now, with a modern refresh of our website. I guess you could say our commitment to the future ignited our desire to don a new look (I’ll see myself out).

Let us know what you think (or if you see any glaring issues).

Thank you for being an IgnitionDeck customer. If you’re not a customer, then hello 👋. Stick around for a bit and say hello!

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