Hello world 👋 my name is Francisco, fcoterroba on the Internet and today I’m bringing you a post where I’m going to explain, with all luxury ✨ of details, what Progressive Web Apps, PWA or Progressive Web Applications are and how to make them.
Before we begin, as I always tell you, although I’m going to explain what it is later, I recommend you visit a post I uploaded more than a month ago, where I explain many of the most used computer terms in our daily lives. Since, in this post, you’ll see words that probably won’t sound familiar to you. 🤯 You can read the post here.
I also want to remind you that a few weeks ago I uploaded a video to my YouTube channel, very interesting, focused on home automation. Specifically, we connected, configured, and installed a smart light bulb 💡 with which you can change its color, turn it off, turn it on, and much more simply by using your mobile phone and/or voice assistants like Google, Alexa, etc. 👇🏻
Now yes, let’s begin 👇
WHAT ARE PWAs?
A progressive web application (PWA for its acronym in English) is a type of application software that is delivered through the web, created using common web technologies such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript. It’s intended to work on any platform that uses a standards-compatible browser. The functionality includes working offline, push notifications and access to device hardware, which allows creating user experiences similar to native applications on mobile and desktop devices. Since a progressive web application is a type of web page or website known as a web application, there’s no requirement for developers or users to install web applications through digital distribution systems such as Apple App Store or Google Play.
WikiPedia’s chunk is fine, as always, to find out while your brain explodes 💣
But, in summary, PWAs could be summarized as applications for mobile devices, both Android and iOS using web application technologies such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript and even PHP.
The graphical interface would be the same as the one available on the web with some additional advantages such as push notifications, being able to visit the application without internet access, access to device hardware, etc.
And one more advantage for us, the developers, is that we get rid of the fact of going through Apple and Google’s app stores. Which maybe gets a bit tedious 😅.
Look how it looks, at the bottom of this same page and even here, in this image, let’s see your viewing skills! 👓
Now that you’ve perfectly understood how this new technology works, let’s perform the installation and configuration of the necessary plugin to have our page as a PWA ❗.
Although today there are quite a few PWA plugins, possibly the best and most valued in the WordPress community, is
We’re going to perform the installation of this plugin online by going to Plugins > Add plugins > We write the plugin name and > Install
WATCH OUT 👀 Very important once installed, that we activate the plugin, if not, it’s as if we hadn’t even installed it.
When it’s installed and active, we’re going to proceed to Settings of the plugin name, in the left sidebar of our WordPress dashboard.
And, finally, we would simply have to configure all the plugin parameters so that our website is a PWA. It’s simply simple. 😁
Be patient, because depending on various factors, your website may take time to have the PWA installation notice. 😣
And that’s all for today guys, I hope you liked this post as much as I enjoyed making it. We’ll see each other very soon here and you already know you can follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. 🤟🏻