The RunClick WordPress webinar software lets you run a business-level webinar platform on your WordPress site using Google Hangouts.
Digital business tools like webinars and video conferencing applications help organizations to make presentations online, work together remotely, save valuable time and work more productively. These solutions are also great for the environment as they reduce the need to travel, and provide workers with many other benefits and advantages, such as improving work-life balance, etc…
A business that will be successful must do the followings:
Improve Engagement
Improve Productivity
Reduce Expenses
Save Money
Save Time
Work Smarter
Move more goods and Services
Webinars and online meeting tools let you do this easily.
Webinars can help grow your business in many different ways. You can use webinars to teach people and promote your products and services, deliver timely events and presentations to a live audience who can ask you questions and provide you with immediate feedback, help users get clarification on any questions they may have, and reach a worldwide audience of customers for your business, events, workshops, services, membership sites, and more.
Additionally, webinars allow you to develop new relationships, grow your prospect lists and even create new products “on the fly” simply by recording your presentations and redistributing these as videos, podcasts, presentation slides with transcripts, and so on.
Webinars, then, are a terrific and effective way to do business, teach and learn new information and share ideas. The problem, however, is that the cost of accessing these tools can be very expensive or even prohibitive for many businesses, with some services requiring you to remain subscribed and pay ongoing fees, and restricting the number of people who can attend.
Fortunately, if you run a WP site, there is now a way to run webinars with no limits or ongoing expenses.
Introducing …
RunClick – Video Conferencing Plugin
Plugin Description
The RunClick WordPress webinar software allows you to run a business-level webinar platform on your WP site using Google’s own webcasting tool, Google Hangouts.
Google Hangouts is a powerful web broadcasting application, but it’s not a marketing solution. RunClick uses the high quality audio visual capabilities of Google Hangouts, and also gives you the power of pre-recorded webinars at no additional cost, plus built-in lead capture and follow-up functionality, giving you a complete webinar system.
RunClick (previously released as “Hangout Plugin”) is a very simple-to-install and easy-to-use webinar plugin for WordPress that will help you promote and broadcast your information to an unlimited global audience, build engagement with your attendees, close sales live online, turn your presentations into webinars that can be scheduled to run automatically, and instantly set up automated follow-up campaigns.
Here are just some of the many benefits and advantages of using RunClick to run webinars and video conferences using Google Hangouts on your WP web site:
No Limits On Events
With RunClick you can run as many webinars, web conferences, training courses and live presentations as you want.
No Ongoing Fees
Unlike a number of solutions that restrict the number of people who can view your web conferences, RunClick allows you to stream your information to an unlimited number of registrants.
No Monthly Fees
Many webinar services can be very expensive or require you to subscribe and pay ongoing fees, even if you have no new events planned for that month. Some services, for example, can cost around $500 per month.
Some additional benefits include:
Hold Virtual Meetings: RunClick allows you to hold web-based meetings with anybody anywhere around the world, monitor attendance, send out minutes, and take advantage of Google’s own infrastructure to provide superior video and audio quality to your online meetings.
Improve User Engagement: You can chat, run live surveys and share live virtual information with users to boost your interactivity and monitor results with real-time reporting.
Earn Repeat Profits: Your webinars are automatically recorded, enabling you to schedule ongoing replays and earn residual streams of income from pre-recorded webinars.
Plugin Features
RunClick is a complete webinar solution that offers many features to website owners. Here are just a few of these:
Easy Installation & Setup: Unlike the majority of webinar and video conferencing solutions that are hosted, RunClick installs easily on a domain. Leads can be added to your auto-responder and sent your replay later!
Excellent Quality Audio And Video: RunClick uses Google’s own webcast system to provide excellent audio and visual quality to your presentations.
Automatic Webinar Capture: Just press “Go” and begin running your broadcast. The plugin will automatically begin recording it.
Control Over Your Brand: RunClick includes a range of high quality templates, providing you with control of your pages and your branding. You can also add your own custom template designs.
RunClick also allows you to replay your recorded broadcasts and gives users additional replay features like:
Timed Availability: You can schedule your replays to be available and display countdown timers to increase urgency and maximize registrations. Once the scheduled time period has lapsed, replays then become unavailable automatically.
Replay Access Options: Schedule your replays to broadcast to any member of the public, or restrict access to event registrants only.
Testimonials
Here are just a few of the testimonials plugin customers have provided for RunClick:
“This isn’t blowing smoke… I’ve literally saved two companies well over $6000 each.” Drew Griffin
***
“I seldom considered running webinars because of the cost associated with them. Your plugin changed all that.” Robert Blake
***
Plugin Tips
Convert your powerpoint presentations and training broadcasts into instant info products and generate residual sources of revenue with the RunClick webinar software installed on your website or blog.
The plugin automatically records all of your broadcasts, so with a little imagination and a small investment of time and effort behalf, you can significantly expand your business and increase your profitability.
For example, even if you are not an expert in your field yet, you can promote webinars featuring guest speakers who will reply to your questions or discuss a specific topic providing thus most of the information for the webcasts. This will give you high quality content that involved no expert knowledge on your part to create.
Support
RunClick was developed by Walt Bayliss, a well-known and highly respected WordPress plugin and software developer. The software is well-supported, and users get lifetime upgrades and new releases for free with their purchase, backed by a no-risk, 30 day, complete money-back guarantee.
“It is truly rewarding to find someone who not only stands behind his product but is there to handle any question in a timely manner.” Cary Ganz, President Mobile Market Creator Inc.
Plugin Cost
The RunClick software license gives you the ability to run as many webinars as you want and can be accessed for a one-time purchase fee of US$97.
Please Note: The cost to purchase the RunClick plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The price above was current at the time this content was published. This may not be the actual pricing set by the software developer when you visit the plugin site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
For “how-to” videos showing how the software works, including help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, customer helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the RunClick website.
We Recommend
RunClick lets you schedule web-based conferences and provide high-quality webinars, online training, sales presentations and more without limits on how many people you can present to, and with no long-term costs.
If you run a business or sell a product or service online, or if you need to provide training to remote users, manage online meetings, make sales presentations, and more, then we recommend downloading and installing RunClick. It is a cost-effective, easy to use, well-supported and complete webinar and software system that installs and integrates easily with your WP site.
WordPress is huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next Page, you will have a clearer picture of where to start and progress to building a professional WordPress Site.
***
Disclaimer: We are not associated with WordPress or any of the WordPress products reviewed on this site. We may derive a financial benefit from sales of products advertised, reviewed or linked to from this site. All images and information on this page have been sourced from the plugin’s website and websites that provide Premium WP Services
Regardless of the type of business you’re in, or what kind of company you have, you need to have a business blog and start blogging about your products and services.
Even if you don’t consider yourself a writer or blogger, you still need to get blogging, especially in today’s ultra-competitive global online economy.
If anything, running a business blog is essential because it offers another way to touch and connect with your existing and potential customers.
Getting a business blog up and running is easy to do. If you set up a business blog on a platform like WordPress, then you will not only have a business blog that is easy to manage, but you will also have a vehicle that gives you full control of your online presence.
There are several great reasons to start your own business blog. Here are just 5 ways to get you thinking about a business blog of your own:
#1 – Small Business Blogs Help You Create A More Personal Connection With Your Customers
Like social media, your blog gives you the opportunity to connect with your customers on a deeper and more personal level.
Traditionally, most websites are composed of static pages that “talk at” users. In other words, they simply tell other people about your business. A business blog can help you “talk with” your readers, because blogs can be made to be interactive.
Running a business blog allows you to start a dialogue or conversation with your visitors. Your blog readers can leave comments after each article you post, which you can reply to. This both helps your audience to get to know you better, as well as helping you to better understand the needs of your market.
Your blog can also help give your business a human face and a social presence. There are many interactive “add-ons” you can add to your business blog to help you improve the way you connect with your customers and visitors.
With WordPress, for example, you can go beyond just replying to visitor comments and add additional interactive functionality to your blog using third-party applications called “plugins” that integrate seamlessly and easily with your blog to provide extra features like:
Personal Greetings
Contact Forms
Facebook Comments
Social Sharing Buttons
Click-To-Call Buttons
Polls
Surveys
Maps
Customer Reviews And Testimonials
Forums
Interactive Chat / Video Chat Facilities
Interactive Webinars
Customer Support Help Desk
Software That Tracks And Monitors Visitor Behaviour On Your Site
Etc…
We provide training, information and reviews on using many of these interactive plugins in other blog posts and in our user training section.
#2 – Small Business Blogs Help You Build Expertise And Credibility
One of the best things about having a business blog is that it gives you an opportunity to establish your expertise and build your reputation and credibility in your field.
No matter what business you’re in, there is so much you probably know that you can blog about. By sharing your knowledge with others, you are not only educating people about your business, you are also educating them about “how” to do business with you, and positioning your products and services in the forefront of the minds of those who are searching for, and who need products and services like those you provide.
For example, if you’re a law firm, blog about common legal questions that people have and what can be done (i.e. What your firm can do) to help solve legal issues. If you’re a chiropractor, write about ways to maintain a healthy posture and prevent back pain. If you’re an environmentally-conscious cleaning company, share some great house cleaning tips and the dangers of using chemical cleaners.
You can add informative and educational content to your business blog that will help build your credibility and expertise like tips, case studies, reviews and comparisons, etc. In a number of exciting ways.
For example, you can add videos to your YouTube channel and stream these on your blog. This not only helps you build credibility, it also gives your business additional exposure online.
You can add infographs to your content and share these on Pinterest …
You can start a regular audio broadcast section where you present interviews with other experts in your field, or run webinars where you train customers to use your products.
By using your blog to show your website visitors how much you know about your industry and your business, you will help them get to know you better, like you more and trust you more. This builds credibility and helps your business grow more sales.
#3 – Small Business Blogs Provide Customized Marketing
Blogging offers a much more effective and affordable way to promote your business than most other methods of marketing, both online and offline.
For example, did you know that a WordPress-powered business blog can be configured so that as soon as you publish new content on your site, your information is instantly distributed to all of the main search engines (e.g. Google, Bing), announced on all of the main social networks (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest) and added to dozens of other authoritative online directories (e.g. Content and news feed aggregators)?
With a static website, your web pages just sit inside your server. You have to actively drive visitors to your site with methods like paid advertising to get new prospects.
With an expertly-configured WordPress blog, however, you can start driving new visitors and targeted prospects to your site just by adding new content about your business. All that is required to automate this process is having a WordPress blog set up for your business, and then getting someone who knows how to expertly configure your blog settings to tweak a few settings and link your blog to some external accounts using a few tools and methods that are freely available to online users.
Ultimately, the most cost-effective form of marketing a business online is to get organic traffic (i.e. “Free traffic). You can achieve this simply by writing content about your business on a regular basis and posting it on your expertly-configured WordPress blog.
Also, by reading your visitors’ comments, and adding interactive features to your blog like statistical and behavioural monitoring tools and learning how to interpret the data, you can start getting information on your target market and using this intelligence to improve your business marketing.
#4 – A Business Blog Benefits You In The Search Engines
Adding a blog to your static website is a great way to attract traffic from search engines.
We’ve talked about the benefits of having an expertly-configured blog to automatically notify search engines whenever new content is posted. Search engines favour sites that have fresh, updated content. So, if you set up a business blog, get it expertly-configured and then consistently write just one blog post per week, you will see more visitors coming your way, especially if you choose a few good keywords with a reasonable amount of searches for your posts.
Do the same thing, but write two or three blog posts each week and your traffic will increase significantly.
#5 – A Business Blog Increases Visibility For Your Products And Services
Through your blog, you can let your existing and potential new customers know about your products and services. You can inform them about discounts, special offers, new inventory and discontinued items, events and so much more! You can even extend your blog’s reach into social media so that every post you add to your blog shows up on social sites as well.
Blogging isn’t like writing an award-winning novel. Identify your ideal customer, and focus on their wants, needs, interests and their questions. Write short, conversational posts as if you’re speaking directly to them. Pick topics related to your business and share your expertise with them through informative and educational articles. Your blog doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel; it just needs to be helpful and engaging to visitors.
Small Business Blogs
One last tip: Don’t let concerns like “not having enough time” and “not being a good writer” stop you from starting a business blog. The truth is, in today’s Information Age, you cannot afford to not have a vehicle like a business blog, where you can share your expertise and build credibility and trust by engaging and interacting online directly with your customers and prospects, answering their questions and providing them with helpful and useful information.
Small Business Blogs Topic – Using A Blog To Engage Your Customers
A blog is a powerful marketing tool for small business owners. A good blog engages its visitors and encourages them to get actively involved.
Unlike regular traditional static websites, a business blog allows you to communicate with your customers in the form of a dialogue. By fully engaging your prospects and customers, your blog can help to boost trust and loyalty and keep them coming back for more.
If you are a small business owner, you need a blog, and you need to use your blog to engage your customers. Below are some simple ideas to get this interaction going:
Small Business Blogs Topic
Contests and Giveaways
Contests are an effective way to build social influence and generate email leads where visitors provide you with their real name and email address. Because the incentive of winning is very strong, running contests can also get visitors engaging with you who haven’t done so before, and sharing your contest with their social network.
Why not hold a contest through your blog where the winner (or winners) get a prize? This could be a prize like an Amazon gift voucher, or something directly related to using your products or services, like a free service, product sample, or download access to information that others would normally have to purchase in order to get access, or even a blend of tangible goods coupled with something that is specific to your business or industry.
You don’t need to have a big budget to run your first contest. For example, you can offer a $25 Amazon gift card and a 30-minute free consultation call with you for help, if you provide any kind of coaching or consulting services, or a free session, e-book or product sample.
You can also make the contest involve getting other people to sign up to your newsletter or opt-in list, or promoting your video or blog on their social networks, etc.
With a WordPress-powered blog, for example, you can integrate a contest management plugin like Contest Domination to help you build a list of subscribers by running contests and giveaways …
Contest Domination is a simple and easy to set up a plugin that lets you quickly set up, manage and track unlimited contests on your blog. You can sign up for a free version, or upgrade to the paid versions, which gives you access to features like integration with your autoresponder, custom fields, detailed analytics, domain mapping, and more.
In addition to the plugin above, you can also check out the social contest and sweepstake plugins and applications made by Wishpond.
Note: If you plan to run brand promotions, competitions, Facebook promotions, or any other type of sweepstake or contest that includes an element of chance (or even skill, e.g. “Tell us in 25 words or less …”), make sure that you are not breaking any laws. Some countries require you to have a permit to run competitions, and your competition must comply with certain conditions to be legally acceptable.
If everything is okay and you’re good to go with your marketing strategy, then post the rules online and make sure that people clearly understand what they are required to do to participate and qualify for the prize(s) you’re offering.
Also, make sure to promote your contest or giveaway on all of your marketing channels including social media, your website and your offline materials. Remember that the objective of this exercise is to drive as much traffic to your blog as possible.
Small Business Blog Topics
Case Studies
Using case studies on your blog not only helps to engage your customers, they also help you accomplish many great things at once.
Case studies attract new readers, showcase your clients, educate customers and highlight many of the benefits of using your business. A case study gives customers practical information they can use and provides them with concrete proof that your business gets results.
If you don’t know where to begin when it comes to creating case studies, search online for “how to create a case study”, or see this great article: 8 Tips For Creating A Great Case Study.
Useful Tips: Adding a written or video testimonial to a case study helps to increase engagement with your blog readers and gives your case study greater authority and authenticity!
You can also offer to send readers a free case study in exchange for signing up to your newsletter or opt-in form, as the example screenshot below shows …
Customer Success Stories
Customer success stories are similar to case studies in that they can serve as testimonials and “social proof” for your business.
Whenever a customer thanks you or lets you know how your business has helped them, contact them immediately and ask them if they would mind being featured on your blog. You can offer to keep their testimonial anonymous if they prefer, or promote them on your blog with a live link pointing back to their website.
Useful Tip: If you receive great feedback via email or via the telephone that you would like to use as a testimonial, you can make it easier for your customers to provide you with a testimonial by creating the testimonial yourself using the words of their email or quoting the feedback they’ve given you, and then simply emailing them the finished testimonial and asking them to give you permission to use it, or to add any modifications they would like to see made before it gets published when they reply with their permission. This also lets you control the way the testimonial will appear when published.
If your business blog is built using the WordPress platform, you can easily add testimonial add-ons (called plugins) to your site that lets you display customer testimonials on your site. Here are a few testimonial plugins you can check out for your WordPress site:
WP Customer Reviews – This free plugin allows you to setup a specific page on your blog to receive customer testimonials for your business/service or to write reviews about multiple products (using multiple pages).
WP Elegant Testimonial – This is an easy to use free WordPress Testimonial Plugin that lets you insert professional-looking testimonials into any post or page. There is no limit to the number of testimonials you can use on a specific page. You can insert as many testimonials as you want using shortcodes.
Testimonials Widget – This plugin allows you to display random or selected portfolio, quotes, reviews, showcases, or text with images on your WordPress blog. You can insert Testimonials Widget content via shortcode, theme functions, or widgets with category and tag selections and having multiple display options such as random or specific ordering.
Testimonials are a great way to engage with your readers and show them proof and examples of what your business can do to help them.
Small Business Blogs Topic
Lists And Checklists
Blog readers love lists and checklists. Lists are not only easy to read and to digest, but useful checklists can be shared socially around the web, driving more visitors to your blog.
Useful Tips: Some of the most popular articles to write lists for are “Top Ten” lists and “Biggest Mistakes To Avoid” lists. Start a “Topic Diary” and write your ideas for list topics down, then continue adding to this list whenever you come across a new topic idea. If you need some inspiration, check out Listverse – a website dedicated to “Top 10 Lists”.
You can engage your blog visitors and attract a lot of reader comments simply by asking them at the end of your list post what some of their ideas are, which item on the list was their favourite, was there anything they felt was left off the list, any new lists about your industry that they would like to see, etc…
Creative Ideas For Your Products
A great strategy for engaging readers on your small business blog is to write blog posts that show people how to use your products in creative ways. This not only informs and educates your potential customers about new ideas and practical ways to use your products or services, it also shows off the benefits and versatility of what you offer and gives them new options for engaging with your business.
Think about all the different types of customers your business can cater to, all of the problems and challenges it can help them solve and begin to write about all of the different ways your products and services can be put to use.
Create a customer survey and ask your existing customers what kind of problems your products helped to solve, or if they have used your products in any unusual or unconventional way and what results did they get.
At the end of your blog posts where you share creative product ideas, uses and applications ask your readers if they can see any additional uses for what your business has to offer.
Videos
You don’t have to only write blog posts. You can also create videos and add these to your blog.
Videos are a great way to engage readers on your blog, because they show you rather than just tell you what to do.
You can purchase screen capture and video editing software like Camtasia or that lets you create narrated “how to” videos as you navigate your computer and browsers, or just record videos on a smartphone, then upload these to YouTube and embed them on your blog.
If you organize events or social functions, or do any kind of external work for clients (e.g. home building, interior decorating, landscaping, flower arranging, etc…), you can create a ‘before and after” video with a commentary of the processes involved.
Make “how to” videos that teach your customers about you and your business expertise. Even better, make it fun and you’ll increase the chances of your video being shared with others and going viral online.
Infographics
Infographics are visual representations of information. They give your readers a visually exciting way to access and digest the information you are offering.
Basically, you take the information you want to convey and then make something visually creative with it, using graphs, images, statistical reports, etc …
Here’s an example of what an infographic looks like…
You can make your own infographic using free online programs – just search for “how to create infographics free” online.
Useful Tip: After creating and posting an infographic on your blog, make sure to share it on Pinterest. Pinterest is a content sharing service that allows members to “pin” images, videos and other objects to their pinboard, and this can help drive new visitors and prospects to your blog …
Hopefully the above has given you a number of great ideas on ways to use a blog to better engage customers with your business.
A final tip is to make sure that you continually mix things up on your blog. Plan to add content with embedded infographics, videos, etc … Talk about your new products in one post and offer a list of simple tips, or customer experiences in another post. Test different blog post formats and ideas as much as possible and study your traffic analytics regularly.
Use statistical reports, survey results, polls etc. to not only engage your visitors, but also to learn what is and isn’t working in your online marketing approach. Keep trying out new ideas and see what sticks with your blog readers (make sure that you can measure the results of your tests and the implementation of new ideas, however, otherwise you won’t know what is working and what needs to be improved!)
One last piece of advice when it comes to using your blog to engage readers is to remember that if you’re only adding “filler” content to your blog for the sake of adding content, then people are quickly going to become disinterest with your blog and disengaged with your brand. Some may even see your blog as spammy. So … keep your content real, informative, educational and useful and you will be well on your way to attracting more visitors to your blog and keeping them engaged and eager to return.
If you need help getting a blog set up for your small business we can help.
If you are looking to start your own web site, or are frustrated with your existing web presence and want to take things to a whole new level, then here are 50 reasons you should choose WordPress.
1 – WordPress Blog is the most popular content management system (CMS) worldwide. It’s a proven software trusted by large companies, small businesses and millions of site owners. It powers around a quarter of all new web sites today and has been continually refined and improved for over eight years now. New versions of WordPress currently get over 10 million downloads each time a new version is released.
2 – WordPress is extremely easy to use and requires no coding experience or expert knowledge. If you have ever used Microsoft Word, then the WordPress interface will be familiar. In fact, WordPress itself refers to the ease of use of its application as giving you “the power of Microsoft Word with the intuitiveness of an iPhone.”
3 – WordPress was designed for publishing content online. It is not just a website application, it’s also a powerful content-publishing platform.
4 – WordPress has features that automate the process of sharing content online and attracting readers and visitors to your site. Some of these features include the ability to automatically notify social networks whenever new content is published on your site, optimizing your site for best search engine results, and giving your visitors the ability to subscribe to your content via RSS feeds or email.
5 – WordPress is standards-compliant and provides you with a fast, light and free content management system that has sensible default settings and features and an extremely customizable core.
6 – WordPress typically releases a new version with security updates, bug fixes and improvements made to the previous version every 3-4 months. It’s a robust and fully-supported application that is continually being improved.
7 – It is backed and supported by a vibrant communityof thousands of users and hundreds of web developers who continually work on improving and refining the software. This means that most bugs, errors, challenges or vulnerabilities get picked up quickly whenever new versions are released and are then addressed in the next version.
8 – WordPress Website can handle your entire workflow, from initial draft to publishing. It has a built-in features that allow you to collaborate with others and review your content, spelling, grammar, etc. without the need to send e-mails back-and-forth or use expensive desktop software.
9 – WordPress has a drag-and-drop media file uploader that lets you effortlessly integrate rich media, images, videos, music, audio and documents into your content, and a media browser to help you store, organize and find your files.
10 – WordPress provides a “distraction-free” writing platform, allowing you to focus on your ideas and concentrate on creating your content without getting sidetracked by distracting features like texts, tweets and status updates.
11 – WordPress automatically saves your work as you type, so you won’t lose any of your content if your computer crashes or you make a mistake. It also allows you to restore previous versions of your work with a single click.
12 – With WordPress, you can schedule your content to be published on any date and time you specify, giving you full control over your publishing timeline.
13 – WordPress lets you publish anywhere and everywhere with mobile applications for Android, iOS, Blackberry, Nokia, Windows Phone 7, WebOS. and even by e-mail.
14 – WordPress provides several levels of password protection for your site and content. You can protect individual posts or just parts of your content from public viewing, or even make your content completely private and accessible only to individual authors, members, or registered users with assigned roles or privileges.
15 – WordPress lets you split long content into multi-paged posts for easier reading.
16 – WordPress lets you save your content as a draft. This means you can save any unfinished articles or posts you are working on without publishing them (i.e. making them publicly visible), then come back and improve or rework your saved drafts later and only publish them when you’re happy to make your content public and visible online.
17 – It allows you to preview your posts “live” just as they will appear when published, without requiring you to publish your content first. This means you can get your content looking exactly the way you want it to look to your readers before publishing your articles, pages or posts live.
18 – The WordPress content publishing platform is designed to make your site conform to your content, not the other way around. This is achieved using a powerful feature called “Theme” – a full theme system which allows you to quickly and easily change the entire design of your site with a single click of the mouse without affecting your content. With the Themes, you can literally change the look and feel of your entire site instantly and as often as you like.
19 – WordPress allows you to organize your content by day, month, year, author, tag, or category. It creates browesable archives dynamically to display your past content and provides a number of features to help keep everything looking up to date. Regardless of how much content you have on your site, you can keep it organized and easy for your site visitors to find.
20 – WordPress has a powerful built-in search function that allows your site visitors to quickly find the relevant content they’re looking for. It is also flexible when it comes to giving site owners search functionality. You can use the built-in search box, or choose to use an external search engine like Google instead.
21 – WordPress has a built-in feature that automatically converts your new posts and pages URLs into “human-friendly” and “search engine-friendly” URLs that describe what your content is about.
22 – WordPress automatically typesets every letter you write, working seamlessly in the background while you work on your content to provide your posts and pages with seamless typography. It uses the Texturize engine to intelligently convert web-unfriendly characters like quotes, apostrophes, ellipses, em and en dashes, multiplication symbols, and ampersands into typographically correct HTML entities.
23 – WordPress has been translated into more than 70 different languages. You can create a site that is localized for a specific international audience and delivered in a language of your choice.
24 – WordPress uses powerful “drag and drop” features to help you administer and fully customize just about every aspect of your site – from site menus to site layout and dynamic functionality on individual pages.
25 – WordPress lets you assign multiple users on your siteand define different roles and privileges for each of your users. You can also configure your site to let users register themselves and either publish content on your site, or require content to be submitted for review and approval by the site administrator or other users before publishing.
26 – WordPress Website provides extensive functionality by default and can be used right out-of-the-box. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. With a little customisation, however, you can truly unlock the power of WordPress and create a unique online vehicle adapted to your specific needs.
27 – WordPress source code is open and transparent. The code is free. This means that anyone can take the code apart, use it to build new applications and improve any existing feature in the software. Add to this the fact that the software is built by a dedicated community of professional developers, academics, and enthusiasts, and you have a powerful online publishing platform with a rapid development cycle, frequent updates, software that is always up-to-date, no licensing fees or direct costs, and ongoing support from an international community of professional developers.
28 – Unlike many other publishing platforms, WordPress does not lock you into using proprietary data formats. WordPress believes that you should do what you want with your data, and relies on open standards that enable you to take your data with you. WordPress even makes available tools that allow you to seamlessly import data from other popular platforms like Movable Type, Textpattern, Greymatter, Blogger, b2, Nucleus and pMachine.
29 – WordPress offers users a fully hosted option, as well as the option to run the software on your own domain. If you are planning to run a commercial website or blog, we recommend hosting WordPress on your own domain, as this gives you the most amount of freedom and flexibility. WordPress was designed to be installed on your own web server, in the cloud, or in a shared hosting account. You can even install the software on your personal computer, or on a corporate intranet. Wherever you choose to install it, you have complete control and are able to access and modify everything related to your site.
30 – WordPress offers multi-site technology. This technology allows you to control one or thousands of WordPress sites from one administration panel, and is currently used to power over 20 million sites on WordPress.com and global sites like CNN and the New York Times, as well individual sites in networks, organizations and universities. Multi-site technology allows each individual user to have full administrative control over their own site without any security concerns. Each site can also have its own design (theme), individual functionality (using plug-ins), and manage its own users. Super administrators can implement network-wide policies and deploy security, plugin and theme updates at the click of a button from one central location.
31 – WordPress updates content displayed to visitors on your site fast. It uses dynamic page generation technology to generate page requests by viewers on your site directly from your database and templates. This uses minimal server storage space and makes updating your site, or your site design extremely fast.
32 – WordPress uses templates to generate your site’s pages dynamically. You can fully control how your content is presented, therefore, simply by editing your site’s templates (or hiring someone with basic knowledge of PHP to do this for you!)
33 – With WordPress, you don’t have to mess at all with design templates if you don’t want to. You can just browse thousands of ready-made premium quality themes from professional design companies that already have the look and feel you have envisioned for your website (most premium themes offer built-in features that allow you to further customize the theme) and purchase the theme for just a few dollars (most premium themes can be purchased for anywhere between $10 – $100).
34 – WordPress software is stable, secure and robust. Because of such a wide user-base numbering in the millions and a dedicated open-source community, vulnerabilities are quickly discovered and patches are developed and often released by a dedicated security team within hours of being reported. There’s an integrated core-update system, which means that patches are deployed at the click of a mouse button. Additionally, WordPress sanitizes all user input, restricts URL access, has an extensive user permission system and never stores passwords in an unsecured format. Because WordPress offers a hosted option (at WordPress.com) it can use the site’s 20 million users as beta testers before releasing a new version, so when new versions are released, users can be confident that the new version is quite stable.
35 – WordPress is highly flexible and adaptable. The core application relies on its own extensive APIs (Application Program Interface). This allows developers to quickly and effectively modify and customize the application to suit their unique needs, and helps WordPress integrate seamlessly with other existing systems.
36 – WordPress is “enterprise-ready.” WordPress has already been adapted to perform in various enterprise environments. It provides support for a number of enterprise-centric features such as Active Directory authentication, user management, work-flow integration, scheduled backups, and more!
37 – WordPress allows you to connect to other systems. WordPress uses XML-RPC, which is an open XML standard that allows different systems in different environments to talk to one another. XML-RPC is designed to be as simple as possible, while also allowing complex tasks to be performed. It supports an extended version of the Blogger API, MetaWeblog API, and the MovableType API. You can also use clients designed for other platforms like Zempt.
38 – WordPress makes installing, upgrading and maintaining the software simple and easy. You get notification whenever there are new updates to the software, plugins and themes, and these can be performed with a click of the mouse.
39 – WordPress lets you specify which HTML tags users are allowed to add when posting content on your site. WordPress also provides you with a built-in default list of safe HTML tags users can add in their comments and posts, so that the safety of your data or server is not compromised by malicious users.
40 – WordPress code is fully compliant with the standards of the W3C. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international community that develops open standards to ensure the long-term growth of the Web. Being standards-compliant is important not only for interoperability with current internet browsers but it also ensures forward compatibility with future tools and technologies.
41 – WordPress is so much more than just a blogging tool. The most widely distributed content management system (CMS) technology in the world today, and is used to power millions of commercially-driven websites. With WordPress, the distinction between a “blog” and a “website” is becoming increasingly blurred, especially since most of the time WordPress isn’t even used as a blog. In fact, chances are that many of the sites you are probably visiting right now are powered by WordPress.
42 – WordPress makes it easy for users to subscribe to your content using “rss feeds”. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and WordPress website fully supports protocols such as RSS 1.0 (RDF), RSS 2.0 and ATOM specifications. Almost every page on your site has an associated feed that your readers can subscribe to (e.g. latest posts, categories, comments, etc.). WordPress also fully supports RSS 2.0 with enclosures, which allows you to mp3 files such as podcasts to your RSS feeds.
43 – WordPress helps you create maximum exposure for your sites online and in search engines automatically. WordPress comes with two ways of automatically connecting your site to other sites (and enabling other sites to do the same to your site), called PingBack and TrackBack. You can also configure your WordPress site to automatically notify dozens of blog directories as soon as new content is posted using the PingBack function.
44 – WordPress promotes interactivity and community-building on your site. You can interact with your site visitors through the use of built-in features like comments, trackbacks and pingbacks. Visitors can leave comments on individual entries on your site, and you can then reply to their comments. You can also delete inappropriate comments, and enable or disable comments on a per-post basis.
45 – WordPress helps you manage and eliminate comment spam on your site. WordPress comes with default tools to help you fight spam. You can also control spam using plugins and by moderating your “comments” settings. For example, you can moderate all comments before they appear on your site, block comments with specific words in them, block comments posted from specific IP addresses, and block comments containing more than a number of specified links.
46 – WordPress can send out automatic notifications. For example, you’ll get a notification via email each time there is a new comment or a comment awaiting moderation.
47 – WordPress has a built-in user registration system that you can configure to allow people to register, maintain profiles and post comments on your site. You can decide whether registered users can leave authenticated comments on your site, and you can also choose to close comments for non-registered users. Additionally, there are plugins you can use that will hide posts from lower level users.
48 – WordPress development is guided by a set of unwavering principles. These principles include being able to work right out of the box, designing for the majority (but being mindful of the vocal minority), striving for simplicity, and keeping the code clean, lean and mean, among other things.
49 – WordPress currently provides users with access to more than 20,000 free, open-source plug-ins and themes. This library is growing every day. This means that your site can do virtually anything you can imagine or want from a website in terms of functionality, and look as unique as you want it to in terms of design.
50 – WordPress is 100% free to download and use. You can install WordPress on your own domain and do whatever you like with the WordPress code. You can extend or modify WordPress however you choose, and use it commercially without licensing fees or restrictions. WordPress is “free” not just in terms of price, but also in terms of the amount of control you have over using it. For example, you have the freedom to run the program, for any purpose, the freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish, the freedom to redistribute the application, and the freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others.
With literally tens of thousands of free plugins that extend what WordPress does and free themes that completely change the way WordPress looks, all you need is WordPress, a domain name and web hosting. Most of the power of WordPress is available to you for little to no cost.
Doesn’t it make sense, therefore, to consider using WordPress to power your new web site, or switch your existing web site to WordPress and start growing your web presence using an online vehicle that is more powerful, more flexible, more scalable, less restrictive, cheaper to run, easier to use and fundamentally “smarter” than any other online publishing platform or content management system available?
The blogging revolution has introduced a whole new set of blog terms, blog abbreviations and blogging acronyms to online users.
Even though WordPress has moved well beyond just being a “blogging” platform and is now the fastest growing Content Management System (CMS) platform for personal and business users worldwide, in many ways WordPress is still synonymous with blogging,
If you’re considering starting a blog, or you are a beginner WordPress user, therefore, it helps to understand some of the basic blogging definitions.
Here, then, are some of the more common and useful blogging definitions to help you understand the blogging terminology:
A blog is short for weblog, which, according to most definitions, is a simple online diary that allows you to publish, date and list your periodic thoughts, opinions and musings on a particular topic or idea, generally in reverse chronological order (i.e. Whatever you publish last appears first). When you focus a blog towards business purposes (e.g. Promoting your business, products or services), then you have a business blog, instead of a personal blog.
Blogging is the act of posting content on blogs. A blogger is someone who blogs and the Blogosphere represents the entire universe of blogs and the internet blogging community.
Most blogging activities are made possible via the use of a blogging platform, which is the software application used for blogging. Most blogging platforms are sophisticated Content Management Systems (CMS) that allow you to create and publish content without requiring you to have “web site skills” like knowing how to write or edit HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language – the language used to create web pages.).
Blogging platforms also generally give you the choice of setting up a blog on the software creator’s domain (e.g. my business.wordpress.com), or hosting the blog on your own domain (this is the recommended option for businesses). Common blog publishing platforms include WordPress, Type Pad, Movable Type, Blogger and many others.
For business blogging purposes, it is important to understand some of the main components of a blog, both internal and external.
WordPress Glossary
Blogging Terminology
Main Blog Components
Blog Index Page – The front page of your blog. With a blogging platform like WordPress and many others, you can either make your index page show the latest post, or you can specify a specific post or entry page as a “fixed page”, so that the same content appears every time someone visits your site.
Blog Header – The area at the very top of your blog that displays on every page. Here you can add your blog title, a short description of what your blog is about, a background header image, etc …
Blog Footer – The area at the very bottom of your blog, which is usually used to list site navigation links and a copyright statement.
Blog Sidebar – Depending on the theme of your blog, this refers to one or more vertical sections or columns that run along one or both sides of your blogs and contain information that appears on all pages.
Blog Post, Blog Entry – Each of the individual articles or pieces of content that make up your blog. A post or entry can be edited or deleted from your blog without affecting other posts or entries.
Blog Categories – Blogs allow you to organize your posts not just by date but also to group them by related topic or theme. This way your blog visitors can find all of your topic specific posts on themes like “Travel Accommodation” or “Product Reviews.”
Permalink – A link to a specific article in your blog. Permalinks can be modified to display the URL in different formats. This is useful for SEO (Search Engine Optimization), as permalinks can include keyword-rich category titles.
Blog Comments – Feedback or remarks left on a post from a reader or visitor to your blog. Comments often include a link back to the reader’s blog or Web site. You can block or moderate comments before allowing them to be published on your blog.
Captchas – An acronym for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”. Captchas are often distorted word and letter verification images that a visitor is required to type in to show they are human and not an automated bot. Captchas are useful for blocking automated spam comments.
Blog Dashboard – This is generally the first screen you see when you login to your blogging account. The Dashboard gives you access to all the settings, controls, tools and functions you need and also provides you with “at a glance” information about your blog (e.g. the number of posts in your blog, comments awaiting moderation, etc …).
Blogroll – A list of links to other recommended or useful blogs or sites. A Blogroll is generally found on a blog sidebar and is similar to the links page on a Web site. The word “Blogroll” is often changed by bloggers to better descriptive titles like “Useful Links” or “Recommended Resources”.
Blog Archives – A collection of all your posts on one page. Archives allow users to quickly locate old blog entries and can be categorized by month, etc.
Tags – A labeling system that allows you to further categorize and group similar post topics on your blog by related keywords or keyword phrases. For example, this page may contain the following the tags (separated by commas): blogging terms, blog abbreviations, blogging acronyms, blogging glossary, blog terminology, business blog, blogging descriptions, blogging dictionary, blog terms, and so on … You can generally assign multiple tags to your blog posts (we recommend using between 5 and 20 tags to avoid “keyword stuffing”)
Tag Cloud – A block of text that displays a list of tags or keywords in a blog. Clicking on a tag cloud keyword usually brings up a page listing all blog entries related to that keyword or keyword phrase.
Blog Template – The collection of files containing code instructions for a blog’s design, layout, appearance and functionality. A collection of blog templates creates a blog theme.
Plugins – Small files or scripts that greatly add improved or enhanced functionality and new features to your blog. There are thousands of WordPress plugins, for example, that can be freely downloaded and added to your blog to greatly improve your blog’s functionality, usage and interactivity.
Widget – Widgets are an easy way for bloggers to arrange and rearrange your blog sidebar items without touching a line of code. The WordPress blogging platform uses widgets.
WordPress Glossary
Other Useful Blogging Terminology
Expandable post summaries – A feature that allows you to display an excerpt of a blog post (i.e. a teaser) on the index page of your blog that links visitors to another page containing the full post.
Incoming Links – Incoming links or backlinks are links from other blogs (or web sites) pointing back to your blog (or web site).
Ping – An acronym for Packet Internet Grouper. Pinging helps to notify other blog tracking tools about updates, changes and trackbacks on your blog. One of the major differences between blogs and web sites, is that a blog allows you to “ping” (i.e. Automatically notify) search engines whenever you update your blog (called “Blog and Ping” or “Blogging and Pinging”), where most normal websites lack this function and require you to manually notify search engines that you have added new content to your site.
Trackback – Similar to a comment, a trackback (or pingback) is a snippet of referring feedback sent from one blog to another blog to notify that your article has been mentioned on another blog, or vice-versa (i.e. that you are referring to someone else’s post on your blog). In short, a trackback is a notification system in which a ping is sent to another blog to notify it that one of its articles appears on someone else’s blog. It is usually attached to the bottom of a post on another blog and also includes a link to the new post.
Comment or Trackback Spam – These are comments or trackbacks that are left on your blog for the purpose of creating inappropriate links to the commenter’s Web site or blog and increasing their number of backlinks.
BlogThis – This is a useful function that allows a blogger to automatically add or import an entry they are reading on another site or blog to their own blog.
Ajax – An acronym for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. Used by software developers to create interactive and dynamic web applications for blogs (like “dragging and dropping” items in your blog widgets.
FTP – An acronym for File Transfer Protocol. An FTP tool (also known as FTP client) allows you to transfer files to and fro from your computer and web host server where your blog is located.
RSS – An acronym for Real Simple Syndication. Blogs automatically create RSS feeds for posts and comments that your blog visitors and readers can subscribe to. RSS feeds can be read through a newsreader.
Newsreader – A piece of software or web application that allows you to receive and read news feeds. Web-based services like Bloglines, Rojo, Newsgator, Kinja, etc. … are News Aggregators (also called RSS readers, feed readers, feed aggregators or news readers) that display content from syndicated web content and web feeds. These can be configured online or downloaded on your desktop.
Farticles – A “Farticles” is a slang term for a fake news article. These are online articles that describe the benefits and features of a product using the format of an unbiased news story or article, but in essence, they are an “advertorial”, which is really just sales copy.
The above are just some of the main blogging terms you will need to become familiar with as a blog owner. If you are interested in expanding your blogging vocabulary beyond the above definitions, then search for terms like “blog glossary”, “blog definitions” or “blogging terminology”.
WordPress Glossary
Alternatively, for a useful blogging resource containing definitions of terms related to “Blogging Forms” (e.g. Photoblogging, Podcasting, Autocasting, Blogcasting, Vlogging, Audioblogging, Moblogging, etc. …), “Blogging Habits” (like metablogging, linkbaiting, blogstorming, blogvertising, blegging, blurking, blogroaching, multiblogging, etc. …), “Blogger Types” (e.g. problogger, blognoscenti, blogerati, etc. …), unusual blogging terms (e.g. blaudience, blogiverse, blogonomics, spomments, blammer and blogiday), and a range of links to other blogging tools, feed sources and services, go here: Blogging Terms Glossary
Hopefully, now that you understand the language of the blogiverse a little better, you will be able to truly wow your blaudience (and maybe even become a blogebrity in your own right!)
When you are the world’s most popular content management system and the preferred online publishing platform for over 60 million websites around the world, used by millions of businesses and loved by thousands of web developers and web designers, it’s inevitable that, at some point, WordPress will come under attack from hackers wanting to score a “big win”.
In early April 2013 a global “brute-force” attack began hitting WordPress installations across virtually every web host in existence around the world using botnets.
A “Botnet” is a network of private computers that has been infected with malicious software, which is then controlled remotely as a group, typically without the computer owners’ knowledge. Botnets are often used to send mass spam emails.
Below is a screenshot taken from an Internet Security monitoring site showing the locations of the command centers of ZeuS – a botnet that has been actively infecting computer networks all around the globe since 2009 …
The ongoing botnet attacks on WordPress are well-organized and highly-distributed. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by a number of webhosting companies just in the initial attack, when the web was flooded with millions of attempts to force their way into WordPress users administration areas. As this article is being written, over 30,000 WordPress sites are being hacked per day.
News of the April mass brute-force botnet attack was reported by all of the major webhosting companies, as well as the leading technology publications, such as Forbes, TechNews Daily, PC Magazine, Tech Crunch, BBC News, and even on the official website of the US Department of Homeland Security …
How To Prevent Your WordPress Site From Being Attacked – 10 Simple Steps
If your website is powered by WordPress and you’re not taking steps to harden your site, it’s practically guaranteed that your site will be hacked, or at least targeted by bots, because these attacks are systematically targeting WordPress sites around the world!
Typically, whenever a site is hacked, website owners will discover much to their dismay that they have been “locked out” of their own site, or that their content has been vandalized or even entirely wiped out. Often, sites will be infected with malicious software without the owner’s knowledge.
To help avoid the heartache of having your site being hacked into, we have published below 10 simple, yet essential steps that will help to protect your WordPress site from brute force attacks.
Note: Some of the steps listed below require some technical understanding of how to modify core WordPress and server files. If you are not technical, or don’t want to mess around with code on your site, then please[contact us / ask someone who knows what they are doing], or see our recommended software solution further down this page.
1 – Contact Your Web Host
Contact your webhosting provider and ask them exactly what they have put into place to help prevent your site from being attacked, and what they are doing to ensure that your WordPress sites are being regularly backed up. Check that your host is backing up your sites and that, if anything happens, you can easily get your site back.
2 – BackUp Your WordPress Data And Files And Keep Your Site Regularly Maintained
You should never rely only on your webhost for your site backups. Instead, learn how to maintain and manage your WordPress site and develop a habit of performing a complete WordPress site maintenance routine on a regular basis (e.g. weekly, monthly, etc …)
3 – Make Sure That Your User Name Is Not “Admin”
The mass brute-force botnet attack on WordPress is mostly attempting to compromise websites’ administrator panels by exploiting hosts with “admin” as their account name. If your site’s username is “admin” you need to change this immediately.
Since WordPress doesn’t allow administrators to change the username assigned during installation, the simplest way to fix this issue is to create a new User account with administrator privileges. Make sure your new username is not obvious and choose a very strong password (see next section below).
Once you have created a new user with a new username and assigned it the role of administrator, log out of your WordPress site and log back in using your new user login details.
Once you have logged into your WP admin area, delete the old administrator account (i.e. the account with username = admin)
A “brute force” attack occurs when malicious software continually and persistently hits a login or password field with different strings of characters in an attempt to guess the right combination that will unlock it and give them access to your site.
Unless some measure is put into place to block the brute force attack (see further below for a simple and effective way to do this), the “bot” will just keep attacking your site until it eventually “cracks” the code.
Weak passwords are very easy targets for brute force attack methods. Make sure, therefore, that you change your password to something that is at least eight characters long, and that includes upper and lowercase letters, and “special” characters (^%$#&@*).
If you have trouble coming up with strong passwords or feel reluctant to set up different passwords for all of your online logins, then use a password management tool like Roboform.
5 – Prevent the wp-config.php file from being accessed
If a hacker breaks into your site, they will look for the wp-config.php file, because this is the file that contains your WordPress database details.
To prevent the wp-config.php file from being accessed, insert the following code into your .htaccess file:
Note: Editing your .htaccess file can seriously mess up your site. Make sure that your site is fully backed up before you modify any system files. If you don’t know what you’re doing please [contact us / ask someone who does], or see our recommended solution further down the page.
6 – Rename or delete your install.php, upgrade.php and readme.html files
These files are completely unnecessary after installation and can be removed. If you don’t want to delete these files, then just rename them.
7 – Upgrade your WordPress installation, plugins and themes to their latest version
Hackers look for vulnerabilities they can exploit in older versions of WordPress, including outdated versions of WordPress plugins and themes. Ensure that all of your WordPress files, plugins, themes etc. are always up to date.
8 – Disable Your WordPress Theme Editor
When you log into WordPress, you can access your WordPress Theme Editor (by selecting Appearance > Editor) from the dashboard menu. This means that anyone who logs into your site can see all of your WordPress files and make changes or cause havoc on your site.
The WordPress Theme Editor can be easily disabled by adding the line of code below to your wp-config.php file:
Once again, please don’t modify any files on your site if you don’t know what you are doing and always backup your data before making changes. See our recommended solution further down the page if you need help with this step.
9 – Remove Access To Your WordPress Uploads Folder
The “uploads” folder stores all the media that gets uploaded to your WordPress site. By default, this folder is visible to anyone online.
Adding the line below to your .htaccess file will prevent online users from viewing your Uploads folder:
It’s worth repeating this warning once again: back up your site before making changes to core files and don’t edit files if you don’t know what you are doing.
Tip: You can add a blank “index.php” file into any directory that you don’t want people to look into. This will display a blank page to visitors. (The downside to this method is that you have to add a blank “index.php” file into every folder that has content or files you don’t want people to access.)
10 – Use WordPress Security Plugins
Currently, a number of WordPress security plugins are available that address many of the common security issues that most WordPress website owners face (e.g. preventing hackers from accessing your site, protecting your site from malicious software, etc …)
We provide detailed WordPress Security step-by-step tutorials to our clients on all aspects of using WordPress, and these also include tutorials on WordPress security.
Many WordPress plugins address some but not all areas of WordPress security. One WordPress security plugin that seems to do a comprehensive job of scanning, fixing and preventing issues that could lead to hackers accessing your site files and damaging your site is SecureScanPro.
SecureScanPro is easy to install and easy to use, and does a great job of addressing most of the security areas and fixing the issues that WordPress users need to address.
Here are some of the main features and benefits of this plugin:
It requires no technical knowledge to use and is easy to install.
It scans, fixes and prevents your site from being attacked in around 2 minutes.
It scans for 33 known risks and vulnerabilities and automatically corrects 12 known vulnerabilities on WordPress sites with a click of the mouse.
It does all of the recommended “code” fixes suggested earlier
Each test is accompanied by a detailed explanation of the risk and the solution provided.
You can schedule scans on a daily or weekly basis that will regularly monitor your site and notify you in seconds via email if someone tries to log into your site using incorrect login details, or executes a brute-force attack on your site.
It ensures that unauthorized IP addresses are not permitted entry to your site and will automatically ban intruders after a number of failed logins.
Free technical support and upgrades are provided.
Here are some screenshots of SecureScanPro in action …
The plugin adds important protection features on your WordPress login screen. This includes removing any references to the username during unsuccessful logins (WordPress tells you what the username isn’t, so if someone guesses the username correctly, all they have to do is try to work out your password), as well as adding an IP ban after a number of specified failed login attempts, and a simple challenge that only human beings can solve …
Once installed, the plugin performs a comprehensive scan and returns the results in an easy to understand report (green = good, red = bad) …
You can automatically correct a number of issues found by the plugin scan simply by clicking a “Fix It” button …
The plugin also lets you schedule scans to run automatically and email you the results …
You can also block the IP addresses of known spammers, botnets, content harvesters and malicious attackers from various locations around the world …
After recently installing the plugin on client sites, the software immediately went to work and began sending reports of one site that was being brute-force attacked without the owner even realizing that this was happening …
At the plugin’s documentation states, there are no guarantees that your site will not be hacked if you use the SecureScanPro plugin. However, when used as part of a comprehensive WordPress site security strategy, you should find that your site will no longer be an easy target for attacks, especially from people looking for any obvious or know weakness and vulnerabilities.
As cybercrime grows worldwide and cybercriminals develop more sophisticated mass methods to identify and exploit vulnerabilities online, WordPress security is becoming increasingly more important. Hackers range from individuals who carry out attacks on sites out of curiosity, for entertainment, or to earn “bragging rights” with their peers, all the way to sophisticated, co-ordinated and highly organized criminal networks and cyberterrorists.
As stated earlier, WordPress is a target for hackers because it is the most widely used platform for publishing websites and managing content online. We have covered some of the steps you can take to protect your WordPress site, now let’s take a quick look at why you should still consider using WordPress if you are currently looking to start your own website.
There are some people who argue that WordPress is not the most secure platform for running a website or blog because it is “open source” (i.e. free), which means that hackers can easily access the software to find and exploit holes and weaknesses in its coding and security.
While it’s true that WordPress is free and hackers can easily access it and study the code for weaknesses and vulnerabilities (hackers can do the same with any program), the fact that WordPress is a free, open platform makes it actually more secure in many ways.
The reason for this is that WordPress has the support of a huge community of thousands of people such as software programmers, plugin developers and theme designers who are constantly working to help improve the program.
WordPress evolves through the effort of a huge community and benefits from thousands of minds who are dedicated to improving the software and making it safer for every user. As soon as an issue, weakness, vulnerability or problem is discovered, therefore, it is almost immediately reported to the software creators and addressed by the WordPress development team. This is why WordPress releases new security updates so often, and why you need to keep your WordPress site constantly updated and maintained.
Contrast the above with other proprietary web development platforms and technologies which are developed by one company with a limited number of employees, and whose updates are therefore much less frequent, and you will quickly realize the value and advantages of using WordPress to power your website or blog.
Like many modern software packages, WordPress is updated regularly to address new security issues that may arise. Improving software security is always an ongoing concern, and to that end – and as we have been stressing throughout this training program – you should always keep up to date with the latest version of WordPress. Older versions of WordPress are not maintained with security updates.
And just one last thing …
It’s important to note that in the case of this recent mass brute-force botnet attack there is actually no WordPress vulnerability being exploited (the same script is also attacking Joomla sites).
In a recent interview, Mike Little – the co-founder of WordPress with Matt Mullenweg, said the following about the attacks:
It is a “simple” script that attempts to login using the admin login and a generated password. So if your password is too short or based on dictionary words it will be guessed and then the script can login legitimately and do whatever it wants including installing scripts (as plugins) or editing files. The attack tries to guess your password, if it succeeds, the most secure site in the world is wide open because they have your password.
Hopefully this information will help to keep your site protected. Please contact us if you need any further help or assistance with WordPress security issues.
How To Save Thousands Of Dollars from Web Design Company
If you’re currently looking for affordable web design for your small business, then the information in this blog post will definitely help you save anywhere from hundreds to even thousands of dollars in your web design and web development costs.
Website Design Company & Development – Where The Real Problem Lies
When looking for an affordable business website solution, many business owners will typically base their decision on the cost of getting their website built.
This may sound obvious to budget-conscious business owners. Basing your decision on the initial cost of getting your website built, however, can often turn out to be a lot more expensive later on than you think.
In fact, it’s not hard at all to imagine a number of situations where something starts out as an “affordable” solution, but then ends up becoming very “costly” after all things are considered and all costs are taken into account.
Before you start thinking that this is another one of those “you get what you pay for” articles, let me tell you it’s not.
As you will see in a moment, many business owners end up spending hundreds and even thousands of dollars more than they should have paid, because they weren’t aware of what I am going to share with you here when they set out to get their business website built.
So … let’s start with the obvious.
Many websites are built using platforms, tools and web editing applications that require a knowledge of coding and programming languages like HTML, CSS, PHP, ASP, etc.
For most small business owners, what this all basically means is that if you need to modify content on your site – for example, update your product details, insert images, add a video or a downloadable PDF report, etc., and you don’t have the tools, skills or knowledge to edit your own website or web pages, then you will need to find someone who can help you.
In a professional situation, this means paying somebody money every time you need to make changes on your site.
Another situation can arise, however, that is even more costly. If your website is built using some form of “fixed design” template and for whatever reasons, you decide later that your website needs a complete new redesign, this often means having to pay a web designer for new work to be done, or a web developer if you want to integrate some new functionality (e.g. e-commerce) that your existing website wasn’t built to originally accommodate.
Website Design Company & Development
If code on your website needs to be edited or created, you could be looking at anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars, depending on the complexity of your requirements.
But things can get even more expensive for you.
Sometimes, business owners end up in a situation where they have to make the painful (and very costly) decision to scrap their existing website altogether and start all over again.
Here are just some “real life” examples of situations where this can and does happen:
If your website is built using a “proprietary” platform or an exclusive content management system and you decide to go elsewhere later, you could end up in a situation where you discover that you can’t take your existing site “as is” or any portions of it with you to your new web environment.
If you come across certain technologies, solutions or applications where you believe these would make a significant difference to your business, but discover that they requires a different technology platform to work on than the one you have built your website on, and the cost to integrate is higher than the cost of rebuilding a new website.
If you discover that you simply can’t test or measure important aspects of your business online, because your website doesn’t allow you to easily reconfigure different elements and components on your site to compare how one configuration performs against another. Many businesses discover this when, for example, they start an online advertising campaign (e.g. Google AdWords) to drive more traffic to their site, only to learn that Google has given their site a really low “quality score” (which significantly drives up the cost-per-click of their ads). Some will then spend a considerable amount of time and money researching ways to improve their site’s quality score, only to realize that, unless they can easily test different things on their website, they won’t know with certainty what can actually help to raise or lower their click costs, and/or what can help to improve or make their conversion rates worse. If your website can’t be easily reconfigured for testing different marketing strategies and you can’t afford to pay someone to keep changing things around on your site every time you want to perform a new marketing test, then your business will clearly be at a considerable disadvantage because of your website.
The above are just some examples of things that can turn out to be a whole lot more expensive later than most business owners imagine … often because of a decision that was based more on the initial cost of setting up a website, rather than understanding the long-term consequences of making purely cost-based decisions.
The problem is not in the “cost” of getting a website built.
In fact, it has almost nothing to do with how good your web designer is at designing, or how skilled your web developer is at programming code (although the principle of “you get what you pay for” certainly applies to these areas).
The reason why many small business owners can end up paying hundreds, or even thousands of dollars more than they need to when getting a website built for their business has a lot more to do with their choice of website “platform” than cost.
Website Design Company & Development – Where The Real Savings Are
You can save anywhere from hundreds to thousands of dollars in web design and web development costs simply by choosing the right platform for your small business website.
There are many platforms you can choose to use for building a small business website.
One platform, however, stands out from all others.
WordPress is the world’s most popular content management system (CMS) and the fastest growing online publishing platform for millions of businesses around the world.
We present some compelling facts and figures that support the growing popularity and dominance of WordPress and we have written about many of the benefits and advantages of using WordPress in some of our other blog posts.
In this post, we want to focus exclusively on how you can save a considerable amount of money by choosing WordPress to power your small business website.
First, however, let’s be clear on a few things:
1) Depending on what you need, WordPress may not be the ideal solution for your business. WordPress, however, can and normally does accommodate the needs of almost all businesses, especially small businesses.
2) Everyone you speak with about getting a website built will have their own personal preferences and opinions. More importantly, though, they will also have their own “biases”, which is something that you need to be aware of when talking to web designers and web developers.
Website Design Company & Development
Typically, many web developers are “technically-minded” and like to mess with code, while many web designers gravitate towards “aesthetic” principles and like how things “look”. Of course, there is nothing wrong with this, but just keep in mind when speaking with web developers that they probably have certain biases towards solutions that focus more on technical features, and that many web designers you speak with may have similar biases towards solutions that have a stronger visual or aesthetic appeal.
The main thing to remember, however, is that your web developer or web designer is not ultimately responsible for the success or failure of your business. You are.
If you are a business owner, therefore, you need a platform that will suit your business needs more than a platform that will suit the needs or tastes of your web designer or web developer (unless, of course, you plan to let them handle everything on your behalf and are happy to pay them to do this for you).
Now, if we just focus on the topic of reducing costs and saving money, then we should start by comparing how the cost of building a website using WordPress compares with the cost of building a website using other platforms.
Rather than try to list every website-building platform available and then try to compare costs across these platforms, we will show you instead what you should be looking for when making decisions with a relatively small budget, so you will know how to avoid incurring unnecessary costs later.
There are two main “costs” to look for. The first is the cost of the labor involved in building certain aspects of your website, and the second is the cost of “post-production”, i.e. your running costs.
Website Design Company & Development – How To Save Money
Let’s use a typical small business website design brief as an example, to illustrate how you can save money on web design and web development costs.
Let’s say that you want to build a website for your business that includes the following:
Additional Features (e.g. Banners, Image Gallery, etc …)
All of the above would normally be discussed and agreed on during your brief. Once the project has been agreed on, work on building your site would then commence.
If you look at the chart below, you will see that the first area where you can save money by choosing a WordPress-powered website, is on the cost of labor during production …
Regardless of which platform you choose for your website, the cost of “pre-production” will typically be the same. You will need a domain name and webhosting for your website no matter what platform your website is built on.
Also, the better prepared you are in terms of knowing exactly what you want to achieve online, and having materials like logos, graphics and content for your main pages already prepared (e.g. content for the About Us page, service / product descriptions, etc.), the less time it’s going to take for someone to get your website completed, and hence the less expenses will be incurred by additional meetings, unclear communications, etc.
With WordPress you don’t need to pay someone to spend time creating layouts and designs, coding pages, or programming features and functionalities into your site. This is all handled by WordPress, using themes (pre-designed layouts and templates) and plugins (applications that integrate seamlessly with your site and instantly add new functionality).
Website Design Company & Development
WordPress Themes and WordPress Plugins are covered in separate blog posts and in our detailed training tutorials. For the purposes of this discussion, there are a few things you should know about themes and plugins that can save you additional money on the cost of building your website:
WordPress themes and plugins can be easily installed and activated on a WordPress site with just a few clicks of the mouse. This can instantly and completely change the entire look and feel of your website, and immediately add new functionality (e.g. e-commerce) without requiring programming skills,
WordPress themes and plugins can just as easily be deactivated and removed with a few mouse clicks without affecting anything else on your site.
You can easily add new themes and plugins as often as you like. There are thousands of themes and plugins to choose from.
Websites built using WordPress can be fully up and running without the need to spend time worrying about web design. You can start with any one of the thousands of themes that are available and instantly change the entire look and feel of your site anytime you like without affecting your existing content, simply by changing your theme.
What you are paying for when you choose WordPress for your website, therefore, is for someone to expertly install, set up and configure your website.
With WordPress, only minimal work is required to set up and configure things like navigation menus, contact forms, newsletter forms, social media sharing buttons, and to optimize your site for visitors, mobile devices and search engines. You can also preview how your site looks as it’s being built, so very little time is required for testing prior to going live.
Essentially, what this means is that by choosing WordPress, your business site can be fully built, set up and be live in just a few days, instead of taking weeks, or even months to complete.
Now, for the great news!
If you look at the next chart below, you will see that where you can really save money with a WordPress-powered website, is on your running costs …
Let’s assume that the budget you have set aside for getting a website built for your business covers the set up costs for a number of different platforms, including WordPress.
Website Design Company & Development
If you now look at the “running costs’, you will see that, as we’ve already discussed, costs like domain name registration and webhosting tend to be the same, regardless of which platform you choose. Additionally, all sites require regular maintenance (e.g. upgrading, performing backups, troubleshooting errors, etc…), so expect this.
Where you really can save money, is in the fact WordPress is an Open Source application that is supported by a growing worldwide community of thousands of enthusiastic web developers and web designers, who develop and create new applications and design templates which they then make available for WordPress users worldwide either for Free, or for a relatively small cost.
When coupled with the flexibility, scalability, openness and ease of use of the WordPress platform itself, you can have an extremely powerful website that can look and do almost anything you can imagine, and that costs very little to run and maintain.
Once you know the basics of using WordPress, you can easily upgrade your software application when new versions come out, redesign your website and reconfigure the entire layout of your site, easily create new pages and edit your existing content, and add almost unlimited features and functionalities to your site with (yep, you guessed it!) just a few clicks of the mouse.
Website Design Company & Development
And best of all, you can do all of this for very little to no cost. Start with a simple website built using WordPress, know that you can easily add and change anything you want on your site as your business grows, and you will save yourself a lot of money in the long run.
Hopefully, this information has helped you understand how to get “truly” affordable web design company for your small business, and not just how to save some money on the initial cost of getting your website built.
If you have any questions or need any help with WordPress, please feel free to contact us. We offer comprehensive step-by-step WordPress training tutorials covering all aspects of using WordPress.
WordPress Tutorials Index
There are currently $ { Post Count } listed for the " $ { Category }" training category
The Benefits Of WordPress As A Content Management System(CMS)
What began as a blogging tool in 2003 has grown in less than a decade to become the largest self-hosted Content Management Systems (CMS) platform in the world, used on millions of sites and seen by tens of millions of people every day.
In simple terms, a content management systems (CMS) allows you to manage your content in a structured environment. It stores all of your documents, images, videos and any other type of online content in an organised way, so that you can easily add, retrieve, edit, delete and publish your content quickly and easily.
Content management systems also allow multiple editors to access, manage and work on the content, and publish it under different sections of the site.
As you can see from the chart below, WordPress is the most widely distributed CMS technology in the world …
In fact, WordPress leads all other CMS technologies by quite a significant margin …
So … what exactly is it that makes WordPress the most popular choice for a Content Management Systems?
Here are just 5 reasons to get excited about using WordPress:
1 – WordPress Is Free
Well, for a start, WordPress is completely FREE to use! In fact, you can download the full WordPress software application free of charge, and host it on your own domain without having to pay any software license fees whatsoever.
2 – WordPress Is Easy To Use
One of the reasons why WordPress has become so popular so quickly, is that it requires no technical or programming skills to use or manage.
Once WordPress is installed and configured, almost everything else, from using and running it, to redesigning and restructuring it, can be easily managed using simple interfaces and menus that require little to no web skills.
For example, WordPress has a built-in visual editor that allows anyone to create, format and publish content online quickly and professionally just by clicking on a few menu buttons. If you have ever used Microsoft Word, then you would have no problems at all managing your WordPress content.
3 – WordPress Is Powerful
WordPress provides users with a framework that is extremely flexible and scalable, making it almost infinitely extensible. One of the core principles of the WordPress philosophy (apart from developing it as an Open Source project), is to keep the core code as light and fast as possible while providing a rich framework that allows the growing community of WordPress software developers and web designers to keep expanding what WordPress can do with applications that enhance its core functionality (called Plugins) and flexible web design templates (called Themes) that allow you to instantly change the look and feel of your entire website in just a few mouse clicks.
What this all means, is that you don’t have to spend thousands of dollars on web development and web design costs. You can start building a web presence with a basic, simple WordPress site, and then get it to do almost anything you want by adding a few of the tens of thousands of WordPress plugins available, or completely change the look of your site as often as you want with WordPress Themes.
With plugins, for example, you can add e-commerce, social-media sharing buttons, SEO optimization, integrate your visitors’ Facebook comments, make your site fully optimized for mobile devices, add custom videos and audio players, add newsletter forms and surveys, animated graphics and fading image galleries, make your pages printable, add sitemaps for visitors and search engines, block spam, and much, much more. And best of all, you can expand your WordPress site with thousands of plugins that will cost you absolutely nothing to download!
This is the same with WordPress Themes. You can choose the look of your site from thousands of professionally designed themes that are available at no cost to you.
4 – Websites Powered By WordPress Are Inexpensive To Run And To Maintain
Generally, free plugins and free themes don’t offer much in the way of support for users. In most cases, this is not a problem, as some of the most popular free plugins and themes are quite robust and their developers do provide regular upgrades to keep up with new WordPress upgrades. If you want support, however, there are many amazing and feature-rich “premium” plugins and themes you can purchase for a ridiculously low price (many great premium plugins and themes retail for between $10 – $100).
All you need, in addition to the WordPress application itself (which, as we’ve already mentioned, is Free to download), is a domain name and web hosting. These can cost as little as about $120 – $150 per year.
Instead of spending thousands of dollars on web development and web design, therefore, you can start running a professional web presence on your own domain with a very minimal outlay.
5 – WordPress Puts You In Complete Control
With WordPress, you don’t need to spend a great deal of money to have a professional web presence, you don’t need technical skills or programming knowledge to run a web site, and you don’t need to depend on webmasters, web developers or web designers to manage your content or your site.
Once your WordPress site is up and running, all you need to do is learn how to use all of the powerful features and functions that WordPress makes available, so you can achieve anything that you envision doing with your site.
With WordPress, you can be in complete control of your own web presence!
The great news, is that we can provide you with a complete A-Z WordPress training system with step-by-step screenshot and video tutorials that will teach you everything you need to know to master using WordPress quickly, confidently, and competently.
For more details about how to get access to our WordPress training system,Click here.
Have you ever been in this situation? After spending a great deal of time and effort composing an article, something unexpected happens to your computer or your software program, and suddenly, you find that you have lost all of your hard work because you forgot to save your work as you went along.
If this happens, don’t dismay! WordPress has an Autosave and Revision Management feature that help you to prevent losing your work if you forget to save, that can get your post or page content back if something happens to your browser or computer while you’re working, or if you just change your mind about a given direction you were taking with your article and want to be able to refer back to older drafts.
In this tutorial you will learn how to use the WordPress Revision Management system to recover and restore your posts and pages while working on your content.
Watch the video below and then complete the step-by-step tutorial to learn how to use the WordPress autosave and management features …
How To Use WordPress Revisions: Step-By-Step Tutorial
Typically, whenever you save (update) a post or page, you will see a confirmation message like the example shown below …
Sometimes, however, when you try to save your work, you might see a message like this displayed on your screen instead …
When you get a message that says “Are you sure you want to do this? Please try again” and click on Please try again, you will normally be taken back to a Post or Page Edit screen displaying a previous version of your post, minus any changes you have recently made.
This is where the autosave feature comes in handy.
WordPress Autosave
Autosaves are automatically enabled for all WordPress posts and pages but do not overwrite your published content. Autosaves are stored as a special type of revision so they won’t overwrite the actual post you’re working on.
By default, WordPress saves the current version of your post in your WordPress database every 60 seconds. This time interval can be changed by adding code to one of your WordPress software files (the wp-config.php file).
If you have been working on your post for a while and something happens (e.g. your browser crashes), you may see a message like the one shown below when you get back to your post or page …
Click on View the autosave …
You will be taken to a revision page where a previously saved version of your post can be restored.
Additionally, if your login session expires, WordPress remembers where you were, so when you login again, you can pick up working exactly from where you left off …
How To Use WordPress RevisionsWordPress Revision Control
WordPress 3.6
WordPress introduced a significant enhancement to its Revision Management system interface in WordPress 3.6.
When you compare revisions, a Revision Slider displays at the top of the screen, allowing you to move through your saved post revisions.The more revisions you have saved, the more revision markers you will see displayed in the slider …
Revisions created by making changes to your content and updating your post or page display in the Revision Slider in black, along with the save interval, time and date of the revision …
Revisions saved automatically by WordPress display in the Revision Slider in red, along with the save interval, time and date of the revision …
You can navigate between revisions by moving the slider to the left or right …
There are also buttons available to help you navigate through the revisions. Click Previous to navigate through past revisions …
Click Next to advance through your newer revisions …
You can also compare revisions by checking the Compare any two revisions option. This lets you adjust two slider buttons to compare any two saved revisions …
When you find the saved version you would like to restore, click the Restore This Revision button to restore your selected revision …
To return to the current saved version of your post or page, click on the title link …
WordPress revisions also warns you if the backup of the post you are trying to restore is different from the version you have displayed and gives you the opportunity to restore your saved backup version …
The new WordPress revision system introduced in version 3.6 has also added a new option to the Publish box called Revisions. This lets you see at a glance how many revisions you have and allows you to bring up the Revisions screen by clicking on the Browse link …
WordPress Version 3.5 Revisions
If your site uses an earlier version than WordPress 3.6 (e.g. version 3.5.X) then you will see a screen that looks like the example screenshot below …
At the bottom of the screen, you will see the Revisions section, which gives you the option of comparing revisions, or restoring one of your previous revisions …
To compare revisions, select which revisions you want to compare from the Revisions table, then click on the Compare Revisions button …
Typically, you will be offered the option of comparing your current post revision and the autosave version, but you can select and compare any two revisions you want by clicking on the radio buttons in the Old and New columns …
Your revisions will be shown side by side, with any differences highlighted in the text …
If the revisions being compared are the same, the message “These revisions are identical” will be displayed …
To restore the revision you prefer, click on the Restore link next to the item in the “Actions” column …
Your post or page revision will be restored …
WordPress Revisions Feature – Additional Information
As soon as you update (i.e. save) a post or page, WordPress begins to store revisions of your content in its database. You can see these displayed in a Revisions box below your post or page …
If you can’t see the Revisions box, click on the Screen Options tab at the top of your screen and tick the checkbox next to Revisions in the Show on Screen section …
You will now see the Revisions box displayed under your content editor section …
Click on any of the revision links to view and restore a previous version of your content …
How To Use WordPress Revisions
Managing Revisions
For most WordPress users, having features like Autosave and Revisions is a good thing. If, for some reason, however, you really don’t want these features to be present, then you can disable them, but this requires modifying some code in your WordPress files.
One thing that can happen if you write and edit a lot, is that after a while the revisions start to build up. This can significantly increase the size of your WordPress database, so it’s important to manage your revisions.
Fortunately, there are a number of WordPress plugins that can help you control and manage your revisions and reduce the size of your database. This topic is covered in a separate tutorial here: WordPress Plugins – How To Manage WordPress Post Revisions
Congratulations! Now you know how to use the WordPress Revisions feature to recover or restore earlier saved versions of your WordPress posts or pages.
WordPress is huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next Page, you will have a clearer picture of where to start and progress to building a professional WordPress Site.
As well as adding text, images and videos into your content, you can also insert audio files into your WordPress posts and pages.
This lets your visitors listen to (and/or download) audio-based content such as interviews, song previews, narrated articles, podcasts, lectures, seminars, classes and more. It also helps your site to engage better with your visitors, and keeps them longer on your pages.
You can add downloadable audio files to your WordPress site, or you can embed an audio player that lets your visitors listen to audio files while on your site … or both!
WordPress Media Library https
In this tutorial, you will learn how to insert playable audio files into your posts and pages and how to add downloadable audio files to your site.
Watch the video below and then complete the step-by-step tutorial to learn more about adding audio to WordPress …
How To Add Audio Files To Your WordPress Site: Step-By-Step Tutorial
WordPress provides a Media Uploader feature by default that allows you to easily upload media files such as images, videos and audio files to your WordPress site …
In WordPress Version 3.6, WordPress introduced the audio shortcode …
To embed an audio file into a WordPress post or page, just add the audio URL inside the audio shortcode as shown below, then publish …
You can add additional information such as fallbacks for other HTML5-supported filetypes ….
From version 3.6, the option to embed an audio has also been added to the Media Library …
To embed an audio into your post, select Upload Files (1) and select your audio file (2) …
Your audio will then begin uploading …
Once your audio file has uploaded, select the file you want to insert into your post or page (optional: add or modify the file’s caption or description if you want) …
WordPress Media Library https
Choose Embed Media Player from the “Embed or Link:” drop-down menu and click on the Insert into post button …
The audio will be embedded into your post using the Audio shortcode …
Just publish your post or page and the audio will display on your site, ready to play …
How To Insert Audio In Earlier WordPress Versions
In earlier versions (e.g. v 3.5) WordPress did not not come with a default media player for playing audio files.
If you are using an earlier version of WordPress, then search online and you will find a number of plugins that allow you to embed audio files into WordPress. Refer to the section further below where we go through some of these plugins.
For now, let’s take a look at how to upload an MP3 audio file in WordPress using the default WordPress Media Uploader and then go through the process of embedding the audio file into a WordPress post or page using a simple plugin and a neat feature of WordPress called oEmbed.
oEmbed allows you to autoembed certain files into a post or page (e.g. a YouTube video) simply by adding the URL in a line of its own with no hyperlinks (i.e. the URL should not be clickable when viewing the post).
The WordPress oEmbed library currently supports a number of popular audio services like Rdio, SoundCloud, Spotify, etc. For the full list of services supported go here:
First, make sure that you have the audio file you want to add to your WordPress site ready to upload, then Click on the Add Media button …
Next, upload the audio file from your computer. You can upload files in mp3, ogg, and wav formats. If you need help using the WordPress Media Uploader, this tutorial …
Once your file has been uploaded, go to your Media Library, then locate the file you want to insert into your content and click on Edit …
In the Save section, select and highlight the File URL (1), then right-click with your mouse on your selection and copy the URL to your clipboard (2) …
Note: if you are currently working on a post or page and have already previously uploaded your media files, then do this instead:
Click on the Add Media button …
Select Audio from the Insert Media > Media Library drop down menu …
Select the file you want to insert into your content and copy the URL of the file to your clipboard …
Once you have copied the audio file URL to your clipboard, open up a new plain text file (e.g. Notepad), and paste the URL from your clipboard into this file …
You will need this URL later. For now, just minimize the text file and move onto the next step.
The next step is to download, install and activate a WordPress plugin called oEmbed HTML5 audio.
All you need to do for this plugin to work is install and activate it …
This plugin converts URLs of audio files (MP3, OGG, WAV) into HTML5 audio and embeds it into posts and pages using the oEmbed technology that is used by WordPress. Audio files are embeded using HTML5 audio tag, with a Flash-based backup player for MP3 format for browsers that don’t support either HTML5 or MP3 format.
After installing and activating the plugin, bring up the text file that you created in the previous step, and copy the file URL back to your clipboard …
Open up the post or page where you want to insert your audio file into, and make sure that you are in the Visual editor mode. Scroll down your content and create a new line where you want your audio player to appear, then place a string of characters to mark this location (e.g. @@@@@@@@) …
Next, switch to the Text editor, then find and highlight the string of characters you have used as a “marker” …
Note: make sure that you select all of the line where you have added your markers. The audio URL must be placed in its own separate line with no surrounding characters. This also includes no hyperlinks!
WordPress Media Library https
Paste the URL of the audio file’s location over the highlighted characters …
After publishing your post or page, the audio player should display in the location where you have inserted the code …
Remembers to click on the PLAY button and test to make sure that you have set up everything correctly …
Note: Depending on the browser type and version used by your visitors, your audio player might display differently. Below are screenshots of the same audio player viewed on different browsers.
Here is a screenshot taken of the audio player in the Google Chrome browser …
Here’s how the audio player looks in the Internet Explorer browser …
This is how the audio player displays in the Firefox browser …
Notes: If the browser does not support the HTML5 and/or the MP3 format, then a Flash based audio player will be used instead. The flash fallback method seems to work fine for most internet browsers and platforms.
Audio Player Plugins For WordPress
Some plugins allow you a little more customization than the one we have used earlier in the tutorial. Below is a list of free audio player plugins for WordPress that you may want to look at:
CP Media Player
With CP Media Player you can publish files in the following formats: MP4, OGG, WebM, WMV, MP3, WAV, WMA and WebSRT subtitle files. This plugin is based on MediaElement.js which guarantees support for all browsers that implement the HTML5 standard. For older browsers, it supports Flash and Silverlight. CP Media Player also allows you to associate a playlist to your media player and change the look of the player to match the design of your site as closely as possible.
Some of the plugin’s main features include:
Publish an Audio player and Video player anywhere
Support for audio and video files: MP4, OGG, WebM, WMV, MP3, WAV, WMA
Support WebSRT subtitle files
Allow playlist
Supported by web browser: IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera
Supported by mobile devices: iPhone, iPad and Android devices
WP Audio Player
WP Audio Player introduces a meta box to each post that allows you to supply the URL to any audio file and will then append the player to the end of the post. This way, you can upload your media using the WordPress built-in Media Uploader, and then use the file’s URL to add the player to your posts.
HTML5 Audio
This plugin lets you use simple functions in your theme to display audio you have attached to Posts/Pages/Custom Post Types in your Media Library. Your player is styled 100% with CSS/images (if you want). Your audio player uses your browser’s native HTML5 capabilities when available with a fallback to Flash when necessary. Allows you to play audio inline on mobile browsers that support HTML5 Audio.
Another WordPress plugin you may want to look at if you plan on adding podcasts to your WordPress site is the Blubrry PowerPress Podcasting plugin…
This plugin lets you add essential features for podcasting to WordPress and offers full iTunes support, web audio/video media players and more.
Adding Downloadable Audio Files To WordPress
Depending on your business or the topic of your blog, you may want to share your audio files with your audience. If you want to let visitors to download your audio files instead of simply allowing them to listen to audios on your site, then here’s a simple way to do it:
First, make sure that you have already uploaded the audio file to your WordPress site, or a remote server location …
Next, open up the post or page where you want to insert the download link to your audio file. With the Visual Editor tab selected, click on the location in your content where you want to add your file download link to place a blinking cursor (1), then click on the Add Media button (2) …
Select the audio file you want to insert into your post or page and click on the Insert into post button (note: make sure that Media File is selected in the Link To drop down menu in the ATTACHMENT DISPLAY SETTINGS section) …
This places a link to the media file into your content …
After publishing your post or page, anyone will be able to download your audio file by right-clicking on the link and choosing “Save Link As …“
WordPress Audio – Useful Tips
Tip #1: It’s a good idea to add some helpful text for visitors, so they will know what to do to download your audio file …
Tip #2: You can store your audio files in a remote server (e.g. Amazon S3) as .zip files and create graphic “download” buttons instead of using direct links to your media files.
Tip #3: Adding direct links to media files does not allow you to monitor information about your downloads. For a tutorial where we explain how to manage, track and control your file downloads in WordPress go here: How To Manage Downloadable Files In WordPress
Additional Information
Some mobile platforms may not display certain video and audio players.
Uploading your audio files to your own server using the WordPress Media Uploader is fine, but it can lead to your bandwidth being consumed very quickly if your audio becomes popular. For example, if the size of your audio file is 10MB and 1,000 people listen to it, that’s 10 GB of bandwidth being consumed.
If you plan to add a lot of media to your WordPress site (e.g. videos and audios), a better solution is to upload your files to a remote storage location such as Dropboxor Amazon S3, then simply copy the links of the files and paste these into your posts.
If you plan to use audio extensively on your site or share music online, then consider signing up either for a free or premium account with SoundCloud – a service created specifically for sharing music and audio online …
SoundCloud is like a YouTube for audio files. You can upload your audios to your SoundCloud account and then embed your files as single files or entire sets (e.g. a lecture series).
Additionally, if you plan to use SoundCloud, you can download a plugin called SoundCloud Is Gold, which is useful if you want to avoid embedding audio codes manually into your posts. It also lets you customize your audio player and choose the tracks you want to play …
Congratulations … now you know how to add audio files to your WordPress posts and pages!
WordPress is huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next Page, you will have a clearer picture of where to start and progress to building a professional WordPress Site.
How To Add Images to WordPress Using An Image Gallery
Are you looking for a way to insert a number of images or photos into your posts and pages?
Many people immediately go looking for a plugin, but did you know that WordPress offers a built-in image gallery feature that allows you to easily insert multiple images into your content and display these in a professional-looking grid-like gallery view?
Note: if you simply want to learn how to insert a single image into your content, see this tutorial.
Below is an example of an image gallery created using the native WordPress gallery feature …
How To Add Images to WordPress Using An Image Gallery
In this tutorial you are going to learn how to insert multiple images into your posts and pages using the built-in WordPress image gallery feature.
Watch the video below and then complete the step-by-step tutorial to learn more about using the WordPress image gallery …
Using The WordPress Image Gallery: Step-By-Step Tutorial
The WordPress built-in image gallery feature lets you create multiple image galleries for displaying images on your posts and pages.
To add an image gallery to a post or page, create a new post or page or open up an existing one, then place your mouse cursor when you want the image gallery inserted and click on the Add Media button …
The Insert Media screen will open in a pop-up window. Click on the Create Gallery link as shown in the example below …
How To Add Images to WordPress Using An Image Gallery
Select the images you want to include in your gallery (selected images will display a check mark on the upper right-hand corner) and click on the button labelled Create a new gallery at the bottom of the screen…
This will bring up the Edit Gallery screen …
There are a number of things you can do in the Edit Gallery screen:
You can add a caption to your images. To do this, just click on the field below the image where it says “Caption this image …” and type in your text …
You can reorder the images using drag and drop. Just click on an image and drag it to a new location, then release your mouse button. Your image will be placed in the new location …
You can reverse the order that your images display in your gallery by clicking on the Reverse order button …
You can remove images from your gallery hovering over the image with your mouse and clicking on the box marked with an “X” …
Gallery Settings
As well as the gallery edit options shown above, there are also a number of gallery settings that can be adjusted.
You can choose whether to link your images to an attachment page or the media file by selecting an option from the dropdown menu in the Link To section …
The image below shows the difference between selecting the “Attachment Page” and “Media File” options …
You can also specify the number of columns for your gallery by selecting an option from the dropdown menu in the Gallery Settings > Columns section …
The image below shows how different column settings display your images …
You can also specify whether your images should display in random order or not by ticking the Random Order checkbox …
The image below shows how images with Random Order option enabled display on your published post or page …
Once you have finished editing your image gallery and adjusting your settings, it’s time to insert your image gallery into your post or page …
Click on the Insert gallery button at the bottom of the Edit Gallery screen …
A placeholder image will be inserted into your content if using the visual editor …
If using the text editor, you will see a gallery shortcode inserted into the content (using gallery shortcodes is explained further below in this tutorial) …
To view your image gallery, publish or update your post or page …
How To Add Images to WordPress Using An Image Gallery
Making Changes To Your Image Gallery
If you want to make changes to an existing image gallery, make sure that you are in the “Edit Post” or “Edit Page” screen, and click on the image gallery placeholder image.
This will display the Edit Gallery and Delete Gallery icons. Click on the Delete Gallery icon to remove your image gallery from your content, or click on the Edit Gallery icon to make changes to your existing image gallery …
We have already shown you how to make a number of changes to your gallery, such as adding captions, reordering or reversing the display order of images, removing images from the gallery and changing image gallery settings.
You can also add new images to your gallery by clicking on the Add to Gallery button as shown below …
You can add images that you have previously uploaded or upload new image files to your existing gallery. Once you have completed adding new images to your gallery, click on the Add to gallery button …
The new image will be added to the gallery, as shown in the Edit Gallery screen …
Click the Update gallery button to update your gallery …
And then click on the Update button to republish your post …
Your image gallery is now updated with your new image(s) …
The WordPress Image Gallery: Using Shortcodes
WordPress supports using short codes for images and galleries. A shortcode is a code that you can enter in the visual editor of a post or page to insert a feature, functionality or script. Basically, Shortcodes can embed files or create objects into your posts or pages that would normally require lots of complex code in just one line.
Shortcodes are wrapped in square brackets ( [ ] ) as shown below …
Here’s the shortcode for the WordPress image gallery …
Inserting the gallery shortcode into your content …
Displays your image gallery when your post or page is published …
You can also display a specific image using the gallery shortcode using a shortcode that includes the image ID …
To find your image ID, do the following:
Go to Media > Library
Hover your mouse over an image
The ID is displayed after “post=” in the status bar at the bottom of your screen, as shown below …
Add the shortcode where you want the image to appear in the content …
And your image will display when your post or page is published …
Additional Gallery Shortcode Options
You can customize your gallery using additional shortcode options, such as columns, id, size, link, include, exclude, orderby, order, itemtag, icontag, and captiontag.
Note: Before using any of the shortcode options above, make sure that you have “attached” the images you want to use in your gallery to a specific post or page …
If you need help attaching images to posts or pages, see this tutorial.
Here are some examples of gallery shortcodes you can use:
columns
The above shortcode lets you specify the amount of columns you want your image gallery to display on your post or page. Simply enter the number of columns inside the quotation marks. The default value is 3. If columns are set to 0, no row breaks will be included.
size
You can use the shortcode above to display your images as thumbnail, medium, large and full size. Simply enter one of these options inside the quotation marks:
thumbnail
medium
large
full
id
The above shortcode allows you to display images attached to a post ID. By default, if no ID is specified, the gallery will display images attached to the current post. In the screenshot above, for example, the gallery would display all images attached to post 123. If you need help finding a post or page ID, see this tutorial.
include
We have covered using this shortcode in the earlier section of this tutorial. Include multiple images by inserting comma-separated IDs.
exclude
You can exclude images by adding the above shortcode with comma-separated IDs for images that you don’t want to display. See the earlier section of this tutorial to learn how to identify image IDs in your media library.
order
This lets you specify the sort order, used to display thumbnails. You have the following options:
ASC (ascending)
DESC (descending)
order by
This option lets you specify how to sort your display thumbnails. By default, your image gallery uses “menu_order” to display images using the order you have specified when creating your gallery.
The options include:
menu_order (note: you can reorder the images by editing your image gallery)
title (order by image title, as specified in the Media Library)
post_date (sort images by date/time)
rand (display images in random order)
ID (order images by ID)
You can combine order and orderby in a single shortcode. For example …
The above shortcode will sort images by ID in descending order.
To sort images by date/time in ascending order, you would enter the shortcode below into your post or page …
And to sort images by image title in ascending order, you would enter the following shortcode …
For most users, the default WordPress gallery feature is more than ideal for their needs.
There are several plugins available, however, that can help you create beautiful-looking image galleries with WordPress. If you plan to use image galleries extensively throughout your site, then check out our tutorial on how to use a popular and feature-rich image gallery plugin.
Congratulations! Now you know how to insert multiple images into your posts and pages using the built-in WordPress image gallery feature.
WordPress is huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next Page, you will have a clearer picture of where to start and progress to building a professional WordPress Site.
In this tutorial you are going to learn how to easily locate your Page ID.
Watch the video below and then complete the step-by-step tutorial to learn how to locate your page ID …
How To Find Your Post Or Page ID: Step-By-Step Tutorial
To locate your page or post ID, log into your administration area and go to the Pages section of your site …
Locate the page or post whose ID you want to know and hover your mouse over its title …
The “Post ID” value is displayed in the status bar of your browser window. (In this example, the post ID is “1825”) …
Note down the ID of the post or page.
WordPress Post ID / Page ID – Examples Of Applications
Here are a couple of examples of using Post or Page IDs:
1) In the example below, we want to prevent a page whose page ID is “26” from displaying to visitors on a Site Map …
2) The next example shows a whole range of page Ids being added to the WordPress Pages Widget to prevent them from displaying in your sidebar.
To do this, simply enter all of the Page Ids for the pages you want to exclude separated by commas into the Exclude field of the Pages widget, then click the Save button …
How To Find Your WordPress Post ID
Plugins
If you need to know your post or page IDs on a regular basis, then here are a few FREE plugins you may find useful:
Reveal IDs
This plugin reveals ids for posts, pages, categories, links, media, users, comments, link categories, custom taxonomies, custom post types, and tags. It also adds a sortable column header …
How To Find Your WordPress Post ID
You can access the plugin settings area by going to Settings > Reveal IDs …
WP Show IDs is another plugin that displays your Posts, Pages, Media, Links, Categories, Tags, and Users in the admin tables for easy access. It’s a very lightweight plugin that also supports Custom Post Types / Taxonomies.
Congratulations! Now you know how to find your page or post IDs.
WordPress is huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next Page, you will have a clearer picture of where to start and progress to building a professional WordPress Site.
WordPress provides a powerful custom menu’s feature that gives you a great deal of flexibility in how you can display links to almost every element of your site on your navigation menus.
If your WordPress theme supports custom menu, then you can use the WordPress features to create multiple menus, organize them into hierarchical sub-menus using a simple drag-and-drop feature, add links to external URLs and categories, even add links to them automatically when new pages are created.
Watch the video below and then complete the step-by-step tutorial to learn how to use WordPress custom menu …
How To Use WordPress Custom Menus: Step-By-Step Tutorial
To view, edit and manage your WordPress log into your WordPress administration area, and then go to Appearance > Menus …
You can also access the section from your theme management screen …
The Menus section allows you to manage your WordPress. This section is divided into two areas:
Edit Menus
Manage Locations
Edit Menus
You can create multiple menus and then assign these to different locations on your site.
To create a new one, go to the Edit Menus screen and enter a menu name into the Name field, then click on the Create Menu button …
Once you have created a new one, you can edit it by selecting it from the Select a menu to edit drop-down and clicking the Select button …
The next step is to add links (e.g. pages) to your menu.
In the screenshot below, you can see that there are no items listed in the Menu’s Structure section …
To add items such as links to pages to your menu, select items from the lists on the left-hand of your screen, then click the Add to Menu button …
The item will be added to your menu under the Structure section …
After adding a new item to your menu, remember to click on the Save button to save your settings …
If you don’t save your changes, a window will pop up asking you to confirm if you want to leave the page and lose your changes, or stay on the page …
Adding Menu Items
You can add various items and elements of your site to your menus …
Note: Although some elements will not display in your Edit Menus section unless you add specific plugins or functions to your site that support custom features, some elements are hidden by default.
For example, you can add links to posts, and even tag pages to your menus. If you don’t see these listed on your screen, do the following:
Scroll to the top of your Edit Menus screen and click on the Screen Options tab on the far right-hand corner of the screen …
Select Posts in the Show on screen section …
The item will now display on your screen …
You can choose to view only your most recently added items, view all items on a list, and even search for items on your page (just type a word into the search field and WordPress will automatically begin searching) …
You can add multiple items at once by selecting multiple checkboxes …
Or, add all of the items in a list at once by clicking the Select All link …
You can also add and display links to external locations on your menu, using the Links function …
Links show up in your menu area with items tagged as “Custom” …
Editing Menu Items
After adding items to your menu, you can modify and customize these further.
To expand or collapse a menu item, click on the little triangle on the right-hand corner of the title bar …
Let’s suppose that you want the item to open in a new page when visitors click on the menu link. Open up the item …
If you can’t see the open link in a new window/tab field displayed below the item’s Navigation Label, scroll to the top of your Edit Menus screen and click on the Screen Options tab on the far right-hand corner of the screen …
Make sure that the Link Target checkbox is selected in the advanced menu properties section …
Click the open link in a new window/tab checkbox …
Your link will now open in a new window (remember to save for the change to take effect).
The screenshot below shows an item with all of the advanced options listed in the Screen Options tab enabled …
The advanced menu properties are used by web developers and by WordPress theme designers to further enhance, style and customize menu options. Below is a brief description of these properties:
Title Attribute: This field specifies the Alternative (‘Alt’) text for the menu item. This text is displayed when a visitor hovers over a menu item with their mouse.
For example, if you add the following line into the Title Attribute field and the save your menu …
This is what your visitors will see when they hover with their mouse over the menu link …
CSS Classes: This allows you to style your links using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). After adding a CSS class to a menu link, you can then target the classes you have assigned from within your stylesheet.
Link relationship (XFN): XFN (XHTML Friends Network) is a simple way to represent the relationships you share with the owners or authors of other websites using links. This allows certain programs such as search engines and specialized services to understand and display the relationships you share with other people, such as friends, professional contacts, etc. For more information, go here: XFN
Description: This field can be used to add a short description to a menu label …
You can also give your menu label a custom name that is different from the name of your page …
Rearranging Menu Layouts
The custom menus feature lets you easily rearrange menu items.
To rearrange your menu items, first add some menu items to your menu …
Once you have added your menu items, notice that “move” options begin to display in your item’s details section, allowing you to move the position of your item on the menu bar …
You can rearrange the position of your menu items by clicking on the “move” options, or simply click on an item’s bar, then drag-and-drop these into its desired position …
Here is a screenshot of a custom menu, displaying menu items in a certain order …
After applying simple drag-and-drop to rearrange menu items …
The menu links have now been reordered on the example site …
You can also create nested menus by drag-and-dropping menu items and shifting their position away from the left margin. Items can be nested multiple levels deep …
Below is a screenshot of the above menu configuration displayed in an example menu …
Your menus will display differently, depending on the WordPress theme you have chosen for your site …
Menu Settings
The Menu Settings section lets you automatically add pages to menus depending on the options you specify:
Auto Add Pages: Check this box to automatically add new top-level pages to your menu
Theme locations: Check the box(es) in this section to specify the locations in your theme where you want your new menu links to be added …
Manage Locations
Before your custom menu settings can be displayed on your site, your menu needs to be assigned to a location on your theme.
Some WordPress themes only support one menu …
Other WordPress themes support multiple menus …
If you have not created a menu yet, then click on the Use new menu link to create one …
To assign an existing menu to a location on your theme, select it from the Assigned Menu dropdown menu …
Click on the Save Changes button to save your selection …
If your theme supports multiple menus, repeat the above process to assign all menus to a location on your theme …
Your menu locations will now be updated …
Your custom menu will now be displayed on the theme location you have assigned …
Remove Menu Items
To remove an item from your menu, select and expand the item and click on the Remove link …
Delete Menus
To delete a menu, load the menu in the Edit Menus screen, then scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on Delete Menu …
You will be asked to confirm the deletion. Click OK to proceed, or Cancel to escape …
The selected menu will be deleted …
Using Custom Menus With Widgets
Custom menus can be added to your sidebar and other menu locations using widgets.
WordPress has a Custom Menu widget that you can add to your widgetized menus …
You can add multiple Custom Menu widgets to your menus.
To use this feature, go to the Widgets section of your WordPress site, and drag a Custom Menu widget to the menu where you want your menu links to display …
Enter a custom menu title in the Title: field, select the menu to display on your sidebar from the Select Menu dropdown, and click the Save button to save your settings …
Your custom menu will now display on your site where you have inserted the widget …
Congratulations! Now you know how to split long posts into multiple pages.
WordPress is huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next Page, you will have a clearer picture of where to start and progress to building a professional WordPress Site
In this article we’ll show you the simplest and most inexpensive way to fix issues with your website design.
Are you losing business because of a poorly-designed web site? A poorly-designed website can end up costing you valuable business.
In a world where beautiful design matters, the design of your web site is very important to the success of your business. Your website is the first thing that a web visitor see and this can influence their decision to buy your products and use your services.
We mostly do it online. Even if it’s just preliminary research, we may fire up our laptop and go visit a website before taking the next step.
Now, put yourself in your customer’s position. How does your web site appear to other people? Does your site invite them to enter and explore things further, or does it make people hesitant and cautious about what to do next?
The way your site looks is just the tip of the iceberg. There are so many other things than can influence your visitors’ experience and their decision to ultimately proceed with you.
Let’s take a look at a few key design problems that can affect your web site:
Web Site Design Issues
Typical design issues that can impact your user’s perception about your site include:
Colour – Poor colour combinations can affect your website’s results. This also applies to text and background colours. There are tools that can help you select web colours correctly and even safe web colour tools to ensure that the colours you select will display correctly across various systems. If in doubt, consult a web design professional.
Design Elements – Pages that contain aesthetically unappealing, outdated and just plain old ugly graphic elements can result in users quickly losing interest in away from your site. Visitors can also be affected by inconsistent graphic elements or excessive use of design elements.
Layout – How your site is structured can have a significant impact in the way visitors interact with your site. Layout considerations also include where your navigational items, links and other useful objects.
Responsiveness – As online information is now viewed through various devices with different-sized screens and browsers, it’s important that your web design be responsive. If your web pages do not resize automatically to display your information on all devices, browsers and platforms, you will incur significant loss of customers.
Website Functionality Issues
Common website functionality problems include:
Subpar functionality – A huge turn-off for visitors is landing on a page where some hyperlinks don’t work, videos can’t play and graphics aren’t showing. Subpar functionality is not acceptable for a website, especially if you are trying to come across as a professional. Your website reflects your organization. It’s vitally important, therefore, to make sure that all your links, videos and images remain up and running all the time. In some cases, these problems are related to factors such as your hosting, or they may even be unbeknownst to you, but it’s important to ensure that you’re always proactive and that all issues get corrected as soon as possible.
Feature limitations – If your site offers visitors certain functionality, then make sure that these functionalities are not limited. For example, if you plan to sell products online, make sure that you provide users with full e-commerce features that allow them to easily select and add products to a cart, enter discount coupons, pay using credit card or PayPal, receive notifications, receipts and confirmations, etc.
Poor User Experience
Invariably, where your business suffers most noticeably due to a poorly-constructed website is in the realm of the “user experience”.
A bad user experience can leave a bad taste in people’s mouths and lead them to vent their disappointment in social networks, user forums, review sites, comments, etc., bringing you negative publicity.
Here are just some common issues that can lead to a poor user experience:
Ease Of Use – Your website needs to be easy to use and easy to navigate around in. Information about your products and services should not be hard to find. Your site visitors want user-friendly features and they want to find things quickly and without disappointment. Make your content searchable and if you plan to add downloadable files to your site (e.g. Presentation slides), make sure that users are given instructions on how to download and access your information.
Organization – If your site isn’t organized and user-friendly, you run the risk of losing not only prospective buyers but also existing customers. Providing features such as descriptive URLs, product and service categories and clearly-defined sections where topic-related content can be easily found provides users with a good user experience.
Stimulating Features – Customers stay longer on sites that are user friendly, well organized, and that provide them with eye-catching options. To achieve this you need a balance between attractive, modern web design and compelling content that engages your visitors. For example, highlight hyperlinks which point to your product pages with eye-popping images alongside well-crafted product descriptions. This is effective and can help you improve not only the user experience on your website, but also grow your sales and conversions.
User Interactivity – Another area that helps customers decide to stick around on your website is to provide interactive features that engage your users, like features that let users comment on, share, like, download and recommend your content, interact with your support staff via a responsive helpdesk, support forum, live chat, schedule appointments, make reservations, etc … Additionally, you want visitors to navigate quickly within your site and access your data without waiting around for pages to load, so site loading optimization is important.
Compliance – One of the most important and often most neglected aspects of creating a great user experience is to make sure that users feel comfortable doing business with you online. To reassure your potential clients that your business is credible, trustworthy, secure and professional to deal with, make sure to add legal compliance pages such as a business, information page, privacy statement, terms and conditions of use, security information, earnings disclaimers, etc.
As the above shows, there are many areas that can lead to a poor user experience and negatively impact your business results online. If your site is poorly built, you run the serious risk of not only losing potential paying customers, but also existing clients as well.
Now … what if you have arrived found this post because you currently have an existing website with design problems that are affecting your business?
First, understand that getting problems addressed on an existing site can take some time and can also be quite costly depending on the problem and what kind of website you own, especially if what needs doing requires rewriting code extensively.
If you are considering getting a new website built or overhauling an existing web site, then we suggest that you consider choosing the WordPress content publishing platform.
We currently publish more in-depth posts about WordPress on this site, but here are just a few of the things to keep in mind about why you should seriously choose WordPress:
WordPress – Unique Website Design Features
WP themes are unique web design template systems that let you easily modify the look of your entire website in minutes.
There are thousands of great-looking themes for WordPress site owners available that can be downloaded. Many of these are either freely available, or they can be bought for a relatively small price, saving you hundreds of dollars on the cost of website design.
Most WordPress themes nowadays are responsive and provide users with flexible and customizable options for changing design settings on your site like colour, template elements like headers, footers, menus and styles, page layouts and more. Themes are just one of the many things that make WordPress such a powerful tool for helping you achieve a design for your website that helps your business.
WP Plugins – Virtually Unlimited Scalability
Another great reason to choose WordPress is that WordPress provides users with modular features through add-on applications called “plugins.”
WP plugins, like WordPress themes, integrate easily with your website to provide you with virtually unlimited new functionality.
Earlier in this post we looked at issues in areas like subpar functionality and feature limitations as part of the reason why a poorly built website could cost you customers.
Plugins can help you overcome these issues quite inexpensively. If there is a functionality that needs to be integrated with your website, just install a WordPress plugin that will do what you want your site to do.
Want a plugin that will notify you about any issues detected on your website, such as links not working, videos not playing, images that are missing or even tell you if your entire website has gone down? No problems … There are plugins that can help you fix that, or notify you about issues so you can correct these immediately!
Want a plugin that will turn your site into an online store or provide you with a complete e-commerce solution? Again, no problem! There are several inexpensive and easy-to-use plugins that will help you sell products on your site and provide your visitors with full e-commerce features that allow them to select and add items to a shopping cart, use discounts, purchase using credit card or PayPal, receive notifications, receipts and confirmations, etc.
And just like themes, there are tens of thousands of great plugins designed for WordPress that can be easily downloaded and are freely available, or are extremely well priced and will save you hundreds of dollars on the cost of website development.
WordPress – An Interactive Web User Experience
In addition to being able to correct problems caused by a poorly-built website, WordPress can also help you provide website users with a great user experience.
WordPress provides beautiful, professional and exciting themes that cover all needs and applications and plugins that allow customers to connect, engage and interact with you. With the right combination of a WordPress site, WP themes and plugins, plus great content, you can create a very rich and engaging user experience that will keep them coming back for more.
As stated earlier, consumers nowadays do research online before making a purchasing decision. If your website isn’t designed with a focus on the customer, these consumers will not return and simply move on to another business that does provide them with a better website.
Hopefully now you have a better understanding of issues that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you build a better online. To learn more about the benefits of using the WP website publishing platform, please see our related posts section.
Have we helped you become a more productive WordPress user? Feel free to comment below or take a moment to share this information with your friends.
WordPress is huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next Page, you will have a clearer picture of where to start and progress to building a professional WordPress Site.
Disclaimer: This site is not associated with WordPress or any of the WordPress products written about on this site. We may derive a financial benefit from sales of products advertised, reviewed or linked to from this site. The product details used in this review have been supplied from the plugin’s website and/or from sites that provide Premium WordPress Services
Currency conversion software tools let your prospects have the cost of an international currency transaction translated into their home currency at the point of sale.
Currencyr is a free WP tool that lets your visitors translate international transaction amounts into their local currency.
Need currency conversion for your WordPress website? Learn about Currencyr, a simple and easy-to-install WordPress tool for your WordPress website that lets your customers convert foreign currency amounts into their local currency.
Do you sell products online globally? If so, then it’s a great idea to consider providing your prospects with the convenience of currency conversion on your e-commerce web site.
Currency conversion software tools let your customers have the price of an international currency transaction translated to their home currency when purchasing or checking out products online. It also lets visitors and customers view the exact amount their card or PayPal account will be charged, expressed in their local currency.
The obvious advantage of displaying currency conversion on your site is that it lets visitors see and understand pricing in foreign countries in their own local currency, making it it easier for customers to work out their costs and expenses.
If your site is built using WordPress, it’s simple to add currency conversion via a plugin to your WordPress website or blog, allowing your visitors to quickly understand the cost of your goods.
Currencyr
Currencyr is an intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter WordPress plugin with a beautiful and unique converter tooltip. Best of all, it’s free to install and use on your website or blog.
The Currencyr useful plugin includes features like the following:
In-line converter
Supports various exchange rates providers, such as Yahoo!, Google, Open Exchange Rates, European Central Bank and FoxRates
WP-Cron task scheduler enabled
Currency table and converter widget
Can be integrated with a number of e-store plugins like WP-eCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads.
Can determine local currency automatically
Full support for language translations
Important: This plugin requires your server to be running PHP 5.3.0 or later. Do not install this plugin if you currently have an older version of PHP installed on your server. Ask your web host to upgrade your PHP.
***
You can install the plugin from your WP admin area by typing in “currencyr” into the Plugins search field and clicking “Install Now” …
After the plugin has been installed and activated, you can configure the plugin’s settings by choosing Currencyr from your WordPress administration area …
This takes you to the plugin settings screen …
For example, you can select your base currency from the ‘Base Currency’ dropdown menu. The default base currency is ‘United States Dollar’ …
Similarly, you can choose a data provider from a dropdown menu. The default selection is ‘Yahoo! Finance’, but you can choose one of the other options, such as European Central Bank or Google Finance …
Note: If you select ‘Open Exchange Rates’, you will need an API (Application Programming Interface) ID …
You can select how frequently you want to update the currency exchange rates by choosing an option from the Update Rates drop-down menu …
The plugin uses jQuery, which is an open-source library of Javascript code that lets web developers add things like animation effects to web applications (like WP plugins).
Unless there is a reason to modify the jQuery settings, leave this option alone …
Configure the rest of the settings according to your own needs and click ‘Save Changes’ when finished …
When you have finished configuring your plugin settings, you can add currency conversion to your WP site’s pages and posts using shortcodes and widgets.
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section further below to learn how to use currency codes (e.g. USD, NZD, CAD, etc …) in the Currencyr plugin.
How To Use Currencyr Shortcodes
You can easily add currency conversion to pages, posts and widgets with no technical knowledge or skills using shortcodes.
Let’s take a look at some examples of currency shortcodes that you can add to your WordPress pages and posts:
Let’s say that you are selling goods for a set amount (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you would like to display the amount converted into British pounds (GBP) on your sales page.
To do this, you will need to add the shortcode below into your page content …
Note: You can also insert amounts in dollars and cents (for example, 155.25, 79.45, 544.97, etc …)
The screenshot below shows how the above shortcode should look once you have added it to your post …
After publishing the page, your currency conversion will then display like this …
Using this example, let’s also translate the same amount into multiple currencies.
To do this, use the shortcode shown below (add as many currency symbols as you want separated by vertical pipes) …
You can see how the shortcode appears when added to a page …
Once the post or page has been published, your converted currency will then appear as you can see in the example below …
refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section at the bottom of this tutorial to learn how to change the currency separator symbol with this plugin.
Now, let’s say that you would like to select a different base currency than the one selected as the default.
For example, say you have specified your default base currency as EUR and you have a section on your e-commerce pages targeted to customers from countries like Australia or Canada, you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
The screenshot below shows how the shortcode looks when inserted into your content …
After publishing your content, the converted currency will then display as you can see below …
How To Use The Currencyr Widget
You can also insert currency conversion into your site’s sidebar using the Currencyr widget.
To add the currency converter to your sidebar, select Appearance > Widgets in your WP admin menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets section find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and drag it to an ‘Active Widgets’ area …
Configure the widget settings as shown in the screenshot below (add currency codes separated by a comma), and click ‘Save’ to update your settings …
The currency conversion tool will now appear on your site’s sidebar menu with the settings you have specified …
Additional Plugin Notes
Here are some additional notes and useful information about using the Currencyr plugin.
Currency Separator
The Currencyr plugin allows you to specify a symbol of your choice to display as the currency separator when using several currencies.
You can select a different symbol in the ‘Multiple Separator’ settings field.
So, for example, using the default symbol “/” (forward slash) …
Separates all your currency values using the forward slash as you can see in the example below …
If you modify the symbol and resave your settings …
Your web visitors will see the new symbol display as the currency separator …
e-Commerce Platform Integration
As stated earlier, the plugin integrates with a number of WP-compatible e-commerce plugins such as WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads …
(image source: plugin site)
***
Congratulations! Now you can go and easily add a currency converter to your e-commerce site.
Have you found this tutorial helpful? Feel free to add your comments below or subscribe to our newsletter and get notified about practical online business tips, news and WordPress tutorials.
***
WordPress is huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next Page, you will have a clearer picture of where to start and progress to building a professional WordPress Site.***
Disclaimer: We are not associated with WordPress or any of the WP products reviewed on this site. We may derive a financial benefit from sales of products advertised, reviewed or linked to from this site. All images on this page have been supplied from the plugin’s website and websites that provide Premium WP Services
A typical website mostly has a page termed static which could also be considered a shop front. This is the page that the visitor lands on when they get to your website.
This page is must be given priority regarding impression because it is the first thing that the visitors sees upon arrival on your page. A visitor types your domain name into a web browser and lands of this page. On the other hand a visitor could navigate to this page through a search engine or directory listing.
The static page can also serve as a landing page to attract your visitors’ attention, let your visitors know who you are, what you do and also to help them find their way to important areas on the site.
In a static page, the page and its content are normally intrinsically part of the home page file (e.g. www.mywebsite.com/index.html), so if you want visitors to see different content on your homepage when they arrive on your site via the main URL (i.e. www.mywebsite.com/), you would normally have to edit the content of the page itself, or log into your server and change file names around.
WordPress makes everything easier for users, especially if you don’t want to mess around with stuff like editing web page code in server files.
By default, WordPress acts as a “blog” and presents a changing list of recently-published posts, with the headlines and an excerpt of the content displayed for each article published, and links pointing to separate pages which contain the full article (e.g. “click here to learn more” …).
With WordPress, however, you are given the flexibility to create as many pages as you want and then specify which of these pages you want to designate as static WordPress Homepage for your site.
Better still, you can also replace the static WordPress Homepage of your website as often as you like, without having to edit any of its content, simply by creating a number of different pages you can point to as the site’s static page, and then selecting the page you want to show as your static WordPress Homepage.
This feature can be very useful. For example, you may want visitors arriving on your site’s home page to:
Watch a video presentation
Read an important announcement on a separate page before navigating to the rest of your site
Promote a different “book of the month” each month, or “product of the month”
Promote seasonal information (e.g. a “Season’s Greetings” themed offer as the new year approaches)
View different sections of your e-commerce catalog at regularly-spaced intervals (e.g. daily), or special occasions (e.g. sports events in your region)
View information on “split-test” sales pages (create two or more sales pages with similar content to test different page elements, e.g. pages with or without a sales video, price points, different font sizes, etc., then display one version as the home page for a specific period of time and then replace with the other version for the same period of time to see which page ultimately converts better)
Or even land on a “pre-launch” page if your site hasn’t officially launched yet!
This tutorial shows you how to easily create a static home page in WordPress.
How to create a static WordPress Homepage: Step-By-Step Tutorial
To set any page in your site to display as the Home Page, go to your admin menu and select Settings > Reading
In the Reading Settings screen, do the following:
Front page displays: select “A static page …”
Front page: Click on the drop down menu and choose the page you want to set as the Home Page (you can choose any of the pages showing in the dropdown menu)
Click the Save button after selecting your options to update the settings and set your new home page
After saving, click on Visit Site (tip: right-click and open the link in a new tab to open the homepage in a new browser window without leaving your WP dashboard) …
The page you have specified in Front page displays > A static page should now show as your site’s home page
You can specify a different home page for your website as many times as you want, just by repeating the above process and selecting another page …
Your newly-selected page will become the new home page immediately …
When you select any page to become the homepage of your site, WordPress reassigns the domain root to the URL of the page.
What this means is that if you select the page with the following URL your site’s home page:
The above page will automatically be given the following URL for as long as it remains the site’s home page:
http://yourdomain.com/
Notes:
If you type the “old” URL of the page you have specified as the new home page into your browser, WordPress will direct you to the home page.
Also, if you select another page as the home page, WordPress reassigns your old home page back to its original URL …
Congratulations! Now you know how to show any WordPress page as the home page.
Has this tutorial helped you? Did we leave something important out? Feel free to add your thoughts below and share this tutorial with your friends.
WordPress is huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next Page, you will have a clearer picture of where to start and progress to building a professional WordPress Site.
WordPress Tutorial for Beginners: You can specify your name and decide how it is displayed on your website through your profile section. This also includes how you want to display your:
Email address for administrative purposes
Personal details – optional
And Additional settings
***
This tutorial reveals how to edit your WordPress user profile and also how to configure the optional contact information.
The Users Profile Area lets you how your name will be displayed on your site, your e-mail address for admin purposes, and other personal information and personal options associated with your WordPress user account.
You will also learn how to create a “resources” section that automatically displays your published content on the Author Archives area of your blog and how to use this feature to better promote an author or their business online.
WordPress Tutorial for beginners: How To Change Your User Profile And Personal Options In WordPress
On the far right in your administration area is the Howdy, User Name section …
Hover over this panel with your mouse and it displays an image of your Gravatar, your name and username, and links pointing to your “Profile Screen” and a “Log Out” link …
Select Edit My Profile…
Another way to edit your user profile section using the main navigation menu is to go to Users > Your Profile …
This open up the Profile screen …
The Profile screen contains a number of subsections that allow you to manage information about your WordPress user account.
These include:
Personal Options
Name
Contact Info
About Yourself
Change Password
Let’s go through each of these sections below …
WordPress Tutorials for beginners: Your Profile Fields
Please refer to the screenshot above as you go through the sections below.
Main Profile Screen
1 – Accessing Your Profile
As we’ve already mentioned, you can access your profile by clicking on your username, which is displayed on the top right hand side of the screen, and selecting “Edit My Profile” from the drop-down menu, or selecting Users > Your Profile using the main navigation menu.
Profile > Personal Options
You can typically ignore this section, unless you specifically want to customize aspects of your WordPress site administration area that are only viewable to you (and no one else) such as disabling the visual editor when writing, changing the admin area’s colour scheme, or enabling keyboard shortcuts for comment moderation.
2 – Visual Editor
Ticking this box disables the visual editor and uses the plain HTML editor instead.
Tip: Should you experience any issues when trying to add code to your posts or pages (e.g. HTML), try disabling the visual editor checkbox in this section.
3 – Admin Colour Scheme
With WordPress, you can customize the look of your WordPress Dashboard by selecting a global colour scheme…
WordPress User Profile: Changing The Default WordPress Colour Scheme
You can select a different color scheme for your WordPress administration area from the default choices, or add a custom colour scheme using WordPress plugins …
WordPress Tutorials for beginners
Although this has no impact on what your blog visitors see (your theme controls the look of your site is controlled by themes) or the functionality of your site, this feature can be useful to brand the dashboard area with your corporate colours, or allowing other site users to personalize their own dashboard.
WordPress Tutorials for Beginners: To learn how to customize your WordPress dashboard, see the tutorial below:
Ticking the Enable keyboard shortcuts for comment moderation box allow you to rapidly navigate and perform actions to moderate comments using keyboard shortcuts.
5 – Toolbar
The Toolbar is located at the very top of your Administration screen and provides you (and your registered site users) with access to various administrative functions, features, information and “quick links” to other areas of your site …
Important: Leave the “Show Toolbar when viewing site” check box enabled to display the Toolbar in your WP administration area.
WordPress Tutorial for Beginners: To learn more about the WordPress toolbar, see the tutorial below:
Your username cannot be changed in the Profile section by anyone, including the site administrator.
You can, however, change your username if you know how to edit your WP database.
You can also change the username inside the WordPress Admin area using an easier method that requires no code editing or messing with your site’s database.
Changing your username will affect your login, as this username is required for logging into your site!
For a tutorial that teaches you how to do this, go here:
You can edit your First Name and Last Name details in this section.
Just type the first name and last name into the name fields …
7 – Name > Nickname / Display Name Publicly As
If you want a different author name than the one you originally set up for your WordPress site to display on your posts, you can change the Nickname (required) field and select your new nickname from the Display name publicly as drop down menu …
You can add multiple nicknames to your profile section.
If you select a new nickname, all your blog posts, comments, etc. will then display with your new nickname, instead of the one that you originally set up your site with.
Profile > Contact Info
8 – Contact Info > Email
Ensure that your correct email address is entered in the Email (required) field. This field is required (see “Notes” section below for more information).
9 – Contact Info > Website
Add the address of your website or blog into the Website field.
If you would like to display another URL in your profile, then enter the address for that website or blog instead.
10 – Contact Info > Other
You can enter details for the other Contact Info section fields, or just ignore these.
For more details about using this feature, see the “WordPress User Profile: Additional Contact Information” section further below.
Profile > About Yourself
11 – About Yourself > Biographical Info
In this section, you can insert a personal or business description for your visitors or blog readers.
For more details about using this feature, see the “Useful Tips Related To Your WordPress User Profile” section below.
12 – About Yourself > Password Settings
Here you can change your login password details.
Use the New Password section only if you are required to change your login password. You will need to enter your new password twice before the system can accept the password change.
For a tutorial that teaches you you how to change your WordPress password, go here:
WordPress lets you log out of all current sessions except the one in your current browser. This is useful if, for example, you’ve left your account logged in at a public computer, or if you’ve lost or misplaced your phone.
For more information about logging securely out of WordPress, see the tutorial below:
Click the Update Profile button to save any changes you make to your user profile …
WordPress Tutorials for beginners: Important Notes
WordPress only requires your e-mail address and a nickname in the User Profile section.
Your email address is only used for administration purposes.
The email address on your profile is never sent to any other site (including WordPress) and it is never shown on your site (unless you decided to publish it, or use a particular WP theme that displays the email address).
Only registered users of your blog can access the email address you have provided.
Each user’s email address must be unique.
In Addition …
Installing certain plugins on your site (e.g. for adding social media features), may insert or remove fields in your User Profile area (e.g. add a Facebook URL field, insert extra settings related to the plugin, etc…)
There are a number of plugins that allow you to change user profile fields. You can find a number of these plugins by typing in keywords like “user profile fields” in the “Add Plugins” section inside your WordPress dashboard …
See Tip #3 in the “Useful Tips Related To Your WordPress User Profile” section below for an example of a free plugin that lets you remove unnecessary user profile fields.
WordPress Tutorials for beginners: Your Profile: Additional Contact Info
As mentioned earlier, your WordPress Profile area has a number of fields that allow you to enter extra contact information such as:
Normally, most users simply ignore these fields. Some WordPress theme developers, however, may choose to customize their templates to display this and other contact information.
If this is the case, then you can set up accounts with these services (if you haven’t already done so) and then add your details to the appropriate fields in the Contact Info section.
Currently, WordPress provides default fields for the following services:
AIM
AIM is a desktop and mobile chat application that allows you to chat with friends or collaborate on a group project online …
WordPress Tutorials for beginners:
Yahoo! Messenger
Yahoo! Messenger allows you to connect and chat with friends from any web browser or mobile device …
Jabber / Google Talk
Although this field says “Jabber / Google Talk”, if you click on the link in this section, you will be taken to Google Hangouts.
Google Hangouts is an instant messaging and video chat platform developed by Google. It replaces three products that Google had previously implemented within its services, including Google Talk, Google Messenger (formerly: Huddle), and Hangouts, a video chat system present within Google …
Useful Tip: If you plan to run business webinars on your website using Google Hangouts, then check out this article we’ve written about a great plugin that lets you manage a business-level video conferencing platform on your WP site with Google Hangouts:
WordPress Tutorials for beginners: Your Profile: Useful Tips
Tip #1: Make sure that Show Toolbar when viewing site is enabled in the Toolbar information area of your Profile area …
Tip #2: Your user profile gives you an additional opportunity to promote your business to your site visitors.
As mentioned earlier, you can add a Nickname and/or select a different name to display as the author of your posts …
WordPress Tutorials for beginners
Once you have set this up, a link to the author displaying your specified nickname gets added to every post published on your site …
This link takes your blog visitors to the Author Archives section, where people can learn more about you (or about other authors registered as users on your site) and see all content that you (or other authors) have published …
You can insert hyperlinks and basic text formatting like bold and italicized words to enhance your author description and promote yourself, your services, products, other websites, etc. to site visitors …
To do this just add HTML formatted content into the About Yourself > Biographical Info field in your Profile section …
Tip #3 (Advanced User):How To Hide User Profile Fields
If you plan to run a corporate website, you can install a free plugin called Hide User Profile Fields that automatically hides a number of fields when activated, such as:
Color Scheme
Keyboard Shortcuts Checkbox
Toolbar
AIM
Google Talk
Yahoo IM
Website
Biography description
User Role (every new user is registered as “Subscriber”)
Congratulations! You have now learned how to change your user profile in WordPress Tutorial for beginners
WordPress is huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next Page, you will have a clearer picture of where to start and progress to building a professional WordPress Site.
How To Add Tags To WordPress Posts: One of the main things you want to keep in mind when using a website or blog as a communication tool for your business, is to make sure that users can find what they are looking for on your site quickly and easily, and that search engines can find and index your pages for relevant searches and search results.
This is where Tags can help you. They can be useful for letting users find what they are looking for and for letting search engines know what your content is about.
In this how to add tags to WordPress Posts tutorial you are going to learn what they are, how they can help WordPress users, and how to use them in your posts to improve user experience and search engine indexing.
Watch the video below and then complete the step-by-step tutorial to learn more about using tags in your WordPress posts …
Tags – What Are They And How Can They Help You?
It’s a keyword that provides a useful reference for visitors and search engines. They are essentially words or short two to three word keyword phrases that help describe what your posts and pages are really about.
They are accurately representing your posts or pages can help to increase traffic by allowing search engines to gain a better understanding of how relevant your site is to specific topics, and assist visitors in navigating through your content to related topics on your site.
They also need to be used and managed correctly, however, as “over-tagging” posts and pages can dilute its effectiveness as a navigation and search engine indexing tool. Adding too many tags is the equivalent of “keyword-stuffing”, which search engines like Google not only frown upon, but have long been penalizing sites for.
How To Add Tags To posts in WordPress
Tags Vs Categories
They should not be confused with categories. They are similar to a Category, but it’s smaller in scope. While a post may be filed under a single category, it may be referenced using several tags.
A popular definition used by taxonomy experts to help people understand what tags are and how they differ from categories, is to think of categories as your site’s table of contents, and tags as your site’s index words.
An easier way to remember the difference is that the Categories of your posts won’t change often, but your Tags will probably change with every new Post you make.
A good example of this, which is often used to help users understand the difference, is to imagine that you own a recipes website. You could “categorize” your recipes by meal type (e.g. breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert, etc) or by cuisine (e.g. Italian, Chinese, French, etc), which would help give your visitors a broad starting point for finding information on your site, and then use tags to help group your individual posts containing recipes along similar main ingredients (e.g. “chicken”, “fish”, “vegan”, “gluten-free”, etc).
This way, having a “chicken” or “chicken recipe” tag on chicken-based recipes linked to all other chicken recipe posts on your site, would be very helpful if your readers come across a great chicken dinner dish recipe on your site, and are then interested in finding more chicken recipes that you have published across different meal types or cuisines.
So, in the screenshot below taken from an actual WordPress-powered recipe blog found online, if you click on the “Chicken” tag at the end of one delicious chicken recipe …
You will be taken to a resource page on that blog listing all of their other chicken recipes …
The “chicken recipe” example above shows you how tags can be a useful navigation aid, and how they can also lead to increased engagement on your site, by making it easier for your site users or blog readers to locate the exact type of content that they are interested in.
How To Add Tags To posts in WordPress
When To Use Tags
Preferably, you should only use tags if you believe these will add value to your site’s navigation for users, or if you think it will help give search engines more “context” to work with when trying to determine how relevant the pages and posts of your site are to a specific topic.
If you already have a good navigation menu on your site, a list of categories on your sidebar and a search box prominently displayed, using tags may not be as important to your users in terms of navigation.
Keep in mind that there is no real downside to using tags if you choose your tags wisely, feel that it will benefit your users, and believe that it will have a positive impact on your search rankings.
They should be used sparingly and efficiently. Each tag you use should be short (no more than two or three words) and highly relevant to the content in your post.
Ideally, it’s recommended that you add no more than around five tags to your posts. Think about what the focus of your site is really all about, then think about the five keywords or keyword phrases that best describe what your post is about in the context of your site’s purpose and use these keywords as your tags.
Using the recipe blog from our previous example, you can see in the screenshot below that the blog owner has identified the five keywords that she believes best represents her post on “Southeast Asian Chicken Wings Recipe” and used these for contextually tagging her content …
Your tags should relate directly to the subject matter addressed in your post. Many SEO experts advise not to include keywords that appear in your content, but that are not relevant enough to warrant tagging.
Additionally, if a tag is only used a few times throughout your entire site’s body of content, there is little point in using it, as this indicates that the term is not particularly relevant to your site or blog as a whole. Likewise, if almost all of your posts use the same tag, then that particular tag is probably too general to be of any real value to users, as clicking on it will only bring up a list of posts that will probably comprise of almost your entire site.
When thinking about which tags to use, put yourself in the shoes of your ideal site visitor or blog reader and ask yourself for every tag you come up with if you would be compelled to click on it after coming to end of the post if you were interested in reading more about that topic on your site. If the answer is “yes” that is probably a useful tag to include. If not, don’t bother.
How To Add Tags To posts in WordPress: Step-By-Step Tutorial
To add tags to your posts, create a new post or edit an existing one, then locate the Tags Box in the sidebar section of your Create / Edit Post screen …
Note: If you can’t see the Tags box displayed in your screen, click on the Screen Options tab on the top right-hand corner of your screen …
And make sure that the “Tags” checkbox is ticked in the Show on screen section …
Enter your tag into the Tags box and click the Add button…
You can also add multiple tags to your post by typing or pasting them, separated with commas into the tag text field …
As you begin typing in your tag, an auto-complete list appears, allowing you to select from existing ones on your site to add to your post …
Additionally, you can click on Choose from the most used tags link and add them to your post by selecting them from the tag cloud that appears below the link…
To delete any unwanted ones, click on the little delete icon next to the tag…
You can also manage your post tags from the Quick Edit section of your Posts screen…
Once your post has been published or updated, your tags will display to visitors in a Tag Cloud in your sidebar (if you have configured your sidebar to display a Tag Cloud widget) …
“Tag clouds” may be configured in some themes to show how they are used throughout your blog in various sizes, colours, etc. This allows people to get a better perspective at a glance of what your site is really about…
Clicking on any Tag in the Tag Cloud …
Brings up a list of all posts that have been tagged with the same tag …
Editing WordPress Tags
If you are consistently posting content to your site using tags, you may end up with a bloated list after a while. If you need to edit or manage your tags, you can do so by going to Posts > Tags …
This will bring you to the Tags screen, which contains a list of all your tags and allows you to perform a number of management tasks, such as adding, editing and deleting single and multiple ones …
There are a number of WordPress plugins that can help you when it comes to using and managing your WordPress Tags. For more details, see this tutorial: WordPress Plugins For Managing WordPress Tags
Congratulations! Now you know how to use tags in your WordPress posts.
WordPress is huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next Page, you will have a clearer picture of where to start and progress to building a professional WordPress Site.
In this WordPress troubleshooting step-by-step tutorial, we’ll take you systematically through the process of recovering a misplaced password or username and getting access to your admin area.
***
Are you unable to log back into your WordPress site because you’ve misplaced your password? In this WordPress troubleshooting tutorial for non-technical users, you will learn the process of retrieving a lost, misplaced or forgotten password or username and getting access to your admin area.
WordPress Password Recovery
Have you misplaced your WordPress password?
Finding yourself unable to access your admin area because you can’t remember your password or username can be very frustrating.
Fortunately, with WordPress, there is always a way to get back into the back-end of your website or blog.
In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to retrieve a forgotten password or username, and get back into your website or blog. We’ll go as far as we can without getting into complicated technical areas, and then, if the information still doesn’t help you, we’ll explain to you what your other options for password recovery are.
WordPress Password Recovery
Let’s start at the beginning.
Incorrect Username/Password
Normally, if you get your username or password wrong when trying to login in WordPress, an error message like the one below will display …
Your first clue, is that if you get the username correct, but the password wrong, WordPress will let you know this…
For security purposes, avoid setting up WordPress sites with the username “admin”.
This is the default installation username for WordPress and one of the leading causes of brute force attacks and security threats on WordPress sites.
If you have forgotten or lost your password, but you do know your username or the email address you have registered with, then click on the “Lost your password?” link in the login box …
You can also access the lost password area by clicking on the link at the bottom of the login box …
Alternatively, just type the following URL into your web browser (where “domain” is your domain and “tld” is your domain extension, eg. “com”, “net”, “biz”, etc.) …
Enter your username or email address and click the button to get a new password …
At this stage, there is no password “recovery” option, only password “reset”.
You will receive a system notification via email containing a link to reset your password.
Enter a new password into the “Password reset” field. Make sure to choose a strong password containing upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols, like “$, ^, @, &” etc …
Use a password generator tool to help you generate a strong password.
You can use a free online password generator tool like PasswordsGenerator.net (shown below) …
Or use a password management software like RoboForm, which not only lets you create strong passwords, but also store and manage all your passwords …
Use A Password Generator Tool If You Need Help Creating A Strong Password
After resetting your password, log in as normal …
WordPress Password Recovery
How To Change Your Password Inside Your WordPress Admin Area
To change your password inside WordPress, log into your admin and select Edit My Profile from the “Howdy, User” dropdown menu at the top-right hand corner of your screen …
You can also access your “Profile” screen by selecting Users > Your Profile from your main admin menu.
Towards the bottom part of the screen, you will see the “change password” section. Enter a new password and confirm this password here.
Note: Use the WordPress password strength meter to help you avoid using weak passwords and set up a strong password.
Click the Update Profile button after you have entered your new details to update your password settings.
If You Don’t Know Your Username And Password
So far, the above steps work if you’ve forgotten your password but you know your username or email address.
How can you log in if you can’t remember both your username and password?
You can still log into your WordPress site, but a little technical intervention is required.
As this tutorial is really intended for non-technical WordPress users, we recommend that if the information above hasn’t helped you get back into your WordPress backend, then either contact someone who can provide you with technical assistance (i.e. your webmaster, web support person or your webhost) and ask them to help you reset your WordPress Password from phpMyAdmin, or you can try the method below, which will reveal your username and email address, so you at least you can get your password reset and log back in.
All you need is access to your server. Don’t worry, you won’t be changing anything inside your server … you’ll just be taking a look!
WordPress Password Recovery
If you feel hesitant about working inside your server or WordPress database, then please ask a web services professional to assist you.
In this example, we’ll be working with the cPanel management tool …
cPanel management application
Log into your server control panel …
cPanel admin area
Find the “Databases” section and open phpMyAdmin …
phpMyAdmin
Open up your WordPress database.
Note: If you have a number of databases set up on your domain, make sure that you select the right one …
phpMyAdmin databases
Don’t be concerned about the complicated-looking information on your screen screen.
Click on wp_users in the “Table” column on the left-hand side …
phpMyAdmin databases
You will see a list of all your site’s users with their usernames and registered emails. Typically, the first line is assigned to the site administrator, but if you have more users and need to locate their username or email, then scroll down the list until you find the details you are looking for …
Note: The user password is also included in this section of your database (in the “user_pass” column”), but as you can see from the screenshot above, it is encrypted.
Due to reasons of security, WordPress stores all passwords as a cryptographic hash function (MD5 Hash) instead of plain text. This prevents even the site administrator from knowing a user’s password.
WordPress Password Recovery
To replace this password you will need an encryption tool that lets you generate an MD5 hash, which you would then copy and paste into the password field. You can search for “free MD5 generators online” if you want to change the password yourself, but as suggested earlier, ask for help from a professional if you don’t know what you are doing, and want to avoid causing errors.
Now that you have retrieved your username and email address, log out of your server, return to the login screen and request a new password …
Hopefully, you have found this tutorial useful and can now resume working on your website or blog.
WordPress is huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next Page, you will have a clearer picture of where to start and progress to building a professional WordPress Site.
The Conversion software tools let your prospects have the cost of an international currency transaction translated into their home currency at the point of sale.
It’s a free WP tool that lets your visitors translate international transaction amounts into their local currency.
Do you need a conversion for your WordPress website? Learn about conversion, a simple and easy-to-install WordPress tool for your WP website that lets your customers convert foreign amounts into their local currency.
Do you sell products online globally? If so, then it’s a great idea to consider providing your prospects with the convenience of conversion on your e-commerce web site.
The conversion software tools let your customers have the price of an international transaction translated to their home currency when purchasing or checking out products on line. It allows visitors and customers view the exact amount their card or Pay Pal account will be charged, expressed in their local currency.
The obvious advantage of displaying conversion on your site is that it lets visitors see and understand pricing in foreign countries in their own local one, making it easier for customers to work out their costs and expenses.
If your site is built using WordPress, it’s simple to add the conversion via a plugin to your WP website or blog, allowing your visitors to quickly understand the cost of your goods.
This is an intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter WordPress plugin with a beautiful and unique converter tooltip. Best of all, it’s free to install and use on your website or blog.
The useful plugin includes features like the following:
In-line converter
Supports various exchange rates providers, such as Yahoo!, Google, Open Exchange Rates, European Central Bank and FoxRates
WP-Cron task scheduler enabled
Currency table and converter widget
Can be integrated with a number of e-store plugins like WP-eCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads.
Can determine local currency automatically
Full support for language translations
Important: This plugin requires your server to be running PHP 5.3.0 or later. Do not install this plugin if you currently have an older version of PHP installed on your server. Ask your web host to upgrade your PHP.
WordPress Currency Conversion – Plugin
***
You can install the plugin from your WP admin area by typing in “currency” into the Plugins search field and clicking “Install Now” …
After the plugin has been installed and activated, you can configure the plugin’s settings by choosing a currency from your WordPress administration area …
This takes you to the plugin settings screen …
For example, you can select your base from the ‘Base Currency’ dropdown menu. The default base is ‘United States Dollar’ …
WordPress Plugin Currency Conversion
WP Plugin Currency Conversion
Similarly, you can choose a data provider from a dropdown menu. The default selection is ‘Yahoo! Finance’, but you can choose one of the other options, such as European Central Bank or Google Finance …
Note: If you select ‘Open Exchange Rates’, you will need an API (Application Programming Interface) ID …
You can select how frequently you want to update the exchange rates by choosing an option from the Update Rates drop-down menu …
WP Plugin Currency Conversion
The plugin uses jQuery, which is an open-source library of Javascript code that lets web developers add things like animation effects to web applications (like WP plugins).
Unless there is a reason to modify the jQuery settings, leave this option alone …
Configure the rest of the settings according to your own needs and click ‘Save Changes’ when finished …
When you have finished configuring your plugin settings, you can add the conversion to your WP site’s pages and posts using shortcodes and widgets.
WP Plugin Currency Conversion
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section further below to learn how to use currency codes (e.g. USD, NZD, CAD, etc …) in the Currencyr plugin.
How To Use Currencyr Shortcodes
You can easily add currency converted to pages, posts and widgets with no technical knowledge or skills using shortcodes.
Let’s take a look at some examples of currency shortcodes that you can add to your WordPress pages and posts:
WP Plugin Currency Conversion
Let’s say that you are selling goods for a set amount (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you would like to display the amount converted into British pounds (GBP) on your sales page.
To do this, you will need to add the shortcode below into your page content …
Note: You can also insert amounts in dollars and cents (for example, 155.25, 79.45, 544.97, etc …)
The screenshot below shows how the above shortcode should look once you have added it to your post …
After publishing the page, your conversion will then display like this …
Using this example, let’s also translate the same amount into multiple currencies.
To do this, use the shortcode shown below (add as many currency symbols as you want separated by vertical pipes) …
You can see how the shortcode appears when added to a page …
Once the post or page has been published, your converted will then appear as you can see in the example below …
refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section at the bottom of this tutorial to learn how to change the currency separator symbol with this plugin.
WP Plugin Currency Conversion
Now, let’s say that you would like to select a different base one than the one selected as the default.
For example, say you have specified your default base currency as EUR and you have a section on your e-commerce pages targeted to customers from countries like Australia or Canada, you can change the base using the following shortcode …
The screenshot below shows how the shortcode looks when inserted into your content …
After publishing your content, the conversion will then display as you can see below …
How To Use The Currencyr Widget
You can also insert currency conversion into your site’s sidebar using the Currencyr widget.
To add the currency converter to your sidebar, select Appearance > Widgets in your WP admin menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets section find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and drag it to an ‘Active Widgets’ area …
Configure the widget settings as shown in the screenshot below (add currency codes separated by a comma), and click ‘Save’ to update your settings …
The conversion tool will now appear on your site’s sidebar menu with the settings you have specified …
WP Plugin Currency Conversion
Additional Plugin Notes
Here are some additional notes and useful information about using the Currencyr plugin.
Currency Separator
The Currencyr plugin allows you to specify a symbol of your choice to display as the separator when using several currencies.
You can select a different symbol in the ‘Multiple Separator’ settings field.
So, for example, using the default symbol “/” (forward slash) …
Separates all your currency values using the forward slash as you can see in the example below …
WordPress Currency Conversion
If you modify the symbol and resave your settings …
WP Currency Conversion
Your web visitors will see the new symbol display as the currency separator …
e-Commerce Platform Integration
As stated earlier, the plugin integrates with a number of WP-compatible e-commerce plugins such as WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads …
(image source: plugin site)
***
Congratulations! Now you can go and easily add a wordpress currency converter to your e-commerce site.
Have you found this tutorial helpful? Feel free to add your comments below or subscribe to our newsletter and get notified about practical online business tips, news and WordPress tutorials.
***
WordPress is huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next Page, you will have a clearer picture of where to start and progress to building a professional WordPress Site.
How To Use WordPress: How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete a Plugin From Your Dashboard. This WordPress Plugin Tutorial explains how to automatically upgrade and delete them safely from the WordPress admin dashboard without coding knowledge necessary.
In a previous article, we explain what a plugin is and how you can use them to enhance your blog’s functionality.
WordPress Plugin Detector Tutorial
In this tutorial you will learn why plugins need to be kept up-to-date, how to easily upgrade and delete a them, and discover the management tools if you plan to own or manage multiple WordPress sites or blogs.
Why Many WordPress Plugin Needs Upgrading
The WordPress software is regularly updated (about every three to four months) to fix bugs and address security issues and vulnerabilities discovered in earlier software releases, and to improve existing features.
Depending on how many plugins you have installed on your site, you can expect to see at least some new updates for WordPress plugins tutorial every.
WordPress Plugin Detector Tutorial
The reason for this, is because most WordPress plugins are created by third-party developers, so sometimes code or features in the newly-released WordPress version conflict with plugins that were developed for a previous version. When this happens, conflicts can sometimes develop.
Fortunately, most WordPress developers (and the WordPress developer community itself) are fairly proactive when it comes to making sure that a plugin get updated when a new version of WordPress is released (if required). All you have to do on your end, is keep the plugin up-to-date, which, as you will soon discover, is really easy to do.
WordPress Plugin Detector Tutorial
Keeping your WordPress plugins regularly updated and removing old plugins you no longer use is an essential aspect of good WordPress management and helps to avoid any problems or errors.
The step-by-step tutorial below explains how to automatically update and delete plugins without touching web code.
How To Automatically Upgrade And Delete a Plugin – Step-By-Step WordPress Plugin Tutorial
WordPress uses a few methods to inform users when a plugin need to be updated.
For example, you can immediately see how many plugins are out-of-date as soon as you log into your WP Dashboard simply by looking at the “Plugin” menu.
In the example below, nine plugins have older versions that need to be updated …
You can also tell how many plugins need to be updated from your WP Admin Toolbar (as shown below, a number of plugins require updating) …
The Plugins screen (Plugins > Installed Plugins) also notifies you about a plugin that need updating …
WordPress Plugins Tutorial
As well as providing information about which a plugin due for an update, the Plugins section provides links to the plugin download pages and gives you the option to update the plugins instantly …
Let’s start by showing you how to update one plugin at a time.
WordPress Plugins Tutorial
How To Update WordPress Plugins Individually
Always make a full backup of your data and files before updating your website.
In your admin menu, go to Plugins > Installed Plugins …
You will be taken to the “Plugins” area. The list of plugins can run down your screen for some length, depending on how many plugins you have installed in your site …
(Plugins Page)
Useful Information: WordPress Plugins Tutorial
If you have too many plugins and would like to reduce the number of plugins displaying on your page, then click on the Screen Options tab at the top of your Plugins screen and type in a smaller number of items per page (all plugins show on the screen by default, i.e. “999”), then click the ‘Apply’ button …
Your Plugins area will now be made more manageable with a ‘numbered pages’ feature added. You can find an installed plugin by scrolling through the pages or using the “Search” field …
You will see the plugin information in different backgrounds depending on the status of your plugins (inactive vs. active and up-to-date vs. out-of-date) …
Plugins in need of updating show the following notification message: “There is a new version of [Plugin] available” …
WordPress Plugins Tutorial
Locate the plugin that needs updating and click on the update now link …
WordPress Plugins tutorial provides smooth & simpler plugin updates, so that the process of updating your plugins happens with just “one click” without leaving your Plugins screen …
Repeat the above process for any other plugins on your site that need to be updated, or see the section below if you have many plugins that are out-of-date and would like to upgrade them all in bulk.
WordPress Plugins Tutorial
***
Now that you know how to update one WordPress plugin at a time, let’s show you how to upgrade many plugins simultaneously.
WordPress Plugins Tutorial: How To Bulk-Update Plugins
To upgrade multiple plugins in a single operation directly inside your dashboard, go to the “Plugins” page and click on the Update Available link on the menu at the top of the page …
Click on the check box in the Plugin column header to select all plugins at once, or select each plugin you want to upgrade by checking its box …
In the Bulk Actions pull-down menu above the list of plugins, choose Update …
And then click Apply …
The plugins you have selected will automatically begin updating …
Once all updates have completed, you can click on the Return to Plugins page link to go back to the Plugins area, or select another option from the sidebar menu …
Once your plugins are all up-to-date, any plugin alerts will disappear (i.e. the “at-a-glance” indicators and “There is a new version of XYZ plugin available” notices no longer display) …
You have updated all plugins on your site to their latest version!
(When your site uses the latest version of all plugins, the notification icons no longer show)
Now that you know how to automatically upgrade plugins, it’s time to learn how to remove plugins from your WordPress site.
WordPress Plugin Tutorial: Deleting Plugin.
It’s a good idea to uninstall plugins that are no longer needed or being used on your site. This reduces resources on your server and also help to eliminate causes of problems.
In this section, we show you how to safely uninstall unused plugins from your WordPress site.
We strongly recommend creating a full back up of your WordPress site before installing, upgrading or deleting plugins, in case something goes wrong and you need to recover data or restore your site.
To remove a plugin, go to your dashboard menu and select Plugins > Installed Plugins …
In the Plugins area, find the plugin you want to remove and make sure it is deactivated.
Hint:Inactive plugins appear in a different colored background than active plugins and show an “Activate” link below the plugin name …
If the plugin is active, then click on Deactivate before proceeding …
Click Delete …
If you need to have a look at all the files that will be deleted before taking the next step, then click on the “Click to view entire list of files which will be deleted” link in the “Delete Plugin” section …
A complete list of files belonging to the plugin selected for removal will display on your screen …
If you are certain that you would like to proceed and delete these plugin files, just click on the Yes, Delete these files button …
The selected plugins and related files will be deleted …
Deleting Multiple WP Plugins Simultaneously
You can bulk-delete all inactive plugins on your site, or select a combination of active and inactive plugins to be removed.
WordPress Plugins Tutorial
Note: To delete any plugins that are currently active, you must first deactivate them.
Go to the “Plugins” section and select all of the active plugins that you want to delete by either placing a tick next to their check box, or selecting the check box next to the Plugin column header to select all plugins (warning: this will deactivate all plugins) …
Once you have done this, choose Deactivate from the Bulk Actions drop down menu …
Click the Apply button …
Your selected plugins will be deactivated …
Once you have deactivated these plugins, click on the Inactive link on the menu at the top of the page …
Select all of the plugins you want to delete by either placing a tick next to their check box, or click on the check box next to the Plugin column header to select and delete all inactive plugins …
Once you have ticked all the check boxes next to the plugins that you want deleted, choose Delete from the Bulk Actions drop-down menu …
Click Apply …
A list of all selected plugins will be displayed in the Delete Plugins area. Click on “click to view entire list of files which will be deleted” to review all the plugin files that you are about to delete, or click on the Yes, Delete these files button if you are absolutely sure that you would like to go ahead and remove all of the selected plugins …
All plugins will be deleted and their associated files will be removed from your server …
WordPress Plugins Tutorial Management – Tools
As well as the methods shown above, you can install a number of tools to manage your plugins.
For example, Plugin Central helps you manage your plugins with options that let you install plugins directly, displays the status of plugins in need of update in your Dashboard and lets you update many plugins at once in one click …
WordPress Plugins Tutorials Managing On Multiple Sites
Whenever plugin updates are released, the best practice is to upgrade that plugin right away.
What if you have multiple sites using the same plugin? Typically, you would have to login to every site and then update the plugin manually from that site’s own WP dashboard. With multiple sites, this process can take quite a while to complete!
WordPress Power User Tip: If you own or manage multiple WordPress sites or blogs, you can install, update or uninstall plugins on multiple sites automatically and simultaneously using various WordPress management tools.
Below are just some WordPress management tools that are worth knowing about:
The Jetpack plugin is a multifunctional plugin for WordPress that offers users a powerful range of features, allowing self-hosted WordPress site users to benefit from WordPress.com’s infrastructure and take advantage of things like robust stats, easy social sharing, and a whole lot more.
(Jetpack lets you access a range of powerful WordPress.com features)
One of these features is “Jetpack Manage”.
Jetpack Manage allows you to manage your WordPress sites and plugins from a central interface.
With Manage, you can upgrade a plugin, set a plugin to update automatically, and activate or deactivate plugin on a per-site basis or all at once, whether you’re on your laptop, tablet, or mobile phone.
(ManageWP is a leading WordPress management tool for multiple WordPress sites)
ManageWP lets you manage all your WordPress sites from one place, including upgrades, backups, security and more. This tool features easy one-click management and instant login to your WP sites.
To learn more about the plugin, visit this site: ManageWP.com
(With WP Pipeline, you can update all of your WordPress sites, plugins and themes from one single dashboard)
WP Pipeline is very similar to ManageWP, but has a one-time purchase fee instead of monthly payments. It lets you control and organize your entire online WordPress presence and perform multiple updates from one central location.
Congratulations! Now you know how to update and delete plugins safely without editing web code.
WordPress is huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next Page, you will have a clearer picture of where to start and progress to building a professional WordPress Site.
Using images throughout your site can help grab your visitors’ attention, generate traffic, convey your message more effectively, and make your site content stand out.
You could get some for free for your WordPress blog, however, can also present a challenge to web site owners. Not only do you need to find plenty of suitable pictures that will work with your content, but using them without proper licensing and permissions can end up getting you into a lot of trouble.
They are useful, cost-effective tools for website owners. Royalty images that are free are often not free, however, and their usage rights must be respected.
In this tutorial you are going to learn the main differences between royalty-images that are free and other types of licenses, as well as guidelines for using them on your site, and where to find good royalty images that are free that you can legally use to spice up your content pages and help make your WordPress site more visually appealing.
Where To Find Royalty Images That Are Free For Your WordPress Site
There are some differences in the types of pictures that are available online, and these differences are worth knowing about, especially before you start adding them to your content.
Some are free to use, while others have certain restrictions and are rights-protected.
Public Domain images are free to use in any way you like. For example, many images whose copyright have expired are automatically placed in the public domain.
Rights Protected images (also known as Rights Managed images) are purchased or leased for a certain period of time, and for a specific project. These are essentially rented from a photo agency or an individual photographer, with the price negotiated for a specific use. Typically, you will have exclusive rights to these during the negotiated time period for a fee, so competitors won’t be able to use the same in their campaigns. Rights protected images are traditionally used by larger businesses to purchase photography, as the cost to license these can be prohibitive to most website owners and web designers.
Royalty images that are free are typically purchased for a one-time fee, after which you can use them in almost any way you like without having to pay ongoing royalties, and these can be used in multiple projects. Unlike Rights Protected pictures, however, royalty-free are not exclusive, meaning that others can also purchase the right to use the same image on their websites.
Using Royalty Images That are Free For Your WordPress Blog
Royalty-free images are typically priced by size, where the smaller the size is purchased, the cheaper the cost. On some sites, purchasing them in bulk can also reduce the cost. Typically, royalty-free pictures can be purchased without price negotiation, or a requirement to specify what the image(s) will be used for.
Important Points:
Royalty-free images may have limitations and usage rights, and these must be respected. When choosing free or royalty-free images to use on your website, always check the image site for specific guidelines that you are requested to follow, and familiarize yourself with the site’s usage policy and any limitations placed on their use.
Don’t copy images from other websites without permission or “borrow” images from places like Google image search results. Using royalty-free pictures without the rights to do so on your site can be very costly – many companies monitor how and where their images are being used and will not hesitate to issue a DMCA takedown notice or pursue legal action against website owners who breach image licensing and usage rights.
There are many places online where you can browse and download free and royalty-free images. Below is a list of sites where you can search online:
AmazingTextures.com is one of the biggest and most popular dedicated online texture libraries in the world. This site features hundreds of high resolution textures. You can download these for free for non-commercial use, or pay a subscription fee and get access to all images for commercial usage.
Bigfoto.com offers a massive and constantly growing collection of images from around the world, including America, Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Pacific, plus lots of beautiful nature photographs. You can download all pictures for free and use these for personal or commercial purposes. In return for downloading them for free, the site asks you to link back to the site. Read the site’s copyright section before downloading images.
As stated on their website: “BurningWell is a repository for public domain (free for any use) images. You are free to download, copy and use the photos you find here for any purpose. These free images were donated by photographers from around the world …”
Clker is an online sharing service where users share free public domain vector cliparts, or share public domain photos and derive vector cliparts from those photos using clker’s online tracer.
You can download free shared clipart uploaded by users as public domain content, including vector images and raster / stock photos at no cost for your projects. The site also hosts many historical images that were obtained from the US library of congress.
Creative Commons Search allows you to easily search across multiple websites for unique images that you can use on your WordPress website. It is not a search engine, however. It is a convenient way to access image search services provided by other independent organizations.
Before adding images found using this site to your content, it is important that you first familiarize yourself with the Creative Commons licenses. Different copyright owners will require different methods of attribution in exchange for using their images. In most cases, all you need to do to satisfy the copyright owner’s attribution requirements is to provide a link back to the source material.
Crestock ImagesCrestock images offer a flexible, royalty-free licence for all their images. You pay a one-time fee for the right to use them as often as you want. A number of Extended License options are available in addition to the Standard License. You don’t have to register to search and view images and there are only a few restrictions on how they can and cannot be used. Deposit Photos
Deposit Photos are a great source of premium royalty-free stock photos, illustrations and vector art.
If you are a designer, advertiser, photo editor, content manager or blogger, you can find millions of high-quality photographs and vector images and download these on a pay-as-you basis, or access all images through an affordable subscription plan.
Dreamstime has a collection of over 18,000,000 royalty-free stock photos, low and hi res images, vectors & illustrations available for a very low fee.
Images are available in all popular stock photo and image themes. Additionally, web design images include backgrounds, textures, social icons and website buttons.
Every Stock Photo is a license-specific photo search engine. The site searches and indexes millions of freely licensed photos, from many sources, and presents them in an integrated search.
You can view a photo’s license by clicking on the license icon. Membership is free and allows you to rate, tag, collect and comment on photos.
Flickr.com is a free site that lets you store, sort, search and share photos.
There are lots of great images available on Flickr, but not all of them are available under a creative commons license or public domain. The terms of use and the licensing of them are established by the photographers themselves, so be sure to read the permissions carefully before using any images from the site.
If you find an image you’d like to use, look for the “Request to license” link near the license on the photo page. If you don’t see this link, you can contact the owner directly. When you contact a photographer, it’s best to include as much info as possible about the photo and how you plan to use the photo. A good way to facilitate getting permissions to use an image is to offer to link back to the photographer’s page.
Use this site to easily search and find photos on Flickr that were released under the creative commons license.
The site displays photos matching your search term. Click on any of the thumbnails to get a slightly larger image and the attribution details you will need to include for any work you produce using the picture.
If you want to edit a photo, you’ll need to restrict your search to just the licenses that allow derivatives by checking the “for editing” box before initiating your search. There is also a “commercial” checkbox that restricts search results to images with licenses suitable for commercial use.
On this site you will find photos for free commercial and private use. All pictures on this site can be used without any royalty payments as long as they are not re-sold or used in similar stock photo databases, archives or sites. The images are not watermarked, they are not reduced in size and do not have any other technical limitations.
This site provides thousands of free and premium high quality stock photos and illustrations, including many royalty-free photos for business and personal use. All the images on this website are available free of charge, for business, personal, charitable or educational use, with an option to buy larger images at reasonable prices.
Once you’ve chosen your image it can be downloaded immediately without registration. If you opt for a free image you can use it in exactly the same ways as a paid for version, so you can avoid the legal pitfalls of using images you’ve “found” elsewhere and don’t have the copyright holder’s permission to use. The most popular categories on this site are pictures of people and business pictures. The free pictures are small sized, but perfect for websites or draft printed work. If you need a larger-sized version, then they are all available to buy. As the site’s contributing artists have given their permission for you to have their pictures free of charge, you are asked to publish a credit to acknowledge the image authors where you use their image.
FreeFoto.com has over 100,000 images organized into several thousand categories. This comprehensive, yet easy to navigate site, offers images that are free for online use, with higher quality versions available for sale.
FreeFoto.com claims to offer the largest collection of free photographs on the Internet. Link back and attribution is required. Make sure you read the “Free Use Rules” on the site before using any images. Free Images UK
Free Images UK is a high quality resource of digital stock photographic images for use by all. All images in the site’s collection are free to use on websites, printed materials and anywhere you need photos for illustration and design use.
There are more than 6,000 free images in 80 categories available. The images are completely free to use, as long as you do not redistribute them to other people and provide a link from your website or a credit in printed material.
FreeMediaGoo.com offers free photos, textures and digital backgrounds for both commercial and private use.
The free media and free background images are provided royalty-free and can be used in print, film, TV, Internet, or any other type of media for unlimited commercial and personal purposes, without the need to provide credit or link attributions.
Free Photos Bank allows users’ non-exclusive, non-transferable license to images. Some photos/pictures posted by the site are free to use as long as you are using them for a website, book, magazine, etc.
You cannot download the photos to sell as is or modified from any source. To use the photos/pictures you must provide credit to the site on the work that you used the image in to avoid copyright infringement.
Gymp-Savvy is a copyright-free community-indexed photo archive. The photo archive at Gimp-Savvy.com has more than 27,000 free photos and images. The images and photos found in this archive come from three main sources: the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). Each of these sites clearly state that their photos and images are in the public domain, but individual restrictions might still apply, so check the individual image requirements carefully.
iStockphoto is one of the web’s largest and most popular sources for high quality royalty-free stock images, media and design elements. The site’s catalogue of downloadable files also includes vector illustrations, videos, music and sound effects.
iStockphoto offers millions of royalty-free files, from tens of thousands of contributing artists, at affordable prices. You pay once and can use the file multiple times. The site even offers a Legal Guarantee that content used within the terms of the license agreement will not infringe on any copyright, moral right, trademark or other intellectual property right, or violate any right of privacy or publicity.
Karen’s Whimsy offers “hundreds of scans of beautiful images from my collection of old books, magazines, and postcards. They are all from material printed prior to 1923 and are in the public domain.”
You are free to use the images, either privately or commercially. You don’t have to buy any of the pictures listed on the site, as they are all free. However, a few are available at a higher resolution for purchase.
Additionally, you are asked not to sell or give away the images themselves either individually or as a collection. And although not required, if you do find the images helpful, a link or footnote back to the source page is appreciated.
With over 1,000,000 high-quality images, Kozzi is one of the world’s largest online stock photography websites in the world. This site offers stunning high-quality images, clip art and video clips for a very low cost.
Kozzi also features free images from top artists around the world, discount pricing and over 100,000 high-quality clip art and vector images. When you download any from Kozzi, it comes with the rights to use that image for non-commercial and commercial purposes. Also, no attribution to Kozzi or any of its contributors is required.
Mayang’s Free Textures has a texture library of over 4350 free to download, high-resolution texture images. You can download up to 20 texture images per day; or access the entire image library for a low, one-time fee.
Images on this site are free to use for commercial or non-commercial purposes. You can also incorporate them into your derived work with no requirement to pay licensing fees. Your derived work must involve significant modification to the textures, however, and a credit to the site is not required, but is appreciated. Refer to the site for other terms and conditions of use associated with the images.
If you use Microsoft Office products or their Office Web Apps, you are allowed to access and use media images, clip art, animations, sounds, music, video clips, templates, and other forms of content (“media elements”) provided with the software available on Office.com or as part of services associated with the software.
The Microsoft Images and Clip Art Library provides access to many great images, illustrations and clip art. The site also provides filtering options that lets you search for illustrations, photos, animations, sound and image sizes.
Unlike creative commons and public domain images, the images in the Microsoft collection are “owned either by Microsoft Corporation or by third parties who have granted Microsoft permission to use the content.” Before downloading any images from the site, be sure to read all legal pages for the terms of use.
A morgue file is a place to keep post production materials for use of reference. MorgueFile.com contains hundreds of free high resolution digital stock photography for corporate or public use, divided into several categories.
According to the site, their purpose is to provide free image reference material for use in all creative pursuits. They are of a very high quality and completely free. A license summary for each image can be found directly below the image. Attribution is not required.
Nations IllustratedThis site contains over 7000 images taken from all over the world. They are free for personal or non-commercial use. They can also be used for business purposes, but some restrictions apply, so make sure to read all terms of use on the site before downloading images. Open Clip Art – Free Clip Art Library
This is a great place to look for free vector images, icons, or clip art to use on your WordPress site. The Open Clip Art Library offers access to over 7000 user-contributed clip art images available for both personal and commercial use.
All the clip art available in the library is in the public domain, so you are free to use, modify, and create derivative images from the artwork. The clip art search filter options are well organized and easy to browse.
This site makes over 2 million images freely available via Wikimedia Commons to be used for any purpose. As stated on the site, all images listed in Open Stock Photography come from Wikimedia Commons and as such “can be used by anyone, for any purpose.”
Image files are available under a free content license or in the public domain. There are no restrictions of use beyond those relating to use of the site’s official insignia. Licenses which limit commercial use are considered non-free.
Open Stock Photography is a mashup created to help designers find free stock photography (or public domain photography). Open Stock Photography is also a multilingual system, allowing you to search for stock photography in virtually any language.
Photo Pin is a useful site for bloggers. It uses the Flickr API to search through millions of Creative Commons licensed photographs from Flickr that bloggers can then easily add to their posts and articles.
To use the site, just search for any topic using the search box, preview the photo, and click “get photo” to download the photo as well as the proper attribution link.
PicFindr is like a search engine for stock photography. It searches the web for stock photos that are completely free to use commercially. It is a web app that helps you search several stock images, public domain and photo community sites simultaneously.
Several licensing arrangements have recently emerged as alternatives to copyright (sometimes called “copyleft”) and PicFindr makes sense of them all by helping you find images based on what you have to do to use them, whether licensed under Creative Commons, GNU, a site-specific agreement, or something else. PicFindr can even find free images you can use commercially without requiring permission or credit of any kind.
PixabayPixabay provides access to thousands of public domain images.
All copyright and related or neighbouring rights to images, uploaded to Pixabay have been waived. This means that you are free to adapt and use them for personal or commercial purposes without attributing the original author or source. Although not required, Pixabay states that it would appreciate having a link back to the site if any images are used.
Pixel Perfect Digital is a free stock photography website with Creative Commons licensing. The site provides free stock photos, backgrounds and textures.
All images are provided under a Creative Commons Attribution license. This license lets you remix, tweak, and build upon our work, even commercially, as long as you credit pixelperfectdigital.com for the original creation.
PublicDomainPictures.net is a repository for free public domain images. Download high quality royalty-free stock photos. All pictures are free for commercial and personal use.
If you intend to use an image for commercial use, be aware that some photos may require a model or property release. Pictures featuring products or logos should be used with care.
Stock Photos For Free lets you download over 100,000 completely free stock photos from around the world. The photographs cover every topic from exotic locales to talent-released people and everything in between.
There are no fees to download stock photos. Images come with a royalty free license, so you can use them in all types of media, for worldwide distribution, and for an unlimited period. You can also use them in commercial projects for free. Stock.XCHNG
Stock.xchng is one of the best places on the web to find free, high quality images for your site or blog. The site offers over 350,000 quality stock photos from more than 30,000 photographers.
You can browse images by categories or use the search feature. Many are free, provided you stick to the rules in their image license agreement. In some cases you may need to notify the artists about using their images and sometimes you need to give them credit.
You can use the images for almost anything. Restrictions are listed under the previews, next to the download button. Check each image for specific user requirements before downloading, as some images require attributions.
Note: When image search results are returned to this site, the top and bottom rows are search results from iStockPhoto. The images that are free to use are displayed between the first and last rows.
Stockvault.net provides over 40,000 free images for personal and non-commercial usage. You cannot use the images to promote a product or a service.
According to the site, Stock Vault is “a stock photo sharing website where photographers, designers and students can share their photographs, graphics and image files with each other for free.”
Additionally, the site claims that its sole purpose is “to collect and archive medium and high resolution photographs that designers and students can share and use for their personal and non-commercial design work”, and that they are in no way trying to compete with royalty free stock, but rather to fulfil the need for “somewhat” free stock imagery. Uncle Sam’s Photos
If you are looking for free photos of military, science or American history-related themes, the government is a good place to start.
Uncle Sam’s Photos provide users with an organized directory of many U.S. Government collections of free stock photos available for personal or commercial use.
Photos published on US government websites is generally public domain and free to use. Many of the galleries listed on this site state that you can do whatever you want with the photos, but some images may have restrictions and copyrights in place, so read the site’s terms and guidelines for using images before downloading or adding any images to your site to avoid problems. Unprofound
This site aims to simply provide photos for your ideas, with no catch. You can download and use any of the images on this site for free, in just about any way you like, and without registering, in exchange for providing a link back to the site whenever you use one of their images.
You may not redistribute photos individually or en masse, as photos, to any other websites or offline buyers. The photos themselves remain the intellectual property of their respective owners and you are merely receiving permission to use them in your designs, your art, and your personal and professional projects.
Photos are organized by basic colours, except for white, which is more of an “everything else” category. The site also provides a simple search engine that allows you to do basic searches. Unrestricted Stock
Unrestricted Stock provides unrestricted high quality royalty-free stock images, videos and vector graphic image resources, including icons and hand drawn images that you can use in just about any way you like.
Images from this site can be downloaded and used free of charge.
WikiMedia Commons is a media file repository that makes available to users over 18 million public domain and freely-licensed educational media content, including a large library of images, audio, and video files.
Wikimedia Commons is free. You are allowed to copy, use and modify any files freely as long as you follow the terms specified by the author. This often means crediting the source and author(s) appropriately and releasing copies/improvements under the same freedom to others. The license conditions of each individual media file can be found on their description page.
The WikiMedia Commons library can be browsed by media type such as images, photographs, drawings, illustrations or by file type like audio, video, image, etc. You can also search by license. Many on Wikimedia Commons are in the public domain, which means that you are free to use these without any attribution. Some may have a creative commons license requiring attribution. As always, be sure to check the license information below each image before adding it to your content.
Tip: If you are browsing Commons for the first time, you may want to start with Featured pictures, Quality images or Valued images.
Discover how to Get Free Images For WordPress Blog
Additional Image Resources
Below are some additional sites you can visit for free images:
ace-clipart.com – free clip art, photos, illustrations and images
Discover how to Get Free Images For WordPress Blog
Using Royalty-Free Images On Your Site – Additional Information
Be sure to read all license agreements and terms of use for each individual image that you plan to use.
Many photos found on image sites may be copyright free, but some restrictions may still apply. People have a legal right to privacy, and the use of their likeness for commercial advertising typically requires a consent agreement. If a person is recognizable in an image, a model release must be obtained before using the image for commercial purposes. In principle, if a photo is sufficiently modified so that individuals are no longer “recognizable”, it should be okay to use. In any and all cases, however, the final responsibility for the fair use of images rests on you.
Regardless of where you get your images, it’s good practice to give attribution to the image source or the image author either at the end of your article, or under the image.
Sometimes royalty-free image companies get acquired by other companies and the images may stop being available for free. Also, like any other online property, a site may cease to operate, or be taken offline.
How To Find Images Quickly And Easily
Finding the right image for your content can be time-consuming. As well as searching through the image libraries listed above, here are some smart and effective ways to search and find images online quickly and easily for your projects:
Google Images
Google scours the net indexing millions of images, and displays these its own Image Search results pages.
To find an image, first do a search on Google for a keyword or keyword phrase that describes the type of image that you are looking for (e.g. “Excited businessman using laptop”, etc.)…
This brings up the web search results. To view image search results, click on the Images link …
Typically, many of your search results will indicate whether or not the images come from image libraries by displaying watermarks …
If you find an image that you like and can easily trace its source back to an image licensing site, then great! Just visit the site and purchase the rights to your chosen image.
If, however, you find an image in the search results that you like, but the source isn’t obvious, then use the following method to determine whether the image is part of a royalty-free image collection or not.
First, search for an image on the Google Images Search page …
When you find an image you like, click on it to view the source page of the image …
You can do one of two things next… Either:
Continue clicking until you find the exact location of the image, then copy the image URL to your clipboard, or
Save the image to a temporary folder on your computer …
Note: Do not upload this image to your website. We simply need the image for the next step below.
TinEye
After downloading the image to your hard drive, go to TinEye.com …
TinEye is a reverse image search engine. TinEye lets you specify an image, and the search engine then goes out and all other locations on the net that contain images matching the one you have entered. You can find other sites that perform a similar service by searching online for the phrase “reverse image lookup”.
The next step is to specify the image you want to find matches for in TinEye. You can either upload your image or enter an address.
For this example, let’s upload the image we saved earlier to our hard drive.
Click on the Browse button to upload an image …
Locate and select your image file …
TinEye will then go out and search the net for images that match the one you have specified.
If the search returns multiple results, chances are that the image you are looking for was sourced from an image library. If you scroll through the results, you may find the original filename, or even the actual library URL …
The final step is to visit the image library URL and purchase your chosen image.
Note: Like anything else on the web, images may become unavailable, or even be removed entirely from sites. In the example above, for example, when we clicked on the image library URL, the image was no longer available from that location.
Pic Search is an image search service that crawls the web and indexes them. Its search engine has indexed more than 3,000,000,000 images. You can edit your search by animation, colour, or size to find what you need.
Pic Search is an alternative to the Google Image search website. It creates thumbnail images of the original and provides a link to the original page where the image was indexed from. This enables users to visit the original page and obtain the appropriate permissions to use the image. Make sure that you read the sites’ licensing terms or contact the copyright holder before you download or use any pictures.
Wikipedia images are sourced from the Wikimedia Commons library, which is listed above in the stock photo library section.
An easy way to find free images for your content, therefore, is to search Wikipedia for a keyword or phrase related specifically to the topic of your content, and then click on any that you like on the results page. Information about licensing and using that particular image will then be displayed.
Photo Shoot is a directory that shows you where to find thousands of royalty-free images that you can use for commercial purposes.
The guide focuses on helping you find images that you can legally and safely use for any commercial purpose without watermarks, usage limitations or hidden fees.
Photo Shoot includes a master list of over 200 websites that host free-public domain and royalty-free images, a guide to licensing, how to use images for SEO, Free tools and resources you can use to get the most our of your images and more!
WP Quick Picks is a convenient and time-saving WordPress plugin that lets you access over 50,000 stock images from within your WordPress administration area, then resize and insert the images directly into your posts and pages.
The stock images returned by the plugin’s internal search database are all from the public domain and high quality.
For more details, go here: WP Quick Picks
Instant Infographics Presence
Infographics are large graphics that display statistical information on various aspects of a particular topic, subject, or niche.
Instant Infographics Presence is a web-based, easy-to-use, drag-and-drop tool for creating professional-looking infographics. It includes over 500 graphic images and templates that you can easily modify to create a professional-looking infographic in minutes.
Outsourcing the creation of infographic images for your business can be very costly. If you plan to use infographics, this useful tool can help you eliminate these costs.
For more information, go here: Instant Infographics Presence
Additional Video Tutorials
The videos below show you how to get business logos created cheaply, how to convert images to vector graphics and how to create a mascot image to help brand your site …
Video: Where To Get Business Logos Created Cheaply
Your logo brands your company, so you will want to make sure that you have the right logo. In this video, you will learn how to create high quality logos for $10-$20 or less …
Video: Upgrading Images To Vector Graphics
Typically, when using graphic images, increasing your graphics to a larger size than the original size causes the image to lose its resolution. This video shows you how to get your images professionally upgraded to vector images very cheaply …
Video: Creating A Mascot Image To Help Brand Your Website
This video shows you how to get your own mascot for your company to help brand your business ..
Congratulations! Now you know how to search for free and royalty-free images that you can use on your WordPress posts and pages, as well as how to use a range of different methods and resources involving images to improve your business image.
WordPress is huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next Page, you will have a clearer picture of where to start and progress to building a professional WordPress Site.
Starting a blog about your business is an ideal vehicle for communicating information about your business with existing and potential customers.
This allows you to interact in a better with your site readers, post news and announcements about your industry, company and products or services, increase brand awareness, trust and loyalty, promote special offers and so much more.
Many businesses, in fact, no longer use a traditional website, but are now powered completely by “blogging” software (e.g. WordPress), which can be designed in such a way as to provide both the business and its users with all of the functions and capabilities of a website and a blog.
If you want to have control of your own web marketing and don’t have the time, need or desire to learn “web programming” languages such as HTML, then you should consider starting a business blog.
So … How do you get started on creating a blog for your business?
Simple! Take a look at the diagram below, then go through the article on this page before you do anything else… We’ve even included a Planning Worksheet you can download to help you. Also, feel free to contact us after going through the information below if you have any questions or need any help.
For this process, you should look for a planning worksheet, you could get a template online.
Once you have one on your computer, grab some extra paper and a pen so you can jot down your thoughts and ideas on the Worksheet as you follow along with this tutorial and make sure to shut out all distractions for the next 30-60 minutes.
Your Blog Goals
Whether you are starting a blog about business or a personal blog, the first step is to define a clear goal for your blog and make it as specific as possible.
What do you want your blog to do? If your blog could help you achieve anything you want, what would you specifically want it to help you achieve?
For example, you may want to start a blog to inform your customers about your products or services, promote products or information about a specific niche, provide tips or training information to existing and potential customers, build trust and loyalty for your brand, post special announcements and updates on planned events, or simply to generate more traffic for your site and interest from online users.
List whatever it is that you want your blog to help you achieve on a blank sheet of paper.
Once you have written your list, you should be able to identify one or more goals for your blog.
Go through the list and pick the goal that has the overriding importance above all others.
Write down this goal on your worksheet (in “Your Blog Goals” section) as “Goal 1“.
Now, go back to your list and the repeat this process to find two more goals and list these on your Worksheet as “Goal 2” and “Goal 3“.
Once you have identified at least 1-3 goals and written these down in your Worksheet, go back to “Goal 1” and ask yourself how you can measure this goal. In other words, what are the objective, quantifiable metrics or benchmarks that need to be completed or fulfilled in order for you to achieve “Goal 1“?
For example, this could be getting a certain number of new leads to submit an inquiry each week via a contact form on your site, or “X” number of new subscribers or members signing up to your newsletter, opt-in form or membership site per week/month, etc…
Keep this section flexible enough so you can modify it anytime you need, or as you start getting more data or feedback from actual visitors and users on your site.
Naming Your Blog
Once you have clearly identified your blog’s goals, the next step is to name your blog.
This is an important step, so take the time to think carefully about coming up with a good name for your blog and start brainstorming ideas.
Try to think beyond just using the name of your company. Put yourself in the shoes of an online user who is looking for the very thing you sell and try to come up with a name that would entice users. You can be creative with your name, but try to avoid being “too clever”. The same advice goes for choosing a catchy, memorable or a stand out name. It can be a fun or quirky name, but avoid anything that could be made to sound offensive.
Go online and do a little research to find out what other companies in your industry or niche are naming their blogs.
For example, if you are thinking of starting a blog related to food or cooking, a quick search online for “cooking blog” reveals some great blog names like: “Smitten Kitchen”, “Cooking With Amy”, “A Chef’s Daughter”, “Shockingly Delicious”, “The Rambling Spoon”, “Worth The Whisk” and more.
Get inspired, make a big list of names and then narrow these down.
Once you have narrowed your list down to the best choices, repeat the same process as above to craft a blog description, tagline or slogan for your blog.
Your blog description should be concise and should inform the reader is as few words as possible what your blog is all about. For example, in one of the cooking blogs we came across while searching online, the blog description was “Fast, Fresh, and Simple Recipes Easy Enough for Tonight’s dinner.”
Including keywords in your blog name or blog description can also be useful.
Once you have completed this step, it’s time to look at your domain name. If you feel that your business blog should be its own entity and have its own domain name, then by all meansregister a new domain name for your blog. In our blog training tutorials we also show you how to quickly and easily find lots of available keyword-rich domain names that you can register for your new blog.
Technology
Once you have settled on a name and a description for your blog, the next step is to focus on the technology that will host, support and power your online marketing vehicle.
In this step, you need to decide whether you will hire a company to create your blog, make your blog design and manage your hosting, or do it all yourself.
We can advise you on this step, so feel free to contact us to discuss the technology platform that would be most suitable for your blog and for achieving your business goals. We can help you understand the costs and benefits of using reliable web hosting providers such as the ones we use and recommend, and also explain the benefits and advantages on using a powerful and flexible blogging platform like WordPress to give you full control over the creation and management of your online content.
Define Your Target Audience
Once you have a clear understanding of the technology involved in creating a blog for your business, it’s time to define as precisely as possible who your target audience is.
Begin by asking yourself important questions, such as the ones listed below:
Who are you writing to? Who is your ideal blog reader?
What do they want and need? What are they searching online for?
What problems are they facing that you can help to solve? Why are they searching online for solutions?
How does your audience like to consume information? Do they prefer video to images and text? Do they need downloadable content? Do you need to create visual, audio or multimedia content to keep your audience engaged?
How do they see themselves? Who do they form relationships with? How do they dress and behave? What do they buy, eat or consume? What magazines and books do they read? Where do they prefer to live? What do they indulge in during their spare time? What are they self-conscious about?
What do they expect from your blog? What kind of information are you willing to provide online for free or for a fee? What kind of information are you unwilling to provide online for free or for a fee?
The point of this step is to try and create as accurate a profile of your ideal reader as possible. Try to picture an actual person that you can communicate directly with, and present your information to.
If you don’t have accurate market research data about your ideal target audience, then start with a “best guess” and don’t limit yourself too much, but also don’t try to be everything to everyone and appeal to too broad an audience, or you’ll end up confusing everybody and capturing nobody’s attention or interest.
Main Blog Keywords
Now that you have a good idea of who you will be writing to, it’s time to identify the main keywords and keyword phrases you will want to associate with your blog. This will help search engines to connect your blog with your ideal readers.
Ideally, you will want to focus on keywords that have “low competition” and that have a reasonable number of people searching for these every month. Depending on your needs, you may also want to focus on keywords or keyword phrases in your industry that have some level of commercial viability and profitability.
For example, a keyword phase like “overseas adventure travel” has a whole lot more people searching for it every month (> 20,000 searches per month) than the keyword phrase “singles adventure travel“, which currently shows as getting less than 1,000 searches a month.
According to the Google keyword tool, the number of sites competing against one another for visitors searching for “singles adventure travel“, however, is significantly higher than sites trying to rank for a keyword phrase like “overseas adventure travel“. This may be because one keyword phrase relates to a specifically targeted audience (i.e. “Singles” looking for adventure travel), while the other is more generalized.
In terms of the commercial aspects of the keyword phrases themselves, you can find out this information from the Google Keyword Tool if you have a Google AdWords account. Typically, smart advertisers will advertise more frequently and pay more for keywords that are targeted towards a “buying” public, rather than people who are just browsing or researching products or services online.
For example, people who search online for the term “color printer” are typically not as ready to buy a color printer as people who search for “konica minolta magicolor 1600w review”, so if you plan to sell or review color printers on your site, you would want to aim for longer, more descriptive and more targeted keyword search terms (called “long tail keywords”), hopefully with a high amount of searches and low to medium competition.
It helps to have some highly-searched keywords in your blog posts. However, don’t spend too much time or “go crazy” doing keyword research for every post, especially when you are just starting out.
Start simple. Make a list of the top 5 keywords you would like your blog to rank well for in the search engines, make sure that these keywords get a decent number of searches per month and then use these keywords naturally and organically in your posts (i.e. Write for human readers, not search engine robots).
Once your blog starts to attract visitors, you can then study data like “actual” keyword searches used by visitors to find your site from your server logs and use this data to improve your keyword research.
Tip For Business Owners: Avoid using keywords that show extremely low to no monthly searches, or that has no commercial value. There’s no point ranking #1 in Google for a keyword that no one is interested in searching for. Also, if you type the keyword into Google and no one is advertising products for it (i.e. No Google ads show up), then that keyword most likely has no commercial value.
Blog Categories
Decide on specific areas within your niche that people might be interested in learning about and create a list of categories, or “topics” that you plan to blog about.
For example, if you run a travel agency, your categories could include topics such as: “business travel”, “luxury travel”, “exotic destinations”, “holiday packages”, “travel, accommodation”, “travel tips”, “cruises”, “air travel”, etc….
Aim to create an initial list of about 3 – 10 categories. You can always add more categories to your blog later.
Tip For Business Owners: WordPress allows you to create search engine-friendly URLs that include your categories as keywords, so keep this in mind when choosing category names …
Blog Post Keywords / Blog Post Ideas
Now that you have created a list of keywords and blog categories, the next step is to create a list of blog post ideas.
Take each of your keywords and create a blog post topic using that keyword. You can write a blog post about any of the following topics and more:
Your products or services
Your company and the people in it
Your industry
An event you have attended / plan to attend
Customer tips
Reseller training / customer service training information
What area of your business could you educate prospects about to eliminate sales objections?
What problem, could you help your customers solve?
What service, problem or solution could you review to help prospects buy from you?
What is the most common FAQ you get from customers or prospects?
Etc…
In another blog post, we show you ways to never run out of ideas for creating blog posts.
For now, just write down 10 blog post ideas.
Blogging Schedule
Now that you have created a list of blog post ideas, the next step is to set up an initial blogging schedule. How often you blog is not as important as how consistently you do it.
Adding new content to your business blog on a regular basis is very important for building readership and for improving your search results. This is the step where you actively market and promote your business, and so it’s crucial that you create a habit of blogging about your business on a regular basis.
For example, start by making a commitment to add a new post each week or fortnight. Decide on a specific day of the week and the time of day that you will sit down to write your post. Allow 1-2 hours to create and publish (or schedule for publishing) each post.
Now, commit to making this into a regular habit. Monitor your results and if you need to, adjust your schedule accordingly. Remind yourself when you sit down to write your blog content that you are investing in your business, because you are working on your business, instead of just simply working in it.
We have added a couple of Blog Editorial Templates you can use to help you schedule your content creation …
Blog Editorial Calendar Template Overview Spreadsheet
Blog Editorial Calendar Template Details Spreadsheet
Once you have set up a schedule for creating content for your blog, the next step is to define what types of content you will actually create for your blog.
Do you plan to publish articles, videos, audios, interviews, slideshows, case studies, product reviews and comparisons, multimedia presentations, etc….?
Knowing what types of content you intend to create for your blog is useful, because this helps you understand what other tools and technologies you may need to purchase to create the content (e.g. Video screen capture software for videos and multimedia presentations, software for creating slide shows, etc….), as well as plan for other resources, such as the one discussed in the next step.
Blogging Responsibilities
The final step in our blog planning process is deciding who will be responsible for managing the various areas of your business blog.
For example, here are just some of the roles and responsibilities associated with running a successful blog:
Promoting the blog (search engine optimization, online advertising, social media, video marketing, etc….)
Who will handle all of the above areas of your blog? Depending on your business set up, it may be just one person doing it all, or a few people and perhaps some outsourced help.
Once you have assigned the responsibilities for creating and managing content on your blog and completed the planning process, you should have a very clear plan worked out for starting your business blog.
WordPress is huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next Page, you will have a clearer picture of where to start and progress to building a professional WordPress Site
Business Blog Topic Ideas – Using Your Blog As A Business Communication Tool
Developing toipics from your ideas will provide you with an effective and powerful tool for communicating and interacting directly with your customers.
Not only can you communicate and interact with existing and potential customers on your own terms through a business blog, but you can also control the communication, by deciding what content gets shown on your blog, managing visitor comments, etc.
A WordPress-powered business lets you build relationships with people online and provide up-to-date information about your business and your industry.
Most importantly, since blogging is a form of social media, you can employ several strategies and methods to encourage more participation and interaction from your site visitors, turning your business into a dynamic and powerful two-way communication tool.
Here are just some ideas on how to turn your business blog into a more effective business communication tool:
Business Blog Topic Ideas
Create A Community
Creating a community where people can share ideas and ask questions is powerful.
If you run a WordPress-powered site, there are plugins available that can help you create a community on your blog.
For example, a popular WordPress plugin for creating engagement and a sense of community is the Disqus Comment System …
Disqus (pronounced “discuss”), is a service and tool for web comments and discussions. The Disqus comment system replaces the WordPress comment system and makes commenting easier and more interactive, while connecting websites and commenters across a thriving discussion community.
Disqus turns your blog into its own social media channel. Users sign up to comment on your blog and all of their comments are then integrated. Whenever a user leaves a comment on your blog, it adds a link to their blog. Disqus users can also keep track of comments they’ve left at other Disqus-enabled blogs around the net.
Disqus is free to use and offers a powerful discovery feature that helps you increase engagement, build an audience and earn revenue.
Another option for community building is to add a forum to your business blog. WordPress offers a number of stable and well-supported forum plugins with a range of features to suit the needs of most most business blogs.
Here are just some of the WordPress forum plugins worth checking out:
WPMUDEV – On this site you will find a number of robust community-building WordPress plugins including a Forum plugin, Q&A plugin, Communities Plugin (creates internal communities with their own discussion boards, wikis, news dashboards, user lists and messaging facilities) and Wiki plugin (turns any WordPress post, page or entire site into a fully functional and easy to use wiki).
bbPress – The bbPress plugin is a popular forum plugin for WordPress, with the focus on keeping things light and lean. This is achieved by installing a core bbPress plugin, then adding extra functionality using bbPress add-on plugins, which are developed by other third-party developers.
Mingle Forum – Mingle Forum is lightweight, solid, secure, quick to setup, easy to use, and integrates seamlessly with or without the Mingle social networking plugin. The focus of this forum plugin is to keep things simple and the developers boast that you can be up and running with Mingle Forum fully installed and configured in as little as 5 minutes.
WPForum Server – This is a complete forum system for your business blog. Being a plugin, no additional work is needed to integrate it into your WordPress site.
Simple:Press – Simple:Press is a feature-rich forum plugin that can be scaled to the needs of your community. It offers many features that are normally only available from a stand-alone forum application.
(demo screenshot of Simple:Press forum plugin for WordPress)
Business Blog Topic Ideas
Obtain Feedback
One of the best ways to use your blog is to elicit customer feedback. And one of the best ways to obtain feedback with a blog, is to end your blog posts with a question.
Here are just some of the types of questions you can ask at the end of a blog post to elicit feedback from readers:
“What do you think about …?” (the topic of your blog post)
“Did we miss anything?” (useful for list and review blog posts)
“Did you find this post useful?” (tips and how to blog posts)
“Do you have a similar experience that you would like to share?” (posts focused on success stories, case studies, etc.)
“What other solutions have you tried? Let us know …” (tips, lists, how-tos, etc …)
“Is this the approach you would have taken?” (case studies, interviews, etc …)
Another way to get feedback from your blog visitors is to run opinion polls and surveys.
A great WordPress plugin for adding polls to your blog is WP-Polls …
WP-Polls is a free WordPress plugin that lets you easily add customizable polls to your blog’s posts and pages.
For adding surveys to your blog, check out these plugins:
WP Survey and Quiz Tool – This is a free, customizable Quiz, Survey and Poll plugin that allows you to add unlimited questions and sections.
Surveys WordPress Plugin – This free WordPress plugin lets you add surveys to your blog. You can let the visitors take surveys and see the result from the admin side either in aggregate format, or as individual responses.
WordPress Simple Survey – WordPress Simple Survey is a free plugin that allows you to create surveys, polls, quizzes, or questionnaires and track user submissions. Scores, Names, and Results can be recorded, emailed, and displayed in the WordPress backend.
Blog visitors typically love sharing their opinions and letting you know what they think and how they feel. This is a great way to get valuable information and feedback from your target audience.
Business Blog Topic Ideas
Always Respond
One of the biggest mistakes you can make as a blog owner is to ignore someone who has taken the time to leave a comment or post a question on your blog. Always respond to someone who has left a comment on your blog, especially genuine visitors who are interested in your content.
Useful tip: With WordPress, you can automatically thank people who leave comments on your posts using a free plugin called Thank Me Later …
Thank Me Later sends ‘thank you’ emails to your commenters. You can specify when the email gets sent (e.g. minutes or hours after the comment is posted, or a day, week or month later, etc …).
You can use this plugin to attract readers back to your blog by asking them to check for replies to their comments, link to your RSS feed, follow you on Twitter, like your Facebook page, or give a discount for purchases.
Additionally, you can send out emails with HTML, use tags like [name] to make your emails more personal, and write custom emails for each category or post on your blog.
Even if the comment seems trifle or meaningless, take the time to post a quick thank you or reply if it comes from a genuine visitor (if it’s spam just delete it). Your blog visitors will see this as your willingness to engage with and be friendly and helpful to users. This is all good communication and helps you get a dialogue going that people can participate in.
Frame Yourself As An Expert
Building authority and credibility online is important and a business blog topic can really help you establish your expertise.
Use your blog to inform your readers about new developments in your industry and other things that your readers wouldn’t know or have the time to find out.
Useful tip: One of the easiest and fastest ways to build up your expertise online is to subscribe to the top newsletters, feeds and blogs in your industry, then “curate” some of the content you receive into regular blog posts that are specifically aimed at providing your readers and subscribers with an industry “round up” and perhaps even some commentary to prompt debate and engage your readers into starting a discussion on your post.
In addition to showing your readers that you know your industry, it also attracts new prospects that are looking for the information you offer.
Announce New Products And Services
Use your blog to advertise what’s new with your business. Showcase your products and services. You can also use your blog to offer special deals and exclusive promotions to your readers and newsletter subscribers (for example, you can add a discount coupon or discount code for subscribers in your welcome email).
If you plan to add coupons to your site, then consider using an e-commerce plugin (we’ll review these in a separate blog post), or use a plugin like JC Coupon Plugin Lite to add coupons on any post or page on your blog. JC Coupon is a WordPress coupon plugin that lets you set an expiry date or custom text for coupon expiry. Coupon offers that have passed their expiry date will not show up on your blog …
You can engage visitors on your blog by asking readers to talk about any features they would like to see added to the product and post these in the comments section. You can then reply and let them know if your product already has those features, or if you plan to add these in the future (or if not, explain why not and what the challenges are).
A word of caution – don’t use your blog simply for promoting your products or services. People will get tired and disinterest very quickly if all they see when they visit your site is advertising and promotional content. Balance promotional messages with more informative and engaging posts.
Branding
Your business blog gives you the opportunity to broadcast your brand message around the world. Use it to tell people what you and your business are all about. The great thing about having a blog is that you have total control of your brand message. A blog is, among other things, a great brand reputation management tool.
As a final thought, consider this. When you have a business blog, it’s not enough to simply drive traffic to it using online methods of promotion or advertising. You also have to get offline visitors and potential customers as well. When communicating with customers and prospects offline, therefore, make sure that they know you have a blog. Tell people what they can expect to find on your site and offer them an incentive to visit and participate in your online environment.
If you need help getting a blog set up for your small business we can help. We also provide a number of useful training tutorials to customers on branding your business, engaging with your customers and creating better business communication through tools that promote user interaction using a WordPress blog.
WordPress is huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next Page, you will have a clearer picture of where to start and progress to building a professional WordPress Site
Let’s suppose that your website promotes a particular product or service, and you decide to provide your site readers with more useful information about your industry to better engage your visitors.
For example, let’s say you provide accounting services, and decide you’d like to keep your readers informed about the latest tax rulings, current news and updates from the taxation office, or provide corporate or small business tax tips, etc.
To add the above information to your site would require not only researching and writing the content yourself (or hiring someone to perform these tasks for you), but also checking your source sites regularly to make sure that your information is being kept up-to-date.
That’s a lot of work, especially if you are trying to keep up with information that you have no control over.
There is an easier way to do this.
It’s called RSS …
What Is WordPress RSS Feed Link?
RSS stands for Rich Site Summary, or, as is more commonly known, Really Simple Syndication. It can also be referred to as a “feed”, or “Newsfeed”.
It allows content publishers to automatically syndicate their content, so that their site readers can read it without having to keep revisiting their site to check for updates.
The feeds are also used by websites to publish frequently updated information, such as blog entries, news headlines, audios, videos, etc., which users can then subscribe to.
WordPress RSS feed Link can read using a web-based, desktop-based, and even mobile-based software programs called an “RSS reader”, “feed reader”, or an “aggregator”.
The readers are used to access and find new content published on the website, and distribute this content (and any new updates made to the content) to other sites.
Essentially, an RSS feed is a structured XML document that includes full or summarized text along with other metadata such as published date, author name, etc.. It allows people to subscribe to content on a website and then keep up with the latest updates posted on that site through a feed reader. Conversely, it also enables publishers to syndicate data automatically.
Once a user subscribes to a website’s feed, they no longer have to manually visit and check the website for updated content. Instead, their browser will constantly monitor the site and update the content automatically on the user’s feed reader.
Many sites and software applications also allow you to combine different RSS feeds to receive news and updates from several different sources.
There are different kinds of feeds, read by different readers. Some of these include RSS, Atom and RDF feeds. All of these formats, however, use a standard XML file format to ensure compatibility with different machines and programs.
In this tutorial you are going to learn how to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to use this to get your content syndicated online, and how to display someone else’s content on your site via their RSS feed.
Watch the video below and then complete the step-by-step tutorial to learn how to use your WordPress RSS
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds
Content syndication is a very powerful and legitimate way to share content online. They provide a way for other online users to keep up with the latest information posted on different sites.
First, let’s take a look at the concept of “syndication”.
Newspapers use syndication to publish content from other news agencies around the world. Syndication allows newspapers to deliver stories to their readers from all around the world and keep them up-to-date on the latest news, without actually having to employ and post reporters on every location around the planet …
Newspapers syndicate their news stories using news “feeds”…
Most sites actually want you to syndicate their content. Syndicating content not only allows great information to be shared, but it also drives visitors back to the site that published the original content being syndicated. This creates links that drive traffic back to their site.
Newspapers and major sites, for example, will have a section (look for links that say “RSS” or “Newsfeeds” in them) …
Clicking on the site’s RSS link brings up a list of RSS feeds giving you access to different content sections of the site …
Each of these RSS allows you to access specific information from different sections of the site (e.g. Business news, entertainment news, technology news, etc.)…
Note that a feed is simply a URL. All you need to do to view a feed’s content, is to copy the URL, and then paste it into a feedreader – i.e. An application that can read and translate it into readable content.
The Benefit Of Using WordPress RSS Feed Link
Adding someone else’s content to your site obviously benefits them by giving their site additional exposure online, but it also allows you to add value to your site without having to create new content.
For example, as mentioned earlier, if you are an accounting firm, you could display the latest news from the Tax Office on your site simply by adding their feed to your site.
You can use feeds to display a range of information such as news, Facebook statuses, or content from other sites on your WordPress site using RSS Feeds and the WordPress RSS widget.
While adding an RSS on your WordPress site from another site is a great way to add content to your site without having to create it, it’s worth keeping in mind that you also want other sites to use YOUR content …
Your WordPress RSS Feed
WordPress automatically publishes feeds of all your posts, allowing others to easily syndicate your content on their sites.
Depending on your WordPress site’s theme, there are a number of ways to get your WordPress site’s RSS feed:
1) You can scroll down to the Meta section of your sidebar and click on Entries RSS …
2) You can also find links and/or buttons on certain themes that allow your visitors to copy your RSS.
In the screenshot below, for example, you can copy the site’s RSS by clicking on the “Subscribe to RSS” link …
3) On other sites, you can find the RSS by clicking or copying the link on a button …
4) You can also view your WordPress site’s RSS by typing your site’s URL into an internet browser and adding “/feed” after the URL, e.g.:
http://www.yourdomain.com/feed
Or, if your site has been installed in a subdomain (e.g. “Blog”)
http://www.yourdomain.com/blog/feed
Clicking on any of the above links will bring up your WordPress RSS feed page …
Note: You can specify how many items you want to show in your RSS page, by going to your Reading Settings section and selecting the number of items to show in the “Syndication feeds show the most recent” field …
Adding A Feed To Your WordPress Site
In the example below, we are going to add content from a website to your WordPress site, and display it on your site’s sidebar.
First, copy the RSS from the site containing the content you want to display on your site …
Next, paste it into a WordPress RSS widget …
The content will now display on your sidebar …
What if you want to add content from an RSS to a post instead of the sidebar?
You can do this using plugins.
For example, you can use a plugin called WP-o-Matic …
The above plugins are useful if you want to add content to posts, or “Autoblog” (An Autoblog is a blog with content that is automatically gathered and compiled from RSS feeds). Note: The above plugins require some configuration – visit the plugin sites for instructions.
There are also a number of autoblogging software solutions that can create posts on your site using feeds and imported content.
Autoblog is an easy-to-use plugin that can be set-up in minutes, with no coding required and no complicated instructions. Just copy and paste in your feed URL, give it a name of your choosing (for admin purposes) and select a blog that you want it to post to.
Additionally, you can use a plugin like RSS Includes Pages if you also want to include pages in your WordPress RSS and not just posts (by default WordPress only includes posts in your RSS feed) …
Useful Tips
Tip #1 – WordPress Comment RSS Feeds
In addition to displaying RSS feeds of your posts, WordPress also displays RSS feeds of comments posted on your site.
To view these, locate your Meta section on your sidebar (note: this section may not be visible on some themes), then click on Comments RSS …
All comments posted on your site by visitors will appear in the Comments RSS page …
Note: If the Meta section is not displaying on your theme, you can view the Comments RSS section of your site by opening up a browser and typing in the following URL:
http://www.yourdomain.com/comments/feed
Or, if your site has been installed in a subdomain (e.g. “Blog”)
http://www.yourdomain.com/blog/comments/feed
Tip #2 – Displaying Category RSS Feeds
You may find that some visitors come to your site because they are interested in a particular content category. Asking them to subscribe to your site’s feed to be kept updated, may not interest them if they feel they are going to get a whole lot of other content that they are not interested in.
If your site publishes content in multiple categories, you can easily offer them a separate RSS for each category.
WordPress automatically allows you to create a category. All you have to do is to use the format below:
In other words, all you need to do is take the URL of your category …
And then add the word “feed” in front of it …
Your category RSS URL will now contain only content assigned to that category …
You can now create an “RSS Feed” page that allows your readers to subscribe only to content in the categories that interest them, just like the big websites and newspapers …
All you need to do is take an RSS button image like the one shown below, link it to the URL of your category, and then create a table or a list of all category feeds and insert it into a new WordPress page …
RSS Feeds – Additional Notes
RSS feeds can be customized in a number of ways, such as adding images to feed, etc., but many of these require editing code.
WordPress provides a number of RSS configurations, however, that do not require code editing skills. Below are examples of some of the types of feeds you can display on your site by simply knowing how to structure the feed:
Below are the feed types, descriptions and feed examples shown in the table above:
Feed Type: All Posts
Description: Content feed – includes your latest posts
Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/
Feed Type: All Comments
Description: Comments feed – includes the latest comments posted on your site
Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/
Feed Type: Individual Posts
Description: Includes the latest comments made on a specific post
Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/title-of-your-blog-post/feed/
Feed Type: Archives
Description: Day – includes latest posts in each archive
Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2013/10/04/feed/
Feed Type: Archives
Description: Month – includes latest posts in each archive
Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2013/10/feed/
Feed Type: Archives
Description: Year
Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2013/feed/
Feed Type: Search Results
Description: Includes latest posts for a search query
Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/
Feed Type: Custom Post Type
Description: Includes latest posts for a custom type (e.g. Book)
Example Feed:http://yourdomain.com/feed/?post_type=book
One last thing…
It’s a good idea to let your visitors know about your site that they can subscribe to your feed…
Keep in mind that other sites will only syndicate or subscribe to your content, if the information that you provide is useful, educational, informative, entertaining or adds value to their visitors. For great content ideas, see this tutorial.
Congratulations! Now you know how to use your WordPress RSS feed, and how to post content from someone else’s site on your own site.
WordPress is huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next Page, you will have a clearer picture of where to start and progress to building a professional WordPress Site
One of the many great things about using WordPress is that you can easily add content and applications to your site and reconfigure elements of your site layout with no coding or programming skills required.
You can add, rearrange and remove various types of content and applications on your WordPress site’s sidebar menu (or header and footer sections depending on your theme) quickly and easily using a WordPress feature called a Widget.
In this tutorial you are going to learn more about using the widgets.
Watch the video below and then complete the step-by-step tutorial to learn more about using widgets on your WordPress Website.
Using Widgets on Your WordPress Site
Widgets are self-contained modules of code that perform a specific function, such as adding a form, a text box or menu to your site. It also allows you to easily add, reorder and/or remove different types of content and programs on your site.
In WordPress, you can also “drag-and-drop” them around inside sections of your administration area to quickly rearrange the layout of your sidebars, headers and footers.
WordPress is written using a scripting language called PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor). It eliminates the need to know how to program PHP or manipulate PHP code to customize your site’s content and layout, and can be used to extend the functionality of a number of WordPress plugins. Many widgets even allow you to fine tune their settings to further enhance their functionality and usefulness.
Simply put, It allows you to:
Easily add content and functionality to your WordPress sidebar without having to touch any code,and
Rearrange how various elements display on your sidebar using simple drag-and-drop.
They were originally designed to provide a simple and easy way of giving WordPress users design and structure control of their WordPress Theme.
WordPress themes that are properly “widgetized” allow users to control many designs and structural aspects of their site’s sidebar, header, footer, and other areas.
Here are just some of the things you can add to your sidebar menus (and headers and footers, depending on your theme) using widgets:
List Of Pages
Blog Categories
Post Archives
Custom Menus
Links To External Sites
Links To Recent Posts / Most Popular Posts
Excerpts Of Recent Comments Added To Posts
Text and Graphic Images (e.g. Advertising banners)
Testimonials and Quotations
Poll / Survey – Questions and Results
Content from RSS feeds
Newsletter subscription / opt-in forms
Videos
Social Media Buttons
Display Widgets From Others Sites (e.g. Facebook Friends)
Etc.
We provide a number of detailed step-by-step tutorials in our WordPress Training section that show you how to add all of the above functions and more to your site using widgets.
How To Customize Your Site’s Layout With Widgets
With most static websites, changing the site’s layout requires editing code in the site’s pages or templates.
With WordPress you can completely rearrange how information is displayed in areas like your site’s sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse button. This is because the built-in Widgets feature of WordPress lets you rearrange information on your sidebar and footers quickly and easily using “drag-and-drop” technology …
In the above screenshot, you can see that we have rearranged the sidebar layout by switching the search and testimonial sections around. This was easily done by simply dragging and dropping the widget elements into different positions in the sidebar widget section.
It requires no code experience or expertise. They can easily be added, removed, and rearranged in the Widgets panel of your WordPress administration area …
Some widgets are “fixed” in that they provide little to no configuration options, other than to add an optional title to the widget, as shown in the example below …
Some WordPress offers various customization options and the ability to specify and configure settings. This includes enabling forms or fields, including or excluding data and information, displaying optional images, and more …
Let’s take a look at an example so you can see exactly how to reconfigure your site’s sidebar layout by rearranging them in the sidebar section …
In the screenshot below, you can see that the right hand sidebar of the site displays a newsletter sign-up form at the top (1), then a “contact support” button below it (2), and a “click to call” function below that (3) …
To change these features around, first log into your WordPress admin area …
Once you have logged in, click on Appearance > Widgets …
This brings up your Widgets area. The area displays a list of all of the ones available. On the right hand side of the window, you can see your “active” widgets …
The ones dragged from the “Available Widgets” section to “Widget Areas” like your sidebar, footer, etc. They become immediately active on your site.
In addition, your Widgets area includes an “Inactive Widgets” section that lets you remove widgets you no longer want to remain actively displayed on your site without losing its settings …
As mentioned earlier, your Widgets area will also display different sections for your site, depending on the WordPress theme you choose. For example, some themes give you multiple sidebar and footer sections, and themes with multiple templates may include sections specific for each template …
Note: Some may require additional settings to be configured after being made active.
By default, your WordPress installation comes with a number of widgets (e.g. For displaying your pages, links, posts, post categories, adding text, adding RSS feeds, adding tags, adding a search box, etc …). These are available on the default WordPress theme “right out of the box” …
New ones can be added to your site whenever you install new plugins (we cover plugins in separate tutorials). In most cases, however, installing a new plugin does not automatically make the widget associate with that plugin become active on your site.
To active one, drag the widget from the “Available Widgets” area, to an active area (e.g. The “Main Sidebar”) by clicking on the widget and holding your mouse button down, then dragging the widget element to the position in your sidebar, footer, etc. Where you want the widget to appear…
In this tutorial example, the widgets have already been configured to display a newsletter form, support button and the click call plugin…
As you can see from the screenshot below, the features appear on the site in the same order as they have been arranged in the widget bar …
Let’s now rearrange the order of the above widgets in the Sidebar Widget Area, using the click, drag and drop method …
The widget features have now been reordered in the sidebar …
This immediately changes the layout of your site’s sidebar.
Note in the screenshot below that the “click to call” feature (3) is now at the top of the sidebar menu, and the “contact us” graphic button (2) is located above the newsletter sign-up form (1) …
Tip #1: A really useful widget is the Text widget …
A text lets you insert just about anything you want in your sidebar or other widget sections, such as single lines or paragraphs of text, images, media, forms, etc…. By simply typing in text or adding HTML into the widget content area (you can also add an optional title in the Title field). Remember to click Save to save your settings…
Tip #2: Click on the little triangle in the Widget corner to display the settings for that widget…
When the widget expands, you can change and save your settings, or click Delete to remove the widget from the “Active Widgets” section. Click on the triangle or click Close to close the widget…
As soon as your changes are saved, your site will automatically update the widget settings and display your latest changes to your site visitors.
Tip #3: If you see widgets showing up on your site’s sidebar that aren’t listed under your sidebar in the Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because with some themes, until you add widgets to your sidebar, the theme will display its own default set of widgets, which will not be listed in your sidebar area.
Once you add one or more widgets to your sidebar, the default set of widgets will no longer be used.
If you don’t want anything to show up in your sidebar, just add a blank Text widget to your sidebar area.
Tip #4: If, for some reason, you find that you are unable to use the drag-and-drop function to move widgets around (e.g. Using a mobile device that doesn’t support drag-and-drop), then you can still work with widgets, by enabling the accessibility mode for WordPress widgets on your site.
How To Enable Accessibility Mode For Widgets on Your Site
Log into your WordPress administration area and navigate to the Widgets section …
Click on Screen Options on the top right hand corner of the screen …
Click on Enable accessibility mode …
Once accessibility mode has been enabled, the ones in the “Available Widgets” section will display an Add link, and the widgets in the “Active” section will display an Edit link …
If you click on a Widget’s Add link in the “Available” section …
A screen will display the selected ones with options for customizing the Widget’s settings, selecting the location to add the Widget, and drop-down menus for choosing the position of the Widget in the specified location (e.g. Position “1”, “2”, “3”, etc…).
Click Save Widget to add the widget to the “Active Widgets” section, or the Cancel button to return to the previous screen …
In you click on an active Widget’s Edit link …
A screen will display the selected Widget with options for changing the Widget’s settings, reassigning the Widget’s location, and drop-down menus for rearranging the position of the Widget.
Click Save Widget to return to the “Active Widgets” section, or click the Delete button to remove the widget from the “Active Widgets” section …
Click on the Disable accessibility mode in the Screen Options section to restore the drag-and-drop function to your Widgets …
Congratulations! Now you know how to add and remove Widgets from your WordPress site. To learn how to configure a number of different WordPress widgets for your site’s sidebar, see this tutorial.
WordPress is huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next Page, you will have a clearer picture of where to start and progress to building a professional WordPress Site.
A Featured Image (previously known as a “Post Thumbnail”) is an image that you choose to represent your Posts, Pages or Custom Post Types.
Featured images can be used to make your posts look more attractive and enticing to your readers, thus increasing the overall appeal of your site.
In this tutorial you are going to learn how to add images to WordPress.
Watch the video below and then complete the step-by-step tutorial to learn more about how to add images to WordPress
Add Images to WordPress: Step-By-Step Tutorial
Note: Whether a Featured Image displays on your WordPress posts or not is determined by the particular theme you have chosen for your site. Featured images tend to be favoured by WordPress themes with “magazine-type” layouts, which use an image to represent each post. This image might be displayed only on the home page and appear on its own, or alongside an excerpt of the post.
You can find Free WordPress themes that display featured images by going to the WordPress Theme directory and using the “featured-images” search filter when searching for themes …
If choosing Premium Themes, just make sure that the theme supports featured images.
As we’ve just discussed, some themes allow you to specify a featured image in your posts. So, if you plan to use featured images, make sure that the theme you have chosen for your site supports this feature.
To add a featured image to your post, make sure that the Featured Image box in the sidebar of your Edit Posts screen is visible …
If you cannot see the Featured Image box in your Edit Post screen, then click on the Screen Options tab at the top of your screen …
Make sure that the checkbox next to the Featured Image in the Show on screen section is ticked…
Next, click on the Set featured image link inside the Featured Image box …
This will open up the Set Featured Image.Screen as a popup window. Select the image you want to use as your featured image by clicking on it, then click on the Set featured image button …
The image you have selected has now been added to your post as a Featured Image …
Another way to set a featured image in a post is to click on the Add Media button in your Edit Post screen…
This will open up the Insert Media screen in your Media Gallery. Click on the Set Featured Image link in the Insert Media menu …
Next, select the image you want to use as your featured image by clicking on it, then click on the Set featured image button …
Your image will be set as the featured image of your WordPress Posts.
Remember to click Update to save and publish your new post settings …
Now, when you preview your site, you will see that your post displays the featured image you have specified…
Your featured image will continue to display even if you change WordPress themes on your site, as long as the themes support featured images …
To remove a featured image from a post, edit the post, then scroll down to the Featured Image box and click on the Remove featured image link …
You can also use plugins for managing and enhancing the use of featured images on your site in a number of different ways. For more details, see this tutorial: WordPress Plugins – Featured Images
WordPress Posts are huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next Page, you will have a clearer picture of where to start and progress to building a professional WordPress Site.
Regardless of the type of business you’re in, or what kind of company you have, you need to have a business blog and start blogging about your products and services.
A blog is a powerful marketing tool for small business owners. A good blog engages its visitors and encourages them to get actively involved.
50 Reasons To Choose A WordPress Website
Well … it eventually had to happen!
If you’re currently looking for affordable web design for your small business, then the information in this blog post will definitely help you save anywhere from hundreds to even thousands of dollars in your web design and web development costs.
Let’s assume that the budget you have set aside for getting a website built for your business covers the set up costs for a number of different platforms, including WordPress.
In fact, WordPress leads all other CMS technologies by quite a significant margin …
WordPress Revision Control
You can navigate between revisions by moving the slider to the left or right …
As well as adding text, images and videos into your content, you can also insert audio files into your WordPress posts and pages.
Your audio will then begin uploading …
Select the file you want to insert into your content and copy the URL of the file to your clipboard …
You will need this URL later. For now, just minimize the text file and move onto the next step.
After publishing your post or page, anyone will be able to download your audio file by right-clicking on the link and choosing “Save Link As …“
Are you looking for a way to insert a number of images or photos into your posts and pages?
Are you losing business because of a poorly-designed web site? A poorly-designed website can end up costing you valuable business.
Do you sell products online globally? If so, then it’s a great idea to consider providing your prospects with the convenience of currency conversion on your e-commerce web site.
How To Add Tags To WordPress Posts: One of the main things you want to keep in mind when using a website or blog as a communication tool for your business, is to make sure that users can find what they are looking for on your site quickly and easily, and that search engines can find and index your pages for relevant searches and search results.
Do you sell products online globally? If so, then it’s a great idea to consider providing your prospects with the convenience of conversion on your e-commerce web site.
From Your Dashboard. This WordPress Plugin Tutorial explains how to automatically upgrade and delete them safely from the WordPress admin dashboard without coding knowledge necessary.
Deposit Photos are a great source of premium royalty-free stock photos, illustrations and vector art.
Note: Do 
Developing toipics from your ideas will provide you with an effective and powerful tool for communicating and interacting directly with your customers.
Disqus (pronounced “discuss”), is a service and tool for web comments and discussions. The Disqus comment system replaces the WordPress comment system and makes commenting easier and more interactive, while connecting websites and commenters across a thriving discussion community.
Let’s suppose that your website promotes a particular product or service, and you decide to provide your site readers with more useful information about your industry to better engage your visitors.
The content will now display on your sidebar …
RSS Feeds – Additional Notes
One of the many great things about using WordPress is that you can easily add content and applications to your site and reconfigure elements of your site layout with no coding or programming skills required.
A Featured Image (previously known as a “Post Thumbnail”) is an image that you choose to represent your Posts, Pages or 
Note: Whether a Featured Image displays on your WordPress posts or not is determined by the particular theme you have chosen for your site. Featured images tend to be favoured by WordPress themes with “magazine-type” layouts, which use an image to represent each post. This image might be displayed only on the home page and appear on its own, or alongside an excerpt of the post.
