Category Archives: WordPress

Quick Tips for Increasing Blog Traffic

A blog is a personal thing for many people, kind of like an online diary. It is a cathartic place to off-load and share difficult experiences with anonymous strangers. For other people, particularly businesses, creating and maintaining a blog is done purely for SEO purposes. But whatever your reasons for building a blog, without a bit of effort on your part, nobody is going to see it. So if you want to build a loyal readership, here are a few tips to help you increase your blog traffic.

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Write Great Content

Content is king and it is important to adhere to this philosophy if you want to build a loyal readership. Blog content needs to be well-written, interesting, and above all, relevant. Search engines love unique content, so make a real effort to write from the heart and about subjects you know. Readers prefer authentic content that answers questions, highlights an issue, and provokes thought. If you tick these boxes, they will come back for more – and tell their friends.

Tag Your Posts

Tags help search engines and other bloggers find your posts, so use them. WordPress makes it easy to tag posts. However, you do need to choose the right tags: they should be relevant to the post.

Post Regularly

You can’t get away with posting once in a blue moon if you want people to read your blog. Successful blogs are updated regularly; ideally at least two or three times a week. If this punishing schedule is too much for you to handle, you could always accept guest blogs to ensure content stays fresh, but make sure you screen posts before they go “live” to ensure they meet quality controls.

Encourage Social Sharing

It’s good to share! Readers like to share good content with their friends, so ensure they can do this quickly and easier. WordPress has lots of social sharing plug-ins. Look for a plug-in that has buttons for social networks as well as share via email.

Top tip: don’t provide too many share buttons. Stick to the main ones, i.e. Facebook and Twitter. Too much choice is confusing and likely to inhibit social sharing.

Promote on Social Media

Social media is a great place to promote blog content. Once you have written a fantastic new post, go on Facebook and Twitter and start telling people all about it. And don’t forget to provide a link back to your blog post.

The only caveat here is if your blog content is very personal and you prefer that your friends, family and work colleagues don’t know what you are writing. In this instance, telling everyone on your Facebook friends list about your dating “confessions” blog might not be such a good idea.

Link to Other Blogs

Linking to other blogs can help generate new readers by providing a quick route between related content and increasing the numbers of links back to your site.

Building a blog readership isn’t difficult if you are willing to put in time and commitment, but if you need results fast, look at hiring a Sioux Falls advertising specialist.

How to Track Analytics and AdWords in WordPress

If you have a WordPress site, you’re probably quite familiar with Google AdWords and Analytics. However, what you may not be aware of is that you can link the two together in order to track your AdWords campaign by using Google Analytics. However, for many site owners this can prove quite difficult, as there isn’t that much information out there on how to set the two up in order for them to work together. Remember, it is also possible to pay a company to manage your AdWords campaign and this may be beneficial during the early stages.  However, if you do want to try and do it on your own, keep reading for some advice.

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Installing Analytics

If you don’t already have Google Analytics installed, you will need to do so first. This can be done easily by downloading and enabling the Google Analytics plugin on your WordPress site. In order to make authenticating the plugin easier, you will need to log in to your Google Analytics account in a new browser tab. Once you have done this, return to WordPress and select Settings – Google Analytics. Since you’re already logged in, you should be able to easily select the correct profile and account.

Check ad Enable Auto-Tagging

You will now need to check whether or not your site supports AdWords auto-tagging. You can do this by entering your site address into your browser and adding the text ‘?gclid=testing’ to the end before telling your browser to go to that address. If you still see the added text in your browser bar after the page has loaded, you know that your site supports auto-tagging. Next, you will need to log in to AdWords to ensure that auto-tagging is enabled.

Linking the Two Accounts

Now that both your AdWords and Analytics accounts are set up, it’s time to link them both together in order to share data between them. Go to your AdWords account, and select Tools & Analysis – Google Analytics. Once the resulting page is loaded, click the option for Admin, where you’ll be able to select the Google Analytics account that you would like to link. Click on the Data Sources tab, and then click ‘Link Accounts’. You should now have successfully linked the two.

Final Checks

In order to make sure that your Analytics account is tracking your Google AdWords properly, you’ll need to go over your settings and make some final checks. You should still be looking at the Data Sources tab from the Tools & Analytics menu. Click on Properties, and select the first Analytics profile that you would like to set up AdWords tracking for. On the resulting page, click on Tracking Code. Scroll down and you should be presented with the question ‘What are you tracking?’ and a series of checkboxes. Ensure that the Google AdWords checkbox is selected before you save your settings.

It really is that simple – link your Analytics and AdWords accounts today to start tracking your data and better managing your campaign.

Is Your Web Store Ready To Sell EU Wide?

If you have a business that sells products online, and you currently focus only on selling in your own country, it can be a good idea to consider broadening your marketing and sales approaches to bring in more potential business from the EU as a whole. After all, one of the main reasons the EU exists is to make it easier for people in different member countries to trade with each other. If a product range or service is doing well in your country, there are likely to be similar markets elsewhere in the EU that you could be harnessing.

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Of course, it takes a little research and preparation to get ready to start openly welcoming customers from other member states. Here are some things to do:

Ensure You Can Sell in Compliance With EU Regulations and Can Handle Things Like Tax Using The Latest PrestaShop Update

Before you can begin selling to people in other countries, you’ll need to make sure your site is equipped to do things like currency conversions for pricing, handle different taxes, add on different shipping and handling costs for people in different locations (obviously this is not applicable for digitally delivered products like downloadable software and media or eBooks), and is compliant with EU trade regulations. This may seem a bit of an overwhelming thing to have to add to your site’s back end, but actually it can be done very simply.  If you install ecommerce platform PrestaShop, you’ll find that the latest version has a whole module geared towards making EU compliance and EU wide sales easy to manage, and ensuring you’re doing everything right.

Research Different EU Markets

The EU is pretty diverse, and the markets vary quite a lot. As has been in the news a lot recently, some countries are in a better economic state than others, and also, different things tend to be in fashion or important to people in different member states. This means that before you start marketing in other EU countries, you should do some research to establish where your products are going to sit well with the consumer public, and if you can find a gap in the country’s own market to sell in. The web is full of resources and stats that can help you learn more about different markets, so spend some time looking at those that interest you and prioritise countries for marketing.

Translations

A final thing to consider is how you will handle copy, such as advertising and product descriptions. You will of course need translations, but as well as this, consider if you need to actually change things like your trading name or logo to appeal more in other countries. Translation only takes into account language, but if you really appear to care about a country’s culture and understand the market, you will do far better.

By readying your business and website in these ways, you can soon begin tapping into huge markets all over Europe!

Take Your WordPress Design to the Next Level

Choosing design firms to work with when it comes to designing and maintaining your website can be difficult. There are countless companies offering a huge range of services and even wider range of pricing – how can you be sure you’re choosing the right design firms and how can you be sure they’ll be able to assist you with your unique needs as a customer? Let’s discuss some of these ways!

Via https://pixabay.com
Via https://pixabay.com

Use an Agency That Takes Advantage of Usability Studies

Your first stop on your quest to find design firms is to look at their portfolio of past work. Have a quick look through some of the sites they’ve made and designed and see if you like their work aesthetically. Then dig deeper and check if they align with the fundamentals of website usability. You can do this by asking yourself any number of the following questions:

Do they have content patterns in an F shape?

Studies show the most successful sites design content, especially text heavy content, in an F shape on websites. The bulk of the text at the top, a short gap, some more bulk and a punchy conclusion. Google calls this their ‘golden triangle.

Can you find important information quickly?

How long did it take you to find the ‘Contact Us’ section? If it’s an online store, was information on shipping and returns quick and easy to find?

How much text is on the site?

Studies show users only read 28% of the text on any website, and the more text there is, the lower that percentage is. Are the key messages in the text bold or highlighted? Are users more likely to read the most important 28% of text?

There are many more usability rules, and knowing some of them can help you ensure your website has the best possible chance of being as effective as possible in a crowded world wide web.

Use an Agency That Knows Modern Design and Functionality

Modern design uses clean, uncluttered, easy to use designs. Minimalist design is in and complex designs are out and design firms should know that and be applying it to the work that they do. Your website needs to pop out at visitors as soon as they land by being clean and easy to navigate and spot important information. If your website follows the latest trends in web design and layout, you can be guaranteed users of the site will feel comfortable and at home on your website. That comfort will translate into longer visits and more of your message being relayed to those customers. The longer they visit the more of what you offer they’ll see!

Customers for Life

Creating a value added company website for your customers means they’ll be back again and again and consistently rely on your company to be their port of call. But remember, only by selecting top design firms and ensuring you make the right design decisions around your company website will ensure this.

20 must have WordPress plugins for your cool blog

Maintaining a blog, no matter the traffic received, isn’t only about writing and publishing articles. No doubt, the quality of the posts is capital, but a good looking design is also very important. It’s said that the small details make the big difference and this statement is valid regarding the existence of a blog. The competition is very harsh amongst bloggers and each aspect must be treated seriously in order to have a decent number of visitors.
WordPress is the leading platform for blogging and it seems that its supremacy will last, at least, in the near future. The WordPress developers created amazing themes and plugins that allow enhancing any type of website. Practically, a theme and some plugins may completely change the destination and the functionality of a website.
Ironically, the huge number of themes and plugins put in trouble the WordPress users because it’s impossible to make a decent selection of the most beautiful and efficient solutions. Fortunately, we are aware about this situation and as a result we have published articles exhibiting the best themes, templates or plugins.
In this post we searched for various plugins that may be useful for maintaining a blog. These plugins are ideal for different issues, from search engine optimisation to adding nice image sliders. Definitely, the developers created more than 20 plugins for blog owners so we might have missed your favourite one. Please let us know which your favourites are and we will take this into consideration for a new article!

Monetize Now

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It’s not shameful to recognize that many blogs are created to bring an extra income to the owner. The monetization of a blog is a very complex and challenging task. Affiliate marketing is an attractive solution to monetize the blog and this plugin is the perfect solution for this activity. By installing it, the blog will become part of Envato Affiliate program and I guess that there is no need to mention what a huge brand Envato is.

nBar

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The Internet users developed a special sense; they may scan a website extremely fast. In this context, grabbing the attention of the users is mostly an art. This plugin helps the bloggers to add various notification bars into the headers/footers. Of course, the notification bars are very customisable.

Ad Flap Pro

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Another modality of obtaining the attention of the blog visitors is to use this interesting plugin, which is actually in charge with creating cool animated adverts. I really appreciate it because the messages aren’t obtrusive unlike other plugins that „intoxicate” the readers with huge pop up messages.

Mine Flip Book

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Some people are still very much in love with the classic format of a book and hate the digital format. This plugin is created in order to satisfy all the tastes: it creates a „book” and it has a feature that people will love: the files may be flipped similarly to a classic manuscript. It’s a really interesting experience and it will surely make the blog stand apart from other competitors.

LoopPress

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Almost every blogger adds various videos to his / her posts. Handling these is pretty difficult, but Looppress is a great plugin that makes this job simpler. If you are used to adding videos into your blog, then this plugin is ideal for you!

Fast Gallery

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Handling the images is another challenging task for a blog owner. Fast Gallery is a plugin that helps very much the blogger to arrange the images into galleries. The huge advantage of this plugin is the fact that it’s extremely simple to use…you can configure a gallery in less than a minute!

Buzzcomi

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Making people curious is another technique of obtaining traffic. This plugin is able to create a coming soon page with a very interesting countdown timer. The design is very pleasant and it’s very probable that it will make people interested in what is behind the countdown.

Nex

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Forms are apparently not very important items, but an experienced blogger knows that these are vital for the success of the blog. If you want to create your own cool forms, then this plugin is exactly what you need. It creates tons of form versions and it’s impossible not to be satisfied with a variant. I fell in love with the modern design of the forms. If I were a user, I would definitely spend some time just to complete such a wonderful form.

Premium SEO Pack

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A very interesting blog that isn’t search engine optimised is a lost project. Like it or not, the number of the visitors is very important; so a SEO plugin is mandatory for any blog. The market is full of various SEO plugins, but only a few of them are really useful. SEO Pack is one of these useful plugins and you shouldn’t miss it!

Smart SEO

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The previous plugin is a very powerful one, but it might happen not to satisfy your tastes. Smart SEO is another solution that should be taken into account!

Keyword Finder

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Finding the right keywords isn’t a very difficult task, but it takes valuable time that may be used for other more important activities. Keyword Finder is a plugin that should be used by the entire blogging community. As long as you post a title in the dashboard area, it will provide unlimited potential keywords; therefore your time is saved.

Uber Audio

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Many bloggers are writing about music topics and a good and reliable audio plugin is golden for their blogs. Uber Audio may be a solution because it allows people to listen to music from the post, page or sidebar. The playlists may be very easily customised and there is no limit regarding the number of tracks that may added into a playlist.

Calendarize

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A calendar is very important because it helps people get a constant flow of published articles. Calendarize is a great plugin that will simplify the work of an admin very much.

Banner Rotator

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Nowadays, the developers created amazing sliders that simply delight the users. Altogether, it’s quite difficult to find a standing apart slider. Banner Rotator is an original and customisable slider that will surely impress any user.

Posts Slider

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Posts Slider is another plugin that is created for adding sliders. The same as the previous one, it has many useful features and no doubt, it will add a high level of dynamism.

Share Locker

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Social media can’t be ignored by a serious blogger. The different social media appreciations (likes, tweets, shares, pins) are taken into account for the ranking of a website. This plugin hides the content of a post until the users share/like/tweet the respective post.

Social Box

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Social Box is another plugin almost mandatory for a modern blog. It allows the admin to add a social widget, which will let the visitors make an idea about the social media presence of the blog. Its sleek design will attract the eyes of the visitors; so you have all the reasons to use it.

About Me

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People prefer to engage with the ones that provide them interesting information. Having an „About me” section is highly recommended for any blogger – in this way the curious readers may find out who is behind the blog. Luckily, we have this plugin that creates a widget displaying an „About me” section and the latest tweets.

M7 Accordion Menus

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By installing this plugin, the admin has the possibility to create accordion menus in the widget area. As far as the admin is concerned, this is simple to install and use, while the users will have more possibilities to access the content- it’s a win-win situation and everyone should profit from it.

Tabs Widget

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This plugin creates a widget consisting of a tabbed panel that displays various types of content, from tweets to recent posts. It’s a simple method of showcasing a lot of information without annoying the visitors.
I hope that these plugins will be really helpful for the bloggers. Anyway, it will be great to share your favourite ones (from this list or from WordPress Repository) with us.

All In One SEO Pack Vulnerabilities Found, Upgrade Recommended

all in one seo pack logoIn news that popped up all over the web in recent days, the WordPress plugin All In One SEO Pack contains several security vulnerabilities that could put users’ sites at risk. Yes, SEO is very important, but so is keeping your website safe. Let’s take a look at what the issues are and what can be done to stop them.

Researchers from Sucuri, who were conducting a code audit when the problem popped up, were quoted in a PC World article from Monday as saying, “If your site has subscribers, authors, and non-admin users logging into wp-admin, you are at risk. If you have open registration, you are at risk, so you have to update the plugin now.” Not updating the plugin could prolong the security issues that exist.

The flaws are pretty major too. PC World said, “One of the two flaws discovered by Sucuri can be exploited by a regular user, like an author or a subscriber, to modify a post’s SEO title, description, and keyword meta tags created by the plugin. If used maliciously, this could result in damage to a site’s search result ranking. However, the vulnerability can also be combined with a second flaw to inject malicious JavaScript code on the administrator control panel that would execute when the page is loaded.”

When we checked the All In One SEO Pack’s download page on WordPress’ website, it was Version 2.1.6, which is the corrected version. The plugin as a whole has had an amazing 18.5 million downloads throughout its lifetime, including almost 4,000 on Monday alone and 26,000 the day the issue was exposed. You can see why security flaws in it could be so damning: the plugin is used by a bundle of sites across the internet.

If you’re not running Version 2.1.6, you should upgrade post-haste. According to PC World, the latest version was released on Sunday, so if you’ve downloaded it since then, you should be fine. The plugin’s overall features include XML sitemap support, Google Analytics support, SEO on WordPress e-commerce sites, and automatic optimization of titles for Google and other search engines. It’s a massively popular plugin.

In several news stories we checked out covering the All In One SEO Pack’s issues, users recommended the Yoast WordPress SEO plugin, which according to its website has been downloaded 10 million times. One user, for example, wrote, “This is just another in the long list of reasons why we advise our customers against using All In One SEO. While the plugin was great at one point, it has been lagging behind Yoast’s WordPress SEO plugin for quite some time now. If you’re still using AIO, this is a great excuse to switch over to Yoast.” ThemeSquirrel has reviewed another option called Smart SEO.

timthumbWordPress’ widespread use makes it a major target for hacker attacks. One of the most prominent security issues popped up in 2011 via TimThumb. CNN explained, “In this attack, hackers exploit a security flaw in a popular file used by WordPress and other website-building platforms to crop and resize images (Timthumb.php, thus the name).”

CNN added, “Hackers use the security hole to install malicious code or files into a website or server. From there, they can launch spear phishing campaigns and denial-of-service attacks, where hackers overwhelm a website’s server by flooding it with requests, making the site unresponsive.” Google blacklisted some sites that suffered from the hack.

According to another article, TimThumb attacks continued for as long as a year after the problem was exposed, which is evidence why it’s important to update your WordPress plugins and programs as often as humanly possible.

We’ll continue to bring you the latest WordPress news right here on ThemeSquirrel.

20 WordPress plugins to improve your social media presence

Social media was a big hit two years ago but nowadays it seems that people have lost their enthusiasm. Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest still attract new users, but definitely the climax of social media was overtaken.
On the other hand, it doesn’t mean that neglecting social media is a good choice…by far, it’s a huge mistake. The social networks are inestimable for the huge brands because they help them stay connected with people. Being active on various social networks isn’t mandatory only for huge brands, but a good social presence is recommended for local businesses, bloggers or entrepreneurs also. In fact, websites without various social media buttons are very rare. Obviously, the content is the one that determines people to distribute it on social networks but an important role is played by the design. As a result, many designers spend much time searching for the best plugins and methods to improve the social media presence.
Luckily for you, we have collected 20 impressive WordPress plugins that will help you improve your social media presence. The selection was very time-consuming because many talented WordPress developers create brilliant plugins.

Social Fans

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Social Counter plugin lets the viewers make a brief opinion about the number of friends/followers/subscribers. The buttons are retina ready, based on Bootstrap. The plugin contains 21 buttons and four skins (Light, Dark, Colored, and Transparent) that may be customized for everybody’s needs and preferences.

Social Sidebar

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The huge majority of the WordPress plugins are very customizable, but very few ones benefit from a very clear explanation about how to do it. The developers of Social Sidebar noticed this fact and have created a wonderful and very clear preview. I think that it is better to visit it yourself and play around with the various customization options.

YouTube Grid Video Gallery

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If a good image is worth 100 or 1000 words, how many words is good video worth? Definitely, a lot! In conclusion, it’s highly recommendable to pay attention at the manner in which one can display videos and maintain a YouTube account. This plugin will help in handling the YouTube videos, so if you are in need YouTube Grid Video Gallery is a good solution.

Facebook Albums Grid

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The previous plugin was responsible for creating a video gallery; this one does the same, but it handles Facebook albums. Of course, it provides the same quality and easiness to install and use it.

Easy Facebook Contest

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The social networks are very dynamic and are famous for the high level of interactivity. Facebook contests are very much appreciated and they may produce a lot of buzz around the contest holder. This plugin will help in creating Facebook contests directly from the WordPress website and it may bring a considerable traffic increase.

Easy Social Locker

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The monetization of written content is a long and unresolved story. It’s improbable that people will pay for articles as long as the same ideas will appear few minutes later. Still, there is a solution to satisfy the readers and reward the writers/bloggers. A “Like”, “Tweet” or any other form of social media compensation may be the perfect reward for these people. Easy Social Locker is a plugin that once installed will lock the website and it will became accessible only by giving a social media reward.

Twitter Slider

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Twitter is a social network that can’t be neglected. This plugin is a great tool for displaying the Twitter feed; it allows displaying the feed in vertical or horizontal position.

Supercharged Twitter Card Management

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This plugin is another one that helps people manage their Twitter presence better. I think that it is more powerful than the precedent one so don’t ignore it!

SelectNShare

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SelectNShare is a great and very original plugin. I think that this plugin is very useful for blogs because once you install it the user will have the possibility to select a phrase/part of a text and share it via social networks. It is not a very used plugin, but it surely is a very interesting one. Don’t you think?

Twitter Timeline

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Sometimes, the social networks buttons are obtrusive and annoying. Altogether, it’s a huge mistake not to insert some of them. This plugin is a very good middle way solution- it hides the latest tweets into a slider. It’s very discrete and anyone that is interested in checking the Twitter activity is just a single click away.

Tweetdis

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Tweetdis is another WordPress plugin that helps the owner to improve his / her Twitter presence. It’s simple and useful- it allows the editor to select a phrase and make it “tweetable”. Actually it creates a “tweet” call to action: this means that the user will just have to click the button and voila, here is a new tweet in Twitterverse.

WP Smart Like

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WP Smart like is a plugin that consists in displaying the Facebook “likes” into very discrete but visually appealing buttons. At the same time it has inserted a “likes” counter and it’s very customizable, so you have all the reasons to consider adding it into your blog.

Instagram Photo Video

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I guess that a very small percentage of the overall number of websites don’t have photos inserted into the layouts. Displaying photos is a very challenging web design issue: these must be high quality, but their size must be very small not to negatively affect the loading time and of course, the images should be well rendered no matter the device used to navigate. Fortunately, this plugin is inestimable in managing the Instagram images.

My Social Counter

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This plugin makes a great job- it offers a counter for all the major social networks. My Social Counter plugin offers various schemes of displaying social network buttons in order to fit them better to the website design. Every button looks great, which means that the visitors will be delighted with them!

Facebook Likebox Slider

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If the previous plugin offered a bird view over the social media numerical situation, this one is useful in having a complete overview of the social media stream. More exactly, the plugin adds the website a discrete slider that presents the latest actions on the major social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Vimeo, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Instagram).

Social Stream

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WordPress Social Stream is a very original plugin. It takes various social media streams and incorporates them all into a single WordPress powered website. The plugin is extremely customizable and it allows selecting any type of feeds from multiple networks into a layout that may be modified according to the user’s needs.

Twit Lite

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Usually, the bloggers and the website owners are very busy people and they are not able to handle their social presence well, since it is well known that maintaining a coherent social media stream is a time consuming activity. This plugin saves the time and automatically tweets any new post published. It is simple, but effective, isn’t it?

Ring Share

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Ring Share isn’t a very used plugin, but it must be treated seriously by the WordPress users. It gives the user the possibility to create a ring of social media icons on various areas on the layout while the visitors may share the page/image/text paragraph via various social networks.

Social Status

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This plugin doesn’t enhance the user experience, but it shouldn’t be missing from the arsenal of a serious WordPress user. It offers a very detailed situation of the social media hits and the dates are showcased using beautifully designed graphics.

WP Social RSS

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It was impossible not to mention a plugin that will allow you to better handle the RSS (Really Simple Syndication) options. It’s simple to use and it allows customizing the RSS buttons in order to attract more and more visitors.

The social networks are very important and either if you are willing or not, these will be very appreciated in the next years. These plugins are very efficient and any owner of a WordPress powered website must consider installing some of them. If you appreciate this post, don’t forget to share it with your friends!

How Vulnerable is Your WordPress Site?

hackingIt’s not every day that Forbes, a major media outlet, takes a look at WordPress. The subject: security of WordPress sites, focusing on what you can do to ensure your domain is impenetrable. After all, hacking a WordPress site can involve just a user name and password, so let’s see how you can refrain from falling victim.

One recommendation from Forbes was to back up your website “often.” How often is completely up to you, but the news site recommended at least one update a week. Several plug-ins are available to help you back up your site, including UpdraftPlus, which Forbes recommended. Others we found included BackUpWordPress and BackWPup. Some of these cost money and others didn’t, so check out a few to see which ones match your needs and wallet the best.

Forbes also recommended limiting login attempts rather than allow unlimited cracks at your user name and password. A plugin called Limit Login Attempts was recommended, which helps stop logins by tracking a person’s IP address. You can also keep tabs on attempts using Limit Login Attempts and even have them e-mailed to you.

Just like many computer users have an obvious login name, Forbes recommended, “Most hackers try to get your password by trying to brute-force your ‘admin’ username. If you change your user name to something else, that will protect your website immediately.” In other words, pick a user name that’s not “admin”. It’s amazing how simple security can be sometimes.

Similarly, use a password that’s not inanely obvious like “password” or “WordPress” or one you’ve used on a bunch of other websites. Try to come up with something original that would give hackers a headache to crack. No, your first name is not original.

One final recommendation was to “limit the IP addresses that are allowed to visit /wp-admin/ section of your website. The easiest way to do so is to block all entry except your own IP address with an htaccess file.”

We found a number of plugins that provided e-mail alerts when potential security breaches came to light. Take BulletProof Security, for example, which allows you to be notified whenever a user account is locked out, an administrator logs in, and any user logs in. Think about how much control and oversight you’d have if you were e-mailed when any of these actions occurred.

all in one wordpress securityThe All In One WordPress Security plugin (pictured) received rave reviews (113 reviews of five stars out of 119 submitted). According to its site, the plugin “reduces security risk by checking for vulnerabilities and by implementing and enforcing the latest recommended WordPress security practices and techniques. [The] All In One WP Security also uses an unprecedented security points grading system to measure how well you are protecting your site based on the security features you have activated.”

Not protecting your site can yield pretty grave consequences. Take an incident in mid-March that saw 162,000 WordPress sites launch a DDoS attack. Yes, 162,000 WordPress sites were part of the melee. As one observer put it, “Can you see how powerful it can be? One attacker can use thousands of popular and clean WordPress sites to perform their DDoS attack, while being hidden in the shadows, and that all happens with a simple ping back request to the XML-RPC file.” There’s a tool called WordPress DDOS Scanner you can use if you think your site might be at risk.

Users making comments in various articles about the DDoS attack reiterated the dangers of an “admin” user name. Others added that keeping your plugins and add-ons up-to-date is of paramount importance. Changing your password often is also advised.

Check out some of the other WordPress plugins that can help you be a lean, mean WordPress machine.

The complete guide of creating a selling WordPress theme

WordPress is just ten years old but it seems to be one of them most important entities of the Internet. There are so many websites based on this content management system (CMS) and so many themes available that the Internet may be considered as the realm of WordPress. The fascinating aspect is that its success seems it’s not reached its peak as long as the number of websites based on CMS is daily growing. The specialists tried to explain the success of the CMS and they identified lots of factors but the most important was the simplicity of using it. Someone said that everyone that is able to work with Microsoft Office Word will be able to handle a WordPress website…personally, I really believe in this statement.
In this context, it’s normal for any designer or developer to ask himself if it’s profitable to sell a WordPress theme. Unfortunately, by reading this post you won’t obtain a clear answer –“yeah, go for it” or “nope, it’s not for you”. The single clear statement is that yes, there are too many WordPress themes available, but definitely, there are way too few high quality ones. In conclusion, instead of wasting time to ask yourself if it’s good or not to create a WordPress theme, it’s better to create a really impressive theme and start making money by selling it.
Important: Many designers prefer to create only custom WordPress themes that are used by a single client. In this post we will not treat this aspect, we will debate only the matter of themes available for multiple sells.  In order to help you, here is a small, but complete guide to create selling WordPress themes. Obviously, it may be completed with the opinions or past experiences of the readers; we are waiting for your contributions, therefore use the comment form!

1. Decide the type of the theme

Before making the first scratch of a layout, it’s recommended to establish very clearly the type of the theme. In fact, there are two major solutions:

– a theme that may be suitable for multiple purposes. It’s characterized by general items, it has nothing very particular. The advantage of these themes is constituted by the large amount of potential buyers.
– a particularized theme that has a very clear destination, i.e. a layout for church or kindergarten website. These themes have less potential buyers, but the interested ones are better transformed into effective buyers.
It is up to the designer to select which solution work the best for him, clearly none of the above solutions is wrong or good. Anyway, it’s a good idea to follow a path from the beginning, else changing the concept in the middle of the design phase may represent a very bad decision.

2. A good design remains capital (yeah, it’s a deprecated piece of advice)

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I was in doubt about adding or not this tip into the article. I think that no blogger or designer will ever say that the design isn’t important. It’s such a common advice that will bore the readers. Altogether, an impressive number of themes are modest and the design simply has nothing to attract the eyes of the viewers. To conclude, any designer should think twice when creating the design of the layout. It should be original to attract people, but in the same time it should be accessible and usable. The design of a layout requires a lot of time and resources, but this by no means (time and resources) is mandatory to create a product that will be appreciated and bought.

3. A good design attracts clients, a good code maintains them loyal

A good design attracts clients, but selling more themes requires a complete strategy. The main idea is to create a loyal base of clients and definitely it is the basis of a long-term profitable affair. The first step in gaining the loyalty of the clients is to offer them very good products. As long as the design is a subjective matter and it may happen that a good looking theme will not be liked by some people, a clean and correct code is an objective thing. Even if the code is a more discrete presence, it doesn’t mean that coding may be ignored. There is nothing to add: pay close attention to the coding, any mistake affects the rating of the theme and implicitly, it will negatively affect the number of sales.

4. Give options to the users, but don’t let them recreate the theme

Another feature of WordPress that is much appreciated by users is the customization ability. It means that also the themes must be easily customizable and a successful one should have many options to personalize. Many WordPress developers are going too far and add too many options to custom and this situation confuse the clients. There is no recipe to determine which options are necessary and which ones are useless- it’s only the experience of the designer/developer.

5. Customer support is important no matter how high quality is a theme

I bet that even if a theme respects the laws of beautiful design and it’s impeccably coded, at least a client will need support for the respective theme. Customer support seems as an additional activity for WordPress theme creators, but the reality proved that it is very important. On short term perspective, not offering replies to the clients’ demands may not affect the sales, but on medium and long term perspective it is “the perfect solution” to failure.

6. Marketing is as important as coding and design

A common mistake of people selling WordPress themes is the lack of interest regarding the marketing of the theme. As I previously mentioned, the Internet is full of themes and it’s extremely difficult to make some buzz around a new one. The WordPress themes market is characterized by a paradoxical situation: it is full of themes, but very few are really qualitative and people are somehow prudent about a new theme. If the creator doesn’t care about the future of his work, by sure other people won’t either. The conclusion: marketing is a must. Willing or not, creating a selling WordPress theme supposes the next phases: designing, coding and marketing!
In the end, I hope that everyone interested in selling WordPress themes got some useful advices. Once again, I must warn that creating WordPress themes is a taught job, but the rewards are pretty motivating. What do you think, would you start creating and selling WordPress themes?

How To Compose SSL With Merchant Account?

It can be said that a merchant account is not a typical account like saving or any other account. It is however like a contract between you and your bank. Now people prefer to use credit or debit card payments instead of using hard cash. So if you also want to have the facility in your online or retail store then you can go for opening a merchant account. While generating the bank statement the name of your business along with a specified charge will appear on your customer’s credit card statement. Here the processing dimensions passes through every 7-14 days.

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It is not that you will have to work with one account as a business owner you are allowed to have more than one active of merchant accounts at the same time. Generally people go for over-the-counter (OTC) merchant account which is most useful for retail stores. The second types of merchant accounts are termed as Internet Merchant Accounts used by for eCommerce merchants for online webshops, it is though a very high risk Merchant Account associated with a few specific categories like gambling and adult, pharmacy, where there is a more chance of fraud. The next most common kind of merchant account is for the E-mail and telephone made orders account, which provides you services related to the regular Internet Merchant Account as well.

It is true that the common people think it is however difficult to go for a merchant account especially for new businesses as they have experienced that the customers turn away rate regarding payment processors is not up to as high as 98% for all merchants.

Apart from that the most important aspect for small business owners is the cost effectiveness. Though it is associated with many advantages for a business to run but the cost of accepting credit or debit cards for an online business is too high to afford for a small or new business. They can go with 3rd party merchant accounts like PayPal and 2CO as the processing fees here is less as compared to others. Moreover it is suitable for the business of any sizes or all types.

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Now it is the era of online business where everybody wants the ability to operate with credit or debit card payments, whether in a retail store or an eCommerce store on the internet. The user will feel comfortable using their cards and if you will be unable in providing them with this facility then you will most likely lose the customers.

SSL means Secure Socket Layer. It is a developing standard discovered by Netscape Communications to transfer important data and information across the Internet. It is however a reliable and secured way of data transfers. Through SSL your customer’s browser will be connected to your web site and can avail a transparent communication channel. After implementation of the connection you can securely exchange the credit card numbers over the web.

For this process you definitely need a verified “Merchant Account” from an accredited financial institution as all the actual processing of the credit card will be done through this. SSL does not use any software to process the credit card transactions, it also based on the Merchant Account for their transaction processing.

If you are making a web-based form of business where you are required to attract the traffic towards your website and need the visitor to enter data and submit the form online, then you can take the help of an SSL encryption service. This is especially helpful and secured way of exchanging sensitive information like entering credit card numbers.

The SSL service thus uses an encrypted form of information transfer technique. Once after receiving from the web server it is automatically decrypted which enable you to read, store and process the information as usual on the web server.

If you are having an SSL certificate previously then you don’t need to go for the whole process again. You can just send a backup file to renew the certificate that has been generated on the previous web server, along with the password associated with the certificate file. By this you can be able to use the facility over the web with a small setup fee.

About Author:
Mark Wilston is a Content Writer and marketing professional working with PixelCrayons (a reputed Web & Mobile Application development company). He loves to read and write different blogs related to web design and technologies. Contributing in a blog post aids him spreading the words online with a new set of people.