Building a website that will host a lot of content requires a content management system. This is one of the basic fundamentals in ensuring your site has a strong structure to build on. At the moment, there are several available systems online. Yet, one of most trusted for managing content is WordPress. WordPress has become the choice of business owners in ensuring better-looking sites.

If you are already starting to consider WordPress for your website, then there are some things you need to consider. In this post, we’re sharing the top five ways for you to have a bigger, better, and stronger WordPress site.

1. Take time to choose the perfect theme or structure

It can overwhelm you when you try to check the long list of available WordPress themes. Some are free while others are premium with additional features. It’s best to review what you are getting from a specific design to know if it’s worth the price. If you want to save up, stick to free types that still have professional look.

2. Choose wisely when using plugins

One of the best things about using WordPress is it has a lot of plugins for better optimization. Yet just like the themes, these additional features may confuse you or convince you to just use everything. Be careful when adding up plugins since these can affect your site’s speed. If there will be an alternative, then as much as possible avoid adding up too many plugins.

Take this suggested advice to heart when selecting plugins, “Due to the ease of downloading and installing them on your site, it’s very easy to go plugin-happy and keep downloading to your heart’s content,” says digital marketer Derek Iwasiuk. “However, by relying too much on plugins, you risk slowing down your site due to the coding and scripts of each of the plugins.”

3. Avoid hotlinking to save your site’s speed

Oftentimes some bloggers or site users would see your post and admire an image or two from it. They may grab those images by copying the URL and pasting on their posts. The problem here is your site recognizes this thus also working to load up the image for them. Avoid this hotlinking move by tweaking a bit your .htaccess file and adding up some codes.

4. Decide on web fonts that really perform

There’s an endless selection of web fonts that you can try out. Be sure to do a quick research before selecting one since this can affect your site. An example would be a temporary downtime for a web font pack. If this happens, all your posts will be affected. So better choose a reliable and professional set that can keep up with your site’s need.

5. Go for sturdy and trusted web hosting

Having the best WordPress pieces for your website is one thing. Another important element here is making sure to stick it with a trusted web hosting site. There is quite a number online so be sure to choose the right package. Remember that the web hosting may affect your site’s response time so you need to go for something fast and strong.

Conclusion

Hopefully, the shared tips here can help you establish a better WordPress site. So get the work started by doing your research on the right tools to fit.

Originally posted on February 5, 2018 @ 5:23 am

Creating your website and perfecting your landing pages doesn’t end there just yet. You need to consider what it looks like, how fast it loads, or if it’s secured enough to go live.

1. SEO

SEO or Search Engine Optimization has proved itself way too many times with the success of million dollar websites. Unless you don’t have competitors, you won’t be seen by people looking for products or services that you have. For a beginner, SEO may be too complicated to understand and implement.

One of the top downloaded plugins on WordPress is Yoast – your best buddy when it comes to optimizing your website.

2. Cache

Thinking about caching your WordPress website means you are thinking about increasing its performance. Think of caching as taking notes and saving it for later use. In web science, caching reduces the delay of transferring data from the website the user is visiting its browser. It means, when a user visits your website again, their browser don’t have to redownload your HTML pages, images, scripts, etc. because they’ve already saved some of those in their browsers.

Nobody likes to wait for a website that’s taking forever to load. According to DoubleClick, one out of two users expects a site to load in less than two seconds. Take a look at Design Bombs’ comparison of the best WordPress caching plugins and decide on what you think is perfect for your business website.

3. Security

Your website is the place where you point your possible clients to, losing it may cost your whole business to fall. It is not just smart to install security plugins but is a must if you want to keep your business away from intruders. Even though WordPress itself offers a bunch of security updates, hackers are still persistent to find their way and exploit bugs they come across to.

The most downloaded security plugin – Wordfence, does a deep server scan of your website. Gaining more than 22 million downloads in total and mostly a 5-star rating, it is worth a try to install to your website.

4. Social Sharing

Most of your visitors probably use social media, and a good percentage of them are sharers – people who love to share something they’ve read somewhere on their social accounts. When you see content on your website is shared, it means that your visitors like it. A case study of Fizzle shows that sources of web traffic are mostly from social media websites.

Adding a highly customizable social sharing button like Share Buttons by AddThis increases your chances on being shared easier by your readers.

5. Opt-in Form

Opt-in forms are how your business gets its leads. Most of the time, you will have to offer something of value to your visitor in exchange for their email. These emails are going to be your leads and potential customers. Remember that you don’t just put opt-in forms wherever on your website, try to look compare what you think is the best opt-in form plugin you need to be adding on your website.

Using WordPress is an excellent choice because it offers a lot of functionality, but you’ll be doing a lot better by installing plugins that could help solve your little problems for you. Here are some of the best WordPress plugins every business needs – including yours.

Originally posted on May 29, 2017 @ 7:19 am

Getting your WordPress site hacked may be one of the worst things that can happen especially if your website is a business that cannot just pause its services. Installing security plugins and doing the best practices on trying to make your site unhackable won’t stop hackers from doing their thing. What should you do when your website has already been hacked?

1. Restore backup

When hackers attack your WordPress site, their purpose is to manipulate, if not destroy, your files. This could be the death of your online business especially if you use your site to transact with online customers and engage with your audience.

Therefore, to minimize the problems caused by online attacks, you should always prepare a backup copy of your site that you can easily upload onto your hosting if the damage is irreparable. You can use the UpDraftPlus plugin to manually create a copy of your site that you can save to the cloud or your hard drive. For the paid version of this plugin, you can set it to create copies of your site on a regular basis automatically, so you don’t have to do it by yourself all the time.

2. Use Sucuri

Use Sucuri to recover your site to its state before getting hacked. It has ‘Post-Hack Security Actions’ which walks you through the three steps you need to do after your site has been compromised.

Keep Sucuri installed to protect your site all year-long. Aside from fixing your compromised website for you, it also has a lot of security actions that will help you block off hacking attempts and continue to monitor and scan your website proactively.

Even if your site gets hacked without Sucuri installed, you can still reach out to them to get your site fixed. It may cost a bit more than getting protection before the hack, but such is the price that you have to pay.

3. Use WordPress Hosting

Once hacked, you also need to identify if it’s one of the reasons of your website being compromised. Although most web hosts can support WordPress, getting a host that’s specifically tailored to cater WordPress can be an advantage. Automatic updates, built-in mechanisms, and dedicated support are just some of the services these top managed WordPress hosting boast.

4. Change Login Details

If someone has hacked into your site by stealing your password, they can still access your website if you don’t change your login details immediately. Avoid the most used passwords like “123456” or “qwerty” and update your WordPress site, cPanel, FTP and all the other accounts you’ve used this password on straight away.

While you’re at it, remember that you must change the default “admin” username too. It just makes hackers one step closer to hacking your site if you don’t.

5. Scan Your Computer

In some cases, hacks on websites start on your computer. This means that whatever’s on your computer could be stolen, not just your WordPress website but also some of the sites you frequent. Scan your computer immediately using malware and virus scanners and make your computer up to date.

6. Hire A Professional

Although DIYs have been a common practice to most website owners, if you’re not comfortable dealing with codes, hiring a professional to take care of your hacked website would be the safest option. Some of them may charge more than what you expect, but if your site is your primary source of income and you cannot afford to mess it all up by doing it yourself, it’s best to leave it to professionals to take care of.

Some hackers use brute force attack where they try all the possible login detail combinations until one finally work. Limiting login attempts would prevent hackers from obtaining access to your website. Many plugins on WordPress specifically try and protect your site by adding an extra layer of protection by limiting how many times a user can log in. Also, once you’ve properly cleaned your WordPress site, always prepare yourself for another possibility of an imminent attack.

Originally posted on June 15, 2017 @ 10:42 pm