WP Minder

Debbie Campbell

Why Content Marketing Really Matters for Businesses Now

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I read a good post today that reinforces what I tell my WordPress clients – that unless you’re really focusing on creating high-quality content on a regular basis, you’re not using that business website as the marketing weapon that it can be.

This article from Inc Magazine about why online content marketing is so important now presents three good reasons that you should be doing it too:

  • Tough competitors and lots of options for your customers;
  • Trust is incredibly valuable and you can build it through consistent content;
  • Your highly valuable content is likely to be shared with customers’ social networks.

Check out the article, it may be a bit of an eye-opener if you’re of the ‘if we build it, they will come’ persuasion.

An Ounce of Prevention…

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Being proactive can really pay off in your personal healthcare – it’s usually a lot cheaper to prevent a problem in the first place (or at least catch it early) than it is to try to fix it once it’s become a reality.

The same is true for your WordPress website. It may start with a few out of date plugins, no big deal (and it usually isn’t a big deal at first). Then a WordPress update comes out for a security issue, and it’s ignored. Eventually there are a lot of old plugins and you’re a few releases behind on WordPress core files. Maybe some little error shows up at the top of the admin area but doesn’t effect the look of the website, so you let it go…

It’s a slippery slope! The longer you wait to update, the more risk you’re taking.

If you put a lot of value on your WordPress site, don’t take the chance. Make sure everything stays up to date. And make sure that if a problem does happen, you’re covered, because you have a recent backup stored safely somewhere other than your hosting account.  It’s much easier to recover a good backup than it is to clean up a hacked website – or to recreate months of work that disappears when a hard disk on a server goes bad and you discover there isn’t a fresh backup.

Gravity Forms Signature Addon Updated

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Gravity Forms is one of our favorite WordPress plugins. They’ve recently release an update for their handy Signature Addon – read more about it.

The Signature Addon is available for developer license accounts and lets you accept signatures via touch device or mouse, useful for contracts, receipts or anywhere else you need a signature. Learn more about the Signature Addon.

Why WordPress Backups are Critical for Business Sites

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What would happen if your WordPress website disappeared in the next 5 minutes? Say the server has a meltdown… or your site gets thoroughly hacked…

Would you be okay? Do you have a recent backup of your site files and database somewhere safe, that you can get to and recover on your own quickly? Or not? Or do you even know?

Many hosts perform backups of their servers. However, I personally don’t like relying on that for my own business websites. I like to know for sure that I have a complete site backup that was taken in the last seven days, if not a daily backup. In my experience with various hosts, trying to help a client recover from a hacking episode, I’ve encountered everything from hosts who had a 5-day-old backup to those who didn’t have any at all. It’s just too chancy. [Read more…] about Why WordPress Backups are Critical for Business Sites