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Weekly Link Roundup – Security Plugins, Server Issues, Permalinks, 301 Redirects

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This week’s WordPress and web marketing links.

For WordPress security, I’ve been using and recommending Wordfence for a few years, but with a recent update they totally changed the interface , greatly reducing the quality of the user experience, in my opinion. I find the new version hard to navigate, and that doesn’t bode well for my clients who use it. So I’m experimenting with other security plugins to find a replacement; right now the candidate is All-in-One WP Security & Firewall. This plugin has been around a long time and true to their claims, it is quite easy to configure. If you’re looking for a security plugin try this post with quick reviews of 17 top WordPress security plugins.

When there’s a problem with your site, it’s common to assume it’s your site causing the problem – but that’s not always the case. Sometimes it’s your host’s server. Here’s a guide to 8 common server issues that can affect your site in various ways: making it slow, not delivering email, or even showing the dreaded ‘no database connection’ error.

Do you know what permalinks are on your WordPress site? A lot of clients have never heard of them, until they decide to change them on an established site, which can cause big problems. Learn all you need to know about permalinks here, but pay special attention to the part about not fooling with them unless you have a brand new site. In order to make changes later, they also talk about 301 redirects which are a way to make changes safely.

And speaking of 301 redirects, here’s a guide to 7 top redirection plugins (this is an older post but all still valid information). My current favorite, which I last used just this week, is Redirection.

 

Weekly Links Roundup – Email Newsletters, Hosting, Maintenance Plugins, Scrolling

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This week’s WordPress and web marketing links.

I believe I’ve gone over this before, but you should never rely on WordPress to send email newsletters. Learn why (emails will often be flagged as spam especially if you’re on shared hosting, or may not be received at all due to server settings) and see the alternatives.

If you’re looking for a managed WordPress host, I work with an awesome one (WP Engine) but some of the others are somewhat less desirable. This is an opinion piece detailing the inner workings of one of those offerings. I’m happy to provide high-quality WordPress hosting recommendations at different price points for clients.

If you ever need to hide your site from public view temporarily (say you’re doing a logo update or some other change to your live site), you need a maintenance plugin. Here’s a review of 5 of the top WordPress maintenance plugins that will do the job.

Finally…

Here’s a big myth that I’ve had trouble convincing clients about in the past: people don’t scroll. It’s not true – they do scroll. Everything doesn’t have to be at the very top of your page. See the research results.

 

Start-of-Summer Sale!

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With summer vacations and other distractions, keeping up with your business website’s needs can take a backseat to other things. Let WP Minder help you keep everything safely up-to-date and covered in case of an emergency with these two special offers on our Starter Plans:

20% off our Starter WordPress Maintenance Plan for 6 Months

View the Plans here.

Use the coupon code 20OFFSTART and get the discount for your first six months with us – this offer only good for the Starter Plan.

20% off our  WordPress Maintenance + Premium Hosting Plan for 6 months

View the Plans here.

Use the coupon code 20OFFHOSTED and get the discount for your first six months with us – this offer only good for the Starter Plan.

This offer expires July 31, 2017.

 

Weekly Links Roundup – Credibility, Real Estate Plugins, Hosting

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This week’s WordPress and web marketing links.

You’ve got a great-looking business website full of useful, high-quality content. What else can you do to enhance your site’s credibility? Try using these trustmarks to make your customers more confident in using your site. They include things like security seals from payment processors; using HTTPS for added security; and displaying credible reviews and testimonials.

If you’re running or considering starting a real estate site, here are 7 real estate plugins to help you manage your listings. Some also provide various calculators for visitors, like a mortgage calculator. These plugins are designed to work with any theme.

A little nag… Earlier this week I was notified that a client’s site was down. For this client, however, it’s more of a problem than it should be, as he has five active business websites on the same hosting account! I understand the desire to save money, but if you run multiple business sites, don’t put them all on the same account.

For one thing, if something happens to the server, all your sites are down, not just one. If it’s a catastrophic problem like a server meltdown, and you don’t have recent backups of your sites, you could lose everything at once. Also, consider that if a hacker manages to get access to your hosting they then can easily access all the sites on that account. It’s too much of a risk – please keep your business sites on separate accounts. Okay – nag over.

Weekly Links Roundup – WooCommerce, Yoast SEO, PHP

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This week’s WordPress and web marketing links.

Want to squeeze more out of your WooCommerce site without resorting to paid commercial plugins? Here’s a roundup of 20 free WordPress plugins to extend WooCommerce, including:

  • WooCommerce-friendly search
  • Product carousel
  • Edit checkout fields
  • Add a ‘New’ badge to new products
  • Customize the tabs on the single product page

Some useful things here – this one I’m using in a project right now…

Next: if you use Yoast SEO, in the near future you might get a warning from them that your host is using an older version of PHP that’s no longer supported. This post explains what that means, why you should care, and why you should consider moving to a new host if yours won’t get on board with recommended PHP upgrades.

And finally… One of the benefits of the newest PHP versions is a faster website loading time. Learn why a fast website is so important for your business. And to follow up, here are 10 easy ways to speed up your slow-loading site.

The Right WordPress Host Can Make a Big Difference in Performance

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This week I moved a client’s site from a popular big-box ‘managed WordPress’ host to WP Engine. Here are the results of performance tests before and immediately after the move was complete:

Page performance test

(The ‘C’ is in part because WP Engine was adding files to its CDN at that time, and the site does need performance tweaks in addition to just switching hosts…)

The most important thing to note is First Byte. Time to First Byte (TTFB) is affected by three things1:

  1. The time it takes for your request to move through the network to the web server.
  2. The time it takes for the web server to process the request and generate the response.
  3. The time it takes for the response to move back through the network to your browser.

1Check out the MOZ article on improving search ranking by optimizing TTFB.

You can see TTFB on the old host was 3.53 seconds. WP Engine’s is 0.11 seconds. That’s a huge improvement, 97% less time. MOZ says ideally you should be under 1/2 second for TTFB – WP Engine meets that benchmark easily.

My client said:

“I’m posting dozens of articles to [my site] this a.m. (as fast as I possibly can) and am absolutely delighted with the speed I’ve gotten back after moving to WP Engine hosting. The CMS is operating at lightening speed, similar to the way it once functioned when we were hosted at the defunct MediaLayer.”

So yes – good hosting does make a difference!

Check out our site care plans including WP Engine hosting.