WP Minder
WP Minder is happy to announce our brand new WordPress training videos for all Maintenance Plan levels.
Our new training resources include video tutorials for:
In addition, there’s a new WordPress User Manual you can view online or download as a PDF.
If you’re a WP Minder client you’ll find the new Training Videos right under the Dashboard in the WordPress admin menu.
This week’s top WordPress and web marketing links.
Today (Thursday Dec. 6) is supposed to be the (rescheduled) day for the WordPress 5.0/Gutenberg drop. Nothing yet and it’s afternoon… but when it happens, here are some handy links about Gutenberg, the new WordPress editing tool.
Switching gears, here’s a big review of the 15 best WordPress audio and video players. This is brand new and not super-thorough or in-depth on each plugin, but is a good place to start if you’re looking to add audio or video to your WordPress site and need a quick overview of current options.
If you’re a Powerpoint fan (are there any, still?) then you might have a need for this… I was asked a few weeks ago to embed a client’s Powerpoint in WordPress and I’d never done that before. Here’s a guide to embedding Powerpoint in WordPress; the Embed Any Document plugin they mention worked perfectly. It also embeds Word, Excel, PDF and Illustrator files.
And finally, some SEO stuff. You may not know that internal links (links between pages and posts in your own website) are very important! They help drive users deeper into your site to the places you want them to go. They show search engines what pages are most important (the ones with the most internal links!). And they help ensure that search engine crawlers can reach every page on your site. Learn more about internal links and why you really need to audit them from time to time.
Did you find this information useful? Please share with your friends and colleagues! And comment below with questions or observations.
This week’s WordPress and web marketing links.
If you have a Google map in your site, or have tried to add one recently, and found that following the instructions for getting a Maps API Key (cryptic for many users at the best of times) are no longer working? This is because this summer Google made changes in its Maps API offerings. Now, an API key is definitely required (before it was not, not always anyway) and a credit card has to be on file in the Google account in order for the API key to validate.
This is not to say that you’ll be billed – everyone is given $200 in credit each month. Many sites will never come close to this limit (I calculated it as about 29,000 views on one client site, much more traffic than they currently receive) and you can also cap the visits so that it never goes over the usage limit. But still, requiring a credit card is an extra hassle for my clients who will have to set up their own billing in order to keep using Google Maps.
More information on this from WP Google Maps, my WordPress map plugin of choice.
Considering an FAQ (frequently asked questions) page for your business site? FAQ pages are a great way to address the common questions you get about your products or services, and serve as a way to both educate users and help move them deeper into your site. Here’s a guide to 25 FAQ pages and the reasons why they’re so effective at what they do.
If you run an ecommerce site or are planning to, here’s a nice post comparing Stripe and Paypal, two of the most popular payment processors. I love Stripe – one of the reasons is it’s a lot easier for me to deal with Stripe reporting for my accounting than Paypal. But both have their pros and cons – read the post to learn more and make your own decision.
Finally… I’ve mentioned MemberPress before; it’s one of the easiest membership plugins I’ve used. Here’s a new post about MemberPress and why it might be all you need in a membership plugin. The article discusses the plugin’s features and why it stands out from other popular membership plugins.
Did you find this information useful? Please share with your friends and colleagues! And comment below with questions or observations.
This week’s WordPress and web marketing links.
This week I added a new Resources page to WP Minder. Please let me know in the comments if you find this helpful, or how it can be made more useful…
I always customize the WordPress login page for my design clients. It takes just a couple of minutes and adds a nice personalized touch, so why not? But if you’re not into development, you can make a custom login page using one of these plugins. These actually create custom forms for you that you can use in various locations in your site, but there are other plugins that just let you modify the native WordPress login page (which is what I do with a plugin of my own). Which method you pick is up to you.
Ever thought about making a WordPress site for your softball team or bowling league – or maybe your quidditch buddies? Sounds like fun, right? Here’s a guide to making a sports site that’s not too time-intensive, if you’re willing to have a bit of a basic look to it. Use great photos to help fix that.
As I’m considering keeping my newsletter vs. expanding my blog, this was a very timely find this week. If you too are wondering what’s best for your business – email newsletter or blog delivered via email – read the linked post, and don’t skip the comments below it. They may give you some interesting ideas.
And finally… it’s summer and for the lucky ones who get to take vacations, here’s a post on keeping your WordPress site running on automatic pilot while you’re out of town. Learn how to schedule everything in advance. One thing though – I’d strongly recommend against letting a service you’re not familiar with update your WordPress plugins or themes while you’re away. That’s asking for trouble and you won’t be around to fix it.
The FCC votes on removing Net Neutrality protections in mid-December. Do you rely on the Internet for your livelihood? Your entertainment? This is how things will change if this vote goes through.
Please, if you are concerned at all by this, learn how to contact your representatives and ask them to stand up for a fair and open Internet.
This week WP Minder launched our new customizable WordPress Care & Maintenance Plans.
After polling our clients, we found that most of them would like the option of choosing which features go into their plans. You shouldn’t pay for a service you don’t need, right?
All custom plans include these core features:
Then you can choose from the following key services (and in some cases, how often they happen):
Billing is monthly by credit card as it is for all our WordPress care and maintenance plans.
Or if you prefer, check out our pre-configured Starter, Small Business and Business Plans here.
