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Weekly Links Roundup – Blogging Misconceptions, Tweeting for Business, WooCommerce Images, Multisite

February 21, 2020 by Debbie Campbell Leave a Comment

Here’s our latest selection of curated WordPress and web marketing links to help your business thrive.

If you’re thinking about starting a blog for your business, and are feeling a bit intimidated, here’s something for you. Learn about two misconceptions about blogging that are 180 degrees apart. Is blogging ‘just writing’ or does it really require ‘superhuman effort?’ Turns out that neither of those views is really very accurate, and somewhere in the middle is a more reasonable conclusion.

If you use Twitter to promote your business (or want to start), what should you tweet about? Here are 21 easy ideas for business tweets. Some of these can also be good to use on other social platforms you might frequent for your business, like Facebook or LinkedIn, though the article is focused on short tweetable content.

I’m building a WooCommerce site for a client right now and had some issues with gallery thumbnail image sizing. Here’s a useful and recent post containing all you may need to know about WooCommerce images. If you need a little more focus on resizing those products try this second post on changing WooCommerce image sizes.

Finally… if you have a need to run several WordPress sites on one server and would like to manage them all from a single control panel, WordPress Multisite may be for you. Here is a great and comprehensive guide to Multisite just published last month. Is your company or organization a candidate for the networking tools that Multisite provides? Maybe, if you’re:

  • A company with different departments each with their own website
  • A university or school with various departments and also student/faculty who need their own sites
  • A global or chain business where each location has its own website
  • A gym where each trainer needs their own site
  • Basically any situation where you need a network of sites under the control of one administrator.

Did you find this information useful? Please share with your friends and colleagues! And comment below with questions or observations.

Filed Under: Blogging, Design, Ecommerce, Multisite, Social Media Tagged With: blogging, images, multisite, product images, social media, twitter, woocommerce

Weekly Links Roundup – Social Sharing, Easy WP Guide, Slider Plugins, SMTP

January 4, 2019 by Debbie Campbell Leave a Comment

This week’s top WordPress and web marketing links.

The first post of 2019! And to start us off here’s a roundup of the 10 best WordPress social media plugins. I’m a bit partial to this one right now, but Swifty Bar also looks pretty interesting, I’ll be trying this in my next project.

Easy WP Guide is where I send clients looking for the elusive WordPress manual (that and WP101 videos installed for them in their project sites). They’ve just released a new version for WordPress 5.0.

I’m a big fan of the premium plugin Smart Slider 3. If you’re looking for a flexible premium slider with great support, it’s a perfect choice. But if you want more info before making a decision, here is a head-to-head comparison of Smart Slider 3 and Revolution Slider. This is a very detailed review of both plugins, and it walks through the steps of creating a new slider in both so you can understand how they each work. Well worth some time if you’re looking for a new slider plugin.

And finally… One of the problems I hear most often from clients is ‘my WordPress site won’t send email.’ This is a very common problem, it usually has to do with one of three things:

  • Mail services are not set up properly on the server.
  • There’s an incompatibility in WordPress preventing mail from being sent.
  • Mail service is not available at their host (typical of managed WordPress hosts).

But the good news is, it’s not hard to fix this issue. Here’s a guide to setting up SMTP which handles mail sending using third party mail services, such as Gmail or an email account you have on your domain.


Did you find this information useful? Please share with your friends and colleagues! And comment below with questions or observations.

Filed Under: Social Media, WordPress Plugins Tagged With: easy wp guide, email, plugins, slider plugin, smart slider, smtp, social media, social sharing

Weekly Links Roundup – Social Auto Posting, Testimonials Plugins, MemberPress, WordPress in 2019

December 22, 2018 by Debbie Campbell Leave a Comment

Merry Christmas!

This week’s top WordPress and web marketing links.

In the process of finding a good social media auto poster (that lets you post your new or old blog posts to social media automatically) I came across this review of the best plugins for auto-posting to social sites. These are nice because once configured, you don’t have to do any extra work to get your blog posts out there on multiple sites.

One of the most important things to add to your business website is testimonials – they can really make a difference in developing trust in your users, and getting them to become new customers. Here’s a review of 9 testimonial plugins for WordPress.

One of my favorite, go-to plugins for client sites is mentioned in the post above, Strong Testimonials, and I recommend trying it. You can create multiple Views to display your testimonials in different ways throughout your site, like a rotating sidebar widget vs. a big, sliding home page testimonial.

If you’re using MemberPress to run your WordPress membership site (like WP Minder!) here’s some news for you… MemberPress now includes a downloadable files feature. You can set rules to govern downloads by members and track the number of downloads of each file.

And finally… as we close in on 2019, here are some of the predictions about WordPress in the new year. Lots of changes happening as 5.0 launched along with Gutenberg. Take a look and see what may be in store. This post is more of the developer and WordPress community view, so it might be different than what you’re expecting.


Did you find this information useful? Please share with your friends and colleagues! And comment below with questions or observations.

Filed Under: Social Media, WordPress Plugins Tagged With: downloadables, memberpress, membership plugins, plugins, social media, testimonials, wordpress

Weekly Links Roundup – Hiding Email Addresses, SEO Techniques, Blogging, Instagram

August 4, 2017 by Debbie Campbell Leave a Comment

This week’s WordPress and web marketing links.

This question still comes up occasionally… if you want to display an email address on your website, can you keep it from being ‘harvested’ by spam bots? Yes, you can. The venerable Email Address Encoder plugin is perfect for this – just install it. That’s it, nothing else to do. It turns email addresses into text that spambots can’t recognize. Here’s a short post on how it works.

I was sent this infographic on 11 SEO techniques and strategies you should be using today. It’s a good list, and very practical. You’re probably doing a lot of them already.

Did you notice that part in the infographic about building in-depth, high-quality content? If blogging isn’t your thing (you don’t know what to write about, think you’re no good at writing, or don’t have time to even try it) consider a new service offered by Red Kite Creative, WP Minder’s parent. Done-for-you blogging can help you get your business blog off the ground and the benefits for your business can be big!

Finally… if you’re an Instagrammer wanting to add your photo feed to your WordPress site, check out this post on how to use the free Instagram Feed plugin.


Need help with WordPress maintenance? Check out our peace-of-mind plans for small businesses.

Filed Under: Blogging, Security, SEO, Social Media, WordPress Plugins Tagged With: blogging, email, instagram, seo, spam

Friday Link Wrapup – Smush, Facebook Open Graph, WooCommerce, SEO Audits

December 23, 2016 by Debbie Campbell Leave a Comment

If you’re celebrating this weekend – Merry Christmas!

This week’s WordPress and web marketing links.

If you’re a user of Smush Pro (a popular commercial image optimization plugin), this is for you – six tips to make the most of your image compressions in Smush.

Facebook Open Graph  – what it is, why you want to use it, and how to add Open Graph tags to WordPress (Yoast SEO makes it easy).

WooCommerce fan? I sure am – especially after some of the horrible store plugins I’ve used in the past. WooCommerce now powers 42% of all online stores.

Finally – SEO audits are a service we offer for clients, but here’s how to do-it-yourself if you’re so inclined.

Filed Under: Ecommerce, SEO, Social Media, WordPress Plugins Tagged With: facebook open graph, seo audit, smush, woocommerce

Friday Link Wrapup – File Permissions, WordPress 4.6, Social Sharing, Blogging

August 19, 2016 by Debbie Campbell Leave a Comment

This week’s WordPress and web marketing links.

So exciting! Learn about the proper file and directory permissions needed to keep your WordPress website safe. You’re looking for 755 for directories and 644 for files, for the most part. This week I did a security audit for a new client and found his host had used permissions that leaves his site wide open to file edits, additions or removals. Scary stuff, and easily preventable.

WordPress 4.6 was released this week and it includes some small but nice changes to the plugin and theme pages.  Now when you install a plugin or theme, you stay on the very same page for both the installation and activation. Not a big deal, but a good streamlining of the process. Another handy change – when you use the link button WordPress will now check to make sure your link is correctly written.

Here’s a review of 20 social sharing plugins and social locker plugins for WordPress.

And finally… if you’re like most people it’s often hard to find fodder for your blog. Here are some ideas for blog posts that people can’t resist.

Filed Under: Blogging, Hosting, Social Media, WordPress Plugins Tagged With: blogging, file permissions, hosting, social sharing plugin, wordpress 4.6

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