Weekly Links Roundup – Ecommerce Plugins, Buttons, CDNs, 404 Error Pages

This week’s WordPress and web marketing links.

Here’s another roundup of the top ecommerce plugins for WordPress – but I dissent on Shopp. Shopp used to be a really good and well-supported ecommerce platform, but their support fell through the floor years ago. It got to the point where I wondered if it was still being supported at all… Things may have changed, though. But all of my clients using ecommerce have moved from Shopp to WooCommerce and are happier with that decision.

Looking to improve the look of your call-to-action buttons and don’t have the CSS chops to do it yourself? Try one of these premium button library plugins. Lots of variety here, and you can use these buttons anywhere in your site.

Is your site slow? You’re probably either rolling your eyes in agreement, or considering whether it’s possible your site is slow and you don’t realize it. There’s a way to improve load times – that’s a CDN (content delivery network). CDNs can help speed up your site by storing copies of static resources (like images, PDFs, videos, etc.) in servers around the country or around the world. Users who visit your site get served those resources from the server nearest them, making for an improved load time. Learn more about why a CDN can be good for your WordPress site. If your host doesn’t offer one (mine does! Get more info) the article has info about how to choose and set up a CDN of your own.

Finally… did you give any thought to your 404 error page – what comes up when someone tries to visit a page on your site that doesn’t exist? Many people don’t. See 35 examples of good 404 error pages to get some ideas for making your own more useful (and sometimes more humorous).