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Weekly Links Roundup – Lazy Loading, GDPR, CDN Comparison, Trackbacks

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This week’s WordPress and web marketing links.

I know it’s been a few weeks, but June is busy – a weekend trip, Comic Con, a new kitten… But today I’m getting caught up.

If you’re worried about long load times for your website (and you should be) one of the optimizations you can try is ‘lazy loading.’ Lazy loading is when you delay loading of below-the-fold content until the user actually scrolls down to where they are on the page. This way, things that aren’t needed immediately, like images and video, don’t slow down the initial page load. Here’s a nice review post about lazy loading that highlights some of the main WordPress lazy loading plugins. Personally I like a3 Lazy Load and just used it in a site this morning…

You probably haven’t been hearing as much about GDPR since it went into effect May 25th – but that doesn’t mean it’s gone away. Here’s a post-launch article about GDPR and why it’s still such a confusing mess.

If you’re thinking about adding a CDN (content delivery network) to your site, for the benefits of serving static content from servers physically closer to your visitors and making your site faster, here’s a comparison of CloudFlare and MaxCDN. CloudFlare has a free option and MaxCDN does not, but they are both good choices. This post will explain why.

Finally… all about WordPress trackbacks and pingbacks – what they are, why you may or may not want them, and what to do about them.

 

Weekly Links Roundup – CDNs, Event Calendar Plugins, Privacy Policies, Photography Blogs

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This week’s WordPress and web marketing links.

WP Minder’s VPS hosting plan includes a free CDN – but what exactly is a Content Delivery Network? It’s about distance for sure (having your content delivered by a server near your site visitor’s physical location can decrease loading times) but it can also be about security and bandwidth. Learn more about CDNs from Yoast.

If you’re wanting to add an events calendar to your site, here’s a review of 9 event calendar plugins, including both free and commercial options. I used My Calendar recently on the Colorado Sound site to help them manage an extensive concert calender – take a look.

So GDPR (the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation) went into effect on May 25 and the world didn’t explode. Not yet, anyway. If you haven’t yet taken the time to craft a privacy policy page for your website, here’s a basic guide to privacy policies (note that this article doesn’t constitute legal advice).

Finally… a subject near and dear to my heart. If you’re a photographer, even an amateur one, you should seriously consider starting a photography blog. Here’s why.

 

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

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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).

Friday Link Wrapup – Copywriting Mistakes, CDN, Anti-spam Plugins

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This week’s WordPress and web marketing links.

Ready to improve your site’s content in 2017? It’s time to fix those common copywriting mistakes we all make when trying to sell a product or service – and fortunately for those of us strapped for time, it’s not that hard to do.

If you’re on shared hosting, you’ve probably noticed that your site tends to slow down at times. Maybe way down. There’s something you can do about it, even if you don’t switch hosts. Using a CDN (content delivery network) can help speed up your site using less of your host server’s resources. It’s a win-win, and you can find CDN’s starting at ‘free.’ Check out these 6 reasons to get a CDN for your WordPress site (and learn how easy it can be to get started).

And finally – got a spam problem? Spam is everywhere, but luckily WordPress has a lot of plugins that can keep it at bay. Here’s a review of 10 anti-spam plugins – I like Anti-spam Bee because it clears old spam from the database regularly. I used to be a big fan of WordPress Zero Spam, but when WordPress 4.7 came out it started conflicting with Gravity Forms (another must-use plugin). If you’re not using Gravity Forms, Zero Spam is also worth a try.

Friday Link Wrapup – Decluttering, CloudFlare, Blogging Plugins, Lazy Loading Images

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This week’s WordPress and web marketing links.

Is your WordPress site looking a bit cluttered? WordPress makes it easy to add lots of different kinds of content – but at some point, enough is enough (besides being harder to comprehend, too much stuff can impact performance). Here’s a quick guide for decluttering your WordPress site, making it lean, mean, and to the point for your visitors.

Recently I did a performance audit for a client and one of my recommendations was to get a CDN (content delivery network). Basically, a CDN can help speed up page load times by serving static content like images from a location nearer the user. CloudFlare is a popular CDN for WordPress that has a free service level – here’s a guide to setting up CloudFlare for WordPress. CloudFlare can also give your site a bit more security as it acts as a filtering proxy between the user and the website.

Here’s a list of top ten plugins for serious bloggers. My favorite from this list is Editorial Calendar, which is especially useful for multi-author blogs.

Finally – back to performance. If your WordPress site is slow and you’ve done the recommended fixes you got from GT Metrix or other services, you might try lazy-loading your site’s images. This means that images won’t load until the user scrolls to that part of a page. Here are some plugins for lazy loading images.

New Security Features for WP Minder Plans!

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Keeping your site safe!Our Small Business, Business and Premium Plans now come with additional security features from Sucuri.

Our malware monitoring is the same as before – your site is scanned continuously for malware and hacks, plus your site is checked against the biggest blacklists. Cleanup of malware and removal from blacklists continue to be key features.

The new offering we’re now including is Sucuri’s CloudProxy Firewall. Having a firewall in place lessens the likelihood of being hacked in the first place! The firewall protects against:

  • Brute force attacks (an antiquated attack that involves trying all possible combinations of usernames and passwords against your login page)
  • DDoS attacks which throw 10x, 100x or 100,000x more traffic at your site than normal
  • Exploits of insecure code, including Zero Day vulnerabilities

A side benefit of the cloud-based firewall is an included CDN (content delivery network). The CDN can dramatically increase performance as your site files are stored in high-performance servers worldwide – users access the files closest to them, which means faster loading times.

The CDN is highly configurable; you can choose to exclude specific directories, minimize the caching time to just a few minutes, or not use it at all. You’ll have the ability to clear the cache at any time.