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Weekly Links Roundup – Blog Post Length, Online Courses, Gutenberg Addons, Plugins

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

One of my clients is now starting a blog with the goal of getting more traffic from search results. She asked me last week: “How long should my blog posts be?” The answer, like for so many things, is “it depends.” Looks like current trends are pointing to longer blog posts being better for getting more traffic (to the dismay of many!). Really long – like over 1700 words. Here is a post to back that up with research data, along with a number of other opinions and guidelines.

Ever thought about teaching others online? Here’s a thorough and informative post about creating your own online courses using LearnDash, a course plugin one of my clients uses and likes. There is a lot of upfront work involved in creating an online course, but the benefits in passive income can be worth it. Note that the linked post recommends a commercial theme that may or may not suit you or your course idea – you can use any theme with online courseware.

If you’ve made the switch to Gutenberg, you may be wanting more options than what comes in the new editor by default. Here’s a review of 10 of the best Gutenberg add-on plugins. These plugins give you new and different types of blocks to use in your page layouts. One of my current favorites is CoBlocks which includes about 30 layout blocks.

For new WordPress users – confused about the differences between themes and plugins? Here’s a great post explaining what plugins are and why you’d want to use them. One important thing to remember when choosing plugins (free or paid) is to look at the reviews and the compatibility. As a rule it’s better to avoid older plugins that haven’t been updated recently or tested with current or recent WordPress versions.

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

Weekly Links Roundup – WP Minder, Installing Plugins, Knowledge Bases, Gutenberg

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

My website is down! What do I do? Here’s a post that answers that question. Or, if you were a WP Minder client, you’d just let us know (most likely we’d know before you do with our uptime monitoring) and we’d get you up and running quickly with no fuss on your part. But for you DIYers, learn 8 things to check when your WordPress site is down.

(Check out our WordPress Care Plans if you’d like to learn more about WP Minder and use coupon code WPMNP10 to get 10% off your monthly subscription.)

Let’s get really, really basic for a minute… Here’s a post on how to do one of the most important WordPress tasks: installing a plugin. Learn three ways to install a plugin! Bet you didn’t know there were three ways…

A knowledge base on your website can be a great way to provide a lot of information on your products or services in a highly-organized and easy-to-use tool. Here’s a review of four top knowledge base plugins for WordPress and information on how to get started creating your own.

You’ve probably used or at least encountered the Gutenburg editor in WordPress by now. Love it or hate it, it’s here to stay. And if you do use it, you’ve probably notice problems in either its capability limits or just the experience of using it. Here’s something that may help: a guide to 10 of the best plugins to extend Gutenburg. These plugins offer more blocks to give you more layout functionality. I’ve used CoBlocks for clients who like using Gutenberg.

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

Weekly Links Roundup – Copyrighted Images, Gutenberg, Mega Menus, Gallery Plugins

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This week’s top WordPress and web marketing links.

“Ooh, that photo would be perfect for this post I’m writing. Can I use that picture?” Good question! And the answer may surprise you. Learn about the ethics and laws surrounding copyrighted images in this infographic.

So… have you tried Gutenberg yet? I broke down in January and gave it a try myself, and honestly it was not as disturbing as I’d read it was (of course by then a number of bugs had been ironed out). I’m not using it all the time, but I am using it now for some layout tasks that I would previously have added a plugin for like accordions. (Hint: if you use the Classic Editor plugin I’ve mentioned here before, you can switch back and forth between the old and new editors with one click).

If you need a guide to learn Gutenberg (I’d recommend it, it saves time over just diving in and trying to figure it out) and a resource for understanding all that it does, try Go Gutenberg. And if you start using it you’ll likely find it doesn’t have a block you need. There are a number of free plugins now with more blocks; I like CoBlocks because it was the first one I tried with a nice clean accordion block.

Shifting gears… if you’re planning a new site with a lot of pages, you may have considered using a mega menu (you know – one of those huge dropdown menus like this one on the Moleskine site). But do you really need a mega menu? Maybe not. Learn more about when to use mega menus and when it’s not really necessary.

And finally… a winter 2019 roundup of the best WordPress gallery plugins. FooGallery is still at the top of my list.

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

Weekly Links Roundup – Ecommerce Sites, PDF Links, Gallery Plugins, WordPress 5.0, Email Signups

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This week’s top WordPress and web marketing links.

Just in time for the holidays – learn 5 ways to take your ecommerce site to the next level. This is a very useful (and short) article. I totally agree with one of their points and can’t emphasize enough to clients that high-quality product photos are critical to ecommerce sites. Investing in great photography for your site will pay off by providing a strong first impression. And don’t forget – your photographer should remind you – that all product shots should be taken under the same conditions with the same background and angle.

Here’s a simple task: linking to a PDF in WordPress. It’s a help request I get fairly frequently from clients, so here’s a tutorial in how to do it yourself.

I’m a big fan of the FooGallery plugin, but always open to new things! Here’s a review of the 8 most beautiful WordPress gallery plugins.

WordPress 5.0 with the new Gutenberg editing experience came out last week. I’m holding off on updating WP Minder clients for reasons I’ve mentioned in earlier posts, but if you’re considering going for it, take a look at 7 things to know before updating to WordPress 5.0. Just in case, remember that Classic Editor is your friend!

Finally… learn how to get more email signups on your WordPress site. It’s not easy, but this article covers what you need to build your list and strategies that will help you grow your list over time.

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

Weekly Links Roundup – WordPress 5.0, Audio and Video Players, Powerpoint, Internal Links

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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.

  • Should you update to WordPress 5.0 right away? I say no. Personally I would wait until January to give WP and plugin/theme developers time to deal with Gutenberg issues – it is not ready for prime time. I will not be updating client sites until then – I’ll be using Classic Editor instead. Here’s what Yoast says about updating.
  • Do I have to use Gutenberg? No – if you prefer the old editor, install and use the Classic Editor plugin – learn how to do this. You can try Gutenberg when you’re ready, on your terms.
  • What exactly does Gutenberg do? Here’s a guide to everything Gutenberg.

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.

 

Weekly Links Roundup – Cart Abandonment, Gutenberg, Megamenus, Member Directories

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This week’s top WordPress and web marketing links.

We’re right in the middle of the 2018 holiday season. Do you run a WooCommerce shop? Did you know that cart abandonment (people who shop on a site, put things in their cart, but never complete their purchase) is estimated at almost 70%? That’s a huge number. If you could track those people down and try to recover those sales, why wouldn’t you? Here are 4 plugins to help with WooCommerce abandoned cart recovery.

Gutenberg was due for release this week, but it’s been pushed back indefinitely. This is a good thing! Gutenberg is not yet ready for prime time for a number of reasons – that’s the feeling shared by many developers, including me – and for the time being I suggest staying with the classic WordPress editor. This is what I’m recommending to my clients and maintenance service subscribers. Here’s how to disable Gutenberg (when it goes live) and keep using Classic Editor.  If you’re a WordPress user and are not yet familiar with Gutenberg take a look at this….

If your site has a menu with a ton of items or products, and is unwieldy (lots of very long dropdowns), consider moving to a megamenu. These are great if you have lots of items, or many categories, or want to include other content such as images in your menu. Here’s a review of 8 popular megamenu plugins. My favorite of these is UberMenu. I’ve used it on a number of sites and though it’s complex, it’s not too hard to get your head around. They have good support and tutorials available.

Finally… if a member directory would be a handy tool for your community, here’s a nice walkthrough of setting up one using the Posts Table Pro plugin. A membership directory can be valuable for a large organization where you need to display contact and other information for many people. Why would you want to use a plugin rather than just typing out this info in a page? Because the directories generated by Posts Table Pro are dynamic; they can be searched, or sorted by a particular field, for example. I haven’t used this plugin, but the step by step walkthrough looks promising.

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