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Weekly Links Roundup – 2FA, Leaving Squarespace, PHP, WordPress Performance

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This week’s top WordPress and web marketing links.

It’s a scary world out there. You know how when you login to your bank’s website, they’ll typically send you a code on your phone to make sure it’s you? That’s called 2-factor authentication (2FA) and did you know, you can have the same level of login security on your own WordPress site? It’s a great way to improve overall security of your site. Here’s a guide to adding 2FA to WordPress with a free plugin called FIDO.

Squarespace is a popular hosted website platform suited to beginning website owners, but when you understand its limitations, you’re likely ready to upgrade to a more flexible platform that’s totally under your control. WordPress fits that description perfectly. But how do you move? Here’s a step-by-step tutorial on switching from Squarespace to WordPress.

If your host is using a very old version of PHP on its servers, you likely noticed a nagging popup in the WordPress dashboard around August 20 that encouraged you to update to a modern version of PHP. Users of servers with PHP 5.6 or older got this nag (about 43% of all users). WordPress recommends PHP 7.1+ now. Anything older than that is not being updated for security and is leaving your site at risk. The older the version of PHP, the more likely your plugins and themes will begin to fail due to compatibility issues. And, modern versions of PHP are much, much faster! Learn more about PHP and WordPress and why upgrading is so critical.

And why is website speed so important? Glad you asked – check this out. And get in touch if you’d like a Performance Audit to speed up your own WordPress site.

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

Weekly Links Roundup – Pot Store Plugin, Tag Clouds, HTTP Requests, Repurposing Content

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This week’s WordPress and web marketing links.

Do you run a pot store? (Hey, I am in Colorado…). If you’ve been looking for an easy way to showcase your products online, there’s a new WooCommerce plugin for displaying marijuana-related details. Check out the plugin here.

Tag clouds are a handy visual tool for your WordPress sidebar, displaying keywords of various sizes and font weights based on how much they’re used in your site – see the one in the sidebar on Red Kite. Check out this review of 15 free tag cloud widget plugins.

On the more technical side, here’s a post about reducing HTTP/S requests in WordPress. Why would you want to know about that? The more file requests from your site to your host server (and back) the slower your site becomes. Reducing the number of requests can help speed up a slow-loading site.

Finally… if you have a lot of content already written/collected, you’re in a great position to benefit from it all over again. Ever thought about repurposing your existing content? Learn how to use that content to create something sellable, like an ebook.

 

Weekly Links Roundup – Calendar Plugins, Slow Load Time, User Switching

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This week’s WordPress and web marketing links.

Looking for a calendar plugin? You’ll find a lot of them in the WordPress plugin repository… to help make sense of the offerings check out this review of the Six Best Event Calendar Plugins for WordPress. I’m a fan of The Events Calendar, although it is definitely not a lightweight plugin, but if you need Google maps and a large amount of info for your events presented nicely without a lot of work on your part, it’s a good option.

Research shows that over 40% of users will abandon a website if it takes over 3 seconds to load. Yikes! If you’re running an ecommerce site, this can be a hard time limit to beat when your site gets more popular. Learn how to improve slow load times on your ecommerce site.

Did you know that a 1 second increase in page loading time can result in a 7% decrease in site conversions? Again, yikes! Here’s an infographic on how slow load times may impact your company’s bottom line.

Finally…

Here’s a handy thing if you’re testing or troubleshooting issues on a complex site: user switching. Learn how to quickly switch user accounts (if you’re a site admin, or MU super-admin) and see your site from the viewpoint of a subscriber or other lower-level user.

 

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).

Weekly Links Roundup – WooCommerce, Yoast SEO, PHP

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This week’s WordPress and web marketing links.

Want to squeeze more out of your WooCommerce site without resorting to paid commercial plugins? Here’s a roundup of 20 free WordPress plugins to extend WooCommerce, including:

  • WooCommerce-friendly search
  • Product carousel
  • Edit checkout fields
  • Add a ‘New’ badge to new products
  • Customize the tabs on the single product page

Some useful things here – this one I’m using in a project right now…

Next: if you use Yoast SEO, in the near future you might get a warning from them that your host is using an older version of PHP that’s no longer supported. This post explains what that means, why you should care, and why you should consider moving to a new host if yours won’t get on board with recommended PHP upgrades.

And finally… One of the benefits of the newest PHP versions is a faster website loading time. Learn why a fast website is so important for your business. And to follow up, here are 10 easy ways to speed up your slow-loading site.

Weekly Links Roundup – Too Many Plugins, WordPress Tutorials, Monetizing WordPress

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This week’s WordPress and web marketing links.

(Yep, I changed this series’ name because a friend pointed out that this weekly post shows up in social media on other days than Fridays).

I’ve seen WordPress sites with just a couple of plugins run like a drunk turtle on a low-quality hosting environment. I’ve also seen sites with 40 plugins fly like the wind on a great managed host. So how many plugins are too many?  The answer varies. While it’s true that having more plugins can put you at greater risk of hacking, conflicts, and slower performance, keeping your site updated and using high-quality plugins and good hosting can make your site safer and faster than one with fewer plugins that’s chronically out of date on a poor-quality host. I’d recommend using only the plugins you really need, removing anything that’s not activated, and keeping it all up to date. If you’re not sure you need something, don’t use it.

For the DIY types: if you like getting your hands dirty, here’s a big list of 44 WordPress tutorials for everything from speeding up your site to moving to HTTPS and how to use the command line. If you’re interested in getting into the backend development of WordPress this is a good reference.

Finally – do you like money? If you do, here’s a nice post on monetizing your WordPress site. From ad management to notification bars, this is a good overview of ways to enhance conversions on your site.