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smtp

Weekly Links Roundup – Food Blogging, Breadcrumbs, SMTP

November 30, 2019 by Debbie Campbell Leave a Comment

This week’s top WordPress and web marketing links.

Okay, sorry – I know I haven’t been blogging weekly in a few months. It was an intensely crazy summer and fall with a lot of unplanned travel related to family, a broken arm and hand, a vacation, a sinus infection and bronchitis. And no paddle boarding. But things are now beginning to settle into a new routine, and I hope to be blogging more regularly. Onward.

My husband recently started a food blog. Well, not exactly… it was more of a way to get about 150 printed recipes we use a lot out of a ragged folder and into digital format so we can find them easier. He used WP Recipe Maker as the recipe plugin – here’s a review of the best 15 WordPress recipe plugins in case you’re interested in trying a food blog yourself. These recipe plugins make it easy to add SEO-friendly recipes with options and features like printing and Pinterest rich pins built in.

And speaking of food blogs – if you include a recipe that’s been published elsewhere, how does that work? Is that a copyright violation, and if it is, how do you avoid that? This post discusses recipe attribution: “when in doubt, always give attribution.”

Let’s talk about breadcrumbs. No, not the ones from your favorite bread recipe… the helpful little string of text and links at the top of a page that tells you where in the website you are at any given moment. Did you know that those breadcrumbs are important for SEO? Not only are they good for human users; they also help Google and other search engines understand the structure of your site.

Finally… ever had problems getting notifications from your WordPress site, like submitted form entries or completed payment notifications? It’s one of the most common issues my clients report, but thankfully it’s also easy to fix. WordPress by default uses your host server’s PHP mail() function to send notifications, but quite commonly the server either isn’t using it or has problems with its setup. So what do you do? You don’t worry about the server at all. Instead, you use the SMTP (outgoing mail) settings from one of your existing email providers, like Gmail or a domain associated with your site. You could also use a 3rd-party service like SendGrid or Mailgun which will likely improve deliverability of site emails, important as your site and audience get larger. Here are instructions for setting up SMTP; my favorite free plugin for this is currently Post SMTP.


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

Filed Under: Email Marketing, Legal Issues, SEO, WordPress Plugins Tagged With: attribution, breadcrumbs, food blogs, notifications, recipe plugins, sendgrid, smtp

Weekly Links Roundup – Calendar Plugins, Tour Booking, Maintenance Mode, SMTP

October 18, 2019 by Debbie Campbell Leave a Comment

This week’s top WordPress and web marketing links.

Calendar plugins are a big and sometimes confusing topic – there are a lot of them. Some are free and some paid. How do you choose the best one for your particular job? This review of top calendar plugins for 2019 might help. It’s a little different because it includes plugins for appointment and rental bookings – not just the typical event calendar.

And speaking of bookings… my client is a tour guide in Peru and was looking for a plugin to handle tour bookings. That was harder to find than I thought, but I came up with two options that look promising, and that we’re going to try.  Check out WP Travel or WP Travel Engine. You can also use WooCommerce for this purpose.

Sometimes you may need to ‘close’ your site to do some maintenance or handle an emergency. Here’s a post on how to put your site into ‘maintenance mode,’ with or without using a plugin.

Finally… Not getting the expected notification emails from your WordPress site? That’s so irritating, isn’t it? The reason is most likely that the host server is not set up for PHP mail(), or it’s set up incorrectly, or it’s being flagged as spam by the receiving server because PHP mail() is not industry-standard and can lack proper authentication. The fix is to use SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) to send those notifications instead. This post will show you how.


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

Filed Under: WordPress Plugins, WordPress Problems Tagged With: calendar plugin, maintenance mode, smtp, tour booking

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

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