Featured Articles

Tighten Your WordPress Site’s Security With These Tools

March 19, 2013 in Featured Articles, Tips and Tricks, Wordpress by Rob  |  4 Comments

Recently there’s been more and more sites getting infected with malware via automated scripts because of weak passwords or insecure non-updated WordPress sites. Here’s a few tools and tips we recommend to secure your WordPress web site better.

First, start using a strong but memorable (so you’ll actually use it) passphrase for each site login. See this kxcd comic first to understand the point: http://xkcd.com/936/ Then go here to help you choose a nice, easy to remember, yet very strong passphrase: http://passphra.se/ I add the site name to the end, so the passphrase is different per site (in case one site gets hacked), i.e. “four buckets fly facebook”

Sucuri is amazing, go get their free WordPress plugin installed ASAP: http://bit.ly/sucuriwp It is a great preventative service. The paid service includes not only monitoring and alerting of malware, but the best part is it includes removal and recovery from malware infestations, no matter how many pages are infected.

Clean out old unneeded core files with help from this free WordPress plugin: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/old-core-files/ It removes old files that may still be vulnerable to attack.

Restrict your WordPress login to certain IPs. There’s a free plugin for that, too: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/limit-login-attempts/ Just be sure you don’t lock yourself out if your home IP address changes, maybe have multiple login IPs defined, in case one stops working.

To really lock down your site, use the free Google Authenticator WordPress plugin. It acts like a 2-part authentication random code key-ring devices, except it’s an app on your smartphone: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-authenticator/

Share your favorite security plugin, tip, or story in the comments, we’d love to hear from you.

Update to WordPress v3.5.1 Highly Recommended

January 25, 2013 in Featured Articles, News and Updates, Wordpress by Rob  |  1 Comments

WordPress version 3.5.1 is the first maintenance release of 3.5, and it fixes 37 bugs! It also includes three security updates that affect all previous WordPress versions. The major fixes include:

  • Editor: Prevent certain HTML elements from being unexpectedly removed or modified in rare cases.
  • Media: Fix a collection of minor workflow and compatibility issues in the new media manager.
  • Networks: Suggest proper rewrite rules when creating a new network.
  • Prevent scheduled posts from being stripped of certain HTML, such as video embeds, when they are published.
  • Work around some misconfigurations that may have caused some JavaScript in the WordPress admin area to fail.
  • Suppress some warnings that could occur when a plugin misused the database or user APIs.

WordPress 3.5.1 also addresses the following security issues:

  • A server-side request forgery vulnerability and remote port scanning using pingbacks. This vulnerability, which could potentially be used to expose information and compromise a site, affects all previous WordPress versions.
  • Two instances of cross-site scripting via shortcodes and post content.
  • A cross-site scripting vulnerability in the external library Plupload.

For the complete list of bug fixes, please consult the list of tickets.

If you’d like us to manage updating your sites and it’s plugins, we offer a low-cost monthly Managed WordPress service.

WordPress 3.4 Is Available

June 13, 2012 in Featured Articles, Recommended, Wordpress by Rob  |  No Comments

Yes, we’ve already updated our site! ;-)

The release of WordPress v3.4, dubbed “Green”, includes a few fun new features, and more importantly, some great performance improvements. View the short highlight video from WordPress.org, and read through the list of features and improvements shown after the upgrade, below.

Live Theme Previews

Try on New Themes

Gone are the days of rushing to update your header, background, and the like as soon as you activate a new theme. You can now customize these options before activating a new theme. Note: this feature is available for installed themes only.

Customize Current Theme

Satisfy your curiosity and try on a fresh coat of paint — you can also use the live preview mode to customize your current theme. Look for the Customize link on the Themes screen.

Custom Headers

Flexible Sizes

You can decide for yourself how tall or wide your custom header image should be. From now on, themes will provide a recommended image size for custom headers rather than a fixed requirement. Note: this feature requires theme support.

Choose from Media Library

Tired of re-uploading the same custom header image every time you check out a new theme? Now you can choose header images from your media library for easier customization.

Twitter Embeds

Share Tweets with Style

You can now embed individual tweets in posts. It includes action links that allow readers to reply to, retweet, and favorite the tweet without leaving your site. Just paste a tweet URL on its own line.

This works with URLs from some other sites, too. For more, see the Codex article on Embeds.

Better Captions

Basic HTML support has been added to the caption field in the image uploader. This allows you to add links — great for photo credits or licensing details — and basic formatting such as bold and italicized text.

Performance Improvements Under the Hood

There are hundreds of under-the-hood improvements in this release, notably in the XML-RPC, themes, and custom header APIs, and significant performance improvements in WP_Query and the translation system. The Codex has a pretty good summary of the developer features.

Faster WP_Query

Post queries have been optimized to improve performance, especially for sites with large databases.

Faster Translations

The number of strings loaded on the front end was greatly reduced, resulting in faster front page load times for localized installations. Also, better support for East Asian languages, right-to-left languages, theme translations, and more.

Themes API

WP_Theme, wp_get_themes(), wp_get_theme(). Faster, uses less memory, makes use of persistent caching.

Custom Header and Background API

Custom header and background API relocated into the theme support API.

XML-RPC API

A new WordPress API that supports custom content types and taxonomies, as well as dozens of other bug fixes and improvements.

External Libraries

jQuery, jQuery UI, TinyMCE, Plupload, PHPMailer, SimplePie, and other libraries were updated. jQuery UI Touch Punch was introduced.

Read all the details on the official blog announcement: http://wordpress.org/news/2012/06/green/

WordPress jumped 32%, powering 48% of top 100 blogs

April 24, 2012 in Featured Articles, News and Updates, Wordpress by Rob  |  No Comments

There’s no doubt that WordPress is the dominating content management system, powering well over 73 million web sites, per WordPress’ Stats, with about half of those being self-hosted.

Royal Pingdom released their 2012 update earlier this month, reporting that WordPress powers 48% of the Top 100 blogs, an increase of 32% from their findings just three years ago. Self-hosted WordPress sites make up 39% of the share, with hosted (both the free wordpress.com and WordPress’ SaaS VIP services counting as hosted).

Other platforms have therefore shrunk, with TypePad dropping the most, from 16% down to 2%. In addition to TypePad, I expect to see more and more people moving to WordPress from Drupal, Blogger, Movable  Type, & BlogSmith. So does Matt Mullenweg, founding developer of WordPress and founder of the company behind WordPress, Automattic, saying:

”The last few years we’ve really focused on both the usability and flexibility of WordPress, which has resulted in accelerating growth in both big and small sites. I expect even higher adoption among the largest sites and blogs over the next year.”

If you’re interested in making the switch to WordPress, we’d love to help you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3 Surprising WordPress Uses Beyond Blogging for Business

April 9, 2012 in Featured Articles, Tips and Tricks, Wordpress by Rob  |  No Comments

WordPress Guest Blog Series

I am guest blogging for sister company Fandom Marketing on Blogging For Business, covering some unique WordPress topics.

Here’s a summary of a recent post, with the link to the full article:

WordPress powers lots of web sites and blogs such as CNN’s blogs, and can be extended with plugins to power more common advanced needs like e-commerce or portfolios, but here are 3 surprising uses of WordPress that aren’t typically thought of together with the WordPress platform. I hope this inspires you to add more features or functionality to your own web site above and beyond blogging for business, or migrate to the powerful WordPress platform if you haven’t already.

Read the full post at:
3 Surprising WordPress Uses Beyond Blogging for Business

How to Optimize RSS to Display Featured Blog Images

April 2, 2012 in Featured Articles, Social Media, Tips and Tricks, Wordpress by Rob  |  No Comments

WordPress Guest Blog Series

I am guest blogging for sister company Fandom Marketing on Blogging For Business, covering some unique WordPress topics.

Here’s a summary of a recent post, with the link to the full article:

Images are playing a bigger part of blogging, with themes that highlight the posts’ featured images becoming more popular, creating great visually appealing layouts. Even more so with the popularity of Pinterest and Facebook sharing, which uses an image from the page or post. Even with various methods for including specific Facebook OpenGraph code within your post, your content could be shared via other methods that don’t take the Opengraph information into account, like RSS and feed syndication or sharing services like the awesome DLVR.it or Feedburner.

Here’s a fairly simple way to include the featured image of your WordPress blog post in the RSS/Feedburner feed itself, so that services that syndicate or share via RSS, use it when posting to Facebook and other image-friendly sharing sites like tumblr or posterous, etc.

Read the full post at:
How to Optimize RSS to Display Featured Blog Images 

WordPress DB Optimization Made Easy

January 5, 2011 in Featured Articles, Tips and Tricks, Wordpress by Rob  |  No Comments

Update: I located a WordPress plug-in that can be scheduled to automate your database optimization: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-database-optimizer/

Many WordPress customers ask about their database disk use, or their disk quota in general, because they are getting warning emails, or having performance issues with their site. Many times, the cause of a large database has to do with overhead in the database that hasn’t been cleaned out in a while. Overhead is caused by deleting lots of records often, and the tables become fragmented. Optimization cleans up this fragmentation. Here’s how to do it easily in WordPress 2.9.X and greater:

1. Edit your WordPress “wp-config.php” file and add the following line, perhaps near the top so it’s easy to find for undoing afterwards:

define(‘WP_ALLOW_REPAIR’, true);

2. Visit the special “/wp-admin/maint/repair.php” URL and click the “Repair and Optimize Database” button. It’s usually at one of these locations:

http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin/maint/repair.php

or

http://yourdomain.com/blog/wp-admin/maint/repair.php/wp-admin/maint/repair.php

It will scan, repair, and optimize all your WordPress tables.

3. Edit your wp-config.php file again, removing the line you added. Or, set it to false.

That’s all there is to it. Reach out on Twitter if you have any questions or concerns.

Affiliate Marketing Guide

December 7, 2010 in Affiliate Programs, Featured Articles, Tips and Tricks by Rob  |  No Comments

Web Wizards Affiliate Marketing Guide

The Web Wizards Affiliate Marketing Guide will help you market our services through your affiliate link to your visitors. It offers tips on how to better set up and promote your affiliate link both on and off your site. It also provides hints on enhancing your site to generate more traffic. Implementing suggestions from this guide can help you earn more commissions!

CONTENTS:

I. Marketing Tips and Promotional Efforts

  • Emails
  • Newsletters
  • Welcome Letters
  • Contests
  • Pop-Up Windows
  • Invoices

II. Links

  • Placement
  • Navigation and Menu Bar
  • Saturation

III. Site Enhancements

  • Content/Layout
  • Build Traffic
  • Match Content

IV. Use Testimonials

  • Use Our Services
  • Add a Testimonial

I. Marketing Tips and Promotional Efforts

The following ideas will help you earn more money from our affiliate program. Most involve announcing Web Wizards services to your site visitors, leads, and customers. Try out a few to see which ones work for your audience, and repeat the ones that work. Your effort will pay off sooner than you might think.

Emails
Send a personalized email message to your contacts informing them about our services! For example, write a quick note about the advantages of using Web Wizards, and recommend they take a look to see what they think. Provide them with a link so they can get more information or sign up. Remember to include your affiliate ID in this link! Text and graphic link code that already include your affiliate ID can be accessed after you log in to your affiliate account page. To increase the signup rate, dedicate the entire email to promoting Web Wizards services.

Newsletters
If you haven’t done so already, promote our services in your newsletter. Create a newsletter in-house, and send it to your customers, leads, and prospects. You can also give your site visitors the option to opt-in to receive it on a regular basis. Focus each newsletter on your site, product, market, or service, and most importantly the products offered via your affiliate links. Include a section on our services in each newsletter. Since it is your own newsletter, you can take up as much space as you want to promote our services. Add a linking URL that includes your affiliate ID, so you earn credit for all the leads that you send us.

Welcome Letters
If you send your members a welcome letter after they sign up, use that letter to promote our services. You could add a sentence or two at the bottom and provide a linking URL that includes your affiliate ID.

Contests
Run a contest for your visitors and members. Offer a free product, a discount, or a voucher to those who sign up. Create a contest that gives your visitors an incentive to check out our site and register.

Pop-Up Windows
You can also use a pop-up window to inform your visitors about our services. Describe the benefits of Web Wizards, and include a link to our signup page with your affiliate ID in the pop-up. You will catch your visitors’ interest with the pop-up, and you should benefit by getting more of them to sign up. You can design the pop-up window so that each visitor sees the pop-up only once a week or less using cookies.

Invoices
When you send your clients an invoice, use that piece of correspondence to inform them about our services, and how they can sign up for them at your site.

II. Links

The best way to inform your visitors about our services is by placing multiple links on your site. Well-placed links will contribute to the success of your affiliate links. Make sure to check your site for the hints outlined below.

Placement
We recommend that you place your affiliate links in high traffic areas of your site. In order to maximize exposure, we recommend adding affiliate banners, buttons, tiles, and text links in prominent places on your site, such as above the fold on your home page. You may want to place your text links in the top right corner of your Web site for greater visibility.

Navigation and Menu Bar
Integrate our affiliate link into your nav bar. Create a link (e.g. “Free Email” or “Site Tools”) and add it to your navigation bar or menu bar. This will help draw attention to it, and show your visitors that you stand behind the service by adding it as a permanent link. Make sure that every page on your site has the link in the nav bar and be sure to include your affiliate ID in the link. Text links that already include your affiliate ID can be accessed after you log in to your affiliate account.

Saturation
We recommend that you do not run more than 4 ads on any page of your Web site. If you are using single text links, then you can use more, however, you should have more on the page than just a list of links. There should never be more than one 468×60 banner per page. By using a variety of buttons, banners, tiles, and text links, you will be able to evaluate which type are the most effective.

III. Site Enhancements

Affiliate success begins with a well performing Web site, one that not only attracts customers, but also encourages them to return. Follow these tips to increase the performance of your site and watch your registrations grow.

Content/Layout:

Keep plenty of open space
Minimizing the clutter on your site will allow visitors to distinguish between different items on your site pages. If text and pictures crowd the page, your visitors may miss important information.

Make your page design unique
You should strive to keep your design simple and easy to use, yet creative and unique at the same time. When you are designing your site, test various layouts, shapes, fonts, and colors, so that your site stands out.

Avoid using large graphics
Large graphics take a long time to load. If your site takes more than 30 seconds to appear, your visitors may leave your site.

Provide pertinent and helpful information
If you offer valuable information for free, your site builds credibility and generates more traffic. Making your site more interesting to visitors will make your affiliate links more successful.

Forget Internet malls and flea markets
It may seem tempting to sell everything under the sun, but when you sell to everybody, you sell to nobody. Focus on only a few services to promote, and promote them well.

Build Traffic:

Submit to major search engines
Use search engines to your maximum advantage. Many of the most successful affiliate sites concentrate their energies on getting on top of the search engines. Some studies have found that over 70% of Web site visitors come from search engine traffic.

There are many ways to build traffic to your site, and generally, the amount you earn will be proportional to the exposure your site is receiving. It’s a hassle to submit your site to the major search engines every month, but it pays off—as does working at providing fresh, substantial content.

Match Content:

Match the content of your site to your affiliate link. We recommend that you place your affiliate links next to content on your site that is related to Web Tools, Web Services, Web Promotion, etc. The more closely your site’s content is tied to our services, the higher your affiliate click-through rate will be.

IV. Use Testimonials

What better way to sell a service than to use it yourself? When visitors see that you believe in the service enough to use it yourself, they will be more apt to try it themselves. These tips will give you ideas on the types of testimonials that will get your users to sign up for Web Wizards services.

Use Our Services:

Explain to your visitors the benefits you get from using our services. When they hear your experience first hand from you, they will be more receptive to signing up with us if they know you are a satisfied customer..

Add a Testimonial:

Recommend specific services to your visitors
If you recommend a specific service to your visitors, they will be more likely to click on the link. This is a far more effective strategy than just placing an affiliate link on your site.

Instead of just adding a link, recommend a service of ours that you personally are using. To get the most people clicking on your affiliate link, put a personal message telling how you have benefited from using Web Wizards services.

Create product reviews
If you have tried one of our services, or received great customer service, write a product review about your experience. A product review about Web Wizards will encourage visitors to sign up through your affiliate links. This now becomes a personal recommendation, not just a link. Product reviews work great! Someone excited about your review will be eager to try our services.

Add Promotional Copy
When featuring our services, include promotional copy like “Full-Featured, Very Responsive,” “Easy Instant Set Up,” or “Flexible Service Offering.” Give them a reason to sign up for our services. If you believe Web Wizards services are outstanding, don’t hesitate to say so. Using our logo and graphics will add impact as well.

WordPress Search Engine Tips

August 18, 2010 in Featured Articles, Tips and Tricks, Wordpress by Rob  |  No Comments

Here’s how to get your WordPress web site optimized for search engines to index and display your site with the keywords and descriptions you want. With a few tips and tricks, you can make WordPress very search engine friendly, and customize it’s design to rank much better than a default WordPress site ever would.

The first tip would be to host your WordPress site yourself, not on wordpress.com.  The reason for this is because a self-hosted site is completely customizable, and can include additional plug-ins and other custom code that really makes a difference.  We offer WordPress hosting very inexpensively, and provide help if you ever get stuck or need help with doing something you can’t figure out. Here’s more information on all the possibilities for customizing your self-hosted WordPress site:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Blog_Design_and_Layout

The most popular plug-in for WordPress is “WordPress SEO”:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-seo/

A quick overview of WordPress SEO is:

  1. Change your Permalinks to “/%postname%/”
  2. Optimize your Titles for SEO: “%%title%% – Blog Title”
  3. Optimize your Descriptions to add “%%category_description%%”
  4. Optimize the More text to be keywords from each post
  5. Image Optimization: Add ALT and Title tags to images using the SEO-Friendly Images plug-in.

These quick tips above give you the most bang for your buck right out of the gate!

Some links to plug-ins, helpful info, and more detailed explainations:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tags/search-engine-optimization

http://codex.wordpress.org/Search_Engine_Optimization_for_Wordpress

http://www.tomrafteryit.net/boost-search-engine-optimisation-seo-using-permalinks/

http://www.seobook.com/video-google-seo-friendly-page-titles

http://yoast.com/articles/wordpress-seo/

Let us know if you have any SEO tips to share in the comments, or reach out to us for more SEO help.