With the new year comes the opportunity for a renewed and better you. So too is the opportunity for a new and better WordPress website. Use the following as a checklist for the new year (or anytime) to ensure your website is in tip-top shape.
People make decisions between proprietary (closed-source) software and open-source software daily without even realizing it. Do you own an Android phone or an iPhone? Are you browsing the internet with the Safari browser or Firefox? Internet Explorer or Chrome? Open-source software has a significant place in the world and in our lives, and that is especially true when it comes to all-things-internet-related. Chrome, Firefox, and the new Microsoft Edge browser are all open-source. As is the Android mobile operating system. At least a third (probably significantly more than that) of all websites are hosted on servers running Linux, an open-source operating system, and more than a third of all websites run on WordPress and many more are on Drupal, Magento, Joomla, and other open-source content management systems.
A standard WordPress installation offers two different post types: Posts and Pages. If you’ve never worked with WordPress before, you may be asking yourself, “What’s the difference?” Both posts and pages have nearly identical editing interfaces, and at a glance, it is not obvious when to use each post type. If you find yourself asking these questions, you’ve come to the right place. In this post, we’re going to break down the differences between WordPress posts and pages and give you the confidence you need to know when to use each one.
Are you frustrated by your slow WordPress site? Do you routinely receive emails from your user base complaining about the site speed? Fortunately there are many ways to speed up a WordPress website. There isn’t one magic bullet to solve all problems, but a combination of the below will get your site up to speed in no time.
This was going to just be a post about WordPress themes. We were going to talk about why you might want to pick one type of theme over another (and we’ll still get to that). But when you look into what is happening in the world of WordPress themes right now, you start seeing articles and posts with titles like this one: The End of WordPress Themes is in Sight. And that’s worth talking about. That headline might be a bit extreme, but there is definitely a change in the role themes play looming on the horizon.
As your WordPress website evolves over time it is inevitable that you will remove old pages, rename pages, and add new pages. This is especially true when completing a redesign project or content restructuring. Another common instance we see this occur is when an organization grows, changes the business model, or merges with another organization. When this happens, you need to take special care to ensure that any page URLs that were removed or changed are properly redirected to an existing page, otherwise your site will generate what are called ‘not found errors’ until search engines like Google fully re-index the site (which can take some time). Also, any links back to the site you or others posted on social media, online directories, or via other site’s blog comments which no longer exist will return that same dreaded ‘not found error’. These external links, called ‘back links’, are especially important for search engine optimization (SEO) not to mention user experience (linking to a ‘page not found’ as a first impression of your website is far from ideal). Oh, and those ‘not found errors’? Too many of them can have a negative effect on SEO too.
Recently we provided some tips on successfully launching a Magento Ecommerce site. Regardless of what type of website your are building, there really is no better way to prepare for launch than allowing real users to interact with the site. User testing is an excellent way to find all the bugs you may have overlooked before your live customers discover them.
E-commerce can be complicated, tricky and is absolutely essential for many modern websites. Sometimes, we encounter clients for whom getting things set up right the first time was so challenging that they just don’t ever want to mess with it again, let alone try to migrate to a new site or even a new platform. So they end up settling for what “works” instead of figuring out how to make it better.
Are WordPress Page Builder Plugins Worth the Trouble?
Are WordPress Page Builder Plugins Worth the Trouble?
September 17, 2019morgan+WordPress0 Comments
We recently started a WordPress project with a client that wanted us to switch their site over to the popular Enfold theme. What we estimated to be a relatively simple theme implementation task soon turned into a full on content restructuring, requiring more time and energy than we initially envisioned. Why, you ask? Enter the sometimes-complex world of custom page-builder plugins.
If you have data that you need to display on your WordPress website such that your site users can find what they need easily through sorting, searching, and filtering, and display/export their results, look no further than wpDataTables. It’s easy to use for site administrators, and displays attractive and usable data for site users.
If you have a data display/management project for your WordPress website and are interested in learning more, we’d love to chat.