As you well know, WordPress is the most popular content management system in the world. It powers 23% of the web, with over 60 million users worldwide. That popularity has served it well in some regards – it hosts a thriving development community with scores of passionate users coding plugins and helping one another out with technical problems. (more…)
Category: WordPress
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WordPress Is About To Get A Lot Better At eCommerce
WordPress parent company Automattic is finally spending the $160 million in funding it raised last year – on plugins, apparently. Late last month, it purchased WooCommerce, a powerful shopping plugin designed to help publishers turn their websites into digital storefronts. Although CEO Matt Mullenweg wouldn’t comment on the price, recode claims that inside sources have clocked it at around $30 million. (more…)
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Why It’s Now More Important Than Ever To See To Security On Your WordPress Blog
According to a report from CodeGuard, WordPress now powers 79% of content-driven websites. By comparison, Joomla powers 7.2%, and Drupal 5.3%. The report further notes that designers and developers are flocking to the platform in droves; it’s gained more popularity in that market than it has among bloggers. (more…)
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How WordPress Can Supercharge Your Lead Generation Efforts
Hey there, folks! Today, we’re going to talk about lead generation. More specifically, we’re going to talk about one of the most powerful lead generation tools currently available.
No, I’m not referring to Hubspot, nor am I talking about Marketo.
It’s WordPress. See, there’s a reason it’s currently the world’s most popular CMS – it’s versatile enough to handle just about anything you can throw at it. Naturally, that includes lead-oriented marketing. (more…)
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Five WordPress Plugins Your Blog Needs To Have
Without a doubt, one of the most powerful elements of WordPress is its flexibility. This is thanks in large part to its thriving development community. By tapping into the diverse selection of plugins they’ve created, you can empower your WordPress-run website to do…well, just about anything, really.
It’s pretty incredible.
Unfortunately, with so many plugins to choose from, it can be somewhat difficult to figure out which ones are best-suited to your needs. That’s why this series exists – to let our clients know which add-ons are absolutely essential (and by implication, which ones they should probably stay away from). This time around, we’re going to take a look at a few plugins related to website monetization/membership services. There’s just one small difference between the plugins in this post and our regular fare – most of the plugins we’re going to go over today are premium.
Let’s get started. (more…)
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What Your WordPress Theme Says About Your Blog
The theme is arguably the most important element of a WordPress blog. It’s the first thing users will see when loading in, and will impact their perceptions before they even start reading. The impression a theme leaves on a blog’s readers will determine how they view the blog, what they think of the content and, ultimately, whether or not they’ll come back.
What a lot of authors don’t realize is that a theme accomplishes much more than making a first good impression. By studying how a blog is laid out, it’s entirely possible to accurately judge the author’s personality, what they generally write about, and the sort of content they produce. In certain rare cases, it may even be possible to discern an author’s industry. (more…)
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Five More Absolutely Essential WordPress Plugins
One of the most formidable aspects of WordPress as a platform is the immense degree of customizability its diverse selection of plugins affords a blog owner. Unfortunately, no two plugins are created equal, and it can often be difficult to decide what’s worthwhile. How’s a blog owner to know what they should and shouldn’t install?
It all starts with knowing what sort of functionality you’re looking for – what types of plugins does your blog require to shine? (more…)
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Maximizing Your Exposure On WordPress
Content may be king, but it’s nothing if you don’t know how to promote it. Even if you write the best, most enticing and most shareable post in the world and update your blog regularly, it means nothing if people aren’t aware it exists. In order to truly drive traffic to your blog, you need exposure. Obtaining it is a dual process of promotion and optimization.
We’ll start with the latter. The best advice I can give you here is to install a plugin like All-In-One SEO. Although it won’t do all the work for you, it’ll greatly simplify the optimization process, and make it considerably easier for you to deal with Meta tags and title optimization. Scheduling is one thing you’re going to have to do yourself – personally, I’d recommend that you update your blog in the morning, as t traffic is usually highest around 11 AM. You’ll also need to figure out your focus keyword (think of this as the primary topic of your post). More than just site and keyword optimization, however, you should also practice topic optimization. (more…)
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Is A User Created Content Site Possible On WordPress
Although WordPress is without a doubt the best blogging platform on the market, how suitable is it if you’re looking to create a site based on user-generated content? It’s an odd question, to be sure, but it’s one that’s been at the back of my mind for some time now. Is WordPress usable if you’re creating a content hub rather than a simple blog?
The short answer is yes – just look at WPeddit if you’ve any doubts. The long answer…yes and no. It’s complicated. If you’ve got the right plugins and enough programming knowledge, you can use the WordPress platform to design just about anything. The problem with that, of course, is that this doesn’t necessarily mean it’s well-suited for the task. At the end of the day, there are plenty of software platforms specifically designed for user-generated content, it could save you a great deal of trouble to simply use one of those. (more…)
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Five WordPress Plugins No Blog Should Be Without
Perhaps the most powerful element of WordPress – and likely one of the primary reasons it’s the most widely-used blogging platform in the world – is the diverse selection of plugins available to its writers. One might consider that diversity to be one of the platform’s weaknesses, too; the sheer volume of different plugins available can be downright overwhelming, particularly to someone new to the platform.
Thankfully, if you know what types of plugins your blog needs, the process becomes far less daunting. It then simply becomes a matter of knowing the best plugin in each particular category. Today, we’re going to look at a few such addons. We will likely as not revisit this topic at a later date with a new set. (more…)
