How to Create a Facebook Like Box Popup in WordPress

Do you want to promote your Facebook page in WordPress with a popup? Lightbox popups work really well to convert visitors into subscribers, and they work even better when promoting your Facebook page. In this article, we will show you how to effectively promote your Facebook page in WordPress with a lightbox popup without annoying your users.

Why Use a Facebook Page Popup in WordPress?

Lightbox popups are frequently used for email list building and lead generation. They convert really well and that’s why you see them everywhere.

However, they are not just limited to email list building. You can displaying photos in a lightbox popup, offer content upgrades, display a contact form popup, and more.

While you can easily add the Facebook like box in your sidebar, it is less noticeable thus does not get you good results.

On the other hand, a lightbox popup is more noticeable and requires users to take action. This helps you quickly get more likes for your Facebook page.

That being said, let’s see how to add a lightbox popup to promote your Facebook page in WordPress.

Creating Lightbox Popup For Your Facebook Page in WordPress

For this tutorial, we’ll be using OptinMonster. It is the best lead generation software in the market because it helps you convert abandoning website visitors into subscribers and followers.

First thing you need to do is signup for an OptinMonster account. You’ll need at least the pro plan to use their canvas feature.

Next, you need to install and activate the OptinMonster plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

It is a connector plugin that helps connect your WordPress site to your OptinMonster account.

Upon activation, you need to click on the OptinMonster menu in your WordPress admin bar to enter your license key.

You can find this information from your account dashboard on the OptinMonster website.

After entering your license key, you need to click on the ‘Create New Optin’ button at the top.

This will take you to the create new campaign page on OptinMonster website.

Now you need to select Lighbox as your campaign type and Canvas as your campaign template.

OptinMonster will now you to enter a name for your campaign. This name will help you identify your campaign in your OptinMonster dashboard.

After that, OptinMonster will launch its campaign builder interface. You will see a live preview of your blank canvas template on the right and OM options on the left.

First you need to add the website where you will be running this campaign.

After that, click on the ‘Optin’ tab to start designing your Facebook lightbox popup.

At this point, you will need the embed code for your Facebook page. You can get that by visiting the Facebook Page Plugin website in a new browser tab.

You will need to enter the URL of your Facebook page and adjust the width, height, and other display options for your like box. We recommend using 600px width and 350px height.

After that, click on the Get Code button.

This will bring up a popup where you need to click on the iFrame tab and copy the code.

Now switch back to the OptinMonster builder and paste the code under ‘Canvas custom HTML’ box.

You’ll be able to immediately see the preview of your Facebook like box.

Next, click on the Save button at the top to store your changes and then click on the publish button to continue.

This will take you to the publish settings page for your optin. Toggle Status button to live to make this optin available for your website.

Your Facebook lightbox popup is now ready to be displayed on your WordPress site.

Display Facebook Page Lightbox Popup in WordPress

Switch back to the WordPress admin area of your website and click on the OptinMonster tab. You will now see your newly created optin listed there. If you don’t see it, then click on the ‘Refresh Optins’ button.

Click on the ‘Edit output settings’ link below your optin to continue.

On the next screen, make sure that the box next to ‘Enable optin on site?’ option is checked.

Don’t forget to click on the save settings button.

OptinMonster also allows you to selectively display popup on different pages, posts, categories, or tags. You can also show or hide it from logged in users.

Once you are done, you can visit your website to see your Facebook Page displayed in a lightbox popup.

We hope this article helped you learn how to promote your Facebook page in WordPress with a lightbox popup. You may also want to see our list of WordPress plugins that will quickly help you get more traffic.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Create a Facebook Like Box Popup in WordPress appeared first on WPBeginner.

source http://www.wpbeginner.com/plugins/how-to-create-a-facebook-like-box-popup-in-wordpress/

[Report] Who owns the flights market in search?

Which brands dominate the US flights market in search?

A new report by Pi Datametrics has analyzed the entire US flights market to discover the most organically valuable search themes and players with the greatest share of voice across the market.

The search data was collected from across Google US with a view to identifying the search terms with the most commercial opportunity over the last four years, and trended to reveal demand peaks and declines across the travel industry.

‘International’ flights: Trended search themes | May 2016 – May 2017

Image source: Pi Datametrics Market Intelligence

So what does the data show, and what can marketers learn from it about the state of the flights market?

The difference between organic value and search volume

Trended search volume data is a strong indication of research and demand phases, but to determine when a search is most likely to actually convert, Pi has applied their proprietary Organic Value Score.

Search volume alone doesn’t always indicate value. Pi’s Organic Value Score averages out all of the metrics critical to conversion – including adword data – to reflect the true value of individual search terms, and their overarching search themes.

Looking at the search volume graph (above) in isolation, ‘Latin America & Caribbean’ appears to be the one of the most important search themes to focus strategy on within the ‘International flights’ market.

But, if we overlay commercial value, the data tells a slightly different story. ‘Latin America & Caribbean’ devalues significantly, while ‘Europe & Middle East’ retains its competitive edge.

Share of voice: Top sites across the entire ‘Flights’ market

Date: 7th June 2017 | Top 20 sites

Image source: Pi Datametrics Market Intelligence

Using a datapool of the most valuable ‘International’ and ‘Domestic’ search terms, Pi generated a vast snapshot of the entire US ‘Flights’ market (12,286 sites), to reveal the players dominating the industry.

Kayak own the US ‘Flights’ market

Kayak perform best both internationally and domestically, closely followed by Tripadvisor – which has recently transformed into an integrated review / booking site.

Here are just a few key insights:

• The top 3 performers own 57% of the entire ‘Flights’ category.
• All ‘Others’ beyond the top 20 own 10.1% of the ‘Flights’ market. Kayak, alone, owns more than double this.
• The top 11 performers consist of online travel agencies, aggregators or integrated review and booking sites. These sites own 86% of the entire market.
• An airline doesn’t appear until position 11, and only owns 0.6% of the category.

Image source: Pi Datametrics Market Intelligence

Which airline groups own the entire ‘Flights’ category?

• Priceline Group owns 33.5% of the entire market – that’s four times more share than the entire remaining market, beyond the top 20
• Expedia Inc owns 25.6% of the entire market
• All ‘Others’, beyond the top 20, own a tiny 7.7% of the market
• Airline providers can use this market share data to establish the best aggregators to resell their ‘Flights’

When combined, Expedia Inc and Priceline Group own nearly 60% of the entire US ‘Flights’ market. This is astronomical, and has created an ‘illusion of choice’ across the digital travel landscape.

• Priceline is the 6th largest internet company by revenue ($10.64bn USD).
• Expedia is the world’s 10th largest internet company by revenue ($8.77bn USD).

These revenue statistics just prove the success of their digital duopoly.

What can marketers and SEOs in the travel industry learn from the data about the most valuable search terms? Knowing their most valuable content gives businesses the foresight to dictate strategy.

From Pi’s trend chart, we can see that Europe and Middle Eastern flights have the highest Organic Value across the US ‘International flights’ market.

Aggregators, airlines and integrated booking sites can use this data to plan marketing activity around the most valuable flights.

Why is the online flights market so heavily dominated by just two companies?

Priceline group and Expedia own significant search real estate, and dominate the flights industry.

We can’t know exactly how these groups achieve their success, but we can presume that each brand prioritizes search throughout the business.

What’s more, these groups have an array of interrelated digital assets, which provide greater opportunity for comprehensive link infrastructures. This would only serve to boost their presence across the search landscape.

Based on the data, we can also see that online travel agencies, aggregators and booking sites decisively outrank airlines themselves in almost all cases. So why is this?

Based on their business offering, aggregators and OTAs offer a variety of content covering all areas of the flights market.

As direct providers, airlines may have less opportunity to match this offering, which could in turn impede market share.

The full report can be downloaded from the Pi Datametrics website.

source https://searchenginewatch.com/2017/08/31/report-who-owns-the-flights-market-in-search/

The 10 most common WordPress SEO challenges and how to solve them

If you’re new to the business of SEO and are just figuring out how to optimize your WordPress site for search, navigating the landscape of SEO can seem like a nightmare.

You’ll have seen a thousand different articles on SEO: on-page optimization tips, off-page optimization tips, SEO basics, email marketing tips, etc. online and implemented them – only to see them fail, or worse, backfire.

Don’t worry, you’re not alone. SEO can be tricky, and there is always a huge scope for overdoing or underdoing things. While I can’t fully solve this problem for you, I’ll make an attempt to round up the most commonly faced SEO challenges with WordPress so that you can look into your site and make some amends.

The important thing to understand here is that the same factors can prove to be a boon as well as a challenge when it comes to SEO. The key is to understand your own website intricately and devise plans depending upon what works best for you. Listed below are a few things that are commonly done wrong.

1. Finding the right theme

Ask yourself, how did you choose your WordPress theme while creating your website? Odds are you picked the most visually attractive theme that you thought would appeal to your customers.

Another common mistake people make is picking the most premium or commonly-used themes, as they think these are shortcuts to success. This is where you’re going wrong. Many complicated themes are filled with poor code that slows down your website. And loading time is a small but significant factor that affects your SEO rankings.

So pick a theme that works best for the nature of your website. Minimalist themes can be just as effective as complicated themes. And remember to check how often these themes are updated; you do not want an outdated theme dragging your site down.

2. The plugin game

WordPress plugins can truly be a boon for website SEO. But people tend to overdo it by adding too many of them and as a result, the website becomes heavier and slower to load. In order to improve user experience and your website ranking, it is imperative to pick and install only the right plugins for your website.

Multiple plugins also tend to occupy excessive server resources. Therefore, many managed WordPress hosts do not allow websites that consume too many resources.

3. The sitemap issue

As a basic WordPress website doesn’t give you too many features and controls, you’re bound to install SEO plugins, most of which have the option of sitemaps. You can even create multiple sitemaps by getting additional plugins to allow you further control over your site.

But here’s the problem. Many people forget to submit their sitemaps to Google Search Console. Once you fail to do that, search engines stop recognizing your sitemaps and needless to say, you won’t show up anywhere despite all your customized plugins.

4. Link stuffing gone wrong

Adding links to your site is one of the most important SEO tactics, and can do wonders for your website ranking. Many themes come with pre-set links to help you out. But there are two ways this can go wrong:

• Over stuffing – Nothing overdone is attractive, and adding links is no exception. Adding too many links can distract your user and also turn them off your site. A good rule of thumb to go by is using up to 20 links. This way you’re well within your bounds.
• Stuffing nonsense – The relevance of the content you feed to your customers is more important than you think. Offer original and relevant content that is useful to your customers so that they spend more time on your site, thus improving your rankings.

5. Schema gone wrong

Schema markup is the primary code that allows Google (and other search engines) to understand what your website is about. You showcase your Name, Address and Phone Number (NAP) so that Google can run it through its algorithms and display your site if it has local relevance. So this is the single most important thing that helps Google understand who you are and what kind of services you provide.

This obviously improves your rankings and visibility. But if you get this wrong, it could work against you, as it confuses Google.

The best way out of this challenge is to gain a deep understanding of how Schema works. Various online resources can help you learn that. For starters, you can check-out the ‘Organization of Schema’ page to look for the list of most common types of schema markup and the ‘Full Hierarchy’ page for the schema types that you will need.

6. Underestimating alt text for images

People often focus all their attention on optimizing text content and miss out visual content, i.e. images. It’s a big blunder. Without fail, make the time to give your images proper names and descriptions. This will go a long way in improving your site’s functionality, accessibility and ranking.

So if you’ve overlooked this, rename all your images now and add proper descriptions. Another shortcut to do this is using the SEO Friendly Images WordPress Plugin.

7. Wrongly done permalinks

Despite the huge amount of information available on permalinks over the internet, it is one of the most difficult things to get right. And your website takes a really big hit by doing this wrong.

So here’s an over-simplified tip for you. The ideal permalink will allow you to include two very basic yet important things: post name and category. It should look something like this: “/%category%/%postname%/“.

What this does is allows search engines as well as your site visitors to clearly understand what your website is about.

8. Ignoring H1 tags

As your webpage grows, you might end up having a lot more duplicate content than is advisable. Even if this doesn’t affect you initially, it will in the long run.

With growing popularity and content, you might feel you have no option but to use the same H1 tags for multiple pages. But this makes search engines alert and eventually averse to your site. So as far as possible, get precise and innovative and provide only unique content for your site.

And don’t even think of employing the age-old technique of overusing keywords in your meta tags. This might have worked in the past, but Google is very smart and now identifies it.

9. The sin of using duplicate content

It’s not an exaggeration when I say it’s a sin to use duplicate content. The problem is that you might be doing this without even knowing that you are.

The most common mistake in this department is over-categorizing and over-tagging: Google identifies content with multiple common tags and flags them as duplicate content. As a rule, a post should typically be in no more than one or two categories, and tagging should be limited only to the most relevant topics covered in the post.

Furthermore, if you find no obvious way in which you can tag a specific post, don’t tag it. Not every post needs tagging.

However, it is easy to tackle this. WordPress offers plugins like All-In-One-SEO or SEO Plugin Yoast to avoid this error. These plugins add ‘No Follow’ tags to pages that help search engines categorize pages appropriately.

10. Forgetting internal links and related posts

Linking one article to other relevant content across your site increases the average time spent by a user on your website, and also acts as a search engine ranking signal. However, adding unrelated links or poor-quality content will do the opposite and put them off.

If you do not wish to use too many internal links, another smart way to go about it is by adding related posts. Get a plugin to pick the right kind of posts to display as related posts to keep your relevance and integrity intact. The best way to do this is getting the right balance between internal links and related posts.

So read this article through again and thoroughly examine your SEO practices to identify how many of these aforementioned things are you getting wrong, and how many you are doing right.

Another factor that significantly affects your user experience is your host. A slow host will increase your loading time and therefore affect users. Keep this in mind while picking your web hosting company.

Your goal should always be to give your visitors rich quality and relevant content, delivered in the right manner and at the right speed. That is the only true way to keep your customers happy and run a thriving website.

source https://searchenginewatch.com/2017/08/30/the-10-most-common-wordpress-seo-challenges-and-how-to-solve-them/

How to Manage Ads in WordPress with AdRotate Plugin

Banner ads are one of the most common ways to make money from your blog. Many bloggers use an ad management software to maximize their ad earnings without ruining the user experience. In this article, we will show you how to manage ads in WordPress with the AdRotate plugin.

Why use a WordPress Ad Management Plugin?

Advertising programs like Google Adsense and others require publishers to add a code snippet on their website for displaying ads.

As a WordPress publisher, you can do this by either editing the code in your theme files or by using an ad management plugin.

If you are a beginner who just started your blog, then adding code into theme files is not an ideal solution. You cannot properly manage different ad sizes or their placements. You also increase your chances of messing up and causing unexpected WordPress errors.

On the other hand, using an ad management plugin allows you to easily insert ads anywhere on your website. You can save multiple ad codes, rotate them, and show / hide ads on different pages.

Let’s take a look at how to manage ads in WordPress like a pro using the AdRotate plugin.

Manage Ads in WordPress with AdRotate

First thing you need to do is install and activate the AdRotate plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you need to visit AdRotate » Adverts page and click on the ‘Add New’ link to create your first ad.

This will bring you to the add new ad page. You need to provide a title for your ad because it will help you identify this ad inside the WordPress admin area.

After that, you can paste the ad code generated by your advertising network like Adsense. Alternatively, you can also generate your own ad code if you are running self-hosted ads.

For hosted ads, you can upload banner images and enable click tracking.

You need to select the activate option to make this ad available on your WordPress site.

Next, you need to scroll down on the page to the usage and schedule section. Here you can schedule your ad and get the shortcode which you can add to your posts, pages, or sidebar widgets.

Don’t forget to click on the ‘Save Advert’ button to store your settings.

You can repeat this process to create as many ads you want and then decide which ads you want to be displayed on your site.

Grouping Your Ads Together

Many WordPress bloggers join multiple advertising networks and partner programs. You may also have advertising spaces on different locations and in different sizes.

Grouping allows you to easily sort your ads into different categories for easier management.

To create a new group, head over to AdRotate » Groups page and click on the ‘Add New’ link.

This will bring you to the create new group page.

First you need to provide a title for your group. This will allow you to easily identify the group in your WordPress admin area.

Next, you need to choose a display mode. AdRotate allows you to customize how you display ads from a specific group.

For example, you can display one ad from the group at a time, a block of ads, or dynamic mode which changes the ad after few seconds.

Next, you can select the group auto display options. AdRotate allows you to automatically insert ads from a group into posts, pages, and sidebar widgets.

At the bottom of the page, you will see all your ads that you can associate with that group. Simply select the ads that you want to include and then click on ‘Save Group’ button.

Manually Inserting Ads in WordPress

While you can associate your ads to groups and automatically insert them into posts, pages, categories, and widgets, some publishers may want to have more granular control on which ads to display on which location.

AdRotate makes it super easy to insert ads anywhere on your WordPress site.

Each ad you create on your site has its own shortcode that you can copy and paste into your WordPress posts or pages and even custom post types.

Go to AdRotate » Adverts and click on any ad to edit it. On the Edit Ad page, you need to scroll down to the usage section to copy the shortcode.

Similarly, you can also edit a group to get the shortcode and then use it anywhere on your website.

If you want to display ads in your WordPress sidebar, then go to Appearance » Widgets page and add the AdRotate widget to your sidebar.

We hope this article helped you learn how to manage ads in WordPress with the AdRotate plugin. You may also want to see our ultimate step by step WordPress SEO guide for beginners.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Manage Ads in WordPress with AdRotate Plugin appeared first on WPBeginner.

source http://www.wpbeginner.com/plugins/how-to-manage-ads-in-wordpress-with-adrotate-plugin/

Community Blogging: A Short Guide

Yesterday a client asked me this question about WordPress guest editing and publishing (a.k.a. community blogging): +++++
Hi, Jim. Wondering if you had any knowledge or ideas on the following.
I’m interested to find out whether there exists some sort of WordPress plug-in that would allow our readers to input a story and art directly into our site, and submit it to be published on our site. Once we got an email notification, we could edit it and publish it.
My thinking is that our readers could do some of the work for us, thus improving our coverage AND making our news more timely and relevant. My cursory Google search didn’t really turn up anything.
Any thoughts or direction on that?
+++++
So today I put my thinking cap on. And wrote this article to better answer his question on how to handle guest or community publishing:
WordPress is nicely suited to allowing readers the ability to post new content and media. And like any publishing platform, your prospective writer must first have an account on your website in order to post or edit articles respectively.
First, let’s add an “Author” to WordPress
Out of the box, WordPress allows you to add potential authors
Source: https://managewp.org/articles/16000/community-blogging-a-short-guide

source https://williechiu40.wordpress.com/2017/08/29/community-blogging-a-short-guide/

Guide to Manually Restoring Your WordPress Backup files with WPBackItUp

Whether you are migrating your website, creating a clone, or you need to restore your site after something bad happens, WPBackItUp makes it easy to backup and restore your entire WordPress website. In this post we are going to first show you how to restore your site using WPBackItUp Premium’s one-click restore feature. Next we’ll get into the nitty gritty and show you how to restore your Plugins, Themes and Media Files manually. Backing Up Your WordPress Files the Easy Way
With WPBackItUp, backing up your WordPress site and its files is as simple as visiting the WPBackItUp plugin area on your website’s dashboard and pressing the Backup button. This option is available for both WPBackItUp Premium and Community Edition.
This kicks off the process that backups up all the files that make up your WordPress site. This includes the database, themes, plugins and media files that are installed on your site. Once completed, you’ll see your backup file stored under Available Backups.
Before you do anything else we recommended that you move your backup files to a safe location on your computer or to a cloud-based storage such as DropBox or Google Drive.
Bonus: Download our
Source: https://managewp.org/articles/15999/guide-to-manually-restoring-your-wordpress-backup-files-with-wpbackitup

source https://williechiu40.wordpress.com/2017/08/29/guide-to-manually-restoring-your-wordpress-backup-files-with-wpbackitup/

Thrive Architect – NEW Visual Editor & Landing Page Builder

Creating beautiful, engaging and visually impressive content & layouts in WordPress has never been easier! A good tool for your business should be easy and not take away from your time and energy. Thrive Architect is the visual page builder that is built from the ground up for business and conversion focused websites. And because we know that entrepreneurs are busy, Thrive Architect is built with an obsessive focus on being as fast as possible to use. We’ve removed every possible barrier between the business idea in your head and a professional presence of that business on your website.
When you load up the Thrive Architect editor, everything follows one simple idea. We call it “click-to-edit”. If you want to change something, you click on it and you’ll see your edits instantly. If you want to move something, you click, drag and drop. We’ve removed every obstacle between you and building the content you want.
80 beautifully designed and 100% conversion focused landing page templates that come bundled with Thrive Architect. It’s simply the fastest way to create professional looking sales pages, opt-in pages, webinar pages and more, that are instantly
Source: https://managewp.org/articles/15998/thrive-architect-new-visual-editor-landing-page-builder

source https://williechiu40.wordpress.com/2017/08/29/thrive-architect-new-visual-editor-landing-page-builder/

Gutenberg Updates: 1.0 is out! (August 29)

There’s been some discussions on this, and ultimately it seemed better to not let numbers set expectations and prevent us from continuing with the same cadence. Next week it will be 1.1 and so on. Restored keyboard navigation with more robust implementation, addressing previous browser issues.
Added drag and drop for media with pointer to create new blocks.
Merged paragraph and cover text blocks (includes the colors and font size options).
Reworked color palette picker with a “clear” and a “custom color” option.
Further improvements to inline pasting and fixing errant empty blocks.
Added thumbnail size selector to image blocks.
Added support for url input and align and edit buttons to audio block.
Persist the state of the sidebar across page refresh.
Persist state of sidebar panels on page refresh.
Persist editor mode on page refresh.
New withAPIData higher-order component for making it easier to manage data needs.
Preserve unknown block and remove “freeform” comment delimiters (unrecognized HTML is handled without comment delimiters).
Other changes:
Show “add new term” in hierarchical taxonomies (including categories).
Show tooltip
Source: https://managewp.org/articles/15997/gutenberg-updates-1-0-is-out-august-29

source https://williechiu40.wordpress.com/2017/08/29/gutenberg-updates-1-0-is-out-august-29/

Introducing Themedd: Free Ecommerce Theme from EDD

We’re very excited to introduce Themedd, the latest addition to our family of themes. Themedd was created to be a solid starting point for both end users and developers alike. Designed to be clean and simple right out of the box, Themedd makes it quick and easy to set up a store with Easy Digital Downloads to sell your digital products.
Themedd also supports the Frontend Submissions extension (and the rest of the Digital Marketplace Bundle) so setting up your own marketplace is a breeze.
This is how Themedd displays downloads when using the [downloads] shortcode from Easy Digital Downloads:
And a download’s product page looks like this:
Theme Options
Themedd supports native WordPress features so you can add a site logo, site icon, header image, background image, menus, widgets and more. Also included are options for enabling a full width layout or displaying excerpts for posts.
Colors
Creating the perfect color scheme for your site has never been easier thanks to the large selection of built-in color options:
Colors can also be configured for mobile devices:
Easy Digital Downloads
When Easy Digital Downloads is installed and activated, new theme options specific to Easy
Source: https://managewp.org/articles/15996/introducing-themedd-free-ecommerce-theme-from-edd

source https://williechiu40.wordpress.com/2017/08/29/introducing-themedd-free-ecommerce-theme-from-edd/

Grav CMS – Self-Hosted WordPress Alternatives Part 2

When I started the Self-Hosted WordPress Alternatives series in July with a review of Craft CMS, there were several comments asking what I thought of Grav – an open source flat-file CMS that also has a really cool looking website. I had never heard of Grav before, but was immediately drawn to it for a few reasons. It’s open source, which is one of the things that I really love about WordPress since it enables a much larger community to work on the project. And since it’s a file-only CMS, there is no database to mess around with which in theory could make development and migrations easier in the long run.
All of this sounds great, so let’s see how it stacks up!
Installation
There are two versions of Grav that can be installed – a standalone version without a UI, and a version that includes an admin plugin that creates a user dashboard much like we’re used to in WordPress.
You can download both versions at getgrav.org. Once you’ve downloaded the .zip files, you just unzip them and drop them where needed on the server.
If you’re using the Grav + Admin version, you’ll also need to configure the .htaccess or NGINX config file (there are
Source: https://managewp.org/articles/15995/grav-cms-self-hosted-wordpress-alternatives-part-2

source https://williechiu40.wordpress.com/2017/08/29/grav-cms-self-hosted-wordpress-alternatives-part-2/

500th Perfect 5-Star Rating on Widget Options Plugin for WordPress

The most useful WordPress plugin on the planet. Kudos! Keep up the great work.
Source: https://managewp.org/articles/15994/500th-perfect-5-star-rating-on-widget-options-plugin-for-wordpress

source https://williechiu40.wordpress.com/2017/08/29/500th-perfect-5-star-rating-on-widget-options-plugin-for-wordpress/

Top 10 Must Have iPhone Apps for Bloggers

Looking for the best iPhone apps for bloggers that you should install? You’re probably already using multiple apps on your iPhone to assist with blogging. In this article, we have shared our hand-picked top 10 must have iPhone apps for bloggers, WordPress users, and online marketers.

1. WordPress.com Apps

WordPress.com offers beautifully designed apps to manage your WordPress.com as well as self hosted WordPress.org websites. See our guide on the difference between WordPress.com vs WordPress.org for more details.

The app is available for iOS, Android, as well as desktop computers. It allows you to write and edit posts on the go, share photos, get push notifications, and manage comments.

One downside of using the app is that some of its features, like stats, would require you to create a WordPress.com account and install JetPack on your site. However these features are optional, and you can still use the app without using those features.

2. Ulysses

If you are looking for a killer writing experience on your iPhone, then checkout Ulysses. It is an award winning paid app, and you will love the writing experience it offers.

The app basically gets out of your way when you are writing, allowing you to be more productive even on smaller screen. It is a writing app that works with WordPress and Medium. You can share and open files with Notes, Google Drive, DropBox, and more.

It also comes with intuitive organization for all your writing projects making it easier to stay organized while on the go. Text editing uses markdown syntax allowing you to be able to write freely without constantly tapping small buttons to format or add links.

3. Feedly

Want to read all your favorite websites and blogs on the go? Then checkout Feedly. It is the smartest way to subscribe to your favorite websites, read them whenever you want, and on whichever device you are using. Feedly is available for browsers, desktop, iOS, Android, and more.

It is probably the best RSS feed reader on the market. Offering a clean and clear reading experience, intelligent tracking of what you have read, and easier tools to organize your subscriptions.

4. Snapseed

Your iPhone comes with a great camera and sometimes you may need to edit photos on the go using your iPhone. Unfortunately, out of the box it doesn’t come with advanced image editing tool that can do all the things you want to do. This is where Snapseed comes in.

Created by Google, Snapseed is an advanced photo editing app for mobile devices. It is available for both Android and iPhone, and has some really amazing features like healing brush, edit history, filters, color and light balance, and more.

You’ll be surprised how easy Snapseed makes it to use taps and gestures for advanced editing features. It is a must have app for your iPhone if you regularly share photos from your phone.

5. IFTTT

Do you sometimes wish that someone could automate several aspects of your blogging and social media? IFTTT is that virtual assistant you’ve been wishing for.

It allows you to automate your social media, blogging, mobile usage, and internet of things.

Basically, you just set conditions for different apps, and when those conditions are matched IFTTT performs the actions you have defined. For example, it can tweet your new articles, share them on Facebook, retweet articles, and lots more.

See our guide on how to automate WordPress and social media with IFTTT for more details.

6. Google Authenticator

One of the most important tip you will find in our WordPress security guide is to enable two step verification for your WordPress login screen. Google Authenticator is the app you will need to enable it.

It generates time-sensitive passwords that you will need to enter along with your WordPress password. Since these passwords are generated on your mobile device and only for a short time, hackers will not be able to easily break into your website.

For detailed instructions, see our guide on how to add Google Authenticator 2-step verification in WordPress.

7. LastPass

There are identity thieves, malware, and cyber attacks lurking in the dark corners of the internet. Your first line of defense against these threats are your passwords. You should always use unique strong passwords for all your online accounts. Now, the question is how to keep track of all those strong passwords?

You don’t need to. LastPass is a password manager app that works on all browsers, operating systems, and even on your iPhone. It allows you to automatically save and enter passwords. You can also safely share your passwords with co-workers without them being able to look at the password.

For more on this topic, see our guide on how to manage passwords for WordPress beginners.

Alternate: Authy, 1Password

8. Pushbullet

Pushbullet is a neat app that allows you to share files between your devices. It works on all operating systems, iPhone, Android, plus all major browsers. This comes in particularly handy when you want to send a file from one device to another without syncing all your files.

It also allows you to view notifications from your phone in your browser or desktop. You can also view and send text messages to your phone from your desktop.

9. Hootsuite

While the default social media apps work just fine for most users, they miss out on many features that you’d need as a blogger, online marketer, or a business owner.

Some of these features include scheduling, social media monitoring, analytics, unified dashboard, collaboration, etc. Hootsuite is probably the most popular app that offers all these features under a beautiful simplified dashboard.

10. Evernote

Evernote has been the number one choice among bloggers as their favorite note taking app. It is powerful and intuitive allowing you to take notes, save links, set reminders, and share them across all your devices. You can also share notes with anyone using Evernote or any third party app on your device.

On top of that, Evernote works seamlessly with apps like, Feedly, IFTTT, Google Drive, Notes, and more. This offers you greater flexibility and a whole lot of ways to save and share your notes.

Alternative: Google Keep

We hope this article helped you find some new must have iPhone apps for bloggers. You may also want to see our list of the free Google tools every WordPress blogger should use.

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