Filtering ACF Content Blocks with WordPress Hooks & Filters

Here at WebDevStudios, we do quite a bit with Flexible Content Blocks in Advanced Custom Fields (ACF). If you aren’t familiar with the plugin, ACF allows for the creation of a multitude of custom meta field types using a graphical user interface (GUI) in the WordPress Dashboard. You can do almost anything with these fields—from simple text and URL inputs to searching for posts and pages and building image galleries. ACF allows you to power your site with robust customization options, which you can use to create and manage dynamic pages. Instead of being locked into a set of page templates where the functionality and layout are tied directly to the theme’s files, building pages with ACF Flexible Content Blocks puts the power of customization into your hands as a site manager and editor. You can add, remove, and rearrange blocks as needed and have full control over the content within each of those blocks.
Sometimes, though, simply customizing the content within those blocks isn’t enough. Sure, it’s nice enough to be able to edit the title of a block or select a different set of Featured Posts to display. But, what if you don’t want to have to get that
Source: https://managewp.org/articles/18158/filtering-acf-content-blocks-with-wordpress-hooks-filters

source https://williechiu40.wordpress.com/2018/11/30/filtering-acf-content-blocks-with-wordpress-hooks-filters/

Dragonfly: 500+ staff sign open letter for Google to drop new Chinese search engine

More than 500 engineers, designers, managers and other staff from across global Google offices have signed an open letter at Medium.com calling on the search engine to stop their Dragonfly project and for company leaders to “commit to transparency, clear communication, and real accountability.”

As we reported last month…

Google’s project Dragonfly first came to light in August via The Intercept and their reports surrounding leaked documents containing details about the project. In a nutshell, the project looked to be a fresh attempt by Google to re-enter the Chinese search market since having been blocked by the state back in 2010.

Dragonfly was speculated to be taking the shape of a mobile search engine. This is unsurprising, as more than 97% of internet users in China go online via mobile devices (according to CNNIC) and it is in this vertical that the industry is seeing most disruption from companies such as Shenma, Sogou and Haosou.

What was surprising were the subsequent leaked details from The Intercept and other sources hinting that Dragonfly users would be forced to sign-in to make searches, with IP addresses and phone numbers being linked to their activities too. It is also expected that the service would be censored in order to adhere to the country’s ‘cyber sovereignty’ laws – and, an as yet unknown, domestic partner would also have access to this customer data.

Consequently, there was significant uproar among many Google employees. On August 20^th, senior research scientist Jack Poulson left the company and published his lengthy resignation letter online. ‘I believe that Google is largely composed of altruistic employees,’ he wrote. ‘But, due to my conviction that dissent is fundamental to functioning democracies, I am forced to resign in order to avoid contributing to, or profiting from, the erosion of protections for dissidents.’

A dangerous precedent at a volatile political moment

The latest open letter published on November 27^th echoes much of the sentiment expressed by Poulson in his resignation document. ‘We are Google employees and we join Amnesty International in calling on Google to cancel project Dragonfly, Google’s effort to create a censored search engine for the Chinese market that enables state surveillance,’ it says.

‘Our opposition to Dragonfly is not about China: we object to technologies that aid the powerful in oppressing the vulnerable, wherever they may be. The Chinese government certainly isn’t alone in its readiness to stifle freedom of expression, and to use surveillance to repress dissent. Dragonfly in China would establish a dangerous precedent at a volatile political moment, one that would make it harder for Google to deny other countries similar concessions.’

The post also describes 2018 as a year of disappointment for Google employees. It references Project Maven (where Google assisted with development of AI in US military drones) which saw protests and resignations, as well as the Rubingate scandal which saw Android developer Andy Rubin given ‘a hero’s farewell’ and a $90m exit package after claims of sexual misconduct were made against him – ultimately leading to a global synchronized walkout on November 1^st.

Official responses from Google have not satisfied critics

Google are yet to address the direct requests as detailed in this latest open letter. At a Q & A session during the WIRED 25 Summit in October, Google CEO Sundar Pichai sung the praises of the technical achievements of Dragonfly during recent tests. He also justified Google’s position by saying: ‘We are compelled by our mission [to] provide information to everyone, and [China is] 20 percent of the world’s population.’

Pichai also made reference to Google’s stated position on China back in 2010, when it decided it would no longer censor its SERPs at google.cn essentially putting an end to its operations in the country (this is regarded as the preferable position among employees signing the latest open letter). He stated it was time to ‘re-evaluate that choice’ and when asked about employees who were critical of such changes in company policy remarked, ‘we don’t run the company by holding referendums.’

Wider responses

This letter arguably hasn’t yet captured as many headlines as the walk-out earlier this month. There are a number of likely reasons for this – the biggest being that Dragonfly isn’t at this point in time a tangible product which we can see. It is understandably hard to get the public and mainstream press behind a campaign criticising a product that doesn’t even have a launch date.

The ethical issues with Dragonfly are also less black and white than those raised with Project Maven and Rubingate earlier in the year. As one user asks in the comments under the letter: ‘If Google drops dragonfly, the Chinese netizens will end up using “Baidu”, is it better or worse for the netizens of China?’ Another user argues: ‘The debate here really is about sacrificing the western pride and values surrounding censorship in favour of enabling a billion people that are already censored to the freedoms of information the west has.’

These positions might be surprising to some of the Google employees who have signed the letter or left the company, but it is in-keeping with data published at The Drum showing that more than 72% of Weibo users (one of the country’s leading microblogging sites) would choose Google over Baidu et al. if it were to launch its new service. There is something to be said for the potential for Google to disrupt the monopoly Baidu has in the country, and to potentially deliver better quality results if not less censored ones.

The signees, of course are not alone either. They are joined by Amnesty International (and a number of other organisations) who are bolstering the argument that Dragonfly will endanger human rights defenders and journalists who might use it. The number of employees signing the letter is growing, and the number of organisations joining the opposition to Dragonfly looks to be growing too.

Many are now looking to a Congress hearing on December 5^th where Pichai is set to defend Google against accusations of bias in its algorithm. It is likely that the subject of China and Dragonfly will rear its head there, too, and that Pichai will likely face his toughest round of questioning yet. As things stand, Google re-entering the Chinese search market is looking more and more likely to happen. We can reasonably expect that the closer we get to that time, the more people we will see join the voices of the signees of this latest letter and the more heated the debate will become.

The post Dragonfly: 500+ staff sign open letter for Google to drop new Chinese search engine appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

source https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/11/30/dragonfly-googlers-drop-chinese-search-engine/

16 Best WordPress Chrome Extensions that You Should Try

Are you looking for the best WordPress Chrome extensions to boost productivity? Browser extensions can help improve your WordPress workflow and make you more productive. In this article, we have hand-picked some of the best WordPress related Chrome extensions that you should try.

Why You Need WordPress Chrome Extensions?

Google Chrome is the most popular web browser in the world. It comes with hundreds of add-ons to easily perform several tasks within your browser.

You’ll find many useful WordPress extensions that can help with the website development, editing blog posts, check for grammar and spelling mistakes, manage tasks, and more.

Since there are thousands of extensions available, it becomes difficult for beginners to find the right tools they need.

To help you with that, we did the research and picked the best Google Chrome extensions that you can try.

1. Grammarly

Grammarly is the most popular Chrome extension that you can use to check spelling errors and grammatical mistakes in your WordPress content. It helps you in writing and editing your blog posts easily. Grammarly also checks for contextual spelling errors and helps you improve readability of your content.

2. CloudApp

CloudApp is a popular tool to take screenshots, record screen, and share them with anyone. CloudApp’s Chrome extension makes it easy to take screenshots while browsing the web and insert them into your blog posts.

3. LastPass

LastPass is the best password manager tool on the market. It works on Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, and more. It also comes with browser extensions for all top browsers including Google Chrome.

Using a password manager like LastPass allows you to choose strong and unique passwords for all your online accounts. It automatically fills in passwords for you so you don’t need to remember passwords.

4. Ahrefs

Ahrefs is one of the most powerful SEO tools on the market. It helps you understand why your competitors are ranking so high and what you can do to beat them. It also helps you find out keywords and blog post ideas that you can use to boost your search traffic.

They have an SEO Toolbar available as a Chrome extension which gives you a bird’s eye view of any page you are viewing with in-depth SEO analysis and keyword reports.

5. SimilarWeb

SimilarWeb is a Chrome extension for website traffic analysis. You can use this extension to see complete stats of your WordPress website including traffic sources, user engagement rate, keywords, and more. It gives an instant and detailed insight for any website with 1-click.

6. Evernote Web Clipper

Evernote Web Clipper is a helpful Chrome extension for WordPress writers. It lets you clip the articles that you are reading and open them on any of your devices with Evernote. You can highlight the important content on any website and share it in emails or make a link out of it. Evernote is a bookmarking, social sharing, note taking, and task management tool combined in one app.

7. WhatFont

Wondering which font is used on the WordPress website you’re viewing? Simply add the WhatFont Chrome extension on your browser to find out the font by hovering on the text. It also shows the supported services for the web fonts like Typekit and Google Font API.

8. Asana

Asana is a popular productivity and task management tool. It also comes with a Google Chrome extension to manage your tasks easily from anywhere including from your WordPress website.

You can add and search tasks from any web page in your browser. It lets you create your own team and assign tasks with due dates. You can also add current URL as a task to read later or share it with your team members.

9. Buffer

Buffer makes it easy to share your WordPress content on social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. It allows you to schedule blog posts and monitor the stats for better performance. You can add team members to work collectively and schedule your WordPress posts for social media websites.

10. WPSniffer

WPSniffer is a popular WordPress themes sniffer tool. You can use this Chrome extension to find out which theme is used on a WordPress website. It also displays the link of the active theme or redirects you to Google search with the theme name.

11. Dimensions

Dimensions is a Chrome extension for designers to measure different dimensions on a WordPress website. You can simply move your mouse between elements like images, text blocks, form fields, buttons, etc to find out the exact measurements. It can also help you convert JPEG and PSD files to web pages easily.

12. WordPress Keyboard Shortcuts

If you want to explore a new world of keyboard shortcuts for your WordPress site, then WordPress Keyboard Shortcuts is the perfect Chrome extension for it. This extension offers a complete range of keyboard shortcuts that work with WordPress and help you save time.

13. WordPress Style Editor

WordPress Style Editor is a useful Chrome extension that enables you to instantly save CSS changes that you make in the inspect tool of your browser. It saves a lot of time from checking the styles in the inspect tool and then manually updating your stylesheet. Make sure that you’re logged into your WordPress site to save the CSS properly.

Note: It works only with the style.css file of your WordPress theme. It makes the changes directly to the main CSS file, so make sure to keep a backup before you start editing.

14. Version Check for WordPress

Version Check for WordPress is a simple Chrome extension that you can use to find out the version of any website built on WordPress. It displays the WordPress version in your browser while viewing a website. It also shows if the version used on the website is outdated.

15. WordPress Admin Switcher

WordPress Admin Switcher is a Chrome extension for WordPress websites. It allows you to switch to the WordPress login screen without typing the wp-admin in the browser tab. You can also directly switch to the post editor in your WordPress admin area while viewing a post on the website with 1-click.

Note: Mac users can press ‘Cmd + Shift + A’ and Windows users can press ‘Ctrl + Shift + A’ to switch to the admin login screen. You can also click on the extension icon in your browser to switch to your WordPress admin login page.

16. ColorZilla

ColorZilla is an advanced Chrome extension to pick colors from your WordPress pages and posts. It lets you read the color code by using the eyedropper tool. You can also generate gradient colors CSS and use them in your stylesheets. It also maintains a history of recently picked colors.

We hope this article helped you find the best WordPress Chrome extensions to try. You may also want to see our list of the most wanted WordPress tips, tricks, and hacks to improve your website.

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 16 Best WordPress Chrome Extensions that You Should Try appeared first on WPBeginner.

source https://www.wpbeginner.com/showcase/best-wordpress-chrome-extensions-that-you-should-try/

WordPress Community Interview – Toronto with Alex Sirota

Since day one, Weglot has been part of the WordPress community, supporting WordCamps and Meetups around the world. But it wasn’t enough for us! We wanted to know more about the WordPress ecosystem and share the ongoing love story between Weglot and WordPress with the world. We thought that the best way to do so was to interview WordPress lovers from all around the world and get them to share their own experience inside WordPress communities :). To kick off Weglot’s newest blog series, we are more than happy to have an open-table discussion with Alex Sirota from WordPress Toronto.
Thank you again Alex for the great interview. You can find Alex on Twitter and news about the WordPress Toronto community on wptoronto.com
Who is the Toronto WordPress community?
It’s been around for several years, 10+ years.
The first WordCamp was in 2007 and the first WordCamp Central website still running is from 2011. There are over 2500 people on our WP Toronto Meetup Group, and we recap our meetings on wptoronto.com after they happen.
The organization has gone through multiple hands in terms of leadership over the past decade, and in 2018 we had almost a 100% turn over in the leaders
Source: https://managewp.org/articles/18157/wordpress-community-interview-toronto-with-alex-sirota

source https://williechiu40.wordpress.com/2018/11/30/wordpress-community-interview-toronto-with-alex-sirota/

Decoding SEO for business leaders: 5 tips to get stakeholders on board

As SEO professionals, when we present our strategy and project ideas, we are often met with blank stares from business stakeholders. They are not able to connect the dots from SEO jargon to business goals.

And my fellow SEO colleagues, we need to own this one. Every so often we forget to speak in simple language that is understood by all. We do tend to speak in acronyms and codes.

In today’s digital world, we buy and sell online, we pay our bills and make our deposits online. When the first instinct of the users is to “Google” the products or services they want, the business needs to ensure they provide content that meets the user’s search intent. Search Engine Optimization plays a pivotal role in ensuring this content is optimized and available for search engines to display to the end users.

Organic search contributes significantly to the website performance, as well as plays a critical role in the buyer journey, which could lead to a conversion or an engagement. Without proper SEO strategies in place, users will face difficulty locating your content and instead find your competitors.

Thus, understanding SEO is essential to overall business success — and we need to be able to decode that message for all business leaders to understand and value.

Know your audience

First off, you must know who you are talking to when you are explaining SEO. Set a foundation, that it’s about users, rather than search engine bots. Typically, the non-SEO professionals consider SEO to be a technique to outsmart search engine bots and algorithms to rank number one in Google search results. Well, we all know that is not how things work. As a matter of fact, there are dozens of articles on mistakes to avoid.

Leverage your competition

Show and tell always works. Walk your business stakeholder through an actual keyword search on Google and let them observe how the competition is dominating the search results. Then slowly clarify, like peeling an onion, why the competitor is performing better and where do gaps exist in the internal strategy. Essentially breaking it down in simpler terminology. Show how the competition has out-maneuvered you with optimized content, appropriate keywords targeting, and applied technical best practices to ensure the website is visible and creditable.

Get hands on

User experience plays a major role in how search engines crawl and understand the website. When UX teams integrates SEO best practices, the websites are easily discoverable in search, not to mention it leads to effective user experience. In lieu of justifying the business holder that the site navigation is broken, demonstrate how difficult it is to search and navigate to the desired pages. Rather than stating that if a page is taking 3-5 seconds to load, it might be slow, let them experience the frustration of a slow page load. These are critical experiences that lets the story develop itself.

Work with web development

If you are trying to gather backing for a technical project, we need to be extra careful. Algorithm, tags or metadata are not widely understood terms. To an untrained ear all this sounds like gibberish. It will be beneficial if you explain the advantage each element delivers, instead of narrating a variety of technical terms.

For example, instead of saying we need to implement noindex tags, you might want to say, “we need to secure the confidential / private content that is currently getting displayed publicly.”

Instead of asking for implementation of Hreflang, you might want to state “this will allow the business to indicate to the search engines the different web pages in alternate languages that exist and their relationship.”

Get funded

Why should the business fund the project? How does SEO contribute to the bottom line? Advocating SEO successfully means selling to the business stakeholders on the benefits SEO brings. Demonstrate how SEO impacts each stage of the user journey and how the SEO project would bring in effectiveness.

First order of the day is to understand what are the business goals. Usually, it is how to increase revenue. Here make data your friend. Present the data on how much traffic is being attracted organically and how organic users are engaging with the site. What amount of revenue is generated by organic users, the return on investment and of course the repeat buy stats.

Once you show the funnel and profitability of the channel, the buy-in from stakeholders is easy. Then you can break into individual projects and how these projects impact the buyer’s journey.  Consider your execution plan, define and specify details about the people and cost required.

The better you explain SEO, the more likely your stakeholder will buy in the project and provide funding for execution.

Conclusion

SEO can be easily understood by anyone as long as you put it in a language that they will be able to recognize. Simplify your message and make it into comprehensible concepts, which not only explain what it is, but why it works.

Tanu Javeri is Sr. Global SEO Strategist, Performance and Programmatic Marketing at IBM.

The post Decoding SEO for business leaders: 5 tips to get stakeholders on board appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

source https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/11/29/decoding-seo-business-leaders/

The Brad & Matt Limited Edition Totally Unoriginal Random Show

Source: https://managewp.org/articles/18156/the-brad-matt-limited-edition-totally-unoriginal-random-show

source https://williechiu40.wordpress.com/2018/11/29/the-brad-matt-limited-edition-totally-unoriginal-random-show/

5 Ways I’m Improving my Affiliate Program – Joe Casabona

Affiliate programs can be one of the best ways to drive traffic and sales to your products. Mobilized affiliates can become your best advocates. In recent months I’ve been working to improve my own affiliate program to make sure my affiliates are energized about Creator Courses as well as informed about what’s going on. Here are 5 ways I’m working to improve my affiliate program. 1: Not an Open Club
First, I want to make sure my affiliates can actually vouch for me. They don’t need to be students in one of my courses, but they do need to understand my teaching style. Maybe they are fans of my YouTube videos, have attended a workshop, or someone I’ve otherwise interacted with.
The program is not an open club for people who are just linking to my courses in hopes that they’ll make money. I want my affiliates to understand my work and convince people that my courses are worth taking.
2: Better Rates
If affiliates are going to go through the trouble of convincing people to take my courses, it needs to be worthwhile for them. My original commission was 20%, and I was selling my courses for between $24-69. That’s not a lot. So I decided to do 3 things:
Source: https://managewp.org/articles/18155/5-ways-i-m-improving-my-affiliate-program-joe-casabona

source https://williechiu40.wordpress.com/2018/11/29/5-ways-im-improving-my-affiliate-program-joe-casabona/

15+ Best Gutenberg-Compatible Themes

Everybody is getting ready for the day Gutenberg arrives as the default editor in the WordPress core. Developers are either busy adding new functionality to their themes () or engaged in building completely new Gutenberg-compatible themes from scratch. Most people are at least skeptical about switching to this forthcoming editor, but we all need to embrace the change sooner or later.
Source: https://managewp.org/articles/18154/15-best-gutenberg-compatible-themes

source https://williechiu40.wordpress.com/2018/11/29/15-best-gutenberg-compatible-themes/

How to Add Dark Mode to Your WordPress Admin Dashboard

Do you want to add dark mode to your WordPress admin dashboard? A dark mode color scheme makes it easier to work during late hours by reducing white light emitting from the screen. In this article, we will show you how to easily add dark mode to your WordPress admin dashboard.

What is Dark Mode and Why Use it in WordPress?

If you often work late at night, then the bright screen light of your computer causes strain on the eyes. Many apps, websites, and even operating systems come with a dark mode color scheme as an alternative.

Popular websites like YouTube also offer a dark color scheme. This allows users to watch videos late at night with a more comfortable viewing experience.

WordPress comes with admin color schemes, but none of the default color schemes reduce white light coming from your screen.

Luckily, there is a plugin that solves that.

Let’s take a look at how to easily add dark mode to your WordPress admin area for a more enjoyable user experience during late hours.

Adding Dark Mode to Your WordPress Admin Dashboard

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

Upon activation, you need to visit Users » Your Profile page and check the box next to the ‘Dark Mode’ option.

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

Your WordPress admin area will now switch to the dark mode.

Since ‘Dark Mode’ is not an admin color scheme, you can easily use it in combination with an existing WordPress admin color scheme.

At the time of writing this article, the plugin was not compatible with the upcoming Gutenberg editor. However, when writing posts using the new editor, the plugin switches back to the regular admin colors.

It is expected to work with the new editor in an upcoming version. Meanwhile, you can switch to the classic WordPress editor for a consistent dark mode experience.

We hope this article helped you add the dark mode to your WordPress admin dashboard. You may also want to see our guide on the history of WordPress to see the evolution of WordPress interfaces.

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 Add Dark Mode to Your WordPress Admin Dashboard appeared first on WPBeginner.

source https://www.wpbeginner.com/plugins/how-to-add-dark-mode-to-your-wordpress-admin-dashboard/

Managing WordPress Custom Tables with an ACF Repeater Field

Whilst working on the deliciousbrains.com site we had the need to store some data about a custom post type. Because of the nature of the data it didn’t make sense to try and shoehorn it into the post meta table as a serialized array. Instead, creating a custom table to store it was the better approach. We want our customers to be able to download the latest version of the plugin at the time their license expired. We use WooCommerce to sell our WordPress plugins, but that only stores the current product version in post meta.
To implement this functionality we need to store all of the versions for a plugin with the date they were released, and the zip filename. The custom table structure would look like this:
CREATE TABLE `wp_woocommerce_software_product_versions` (
`id` bigint(20) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
`product_id` bigint(20) NOT NULL,
`version` varchar(200) COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_520_ci DEFAULT NULL,
`filename` varchar(200) COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_520_ci DEFAULT NULL,
`date_released` datetime NOT NULL DEFAULT ‘0000-00-00 00:00:00’,
`created_at` timestamp NOT NULL DEFAULT ‘0000-00-00 00:00:00’,
`updated_at` timestamp NOT NULL DEFAULT ‘0000-00-00 00:00:00’,
PRIMARY
Source: https://managewp.org/articles/18153/managing-wordpress-custom-tables-with-an-acf-repeater-field

source https://williechiu40.wordpress.com/2018/11/29/managing-wordpress-custom-tables-with-an-acf-repeater-field/

Interview: Sam Milo from FixRunner

FixRunner is a company that specializes in maintenance and support of WordPress websites. One of their strong points is that the company provides very fast and high-quality service. At Fixrunner, there are fifteen employees and eight of them are located in the central office in Belgrade, while the rest are in different countries including the USA and Israel. Fixrunner is an idea that Sam Milo first had in 2013. Back then he was doing a lot of SEO for his own affiliate websites, but also for clients.
However, at that time, Sam wasn’t completely dedicated to this company since he was in the affiliate and SEO business. But, in late 2015, he felt that he needed to commit more to things he likes doing and not keep doing SEO just for the money the industry had to offer. So, Sam started selling all his other online activities, and from February 2016 he completely switched the attention to FixRunner. Immediately, the business started growing rapidly, and he felt confident the company is going in the right direction.
Sam is 39 years old, married, and has three boys. Today he’s working full time at Fixrunner, and he is mostly busy with management task and sales. Running a 24/7 support
Source: https://managewp.org/articles/18152/interview-sam-milo-from-fixrunner

source https://williechiu40.wordpress.com/2018/11/29/interview-sam-milo-from-fixrunner/

WP Project Manager PRO – Must Have for Team Efficiency Lovers

From a very young age, we’ve been taught to work in groups. It starts with task groups in school, evolves into team study projects at college and reaches its final stage in work-oriented departments when we’re working as adults. Through all this, the biggest responsibility falls on the team leader who has the daunting task of managing his co-workers and their tasks, as well as taking into account everything is done correctly in the allotted time and keeping track of the big picture at all times. In 2018 we find ourselves removed from the “whiteboard and marker” way of doing things.
Team members are not confined to the same space anymore, they can easily span cities, countries or even continents. Because of this, new tools are required to keep everything going smoothly
Tools that are, at the same time, easy to use for those not versed and robust and complex enough for who are advanced or even expert users.
From the tone it’s easy to come to the conclusion we’re edging to the technical side of project management – this is a site primarily aimed at web developers/users after all. Using an online project manager everybody has access to, apart from
Source: https://managewp.org/articles/18151/wp-project-manager-pro-must-have-for-team-efficiency-lovers

source https://williechiu40.wordpress.com/2018/11/29/wp-project-manager-pro-must-have-for-team-efficiency-lovers/

Is it Time to Move on From WordPress?

Source: https://managewp.org/articles/18150/is-it-time-to-move-on-from-wordpress

source https://williechiu40.wordpress.com/2018/11/29/is-it-time-to-move-on-from-wordpress/

Effective Amazon SEO: What to know when shifting ad budgets to Amazon

Sources from the ad industry have shone a light on how fast Amazon ad budgets are growing. Reports from various media agencies show that brands have been moving up to 50 percent of their previous Google search spend to Amazon ads. With shifting budget comes the need for more intentional Amazon SEO.

A report by Jumpshot notes that what used to be Google’s share of product searches just three years ago is now Amazon’s and vice versa. The report says that by 2018, 54 percent of product searches began on Amazon compared to those that began on Google, at 46 percent. Granted, shoppers who found products through Amazon took relatively longer to make a purchase. Additionally, Google has a more diverse field for advertisers to play on — YouTube in particular.

Nonetheless, Amazon is proving to be a serious contender in the Google-dominated space. To marketers, this means the work is only beginning when it comes to optimizing product copy for Amazon’s algorithm, Amazon A9.

Amazon is being used for product discovery

This trend shows that Amazon is becoming a center for product discovery. On the other hand, Google is being used to validate the purchase. To understand the pricing, quality standards or brands, consumers still have to turn to Google.

According to Jumpshot, almost 90 percent of product views on Amazon result from search and not advertising, product aggregators or merchandising.

As a brand, now you know that most of your customers are searching for your product on Amazon right now. They don’t have time for banners and merchandising placements. They type in a product name, and within seconds, they have what they need. To be found on Amazon, you’ll have to understand Amazon SEO.

How to be found using Amazon SEO

Here’s how Amazon describes its search process:

Our work starts long before a customer types a query. We’ve been analyzing data, observing past traffic patterns, and indexing the text describing every product in our catalog before the customer has even decided to search. As soon as we see the first keystroke, we’re ready with instant suggestions and a comprehensive set of search results.

In simpler terms, Amazon’s algorithm considers the best selling products, those that have brought visitors back to the site and their relevance to the searcher’s intent.

Bringing it all together: You need product views to generate more views. Huh!

Understand Amazon’s ranking factors

If the goal is to be found by matching the buyer intent, then you just have to find the right keywords and sneak them in your product copy. Right? Sadly, that’s not the case.

Amazon’s A9 takes into account several factors, which may be a clue to how you can improve your ecommerce sales in 2019. According to Amazon, once relevance is established (through keywords), two main factors further influence product ranking:

– conversion rate and

– sales velocity.

Amazon goes on to explain that factors such as Best Sellers Rank (BSR) and customer reviews don’t count. However, you’ll find they do count, considering these are among the factors that increase conversion rate and sales velocity on the site. Remember, the more easily you can be found, the more views you can potentially gain, which should result in higher ranking.

The following is a list of factors impacting your ranking on Amazon.

1. Relevance

Relevance is used to describe how appropriate the product suggestion is to the context of the search. Generally, the searcher’s intent is manifested in the keywords they use.

Thus, a great way to establish relevance is to use relevant keywords in the product copy. This includes the product description, product features and specifications and brand number (for the more savvy customers).

2. Best sellers rank

Within the product listing, Amazon assigns a value that shows how well that product is selling compared to others within the same category. It’s called the Best Sellers Rank, and Amazon updates it every hour.

It’s an automatically updated value that can be useful to you as a marketer. You can use it to understand your competitors better. By constantly checking how competing products are performing, you can see whom you’re up against and what they’re doing right.

3. Customer reviews

While customer reviews may not directly influence A9, they can improve other areas that boost ranking.

As customers research your product category, they are likely to look for information in the reviews section. More than 90 percent of online shoppers read reviews before making a purchase. And 85 percent trust online reviews as much as they do personal recommendations, according to research by BrightLocal.

To get good reviews, ask your customers for them — once you deliver great customer service.

4. Customer satisfaction

A9 probably does not use customer satisfaction as a ranking factor, but actions of satisfied customers can help align your product with the intent of a future customer.

For instance, when a customer is satisfied and they come back to not just Amazon but your product page, it shows the site you’re generating traffic for them. This, as you’ve seen, is important to Amazon when ranking products like yours. If the customer buys from you again, your BSR goes up. If you have many customers doing this, your conversion rate increases; your BSR remains on top; and you generate significant traffic for Amazon.

Thus, customer satisfaction can influence Amazon ranking.

Conclusion

Amazon SEO doesn’t stop with optimizing your product copy so A9 can find the product. It’s about ranking on the first page of results because 70 percent of Amazon shoppers won’t explore beyond that.

To raise your position, you have to understand how Amazon ranks you. But you have to go deeper than the obvious. You have to know what influences A9. And this includes the product relevance determined by its copy, how frequently people buy your product compared to the products of your competitors, customer reviews and customer satisfaction.

The post Effective Amazon SEO: What to know when shifting ad budgets to Amazon appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

source https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/11/28/amazon-seo-ad-budgets/

Freemius Release Notes – Users Management Dashboard, and more

Release Notes is our periodic update that highlights the recent product improvements we’ve made, so you can easily stay up-to-date on what’s new. Here’s what we launched between April 2018 and November 2018. During the past six months we’ve shipped many powerful new capabilities, including several essential features which many of you have been waiting for:
Users Management Dashboard
Premium Changelog and Readme.txt
Customization of the Premium Slug / Folder-Name
The ability to offer Free Trials without a payment method from your site
I’m not going to cover all of it, only the major releases.
Users Management Dashboard
We are super proud to announce our fully-featured and reactive Embeddable Users Management Dashboard. Just to give you some background, our UX methodology is all about keeping things within the comfort zone of the WP Admin. Up until a few months ago, customers and users could only manage their account within their WP Admin. That was great, as long as they had the plugin or theme installed and activated on their site, but if they had to take actions, like canceling a subscription after the product has already been deactivated, this usually
Source: https://managewp.org/articles/18149/freemius-release-notes-users-management-dashboard-and-more

source https://williechiu40.wordpress.com/2018/11/28/freemius-release-notes-users-management-dashboard-and-more/

How to Stop Search Engines from Crawling a WordPress Site

Recently, one of our users asked us how they can stop search engines from crawling and indexing their WordPress site? There are many scenarios when you would want to stop search engines from crawling your website or listing it in search results. In this article, we will show you how to stop search engines from crawling a WordPress site.

Why and Who Would Want to Stop Search Engines

For most websites, search engines are the biggest source of traffic. You may ask, why would anyone want to block search engines?

When starting out, a lot of people don’t know how to create a local development environment or a staging site. If you’re developing your website live on a publicly accessible domain name, then you likely don’t want Google to index your under construction or maintenance mode page.

There are also many people who use WordPress to create private blogs, and they don’t want those indexed in search results because they’re private.

Also some people use WordPress for project management or intranet, and you wouldn’t want your internal documents being publicly accessible.

In all the above situations, you probably don’t want search engines to index your website.

A common misconception is that if I do not have links pointing to my domain, then search engines will probably never find my website. This is not completely true.

There are many ways search engines can find a website linked elsewhere. For example:

1. Your domain name could have been previously owned by someone else, and they still have some links pointing to your website now.
2. Some domain search site’s results could get indexed with your link on them.
3. There are literally thousands of pages with just list of domain names, your site can appear on one of those.

There are a lot of things happening on the web and most of them are not under your control. However, your website is still under your control, and you can instruct search engines to not index or follow your website.

Blocking Search Engines from Crawling and Indexing Your WordPress Site

WordPress comes with a built-in feature that allows you to instruct search engines not to index your site. All you need to do is visit Settings » Reading and check the box next to Search Engine Visibility option.

When this box is checked, WordPress adds this line to your website’s header:

<meta name='robots' content='noindex,follow' />

WordPress also modifies your site’s robots.txt file and add these lines to it:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

These lines ask robots (web crawlers) not to index your pages. However, it is totally up to search engines to accept this request or ignore it. Even though most search engines respect this, some page or random image from your site may get indexed.

How to Make Sure Your Site Doesn’t Appear in Search Results?

The default WordPress visibility settings instruct search engines not to index your website. However, search engines may still end up crawling and indexing a page, file, or image from your website.

The only way to to make sure that search engines don’t index or crawl your website at all is by password protecting your entire WordPress site on the server level.

This means when anyone tries to access your website, they are asked to provide a username and password even before they reach WordPress. This includes search engines as well. Upon login failure, they are shown 401 error and the bots turn away. Here is how to password protect an entire WordPress site.

Method 1: Password Protecting an Entire Site using cPanel

If your WordPress hosting provider offers cPanel access to manage your hosting account, then you can protect your entire site using cPanel. All you have to do is log in to your cPanel dashboard and then click on ‘Password Protect Directories’ icon under the ‘Security’ section.

Next, you will need to choose the folder where you have installed WordPress. Usually, it is the public_html folder.

If you have multiple WordPress sites installed under public_html directory, then you need to click on the folder icon to browse and select the folder for the website you want to password protect.

On the next screen, you need to enter a name for the protected directory and click on the ‘Save’ button.

Your information will be saved and cPanel will reload the page. After that, you need to add an authorized user by entering a username and password.

That’s all, you have successfully added password protection to your WordPress site.

Now, whenever a user or search engine visits your website they will be prompted to enter the username and password you created earlier to view the site.

Method 2: Password Protecting WordPress with a Plugin

If you are using a managed WordPress hosting solution, sometimes you don’t have access to cPanel.

In that case, you have the option to use different WordPress plugins to password protect your website. Below are the two most popular solutions:

1. SeedProd – it’s the #1 coming soon and maintenance mode plugin for WordPress, used on over 800,000+ websites. It comes with complete access control and permissions features that you can use to hide your website from everyone including search engines. We have a step by step how-to guide for SeedProd.
2. Password Protected – it’s a very simple way to password protect your WordPress site with a single password (no user creation needed). See our step by step guide on how to password protect a WordPress site.

We hope this article helped you stop search engines from crawling or indexing your WordPress site. You may also want to see our ultimate step by step WordPress security 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 Stop Search Engines from Crawling a WordPress Site appeared first on WPBeginner.

source https://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/how-to-stop-search-engines-from-crawling-a-wordpress-site/

How Many Issues Are Acceptable for Gutenberg’s Release?

We are finally (barring any last-minute delays) approaching the time when WordPress 5.0 is released. With it comes a certain new editor that has drummed up quite a lot of debate along the way. Unless you’ve been hiding under that proverbial rock for the past two years, you know that Gutenberg is going to transform WordPress the minute it’s merged into core. Of course, this process would go off-script without some last-minute drama. There have been a number of calls from some in the community (including yours truly) to further delay Gutenberg in order to squash some bugs.
Speaking from my own experience using the editor, the bugs tend to be minor annoyances. I’ve found that some tasks aren’t very intuitive while others seem to be missing altogether when compared to the Classic Editor.
Add all of these little annoyances up and it makes for a sometimes-frustrating user experience. But this doesn’t mean that Gutenberg is fatally flawed. It just needs more time to ripen on the vine.
A Rush to the Presses
Gutenberg has been on the WordPress community’s radar since early 2017. In the time since, a lot of potential release dates were proposed. Therefore,
Source: https://managewp.org/articles/18148/how-many-issues-are-acceptable-for-gutenberg-s-release

source https://williechiu40.wordpress.com/2018/11/28/how-many-issues-are-acceptable-for-gutenbergs-release/

40+ WordPress Maintenance & Support Services Roundup

You’ve decided to hire a WordPress maintenance company and stop wasting time fixing your site every time a new version of WordPress comes out? Smart decision! After some googling it seems like there are dozens of nearly the same companies, offering the same “best” service for the same low price. Wrong! We thought so too, but after comparing 40+ WordPress maintenance services, it’s obvious there are vast differences between the companies. Some data we got is astonishing and sheds new light on the entire WordPress maintenance business. Get the best service for your buck by accurately comparing maintenance services based on your precise needs. You’re busy, right? Let’s not keep you waiting;
• Learn how much money you’re losing by doing maintenance on your own
• Filter through 40+ companies to find the best one for you
• See who we recommend
I just click “update everything” and … it’s all good!
That’s an understandable approach. In most cases, it works out fine. It’s also a calculated risk you’re obviously willing to take. That’s the bottom line here – risk and consequences of
Source: https://managewp.org/articles/18147/40-wordpress-maintenance-support-services-roundup

source https://williechiu40.wordpress.com/2018/11/28/40-wordpress-maintenance-support-services-roundup/

Paths to Learning Web Development

Computer programming is a vast and complex field. For those interested in the ins and outs of engineering, determining a path to learning relevant information can seem incredibly daunting. Even once you narrow your focus to a particular area of the field, there is far more information out there than you can possibly master. Newcomers frequently proclaim, “I don’t even know where to begin!” This guide aims to provide direction and help you discover the right paths for learning web development.
The Circle of Knowledge
Before we begin, let’s discuss briefly what I like to call the Circle of Knowledge (aka, the generalized way in which I like to think about knowledge acquisition). Consider the following image:
For the purpose of this article, let’s assume you are interested in learning to build your first website. In the Circle of Knowledge, the outer edge broadly establishes the topic of Web Development. The inner circles define your level of familiarity with the general topic’s more specific subtopics. These interior circles divide your understanding of the larger topic into three sections: topics you know (or think you know), topics you have heard
Source: https://managewp.org/articles/18146/paths-to-learning-web-development

source https://williechiu40.wordpress.com/2018/11/27/paths-to-learning-web-development/

WordPress Page Builder Performance Comparison – Barrel Roll

After two years of development, Gutenberg (and its delivery device, WordPress 5.0) are nearly upon us and people are not happy about it. 900+ one star reviews are a clear indication that it’s not exactly beloved by the community, but those are primarily focused on its lack of polish in the user interface, missing functionality, and poor documentation. We’ve been wondering; how does Gutenberg fare in the performance department?
Back in August, we conducted a poll asking folks what their favorite WordPress page builder plugin was. We’ve compared some of the most popular plugins with Gutenberg and the Classic Editor to see how their performance stacks up.
What We Tested
In thinking about the best way to setup this test, we tried to come up with the most likely use-case scenarios for a typical WordPress user who might use a page builder rather than letting the theme handle design. We kept it simple, choosing a large featured image, four smaller featured images, and some text blocks. This was a design we could easily (well, except in Gutenberg) replicate and should be a good example of how a typical post or page might work.
WordPress 4.9
We started with a baseline test
Source: https://managewp.org/articles/18145/wordpress-page-builder-performance-comparison-barrel-roll

source https://williechiu40.wordpress.com/2018/11/27/wordpress-page-builder-performance-comparison-barrel-roll/

7 things that hurt your SEO rankings and how to fix them

The top listing in Google’s organic search results draws 33 percent of traffic while the second spot garners 18 percent, a study by online ad network Chitika confirms.

After that, it’s a fight to see who secures enough traffic, and of course, in this sort of scenario you need all the help you can get.

Being penalized by Google and experiencing a drop in SEO rankings is one of the worst things that can happen to a website. Now, fluctuations are par for the course, especially considering the rapidly evolving Google algorithms.

When your search rankings take a huge tumble, you need to adopt a proactive approach before your site gets lost organic search obscurity. And this “approach” involves fixing the seven cardinal SEO mistakes listed below:

1. Avoid keyword stuffing

Use the same keywords repeatedly? You might want to stop! Of course, if it is necessary for your content to make sense, then you’ve got no other choice. But if you seek to optimize your copy in this manner, then you’re in for a rude awakening.

Not only does it discourage visitors from reading or interacting with your content but it signals the search engines that you’re attempting to outsmart their algorithms. And that is not something Google takes lightly.

The above comic strip reimagines keyword stuffing as part of a normal conversation. See how many times the man uses “lunch,” “fine,” “talking funny,” and “mean” in the 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd, and 4^th panels, respectively. If it’s THIS irritating in regular dialog, imagine how your readers would feel reading content like this.

https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/724/21695308292_443d1a2570_b.jpg

Use an online tool like Live Keyword Analysis or Addme.com to calculate the keyword density. Remove excess keywords to keep your density around 1.5 percent. Mention your keywords in the title, the description, your opening paragraph, and once or twice in the body of your content. Make sure it all sounds natural. That should do the trick and help you regain some of your lost SEO rankings.

2. Check your website speed

Almost half of the online users expect a web page to load within 2 seconds or less, and they abandon your website if it does not load in 3 seconds, revealed a survey by Akamai and Gomez.com. So, ensure quick load times for your website by leveraging browser caching, optimizing images, minifying codes, and activating resource compression. A

chieve all this by using a free tool like PageSpeed Insights from Google to determine the current speed of your website. Also, look at the actionable recommendations offered by the tool to increase your load times.

Source: CWC

3. Never buy links

Give your website enough time to become successful. Creating good content is hard work but it pays off in the end. Resort to shortcuts and you get penalized.

One of these no-no shortcuts involves buying backlinks, especially from unreliable sources. As soon as Google finds out, they cut your rankings significantly. 22 percent of web admins still buy links without disclosure, according to a survey.

So, the next time you spot an SEO ad promising hundreds of links along with a first page ranking for a ridiculously low price, ignore it. Links from social networking accounts and spammy, untrustworthy sites hurt your website. A few of these companies claim to protect you by creating a “link pyramid” or “link wheel” that point to an intermediary page.

The truth is, these might work for some time, but as Google continues to evolve and deal more strictly with spam content, they will learn about this practice and shut you down.

4. Become mobile friendly

With Google prioritizing a mobile-first approach, make sure your website is mobile friendly. According to Google, 85 percent of all websites in mobile search results now adhere to the mobile-friendly label. Become a part of the trend and enjoy a smooth flow of traffic.

Otherwise, if your site is not responsive and people are unable to view you on tablets and smartphones, then not only will your rankings suffer, but your customer inquiries and conversions will too. That’s because users will leave your website and visit one that actually fits this requirement.

Use tools like Screenfly by Quicktools to check whether your site is responsive or not. If not, use another tool like Bmobilized to convert your existing pages.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f6/Wikipedia_%22Encyclopedia%22_article_on_a_large_Android_phone%2C_2015-04-16.jpg

5. Get rid of ads

Recent changes made to AdSense rules by Google indicate that stricter rules are going to be put in place for sites “with more advertising than publisher-provided content.” So, if you’ve been indulging in this practice, get ready to bid your SEO rankings goodbye.

Ads prompt users to leave your website and impacts your experience metrics. Once your user experience metrics become critically low, it is usually a sign to Google that your website holds no value for your visitors. They will demote you over time.

Plus, ads have led to the rise of ad blocking. In fact, a report by Adobe and PageFair concluded that the approximate loss of worldwide Internet revenue because of blocked advertising in 2015 was $21.8 billion. So, unless you want to be penalized without any payoff, all you need to do is get rid of the ads and your site will be fine.

6. Handle technical issues immediately

Technical problems like network outages, poor hosting, slow connectivity, and server downtime can affect your site rankings.

If Google constantly abandons attempted crawls on your site, in due time, your SEO rankings will go down. Of course, short server outages don’t matter, but if it becomes a regular occurrence, then you need to look for a new host.

Identify the problem first. This might not be easy, but it becomes quite obvious if your site goes down every 10 minutes. Or, use an online tool like Downforeveryoneorjustme to check whether your page is up or down. Determine if the problem lies with your host and not your Internet plan. You will find plenty of decent web hosting options, like Liquidweb.

7. Maintain the quality of your guest posts

Guest blogging can be a great tool for SEO and lead generation. Unfortunately, as of 2015, only 6 percent of bloggers published original content as guest posts. That’s a dismal number when you consider what an amazing way it is to give your website an edge against the competition.

Use scraping tools like the one from Guestpost.com to conduct automatic scrapes of every website that accepts guest posts related to your keywords. However, when it comes to your own website, make sure you accept only high-quality guest posts.

Feature fresh writers on your site and post original and relevant content that appeals to your audience. Also, make sure you maintain a balance between content produced from the site and content offered to your page in lieu of an author bio and a link.

Source: https://cdn.searchenginejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/low-quality-guest-post.png

Final words

If you want to survive the virtual world and stay relevant, then you need to focus on raising your SEO rankings. Follow the steps given above to help you fix bad SEO and regain your rankings.

The post 7 things that hurt your SEO rankings and how to fix them appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

source https://searchenginewatch.com/2018/11/27/seo-rankings-7-things-fix/

How to Bulk Delete WordPress Posts (2 Easy Solutions)

Do you want to bulk delete WordPress posts? WordPress makes it super easy to manage posts from the admin area. However, if you want to delete a lot of posts then selecting and deleting them may take some time. In this article, we will show you two quick and easy solutions to bulk delete WordPress posts from your blog.

Method 1. Bulk Delete WordPress Posts without Plugin

This method is easier and is recommended for all users. It uses the built-in WordPress functionality to quickly select a large number of posts and delete them.

First, you need to visit Posts » All Posts page. From here you can click on the bulk select box on top to select all posts displayed on the page.

If you don’t want to delete all of the selected posts, then you can now go ahead and uncheck those posts. Otherwise, you can click on the ‘Bulk Options’ drop-down menu and select ‘Move to Trash’ option.

Next, you need to click on the ‘Apply’ button to delete selected posts.

WordPress will now move the selected posts to trash.

Using this default method, you can only select 20 posts at a time. What if you wanted to delete hundreds of posts?

Simply click on the ‘Screen Options‘ button at the top right corner of the screen. This will bring a pull-down menu where you need to change the ‘Number of items per page’ to any number you want.

Next, click on the Apply button and WordPress will display the number of posts you selected earlier. You can now go ahead and bulk delete posts as described above.

Note: Deleted posts will be moved to WordPress trash and will remain there for 30 days. After that, they will be permanently deleted from your WordPress database.

Bulk Delete Posts by Specific Author or Category

Now let’s suppose you want to delete posts filed under a specific category / tag or written by a specific author? You can simply click on the author, category, or tag links to display posts associated with them.

For example, clicking on the ‘News’ category will show you the list of posts filed under that category. You can then select the posts and move them to trash by using the Bulk Options menu.

Method 2: Bulk Delete WordPress Posts using a Plugin

The default bulk delete options are quite adequate for most users. However, there are some cases where you may need more options to quickly select specific posts and then bulk delete them.

For example, if you want to delete posts filed within last few days or posts older than a certain number of days?

Luckily, there is a plugin that lets you bulk delete posts using advanced filters.

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

Upon activation, go to Bulk WP » Bulk Delete Posts page in your WordPress admin area to delete posts. The plugin offers multiple ways to filter and select posts that you want to delete.

You can filter posts by duration, select posts published in last x days, delete them instantly without sending to trash, and even schedule to delete later.

As you scroll down further in the settings screen, you will find more options to select and delete posts by categories, custom taxonomies, custom post types, and more.

Bulk Delete can also be used to bulk delete comments, pages, users, and custom fields.

We hope this article helped you learn how to easily bulk delete WordPress posts using these two methods. You may also want to see our list of the best WordPress plugins for business websites.

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 Bulk Delete WordPress Posts (2 Easy Solutions) appeared first on WPBeginner.

source https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-bulk-delete-wordpress-posts/