Tag Archives: WordPress

Best Tips to Manage and Grow a WordPress Blog

Tips To Manage And Grow A WordPress Blog

The biggest misconception people about starting a WordPress blog is that once you’ve built it, you’re done.

Here’s the thing, if you want to make sure that your WordPress blog reaches a bigger audience and be successful, then you need to know how to manage it properly.

Just because you’ve built your blog on a WordPress platform and designed it with an awesome looking theme, doesn’t mean that you can just sit back and relax.

Once you’ve launched your website, you need to get started on the ongoing task of managing and maintaining your website to keep it secure, updated, and relevant.

Tips to manage and grow your WordPress blog

Tackling all the tasks is not difficult but it will require some effort on your part. If you’re ready to get started, then read on for the tips you need to know in order to manage and grow your WordPress blog.

Manage your content

The great thing about WordPress is that it lets you manage and update your content easily. This lets you focus on the hard part of making your blog grow, which is to create quality content and sharing it with a wide audience.

By doing that, you will have a website that encourages users to visit more regularly and will increase your visibility on search engines. The main parts that you should be thinking about when it comes content management are how regularly you publish content and how you share those content.

Publishing content should be done regularly. If you want people to keep visiting your site and for search engines to keep finding it, you have to post content on a regular basis.

Set up a publishing schedule that you can realistically follow. If you got a bunch of ideas, write them up but don’t publish them all immediately.

Instead, schedule them to post at regular intervals (i.e. 2 articles per week) to maintain activity on your website and keep visitors coming back for more content.

Getting your content out is only half the work. The next part is to tell people about it and there are a couple of ways that you can do this.

For starters, you can get people to subscribe to your blog or website and notify them via email plugins, such as MailPoet, to alert your subscribers when you post a new content or to send daily or weekly newsletter.

Social media is also another great way to raise awareness about your content. Use tools and plugins such as HootSuite, ShareThis, and Ultimate Facebook to plan your social media posts.

Optimize your WordPress blog

Having quality content is important but you also need to make sure that your WordPress blog is working on all cylinders to give your visitors the best user experience possible when they load up your website.

That means making sure that everything on your WordPress website is fully optimized and up to date, including all the plugins as well.

WordPress often release updates for different reasons such as bug fixes, security patches, and enhancements. It’s important that you update your WordPress as older versions can be exploited due to security vulnerability and you wouldn’t want that to happen to your blog.

Minor updates for WordPress are done automatically but major updates will require you to manually install it, so check on your WordPress installs regularly to see if there are any major releases.

Similarly, for plugins and themes, make sure that you keep all of them updated as well. Again, the main reasons for an update are usually for feature enhancements, bug fixes, security patches, and compatibility with the latest version of WordPress.

Updating plugins and themes is easy enough on WordPress. They will usually show any themes or plugins that require an update on the Dashboard. You can even head to the Updates screen to check as well and install from there.

Speed everything up

Performance and speed is an integral part of a website’s success. Before you can even consider about making your website grow bigger, you need to make sure that the performance and speed are up to par, because nothing will make people abandoned your page faster than a slow loading site.

In 2010, Google announced website speed would have an impact on web search ranking. The speed that visitor visits your site from the search result would be a factor.  How can you speed things up?

There are a number of ways that you can utilize to improve your website’s speed but the most important one is to use a good hosting provider. Do research on which hosting companies are the best web hosting for WordPress and look for hosting plans that are tailored specifically for WordPress users.

Another thing that you can do to improve your website’s performance and speed is to use caching plugins. Caching will generally speed up your load page times by having your general static data downloaded into the user’s browser instead of fetching it back from your database.

Some of the more popular caching WordPress plugins are the W3 Total Cache and WP Super Cache. While both are fairly easy to use, you need to test which ones will work best for your website and its needs.

Use themes and plugins wisely

Themes and plugins are useful tools that you can use to grow and manage your website easier. While reliability and security should be the first things to consider before installing one, you should also find themes and plugins that will make it easier for you to manage, update, and create on your website.

Of course, that does not mean you should start installing plugins and themes that you think will help with site management. Rather, you need to see whether the plugins or themes are easy to work with, quick to install, and won’t require extra work on your part.

Premium WordPress themes such as SKT Themes offers great designs while still being reliable and secure. Plus, they are easy to install and administer as they are created from the ground up to work with WordPress.

A good rule of thumb for using plugins is to choose the ones that are efficient and won’t slow down your site. Since there are thousands of plugins available in WordPress, you can pick and choose the ones that fit your needs.

Dan Norris, the co-founder of WP Curve recommends 20 plugins for a WordPress site. A number of issues might arise such as performance, speed, and security if you do not maintain them well.

If you find that the plugin is slowing your blog down, make sure that it is up to date and if it is, then you might need to consider an alternative plugin.

It is worth noting that plugins aren’t always the cause for bad site performance: the myth has been that more plugins installed will slow your site, but the reality is that it depends on the performance and size of the plugin itself.

Conclusion

After launching your blog, you can’t just sit back and relax, waiting for visitors to come. There’s a lot of management that you still need to do if you want your blog to grow and become successful.

Managing a WordPress blog is not particularly difficult but it can be a lot of work. But, if you do it well and you follow the tips above, then you will have a high performing, secure site that engages with its audiences and achieves the objectives you’ve set in place.

WordPress Need File And Folder Permissions

How to Fix File and Folder Permission Errors in WordPress

WordPress is by far one of the most user-friendly content management systems for creating websites and blogs. The reasons why WordPress is popular are many, however, this isn’t to say that it doesn’t come with its own share of problems. For example, sometimes you may run into an error message regarding file and folder permissions.

Why Does WordPress Need File And Folder Permissions?

You see, all the files in your WordPress website are actually on a computer run by your WordPress hosting company known as the server. This server, through the use of some special software, manages all your files and serves them to the browser.

For WordPress to manage all the files and folders on the server, it needs specific permissions. Without proper permissions, the CMS won’t be able to read, run or modify any of the files hosted on your server.

Now sometimes, due to whatever reason, these file permissions might get changed. This will prevent you from creating folders, uploading images or even running scripts on your website. It could even compromise your WordPress site’s security.

Even though issues with file permissions can cause many problems, luckily all of them can also be quickly resolved. For the purpose of this read, we will be providing you with a step-by-step guide on how to fix files and folders permissions errors in WordPress.

So without further ado, let’s get started!

How To Fix File and Folder Permission Errors?

Do remember to backup your WordPress website before going through any of these steps. In case, something goes wrong, the backup will make sure that your site doesn’t get jeopardized.

Step 1: Access Your WordPress Directory

You can do this either through a cPanel or an FTP Client.

  • By Using cPanel

If your hosting provider offers a Control Panel (cPanel), then accessing the root folder will be a piece of cake. All you have to do is log in to your WordPress cPanel – the login credentials should have been provided by your hosting provider. Next, search for the ‘File Manager.’ Once inside look for three specific folders – wp-admin, wp-content, and wp-includes.

Access Your WordPress Directory

  • By Using FTP Client

Since some users might not have the privileges of a cPanel, the same can also be done by using an FTP Client. Access your site’s server using the FTP client and search for the same three folders we did before – wp-admin, wp-content, and wp-includes. These folders can generally be found inside ‘public_html.’

Step 2: Fix The Directory’s Permission Settings

Regardless of which method you use, once you locate the three files, select all three of them and right-click. You should be able to spot ‘File permissions’ or ‘Change permissions’ option in the list of choices that pops up.

Fix The Directory’s Permission Settings

Click on that, and a new pop-up box will open up. Here you should see three attributes – Read, Write, and Execute, each of which is present for three different owner permissions – User, Group, and Public. You can tweak around with this options if you like, but if you don’t know what you are doing it is best to leave them with their default setting.

Fix The Directory’s Permission Settings

What we are actually interested in is the numeric value field down below. This is where we need to insert the number ‘755’ as a measure to solve the problem. These number basically identify the permission levels for the owners we discussed above.

Now once you have inserted the number, down below, you should notice another option. Tick on the ‘Recurse into subdirectories’ options and follow it up by selecting ‘Apply to directories only.’ Next up just click on ‘OK’ and you are done.

Following these steps will now give you full access, and WordPress will be able to read and open folders. However, it will not be able to delete any folders.

Now let’s solve the issue with your files.

Step 3: Fix WordPress File Permission Settings

Previously, you simply selected the three wp folders. Now it’s time to select all the folders and files in the ‘root’ directory. Just press CTRL+A to select all the files and folders, do a right-click, and again click on ‘File permissions’ in the pop-up list.

Fix WordPress File Permission Settings

The same box should appear again. However this time, we won’t be putting in the same numeric values. Instead of ‘755’ type in ‘644’ in the numeric value field.

Fix WordPress File Permission Settings

Once done, this little step will grant you – the owner, the power to read and modify every file. But the visitors and your other group members will only have reading access. Security wise, this is the perfect setting which will reduce security threats and potential hacking attacks.

However, there is one last thing to do before you hit the ‘OK’ button. Like before tick the ‘Recurse into subdirectories’ option, but this time, select ‘Apply to files only.’ Thus, the new setting will only affect your files, and your folders will retain the same options we assigned to them earlier.

Following the above steps should have solved all the file and folder permissions errors you were having. So now it’s time to head on over to your site and check if it worked. Everything should work as it used to and the error you were facing should have disappeared.

However, in case the issue persists, there might be other underlying problems on your website. It is time you get in touch with your hosting provider asap.

What To Do To Avoid Such Issues?

Problems such as these are usually a result of tampering with the core settings of your WordPress website. While WordPress has a user-friendly dashboard, the rule of thumb here is to avoid messing with settings you are not familiar with. And if you need to satisfy your curiosity, avoid experimenting on your main website.

Also, it is advised that you restrict regular users and even collaborators on your website from accessing your WordPress core files. In fact, no one but the administrator should hold the necessary file and folder permissions to modify the site.

Just follow these precautionary steps, and your website should not face this annoying file and folder permissions errors. But if it does, you now know how to fix it!

 

WordPress Hosting Providers

A List of 5 Best Managed WordPress Hosting Providers

WordPress Hosting Providers
WordPress Hosting Providers

The reason behind WordPress being so popular among businesses is the ease of use it offers to the beginners with its free themes and plugins. Building a website in WordPress is no more a difficult task today.

Therefore, there are many businesses that are entering the online world with their well-developed website. But apart from simply building a website, you need to host your website on a server so that it is accessible to all. This is where web hosting comes into the spotlight.

Web hosting is a space that you rent on the server for your website. You can choose any one from shared, dedicated, reseller, VPS, cloud, WordPress, application, and e-commerce hosting depending on your business requirement.

Since you have developed your website with WordPress CMS, it is recommended to select WordPress hosting for your website.

The good news is that the hosting market has become highly competitive. There is an emergence of some new generation WordPress-focused hosting companies that are raising their bar in terms of pricing and performance.

And the bad news is that it is quite tricky to select the one with the best features and packages that would suit your site.

This article will help you find the best managed WordPress hosting features provider that fulfills all your website requirements. Let’s check them:

MilesWeb: India’s Best Managed WordPress Hosting  

WordPress hosting provider
WordPress hosting provider

The first strategic partner of Jetpack in India, MilesWeb was founded in 2012 to offer the world-class hosting services. Started with an aim to support the growing online businesses, the company offers hosting services at affordable cost.

They cater to all types of businesses right from blogging and web development to e-commerce and digital marketing. MilesWeb offers managed WordPress hosting features and their plans start with Ace for personal and hobby sites at Rs.69/mo, Jack for startups and small businesses at Rs.380.25/mo, Queen for pro bloggers at Rs.507/mo and King for growing business websites at Rs.971.75 /mo. They also offer customized WordPress plans, if required. You can also select your preferred server location.

WordPress hosting provider
WordPress hosting provider
WordPress hosting provider
WordPress hosting provider

MilesWeb Managed WordPress Hosting Features:

  • Automatic WordPress Updates
  • Server Level Caching
  • Fast SSD Storage
  • Free SSL Security
  • WordPress Preconfigured
  • Fast Provisioning
  • Secure Email
  • Jetpack Premium/Professional

Technical Features:

  • CloudFlare Railgun
  • HTTPS By Default
  • GZIP/Brotli Compression
  • SFTP Access
  • WP-CLI
  • Dedicated WordPress Support
  • Daily Backups
  • CDN
  • Cloning
  • Server-side Optimizations
  • Caching

Apart from this they also offer 24/7 customer support for resolving the technical issues on the website and they can be reached via live chat, email, and phone. If you are not satisfied with their service, they offer you a 30-day money back guarantee. They also offer you 99.95% uptime.

Bluehost: Optimized WordPress Hosting

WordPress hosting provider
WordPress hosting provider

One of the biggest and most popular web hosts, Bluehost offers optimized WordPress hosting features with an advanced security suite. They have years of experience in making WordPress hosting easier and better and their plans start with Starter Lite at Rs.299/mo, Advanced Lite at Rs.399/mo and Business Lite at Rs.499/mo.

WordPress hosting provider
WordPress hosting provider

Bluehost Optimized WordPress Hosting Features:

  • Instant Scaling
  • Data Mirroring
  • Backup and Security
  • Integrated Caching & CDN
  • Automated Failover
  • Dedicated Support
  • Jetpack Pre-Installed
  • 1-Click WordPress Installation
  • True scalability – single-click upgrade to VPS or dedicated server
  • Enhanced cPanel
  • Standard performance
  • Free SSL certificate included

They offer 24/7 customer support and you can reach them via chat, email, and phone. They also offer 99.9% uptime. They don’t give you a 30-day money back guarantee as well as server location choice with their WordPress plans.

HostGator: WordPress Hosting with 2X Speed

WordPress hosting provider
WordPress hosting provider

Popular for their web hosting services, HostGator offers WordPress hosting for 2X speed and high performance of websites.

Founded in 2003, they offer convenient and simple hosting solution for WordPress users of all levels. Their plans start with Starter at Rs.349/mo, Performance at Rs.419/mo, Business at Rs.559/mo and Professional at Rs.699/mo.  They don’t offer you server location choice.

WordPress hosting provider
WordPress hosting provider

HostGator Managed WordPress Hosting Features:

  • Pre-installed Jetpack
  • Superior Performance
  • Automatic Updates

Technical Features:

  • Blazing Fast Website
  • Blazing Fast Website
  • Advanced Caching
  • Automatic Failover

You can contact their customer support team via chat, email, and phone. They also guarantee 99.9% uptime. But you won’t get money back guarantee on their WordPress hosting plans.

GoDaddy: WordPress Hosting Made Simple and Blazing Fast

WordPress hosting provider
WordPress hosting provider

Well-known as a domain registrar company, GoDaddy also offers web hosting services that power thousands of big websites. Founded in 1997, the company offers quality web hosting services at cheap prices.

Their WordPress hosting plans start with Basic at Rs.99/mo, Deluxe at Rs.229/mo, Ultimate at Rs.449/mo and Developer at Rs.959/mo.  They don’t offer you server location choice.

WordPress hosting provider
WordPress hosting provider

GoDaddy WordPress Hosting Features:

  • Automatic WordPress core software and security updates
  • Malware scan and removal
  • One-click migration tool
  • FREE domain with an annual plan
  • SSH, SFTP and Staging sites available
  • Easy to use interface – Perfect for beginners

They offer a 99.9% uptime guarantee along with 24/7 customer support via live chat and phone. They give you a 30-day money back guarantee if you aren’t satisfied with their service.

Dreamhost: Managed WordPress Hosting for High Performance

WordPress hosting provider
WordPress hosting provider

Dreamhost, high quality managed WordPress hosting features provider, offers both shared and managed WordPress plans. They also offer a dedicated WooCommerce solution.

Their plans start with Starter at Rs.545.89/mo, Basic at Rs.1163.87/mo, Plus at Rs.1713.19/mo and Advanced at Rs.2468.51/mo. They don’t offer server location choice.

WordPress hosting provider
WordPress hosting provider

Dreamhost Managed WordPress Hosting Features:

  • Automatic WordPress Updates
  • WordPress Preconfigured
  • FREE SSL Security
  • Fast SSD Storage
  • Domain Privacy
  • Unlimited Email @ Your Domain
  • Custom Control Panel
  • Web Application Firewall (WAF)
  • Complete Domain Management
  • SFTP Access
  • SSH Access
  • WP-CLI

Additionally, they offer 100% uptime guarantee along with 24/7 customer support via live chat, email, and phone.

How MilesWeb Stands Unique Among All?

  • MilesWeb has become the first Indian hosting company to partner with Jetpack and this actually makes it stand unique from others. Jetpack offers several good features for your website such as displaying high-quality ads on your website, auto-sharing and re-sharing on social media, auto-updating plugins, and securing your website by malware scanning and spams filtering.
  • You get a server location choice with MilesWeb WordPress plans. You can select either India or U.S. as per your preference. Sever location helps in website ranking as well as fast loading.
  • They have already included free SSL certificate in all their WordPress plans. You don’t need to separately buy it.
  • You are allowed to upgrade your WordPress plans.
  • You are allowed to use third-party email service for your domain.
  • If you aren’t satisfied with their service, you can claim for a refund within 30 days of the purchase.

Your Decision…

Finally, after giving you 5 best options for WordPress hosting, you might still get confused. The reality is every provider has its own pros and cons but as you can see MilesWeb offers you all the features that you require for your WordPress website. Their plans start with the lowest price as compared to other hosting providers.

They aim at offering best customer support by actually focusing on customer’s perspective. That’s why MilesWeb is the best. What’s your decision now?

Increase Google Ranking With Website Load Speed

Increase Google Ranking with Website Load Speed

Increase Google Ranking with Website Load Speed (Based on Page Loading Speed)

 

What do you think, what your website load speed should be, in order to attract more traffic? It should be 2 seconds as these days users do not stay on any website which is taking too much time to load. And, one of the most vital facets is the speed of your website also effects ranking to an extent. According to surveys done by Akamai and Gomez.com, nearly half of web users expect a site to load in 2 seconds or less, and they tend to abandon a site that isn’t loaded within 3 seconds. The result of the slow loading speed of your website will adversely affect your sales. It also reduces traffic of your website and inflates bounce rate.

 

That is why website load speed must be faster. You can also check your website load speed. This is plausible with the use of some tools. Google Analytics plugin is now made available with site speed feature. Now with this, you came to know how fast or slow your website page loads. You can also use Page speed online. This tool is introduced by Google itself. With this tool, you can inflate your page speed and also get an overview of high, medium and low priority pages.

 

So, here in this post, we are going to discuss how you can enhance the loading speed of your website. Some of the techniques to abate page load time are listed below.

Website Load Speed
Website Load Speed

 

 

Do not use more redirects:

Redirects are good for making your visitors available with changed structure of your website. And, this way you do not lose search engine rankings as well. But, you have to keep in mind that you do not provide your website with a number of redirects. It will trouble browser and slow it down. As each time it came through a redirect it first has to go to the old destination then the new destination. Hence, be prudent while creating redirects.

 

Exert GZIP compression:

At first, before choosing your web host you have to be assured of one fact. That is you have to ask them that they are using GZIP compression and contraction on their server. You can use these techniques which considerably reduce your website load time by abating page load time. Without compromising the quality of images and videos, you can reduce file size maximum to 70%. You can do it effectively if you are using PHP code. As you can simply put the code for GZIP compression at the top of the page.

 

Maintain your JavaScript and Stylesheets:

Instead of clasping up each and every web pages, have your scripts and CSS loads in external files. It is recommended to put your external JavaScript files close to the tags and external CSS in the portion of your site. As a result, the browser has to load the files only a time rather than visiting each page of your site again and again. And, hence browsers does not hamper in parsing all those requests for external files from the start. In case, if you want to show a name or load an image carousel. Then, JavaScript needs to load on the top of the page.

 

Not Depend on HTML to resize images:

If you have a website with the HTML coding then it is much convenient to spawn compress image. But are you aware of the fact or not? Loading that compressed image does not mean that your website load time will abate. As the browser has to load the entire image, then it will monitor the height and width as you want then resize it accordingly. Hence, you need not think that if you are compressing image then it gets optimized.

 

Image optimization:

You can terrifically reduce image size by exerting Photoshop or fireworks. And, you need not do any strenuous task, just while editing you have to click the option “save for web”. It is just as simple as clicks of buttons. With the use of image quality slider, you can see the visual trade-offs between graphics file size and brevity. If you do not have on your desktop or PC a graphics program, then you can use these two. TinyPNG it is web-based and ImageOptin it works in only Mac. By using this technique you can augment website load speed to a great extent.

 

Content delivery network:

By making use of a Content delivery network, you can reduce page load time. One of the popular and effective content delivery networks is Amazon CloudFront. Depends on the user location of the user, these system serves the pages of your website. Your website will loads faster if there is faster access to a server near your geographical area.

 

If you are using WordPress website then you will be made available with a variety of caching plugins. Here, I am suggesting two of the best caching plugins, to upsurge your website load speed. They are listed below.

 

W3 Total Cache:

This plugin enhances the on-page speed of any WordPress website approximately by 20%. So, the average loading speed of website will reduce to 0.60 seconds. It offers various features so, it is worth to use this plugin on your website. Provides mobile support with AMP(Accelerated mobile pages). Caching is made available for search results pages. Caching statistics for measuring performance insights are also made available.

 

WP Super Cache:

It does not matter your website is having how much traffic and load it will not let down your website. After installing this plugin on your website you will notice a reduction of 0.85 seconds in loading time. But, the speed will be inflated by 28.07%. After doing so many tests it came to know that it is one of the best cache plugins and is a most downloaded plugin. It has been rated 4.2 stars out of 5. As it is available for free so it provides limited support. It is highly useful and it also simplifies the user interface. Works at its optimum with the Content Delivery Network(CDN).

 

Wrap Up:

Although, speed is not the most vital aspect in ranking, yes its effects rankings to some extent. But, speed affects other factors like traffic, bounce rate, brand recognition, and many others. Hence, you have to monitor your website load speed in regular intervals to keep it up to date.