WordPress 5.0 brings with it the biggest change the platform has seen in its entire history. Gutenberg is an editor that’s going to allow for creating pages and posts to be more visual. Here’s our round-up of what makes it different from the current WordPress platform, and why it’s a big deal.



Longtime users of WordPress will notice a change when version 5.0 is released. With the introduction of the new Gutenberg editor, the experience of adding and editing content is going to look quite different than before.

For many, change can be a bit scary. This is especially the case when there’s a major change to something we use so often. Our workflow can be interrupted by having to learn a new way of doing things. It is very much a natural reaction.

But not to worry! More than anything, Gutenberg aims to bring more efficiency and flexibility when it comes to content. And, while the interface is different, it may very well grow on you.

With that, here are some things you’ll need to know about this new editor. We’ll cover why it exists, how it will improve the process of creating content and how it will work with your existing website. Plus, we’ll even provide some information regarding how you can try Gutenberg before WordPress 5.0 comes out.

It Better Reflects the Needs of Modern Websites

When WordPress was first released in 2003, its main purpose was as a blogging platform. In that era, writing a blog post was relatively simple. Content was generally text, with a few photos and hyperlinks thrown in for good measure. The WordPress editor was a perfect fit – a simple box where you could do everything you needed.

But over time, expectations have changed. Users now want to create more diverse types of content – custom mixes of text, multimedia and more advanced design elements. This is something that the “classic” editor doesn’t handle very well. As it stands, it is too easy to inadvertently break surrounding content while trying to add something more complex to a page or post. It also requires us to sometimes edit code – which isn’t a comfortable experience for everyone.

Blocks to the Rescue

Gutenberg, in contrast, does things differently. It enables us to separate different types of content into what they refer to as “blocks”. Each block is a self-contained piece of content. For example, you may create an image block for the top of your page, with a text (aka “Paragraph”) block underneath. If you make a change to the text, it won’t affect the image block – and vice-versa.



There are blocks for several different types of content, including:

Images
Cover Images (meant to take up the entire width of the screen)
Galleries
Audio
Video
Embedded Media (YouTube, Facebook, etc.)
Lists
Headings
Paragraphs
Tables
Widgets

This is just a small taste of what’s available. What’s more, specific themes and plugins may come with their own custom blocks that provide extra functionality. For example, we may eventually see WooCommerce include a “Product” block that lets you easily display product information within a page.

Overall, Gutenberg is a response (perhaps even a necessary one, at that) to the changing needs of websites. Instead of working around the classic editor’s limitations, we’ll now have the flexibility to create content exactly the way we want.

It Should Work With Your Current Theme (and Most Plugins)

Besides its different look, the other concern users have is that Gutenberg will somehow break or simply not work with their current WordPress theme. After all, no one wants to upgrade their website only to have things go haywire.

The good news is that Gutenberg should be compatible with just about every theme. Adding blocks of content should just work without the need to make any changes. There is a small catch, though.



While blocks will work (pardon the pun) “out-of-the-box”, there could be specific types of content that may not look quite as you’d expect. For example, the Cover Image block we mentioned above is meant to stretch across the width of a user’s screen. If your theme isn’t setup to handle full-width images, then you may get something short of that. It may take some custom work to get everything exactly as you’d like it.

Gutenberg and Plugins

For the most part, it is expected that Gutenberg will be compatible with the big plugins out there. But those that also place information on the page/post editor may be displayed on a different part of the screen than you’re used to.

This new setup reserves the vast majority of the edit screen to the content itself, with other settings being moved to a menu on the lower right. Clicking on a title will open it up for tweaking.



Beyond that, it’s worth noting that not every plugin is going to work smoothly with the new editor. So you may see a number of plugins being updated around the time Gutenberg is fully released with WordPress 5.0. Older plugins that have been abandoned may or may not work – the answers will be on a case-by-case basis.

You Have a Choice (For Now)

As we often see with major changes to software, not everyone wants to upgrade. In the case of WordPress, it’s bad practice for security to leave an old version in place. But those who don’t want to use Gutenberg just yet can have it both ways.

The classic WordPress editor will be available as a plugin for the foreseeable future. This means that you can both upgrade to WordPress 5.0 when it becomes available and also keep on using the more familiar editor.

This is not only great news for those who don’t want to change their workflow, it’s also a big deal for those who may need to keep on using the old editor for other reasons. It may be that a certain plugin or customization that is vital to your site’s functionality isn’t Gutenberg-ready. This will at least buy you some extra time.

Granted, we don’t know how long the plugin version of the classic editor will be available. That may very well depend on how many people are using it. It would seem that this alternative setup would be around for quite some time, however.

How to Try Gutenberg Today

If you’re interested in seeing what this new editor can do for you, it’s available as a plugin – that is, until it becomes fully-integrated into WordPress 5.0. It’s not recommended that you use the plugin on your main website. Instead, it’s better to try things out on a separate installation of WordPress if possible.

The plugin version is generally updated once a week, with new features and bug fixes being regularly added in. Those curious enough to try it will see things gradually improve as the editor evolves. Just in the few months that the plugin has been available, there has been a marked improvement in virtually every aspect of the software.

Just remember that, since this is not a fully-finished product, you use it at your own risk.

A Welcome Change

Looking at the whole picture, Gutenberg should be a reason for many WordPress users to feel excited. It’s going to add another dimension to content creation. The new editor will provide everyone with a means to more easily combine different types of content and customize it to meet their needs.

This is a great step forward for users who have felt limited by the classic editor. In fact, you might consider it an opportunity to do more with your website. You can expand the depth of your content without fear of breaking anything – something that wasn’t always possible in the past.

That being said, there will undoubtedly be a few bumps in the road as Gutenberg is sent out into the wild. With the sheer number of possible theme and plugin combinations out there, not everything is going to work perfectly from day one. But any hiccups should improve as time marches on.

And while this new editing experience will take some getting used to, don’t get discouraged. As with any change, there is a learning curve. But the more you use Gutenberg, the more intuitive it becomes.

this company does not place advertisements on your site,

correctguy101:
Won't these "best free" hosts have same things like others?

I mean on 00webhost for example. If one uses their platform, won't the URL carry their own names? something like domainname.00webhost.com?


Didn't use technical terms.

3 Best Free WordPress Hosting Providers Reviews 2018



You are getting ready to build and launch your own website using WordPress this 2018. Everything is coming together quite well, but you still have not found a host for your site.

You want to have a quality host that is reliable, but you also want to save as much money as possible. Fortunately, your search is nearly over. We’ve compiled a list of the three best free WordPress hosting providers you could use in 2018. You can learn more about what each of these can offer and then choose the one that’s right for you.

000WebHost

This is one of the top names in free WordPress hosting, and with good reason. They offer a one-click WordPress auto installer, which should make it nice and easy for you to get your site up and running with them. One of the very best features offered by this company is the fact that even though it is a free service, they do not run ads on your site. You will find that many of the hosting companies offering free services will run ads, so they can offset their cost. Not having ads run on the site can help to give it a more professional appearance. 000webhost.com

This hosting plan includes 1.5GB of storage, along with 100GB of bandwidth. They also have free domain hosting, and five free email accounts for your site. It offers five MySQL databases and five FTP accounts. You will also find a free website builder, but this is not likely necessary if you have a quality template ready to go from WordPress.

AwardSpace



Another top choice for free WordPress hosting is AwardSpace. This company has been around for more than a decade, so you do not have to worry about them suddenly closing up shop and vanishing. They make getting started with WordPress through their hosting services nice and easy thanks to the installer. It will take just a few clicks and then you should be up and running with your site.

awardspace.com

This company offers 1GB of storage space, along with 5GB of bandwidth. They provide one free domain and three subdomains. You will have one free email account and a spam filter, along with one MySQL database and one FTP account. This company does not offer a site builder, but you have so many options with WordPress that this should not be an issue for you at all.

Even though this company night not offer as much space as 000WebHost, they are included here because they are also ad free. You do not have to worry about advertisements cropping up on your page and distracting your visitors.

Byet.host



This company is well-known for providing free WordPress hosting, and they have some nice benefits and features that are often only available with much larger, paid hosts. The hosting tends to be very fast through their servers, and they have a quality auto installer that will take care of your WordPress installation quickly.

byet.host

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They have 1GB of storage, along with 50GB of bandwidth. Byet.host offers five add on domains, five parked domains and subdomains, five free email accounts, an FPT account and five MySQL databases. This site does come with a site builder if needed, but if you are going to be using WordPress, you will probably already have a quality template that you want to use and that will only need a little tweaking to work for your needs.

As with the other options in this article, this company does not place advertisements on the site, so you can be sure it has a professional look for your visitors.

Now that you have a better idea of what options are available with free WordPress hosting, you can choose from one of these three fine options. They have a lot going for them, and it can help you to save quite a bit on the cost of running your site. Just make sure that free hosting will offer you everything you need. You might find that you want to go ahead and find a paid service.

Are There Downsides to Free Hosting?

While getting something for free is always nice, it is important to remember that with paid services, you do tend to get more. We chose the very best free WordPress hosting services here, so you do not have to deal with ads on your site, and you still have plenty of features and options. However, those who want to expand their site and have more space will likely want to find a paid host at some point.

For those who do not need to have as much space for their site, though, this can be a very good option when it comes to getting a host without spending out of pocket for their services.

https://wpbind.com/3-best-free-wordpress-hosting-providers-reviews-2018/

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Hours after WordPress 4.9.3 was released, the WordPress development team followed it up with 4.9.4 to fix a critical bug with the auto update process. The bug generates a fatal PHP error when WordPress attempts to update itself.

This error requires WordPress site owners and administrators to manually update to WordPress 4.9.4 by visiting your Dashboard and clicking the Update Now button on the Updates page. Alternatively, you can update by uploading the files via SFTP or by using WP-CLI.

Dion Hulse, WordPress lead developer, says managed hosts that apply updates automatically for their customers will be able to update sites as they normally do. This may explain why some users have reported that sites running 4.9.3 have automatically updated to 4.9.4 without issue.

The bug stems from an attempt to reduce the number of API calls made when the auto update cron job is run. Unfortunately, the code committed had unintended consequences. “It triggers a fatal error as not all of the dependencies of [
find_core_auto_update() l are met,” Hulse said.

A postmortem will be published once the team determines how to prevent this mistake from happening in the future. “We don’t like bugs in WordPress any more than you do, and we’ll be taking steps to both increase automated coverage of our updates and improve tools to aid in the detection of similar bugs before they become an issue in the future,” Hulse said.

While WordPress 4.9.3 and 4.9.4 do not include any security fixes, it’s important to note that in order to receive automatic security updates in the future, sites using the 4.9 branch must be running at least 4.9.4. Older branches are unaffected.


https://inkmay.com/simple-tips-make-website-interactive-conversion-worthy/

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WordPress 4.9.3 is now available.



This maintenance release fixes 34 bugs in 4.9, including fixes for Customizer changesets, widgets, visual editor, and PHP 7.2 compatibility. For a full list of changes, consult the list of tickets and the changelog.

Download WordPress 4.9.3

https://wordpress.org/download/

or visit Dashboard → Updates and click “Update Now.” Sites that support automatic background updates are already beginning to update automatically.

https://inkmay.com/

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5 BEGINNER-FRIENDLY (AND FREE) TOOLS TO TEST WORDPRESS PERFORMANCE



Want to know how your WordPress site is performing? The internet offers a number of online tools to test website safety and performance, including tools to test WordPress performance specifically.

With most of them, all you need to do is plug in your WordPress site’s URL, and you can quickly gain valuable insights about how well your site is doing.

Free online tools to test your website performance

In this post, we’ll focus on tools that you can use to test WordPress performance for things like:

1, Speed
2, Uptime
3, Malware
4, Search Engine Optimization
5, Mobile Friendliness

Using these tools, you’ll be able to gather data and check your website regularly for weaknesses. You can then use the test results and recommendations to carry out preventive measures or to take corrective action.

1. Tools to test website speed

https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

Google’s PageSpeed Insights analyzes your website for performance issues and tells you where there’s room to improve.

Using this tool to test WordPress performance is downright easy. Simply paste the web page URL of your website on the tool’s homepage and hit enter. PageSpeed accesses the mobile and web page versions separately and checks each page on various parameters.


It returns your score in less than a minute, grading your pages on a scale of 1 to 100, and categorizing them as ‘Good’, ‘Needs Work’ and ‘Poor’. A high score generally translates into better user experience and faster page load times



It doesn’t stop there, it goes on to make specific recommendations to help you optimize your website’s performance. Some recommendations may require professional assistance to implement. But you’ll be glad to know that there are many free plugins that help improve your score, as well as many ways to improve website speed.

One thing to note is that PageSpeed Insights does not actually measure how long it takes your site to load. If you want to measure actual load times, another popular tool to test website speed is Pingdom Website Speed Test. https://tools.pingdom.com/



2. Tools to test website uptime

https://uptimerobot.com/

Sometimes, your website may experience downtime, and it’s likely that you’ll not even know about it. But before you can minimize downtime, you need a way to actually tell how often your site goes down.

Uptime Robot is a free service that does just that. It checks your website every 5 minutes to make sure it’s still available. And if it’s not, it will notify you right away.



Setting up an account is easy. Sign up with an email, verify your account by clicking on a link and you’ll land up on the dashboard.

Next, click Add New Monitor, and you can add any system by furnishing IP or host URL.

To view your uptime stats from within your WordPress Admin screen, install Uptime Robot Plugin for WordPress. You’ll need to paste the API key from your Uptime Robot account in the plugin settings. Stats and logs can then be viewed from any page or widget by placing shortcodes.

You can also test the accessibility of your website right from your Chrome browser by using an extension. The Server Monitor can be added to your browser and used to monitor any number of websites. By merely clicking on the extension in the browser, you’ll be able to view your site’s status. Moreover, if you enable a popup, any change in the status of the URL will immediately show as a popup.

3. Tools to check for malware

https://sitecheck.sucuri.net/

Checking for malware should be a core part of securing your website. But you can also gain by submitting a URL to a quick scan on online scanners such as Sucuri SiteCheck Scanner. Visit Sucuri SiteCheck Scanner, enter the URL of your website and hit the Scan Website button.

The scanner conducts a remote malware scan of your website. It extracts the links, JavaScript files and iframes, and revisits the page as a search engine bot.

It compares all the pages and links against Sucuri’s malware database and reports anomalies. The scan will detect malware, blacklisting, defacing, website errors, and out-of-date software. A report of the malware found is generated, along with recommendations as to how you can fix it.

It’s important to note that the scanner does not access your server, so it’s only able to detect front-facing issues.

If you do not want to run the URL often, you can activate the Sucuri Securityon your website and generate a free API.

Sucuri also offers paid Firewall services as well as malware cleanup.

Another solid option for malware scanning is VirusTotal, where you can upload files or submit URLs to detect malware. Or Quttera Web Malware Scannerwhich detects malware lurking in your website.

4. Tools to help with SEO

https://serpchecker.com/

SERPChecker is part of a set of four SEO tools from Mangools. It’s user-friendly, allowing you to look into your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, offering you an insight into Google SERPs.

You can also use it to check where your site is ranking for certain keywords, which is important because you won’t always get accurate results if you just search on Google (because Google personalizes your search results).

The free account entitles you to 5 lookups per 24 hours and 50 keyword suggestions per search. Visit the tool’s homepage and input your keywords, domain preference and desktop/mobile view, and click Analyze SERP.

Within seconds, you’ll get a detailed look at all the sites ranking for that keyword. It also provides information on 45 SEO metrics, including the number of Facebook shares that the keywords enjoy. You can personalize the report by choosing the metrics that you want to appear by clicking on the Manage Metrics button.

You can also view an actual look of the Google SERP by clicking on the Snapshot tab.

The results can be exported in CSV format for later reference.

For an increase in the number of searches and additional features, you’ll need to create an account and sign up for their paid packages. SERPChecker is not the only SEO tool out there, there are many more free SEO tools available that can help improve your Google rankings.

5. Tool to test mobile friendliness

https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly

Going mobile with your WordPress site is no longer an option given the sheer number of searches initiated from mobile devices. Besides using a responsive theme, there are many things you can do to make your WordPress mobile friendly. And to check if you’ve got it right, you can rely on Google’s Mobile Friendly Test to test WordPress performance on mobile devices.



Using it is simple, just paste the URL of your page to find out if it passes the test. The test results will show if there is any difficulty in accessing the page on a mobile. Besides, it can identify common errors such as small font size or closely placed touch elements.



The results will warn you if external elements such as images and CSS files cannot be loaded. The test result will also include a screenshot of how your website appears to Google on a mobile device.

Wrapping up

With these free tools, you can get a better understanding of your WordPress site’s performance. And that means you can know what’s going well, and where you still need to improve. Give them a try and make your website better today!

And what have you been doing to test WordPress performance so far? Does your website run the way you want it to? Feel free to share in the comments

https://inkmay.com/5-tools-to-test-wordpress-performance/

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SEO Big Mistakes to Avoid When Creating Your New Website

Nowadays, in the era of fierce competition, it is imperative for you to ensure that you begin the search engine optimization of your website at the right time.

You must ensure that you call your search engine optimization expert in the early stages of the web design or the redesign of your website. You might be worried about the initial costs of hiring both specialists together at the beginning of your project, however, in the long run, both of their presences will benefit you!

The following are three common mistakes that website owners make when it comes to hiring a SEO company after the creation of the website:

1, SEO friendly URLs. Most of the time, you will find that your website URLs are not friendly and this can affect the performance of your site on search engines to an extreme extent. In fact, thousands of websites have URLs that adversely affect their search engine rankings. These URLs consist of numbers, letters or even keywords that are not even relevant to their sites and this affects the keywords that they wish to target. They have no value at all in the world of SEO.

There are ways to fix them, and it is essential for you to ensure that you have an SEO professional by your side when it comes to the creation of your website design and its URLs. It would be better if you address them at the outset rather than work on them when the site has already been completed.

2, Irrelevant content will not give you good rankings. If your website has irrelevant content it will not rank on search engines. The reason is that these search engines will not consider your site important enough to feature on its ranks page. This means it is imperative for you to get your web content right from the outset. Every business has a keyword that it must target to attract the right audience.

It is crucial for you to ensure that you target the right keyword in your search engines so that it is properly optimized and saves you time and money. You will find that your website will produce better results, and when people search for queries that are related to your niche, the search engines will crawl and present your site first on their results page.

At the same time, it is imperative for you to update your site with fresh and relevant content at frequent intervals. It is vital for you to use your keywords on the navigation, title pages and the Alt Tags of images. Some business owners overlook this vital part, and this can negatively affect the prospects of their websites.

3, Internal linking- It is equally important for you to ensure that you have an internal linking structure for your website. This is crucial.

When you have the right internal linking structure on your site, you will find that visitors can navigate through your website without any hassles at all. They will be happy if your website is user-friendly and helps them make their purchase quickly. In the event that your site has a very poor internal linking structure, people will not remain on your website for long. This will encourage them to leave your website, and, in the long run, you will suffer as the bounce rate for your site is going to be very high.

Apart from SEO, it is vital for you to focus on website design. The layout and the user experience are important in the creation of a successful web design. When it comes to creating a website, it is crucial for you to ensure that your SEO expert reviews any new design before it goes live.

This will help you to save additional expense when it comes to making corrections at a later stage. It is prudent to hire your SEO expert and web designer from the same company so that they can work hand-in-hand for the success of your website.

https://inkmay.com/3-seo-big-mistakes-avoid-creating-design-new-website/

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Tips for Getting Started with WooCommerce

It takes an understanding of what WooCommerce can (and can’t) do – along with a healthy dose of planning to make sure your site lives up to its potential, so here are some tips to help you.


WooCommerce is quickly becoming the top plugin for creating a WordPress-based eCommerce site. With over 4+ million downloads, its popularity comes from both its ease of use and the companion plugins (or extensions, as Woo calls them) available. This high level of functionality coupled with the ease of use of WordPress makes just about any sort of eCommerce site within your reach.

Still, it takes an understanding of what WooCommerce can (and can’t) do – along with a healthy dose of planning to make sure your site lives up to its potential. Here are some tips to help you start and maintain your site.

What Type of Products Will You Sell?

WooCommerce allows for some great flexibility with the types of products you can sell. Products like digital downloads and products with variations (think t-shirts with different sizes and colors) are fairly easy to setup.


But if you have products that are a bit more complex, such as those that require conditional logic, you’ll need to find an extension that will help you create a product that will function the way you want.

For example, think of buying a custom-built computer. You may want the customer to pick out a motherboard first. After a motherboard is chosen, the customer will then go on to pick a compatible processor and so on. The customer’s first choice will have a direct impact on what options are available next. That kind of functionality is not included in a standard WooCommerce installation.

This type of situation is where planning becomes crucial. Find the right tools to make your store work in the initial stages and save yourself some grief later on!

Choosing the Right Theme

While WooCommerce will mesh pretty well with most themes, your store may really benefit from using a specialized theme that has been customized to take advantage of the plugin.

For example, the standard WooCommerce layout is not fully mobile-device friendly out of the box. So finding a theme like The Retailer, which features a responsive design, will help ensure your store is ready for the all-important mobile traffic coming your way.

Many themes also have other custom features that enhance WooCommerce functionality built-in and without the need for extensions.

Payment and Shipping Options

This one may seem like a pretty obvious topic, but it’s still one worth mentioning. While there are an absolute plethora of payment gateways to choose from, WooCommerce only works with PayPal and the new Simply Commerce by default (not counting bank transfers, checks and COD – which I can’t imagine are that widely used).

The standard PayPal offering may be just fine if your site doesn’t have a lot of budget to start with. But ideally, you’ll want a payment method that keeps customers on your site during the checkout process. It looks more professional and provides a cleaner, less confusing experience for your customers. It is worth noting that these type of payment gateways often require having an SSL certificate installed on your site.

Shipping, I’ve found, is often the most complicated part of things for my clients to figure out. Simple flat rate and table rate shipping is rather easy to setup (table rates do require an extension in WooCommerce) but can sometimes lead to losing some money for orders shipped to faraway locales.

You can certainly use an extension to tie in with just about any shipping provider. But that may be a little more difficult to setup as you’ll most likely need to consider product weights and sizes.

My best advice here is to do what you’re comfortable with and try to at least break even with shipping costs. You certainly don’t want to come off as gouging customers and you of course don’t want to lose a chunk of profit. Do your best to find a happy medium and don’t be afraid to consult a shipping provider if you aren’t sure what to do.

Keep a Daily Routine

Here is where I’ll assume that you don’t have a large, dedicated team hired out to fulfill all of the orders and customer inquiries that you’ll receive while running your WooCommerce site. It’s a big responsibility. Keeping customers happy and orders flowing out the door (and cash coming in) is no easy set of tasks.

That’s why you need a routine. Set up a time to respond to customer inquiries and make sure to check often for emergencies (or at least, what the customer considers an emergency). If you need to ship products, stick to a schedule of when orders will go out. Make sure all of your policies are clearly stated on your site.

Stay in Touch

Lastly, I’ve found that one of the least utilized features of WooCommerce is the ability to go in and mark an order as “completed”. Depending upon the type of products you sell, this simple (if time-consuming) task can help to improve line of communications with your customers. You may even want to add a tracking number at this stage, which can be done through a plugin.

Next Steps

Next, you should head over to wordpress.org and explore the huge selection of WooCommerce plugins that are currently available


https://inkmay.com/getting-started-woocommerce/

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How to Optimize AdWords: 4 Tips & Strategies to Boost Your Clicks

Want to improve AdWords click-through rates? Getting your AdWords campaign up and running is pretty easy. But, if you don’t optimize your ad campaigns well enough, your click-through rates could be low, making your entire AdWords campaign less effective.

In this article, we’ll show you how to optimize your AdWords campaign to boost click-through rates.

1. Use Ad Extensions

Add extensions are additional information you can include in your ads to entice people to click on your ads and make them choose your business over your competitors.

Some of the useful ad extensions are:

Call extension: If you’re promoting a service using AdWords, adding a call extension could significantly increase your click-through rates. People can tap or click a button to call your business directly from your ads without having to visit your landing page.

Review extension: Attract new customers to your store by adding a social proofright in your ads using review and rating extensions.



Price extension: The Price extension appears below your text ad, giving you more space to tell more about your offering.

2. Optimize Your Display URL

A display URL is a web address that your prospects see in your pay-per-click ads. It gives people an idea of where they’ll arrive after they click your ad.

When creating an ad campaign, keep in mind that your actual landing page URL does not have to match your display URL, but should be in the same domain.

A few ways to optimize your display URL to increase ad relevancy are:

Use a keyword: Include a keyword in your display URL. Google bolds the keyword in your display URL when it matches the search query.

Use a call to action: Hyatt, for example, uses the call to action Book now in their display URL to encourage clicks.



Make it readable: Use camel case and hyphens in your display URL to make it more readable.

3. Personalize Your Ad Copy

AdWords allows you to personalize your ads to a great extent to match your ads with the search query. If you’re a local advertiser, you can use geo-customizers to dynamically update your ad based on the searchers’ physical location or location of interest.

You can also personalize the copy based on the following dimensions: device, time, audience, gender or age.

4. Create Tightly Themed Keyword Groups

Finally, Google AdWords allows you to include multiple keywords into your account and ad groups.

While this helps you win a chance to reach your ads to your target customers, at times your ads won’t contain the keyword that people were searching for, which would adversely affect the click-through rates and quality scores.

To increase the likelihood of your keywords to appear in your ads, you might use tightly grouped themes or keywords into smaller ad groups rather than a broader ad group.

i hope this article will help you improve the click-through rates of your next AdWords campaign.

https://inkmay.com/optimize-adwords-4-tips-strategies-boost-clicks/

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Search Engine Optimization is not an easy thing, and it’s one of the toughest jobs to handle.

Sometimes, it becomes so difficult to face the challenges, that SEO looks to get a handy tool to make its job easier.

But, the more features there are, the higher the price. There are still thousands of free and premium tools that can help your optimization.

Even if this does not satisfy you, you can always go ahead with advanced features and look up for an upgrade. To get the best experience for you, this is one of the best options.

Here are the five best SEO tools that you can use to boost up your Google ranking.

Google PageSpeed Insights

This is one of the best options that you could opt for if you want to go ahead with Google rankings. Look for the blogs URL and then move with the analyze button.

The rest is taken care by this tool. It will check the speed and the overall impact the website is putting. Apart from that, it also takes care of the User experience. After all, the goal is to get a green score, and this tool is the perfect option for both mobiles and desktop.

Look at your site, check out its score. If it is good to go with red and orange on both, then this calls for a fix. But the question is, how are you going to fix it? The tool helps in outlining the process and taking care of the necessary fixes. It also optimizes images as per the requirement.

Schema Creator

Schemas bring uses a lot of enhanced experience to choose from. This is the place where the users are presented with precise details about a particular organization or company. This all happens on the search engine result pages itself.

With the help of this innovative tool, you have the option to customize the results that you are receiving. This can include everything starting from your reviews, total number of hours that you operate, the number of events, etc. All of this is likely to appear on Google as well as on the other search engines. This wipes off half of your worries.

There are a variety of options with the help of which you can access and work on your schema code very efficiently. This is a simple as using your command keys – Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V. It is worth mentioning the fact that this told comes with a free version of WordPress plugin. In case you fall in love with the tool, you can easily opt for the scheme application which offers you a trial for 14 days. There are some options about the cost and the price structure which you can easily choose as per your convenience. Also, you can go for the best one that fits your needs.

Keyword Tool

This is one of the primary alternatives keyword planner coming from Google. This works completely free if you have an account made with them. The tool is eligible to offer you more than 750 different suggestions for using and finding your keyword.

One of the best things about this tool is that it also includes long keywords in the search suggestions. Also, there is a benefit to choose your country related to which you are searching. There is also a privilege to choose your platform like from Google, YouTube, etc. and in different languages as well.

The add-on allows you to easily filter out keywords and sort according to the keyword suggestions that are provided to you to use your keyword. There are options to upgrade your account and use the premium version which costs around $90 for a month. The choice is yours as the tool is awesome.

SEO Quake

If we talk about the most popular SEO tool boxes, then SEOQuake serves as the perfect option. It is another kind of an extension that helps in displaying the overall overview of your SEO templates. You can do so easily by going through 11 pages or with the help of a toolbar. It is also available to present before you the total number of pages that have been indexed, the domain age, the number of social sharing it has, and the total number of external links used.

The tool is very fluid and maintains the fluidity throughout. So, instead, tools that individually take care of your websites, everything is available to you at just one place. You can have access to the real-time stats whenever you want.

Apart from all the benefit that it has to offer, it also provides an audit tool that helps in finding out whether or not there are any errors on the website. All that is needed of us a click and will get rid of all these errors. The tool helps to provide you tips and options. Just land on the website pages and look for the toolbar option available in the toolbar area.

SEO SiteChecku

Apart from taking care of the SEO score, the tool helps in giving information about all the fixes that are required to get the perfect SEO. The different issues include speed, usability, security. All you have to do is give your URL, and the results will display you the performance of your website.

With the free version of the tool, you can easily go along for checking at least five times in a day. This will help you decide that whether you need the tool. To look for more than one website in a day, you will just have to create your account which is entirely free.

Things start changing when you want to receive at least 300 reports or more than that for three websites. This will cost you some amount, and it will be worth paying.

The website offers you of free trial for about 14 days. This is undoubtedly going to benefit you and help you get the chills beforehand.

I hope you enjoy the SEO tools and benefit from being on the top pages of Google.

https://inkmay.com/5-seo-tools-improve-website-rankings-2018/

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The Future of Gutenberg Editor: Is It the Death of WordPress Builders?

What is this Gutenberg and why is it such a big deal?

I’ll start with the mention of WordCamp, a locally empowered conference which users of WordPress organize around the globe. People, CEOs, users, techies, non-techies, and anyone who does and does not use WordPress is invited to the conference because of the vast amount of information it brings about the plugin, web-building world.

Now the word Gutenberg is new and already starting up a storm. It’s set to launch in 2018 to WordPress itself and has been a hot topic of conversation amongst the computer community. But what exactly is Gutenberg and why is it such a big deal?

it as “a visual page builder,” which has been a damper on WordPress’ overall popularity.

With new websites seemingly coming out every year, such as Wix, Squarespace, and Webs that have the drag-and-drop accessibility that appeals heavily to new, non-techy users that possess no prior knowledge or experience on professional web building, it seems that WordPress has become unappealing against all these other options.

These almost ‘template tutorial’ sites grab more of an unreachable audience that seemed like a small or easy step to plugin and coding regulars.



Gutenberg gives WordPress the ability to reach that audience. WPCrafter goes on to explain that with version 5 of WP, it will give creators the ability to format their website in “boxes.” Now if you aren’t new to the game, then you know this is going to change almost everything completely. The premise is still the same, of course, but widgets, shortcodes, and the way one edits text and images are up there with the upcoming changes, according to Matt Mullenweg who is the head of WordPress now.

It is supposed to, in a way, make WordPress at a mutual level with its other integrations. So, for such companies like Beaver Builder, Elementor, and other page builders, they are having to create their own unique way to function with WordPress itself, bringing many complications just with that to the table.

Gutenberg aims to wipe that all out and bring one function for each builder, plugin, or whatever is necessary to make their integration more seamless and easy to access.



For me, it was very complicated to navigate WordPress. I’m pretty good at clicking buttons and figuring out a new concept or idea well. I am also not a stranger to such web builders like Wix and Squarespace. WordPress took a minute to figure out, so for me, Gutenberg seems like an exciting innovation that could launch it ahead of all others because of how ahead of its time it is. Even the drag-and-drop tools and elements used in these ‘template tutorial’ sites don’t have such a format to them, which can be a good and bad thing depending on your web building preference.

Which brings me to the techies. Those who like WordPress themes and its small coding necessity like Katy Perry, LinkedIn, and popular blog, TechCrunch (iTheme.com), who all use WordPress as a host for their site might already be aware of the changes that are coming in the next five to six months.

With that being said, is this the death of WordPress builders completely?



For a while after the official launch of Gutenberg, you will hear what is known as the “Classic Editor,” which is the old way and style that WordPress once used.

But I can say that WordPress won’t get rid of what made it so popular and well-respected. Gutenberg gives that easy access and enrichment of text, content, and plugin ability to bloggers, non-techies, and new users. But, those who have stuck with WordPress from the beginning or for a while will certainly make sure WordPress’ “Classic Editor” won’t die, or at least not die hard. There will be that period of transition offered to all users to give them that time to make sure their website flows and is a good fit with Gutenberg.

It will purge a good bit of customization. Because if users want to use the new, better, standard system, they will need to change their projects to accommodate the needs of this new project. So, while a lot of work will be necessary, Gutenberg has benefits. I’ll use the example of Blockbuster. Blockbuster was approached by this little, growing company called Netflix and made an offer that Blockbuster refused. Blockbuster insisted that people liked what they were doing and had to give and in 2010, it was officially announced that it would be removed the New York Stock Exchange as their sales and popularity plummeted over the last decade with the rise in online streaming of video (macnn.com).

That is what I believe WordPress is trying to avoid. It will be harder for current users at first, and it may not be the biggest and most used thing on the market. But it will be much better combing a single and more beneficial system in which the plugins and builders can interact with each other to form a more communicative program. WordPress will be on the playing field with the non-techies and people.

So, is it the death of WP builders?

Not right now. Gutenberg will offer new options and will eventually become the primary use that WordPress wants for its viewers, but as of 2018, your customizations and your current page builders are safe. Do not be so closed off to the idea of this new project. It could offer a lot of new benefits to your site that are only explorable through a test trial of Gutenberg, which you can use and download right now through WordPress website.

I recommend you not to use it on a current site but build a casual one on the side just to play out the effects and new options it has for users.

i think is best you start getting use to it now


https://inkmay.com/gutenberg-big-deal-wordpress/
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Reasons Why Blogging Can Make You a Better Academic Writer

What’s the point in becoming a blogger if you hate writing? Well, perhaps you hate writing only because you write stuff that you don’t like. For example, research papers and academic essays. However, if you are still a student, you can’t just refuse to write them, so you need to find some way to make writing at least less complicated for you. Here’s where blogging may come in handy.

If you start to write what you like, the papers won’t be a problem for you. And here are five reasons for that.

You increase your vocabulary
Finding proper words for your idea is quite complicated. The matter is that a person knows 20,000–35,000 words on average, while 171,476 words are in active use. It means that most of us use only 15% of all words! Is it enough to speak? Yes. But is that enough to write? Of course, you can easily express your ideas on writing, but if you want to surpass other students, you need to increase your vocabulary.

There are many ways to do that, like reading books and watching/listening videos and podcasts. But the most efficient way is to use them in writing.

When you are working on the paper, you may not be entirely interested in checking the thesaurus to find a proper word. But when you write in your blog, you want to present your ideas in the clearest way so that your readers understand what you are talking about. So, you will check the meaning of the words and will find synonyms that will suit the context of your post correctly. In this way, you’ll increase your vocabulary which will be quite helpful for writing papers.

You experiment with the style and find your tone of voice

Working on an essay, you rarely think about people who may read it. You just write what you think hoping that the lecturer will find your arguments good enough to get a better grade. This is a standard approach for all students, but by following it, you never have a chance to enjoy writing.

If you analyze your previous papers, you’ll notice that there is no personal style. Anyone could write it. When you work on the post to your blog, you start to develop your style step-by-step even no realizing that you’re doing. It’s easier to do that when you write something that you like rather than working on the essays that brings you nothing but disappointment.

Why do you need to develop your style?

It does not matter whether the lecturer or your Facebook follower reads your writing, as the reader should always understand who was the author of the text. For students, that will help to stand out from the rest of the students so that a lecturer can guess that you wrote the essay without even checking the name. That will give you some extra points, as everyone loves people who have their own style even though they may not love the style itself.

Moreover, if you find your style and tone of voice, it will be easier for you to express your thoughts. For instance, you always have problems with a starting sentence. You may always give a quotation instead of the first sentence or ask the question. Each time, the lecturer will find the quotation or the question at the beginning of the sentence, he will think that it’s you who wrote it.

You start to understand what’s relevant to the story

We’ve all been in the situation when you have so much to tell that you don’t even know where to start and what to tell. It’s quite tricky to define what’s important to add to your paper, but it’s even more difficult to define what’s most important to the blog post. So, if you start working on this on your blog, there will be no problems for you in the paper.

Many bloggers use mind maps to define the right ideas. You just write down everything you would like to tell and analyze each aspect. When you reach ten of the most interesting ideas, choose those that are closely related to the topic of your post or a paper. Step by step, you’ll get no more than five ideas, and it will be enough for a post or a paper.

Your writing becomes more coherent

Among the most popular mistakes that students make in their paper is illogical narration. Even if the paper is structured correctly, it does not guarantee that the body and conclusion reveal the ideas that were presented in the introduction. In a good paper, each fact should be supported by proper arguments, and the facts should stick to the same idea. However, students do not think about that, and in the result, the essay lacks coherence. At some point, they just quit and start to order paper on services like EssayWriterSite and Ukessays.com to get rid of all problems connected with writing. But it won’t be like that all the time if you start to write blog posts.

If you want to carry your message to the audience, you need to write clearly and logically. No one wants to spend another 10 minutes trying to find the connection between your ideas. After writing several posts, you’ll notice what you are doing wrong and will try to fix those mistakes. Later, it will become your habit, and you’ll no longer break the coherence in your academic writing.

You become a confident writer

Do you feel that words don’t come easy? They do indeed. But if you start to write regularly, you’ll notice the changes. The words will flow, and you’ll only need to follow them. Of course, it still will be easier for you to write blog posts, but papers won’t longer be such a problem.

Besides, you will at least solve the problem of sticking at the first sentence. You will get enough experience to find the ideas for your writing no matter how tough the topic is.

Another wonderful thing is that you will get rid of all grammar problems. If you make mistakes in your blog posts, your readers will notice them and will ask you to fix them. Eventually, you’ll start to write without mistakes, and this will affect the quality of your papers as well.

It will take some time to gain confidence in writing, but it is worth the try. If you don’t feel about writing long-reads, you may start to write descriptions for your Instagram posts or tell something to your friends on Facebook.

Still hesitant to see how blogging can help your academic writing results? At this point, you should forget all doubts and just start to write. You’ll get nothing without attempts, but if your attempts are successful, you get the result that you wanted…

https://inkmay.com/5-reasons-blogging-can-make-better-academic-writer/

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Reasons Why Blogging Can Make You a Better Academic Writer

What’s the point in becoming a blogger if you hate writing? Well, perhaps you hate writing only because you write stuff that you don’t like. For example, research papers and academic essays. However, if you are still a student, you can’t just refuse to write them, so you need to find some way to make writing at least less complicated for you. Here’s where blogging may come in handy.

If you start to write what you like, the papers won’t be a problem for you. And here are five reasons for that.

You increase your vocabulary
Finding proper words for your idea is quite complicated. The matter is that a person knows 20,000–35,000 words on average, while 171,476 words are in active use. It means that most of us use only 15% of all words! Is it enough to speak? Yes. But is that enough to write? Of course, you can easily express your ideas on writing, but if you want to surpass other students, you need to increase your vocabulary.

There are many ways to do that, like reading books and watching/listening videos and podcasts. But the most efficient way is to use them in writing.

When you are working on the paper, you may not be entirely interested in checking the thesaurus to find a proper word. But when you write in your blog, you want to present your ideas in the clearest way so that your readers understand what you are talking about. So, you will check the meaning of the words and will find synonyms that will suit the context of your post correctly. In this way, you’ll increase your vocabulary which will be quite helpful for writing papers.

You experiment with the style and find your tone of voice

Working on an essay, you rarely think about people who may read it. You just write what you think hoping that the lecturer will find your arguments good enough to get a better grade. This is a standard approach for all students, but by following it, you never have a chance to enjoy writing.

If you analyze your previous papers, you’ll notice that there is no personal style. Anyone could write it. When you work on the post to your blog, you start to develop your style step-by-step even no realizing that you’re doing. It’s easier to do that when you write something that you like rather than working on the essays that brings you nothing but disappointment.

Why do you need to develop your style?

It does not matter whether the lecturer or your Facebook follower reads your writing, as the reader should always understand who was the author of the text. For students, that will help to stand out from the rest of the students so that a lecturer can guess that you wrote the essay without even checking the name. That will give you some extra points, as everyone loves people who have their own style even though they may not love the style itself.

Moreover, if you find your style and tone of voice, it will be easier for you to express your thoughts. For instance, you always have problems with a starting sentence. You may always give a quotation instead of the first sentence or ask the question. Each time, the lecturer will find the quotation or the question at the beginning of the sentence, he will think that it’s you who wrote it.

You start to understand what’s relevant to the story

We’ve all been in the situation when you have so much to tell that you don’t even know where to start and what to tell. It’s quite tricky to define what’s important to add to your paper, but it’s even more difficult to define what’s most important to the blog post. So, if you start working on this on your blog, there will be no problems for you in the paper.

Many bloggers use mind maps to define the right ideas. You just write down everything you would like to tell and analyze each aspect. When you reach ten of the most interesting ideas, choose those that are closely related to the topic of your post or a paper. Step by step, you’ll get no more than five ideas, and it will be enough for a post or a paper.

Your writing becomes more coherent

Among the most popular mistakes that students make in their paper is illogical narration. Even if the paper is structured correctly, it does not guarantee that the body and conclusion reveal the ideas that were presented in the introduction. In a good paper, each fact should be supported by proper arguments, and the facts should stick to the same idea. However, students do not think about that, and in the result, the essay lacks coherence. At some point, they just quit and start to order paper on services like EssayWriterSite and Ukessays.com to get rid of all problems connected with writing. But it won’t be like that all the time if you start to write blog posts.

If you want to carry your message to the audience, you need to write clearly and logically. No one wants to spend another 10 minutes trying to find the connection between your ideas. After writing several posts, you’ll notice what you are doing wrong and will try to fix those mistakes. Later, it will become your habit, and you’ll no longer break the coherence in your academic writing.

You become a confident writer

Do you feel that words don’t come easy? They do indeed. But if you start to write regularly, you’ll notice the changes. The words will flow, and you’ll only need to follow them. Of course, it still will be easier for you to write blog posts, but papers won’t longer be such a problem.

Besides, you will at least solve the problem of sticking at the first sentence. You will get enough experience to find the ideas for your writing no matter how tough the topic is.

Another wonderful thing is that you will get rid of all grammar problems. If you make mistakes in your blog posts, your readers will notice them and will ask you to fix them. Eventually, you’ll start to write without mistakes, and this will affect the quality of your papers as well.

It will take some time to gain confidence in writing, but it is worth the try. If you don’t feel about writing long-reads, you may start to write descriptions for your Instagram posts or tell something to your friends on Facebook.

Still hesitant to see how blogging can help your academic writing results? At this point, you should forget all doubts and just start to write. You’ll get nothing without attempts, but if your attempts are successful, you get the result that you wanted…

https://inkmay.com/5-reasons-blogging-can-make-better-academic-writer/

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You may be the most powerful man on earth, but even that pales in comparison to the power of a beautiful woman. After all, President Obama is still a man and sometimes men can’t help themselves. France’s former President Sarkosy seems to be appreciative as well.

All modal verbs are auxiliary verbs, which means they can only be used with a main verb. Modal verbs cannot be a main verb.

The modal verbs are; will, would, shall, should, can, could, may, might and must. In this module we focus on will and would, and shall and should.

(Will)

Will is used to show desire, preference, choice or consent:
I will accept your offer.
Will you please be quiet?

To show the future:
It will be a great party.
I will probably go out tonight.

To express capability:
The ship will take three hundred guests.
This bottle will hold two litres of wine.

To express determination or insistence:
I will pass my driving test.
I will do as you say.

( Would)

Would – used to show preference
I would rather go to the cinema today. (I prefer going to the cinema today.)

Would – to show a wish
I would like to have more free time.

Would – for advice
If I were you, I would study economics.

(Shall)

Shall – to make a suggestion
Shall we dance?
Shall I go now?

Shall for obligation in very formal situations
You shall obey the rules.
Students shall not enter here.
There shall be no food and drink on the premises.

( Should)

Should is often used to give an opinion, to make a suggestion, express a preference or an idea.
You should stay at home if you are feeling tired.
I should walk to work.

He should be more open to ideas.
Should – to ask for an opinion.
Should we tell him about our idea?
What should we do now?


Now complete the following using the right word:


1) We _ leave now or we will miss the last train.

should
will
would

2) _ we meet tomorrow morning?

Shall
Would
Should

3) I _ like a cup of coffee, please.

should
would
will

4) Do you think we _ tell Sarah about Peter?

should
will
would

5) I _ probably spend the holidays with my family.

shall
will
would

6) Danny _ prefer having the meeting next week.

would
should
will

This is an interesting one. We know what we’re saying, yet when we write, we get both words mixed up. In fact, there shouldn’t be a confusion because the words are not even homophones . They are pronounced a little differently. One is spelt with a “ v ” and the other with an “ f “.

save (v.) – to keep (there are other meanings as well)

safe (adj.) – not in danger, protected

Examples:

I had to "SAFE" myself because the fire could not be extinguished. (X)

I had to "SAVE" myself because the fire could not be extinguished. (√)

They are now "SAVE" from the horrible weather. (X)

They are now "SAFE" from the horrible weather. (√)


Now that you know the difference, make sure you save
your money in a safe place. Make sure you know how to spell the word correctly. Often what you speak is not what you write. Isn’t English interesting?

HOW TO SET UP ADSENSE WITH WORDPRESS IN 3 SIMPLE STEPS



HOW TO INTEGRATE ADSENSE WITH WORDPRESS IN 3 SIMPLE STEPS

If you want to make money from your website, you’ve probably heard of Google AdSense. It’s one of the most popular advertising platforms online, it’s used by over 12 million active sites, and it’s an easy way to monetize your website. But to get the most out of it, you’ll need to learn how to integrate AdSense with WordPress.

Fortunately, this is easy to do. You’ll simply have to sign up for the service, wait to be approved, and then start placing ads on your site. WordPress provides a simple way to insert AdSense ads out of the box, but you can also find plugins that will help you optimize their placement and appearance.

In this post, we’ll introduce Google AdSense and talk about what makes it so useful. Then, we’ll show you how to integrate AdSense with WordPress in three short steps. Let’s take a look!

AN INTRODUCTION TO GOOGLE ADSENSE


If you are interested in earning a little extra revenue, Google AdSense is one of the first solutions to check out. AdSense enables you to easily insert ads on your website – you just include a small code snippet on your site and Google will handle the rest. Your visitors will see relevant ads and you’ll get paid based on how many people view and/or click on your ads.

This solution is great for beginners. It’s easy to get started and integrates with just about any platform – including WordPress. To use it, you’ll just need to meet a few basic requirements, such as having an active site that complies with Google’s program policies.

Of course, there are alternatives to Google AdSense, and it’s worth taking a look at those solutions too. But most of the time, AdSense is a great first step in monetizing your website.

HOW TO INTEGRATE ADSENSE WITH WORDPRESS (IN THREE STEPS)

Signing up for the AdSense program and placing ads on your site is a pretty simple process. Let’s walk through it together!

STEP 1: SIGN UP FOR GOOGLE ADSENSE

To integrate AdSense with WordPress, you’ll first need two things:

A website
A Google account

With those in hand, you can visit the website and click on the option to Sign up now.

You’ll be prompted to choose a Google account to connect to the program. Then, you’ll be taken to a simple sign-up form:



Here, you need to provide the URL for your website, as well as your home country. You can also choose whether you want the program to send you customized suggestions. After this, check the Terms and Conditions box and select Create Account.

It will take up to three days for your request to be approved and then you’ll get an email with instructions on how to activate your account. When that’s done, you’re ready to start creating ads.

STEP 2: CREATE YOUR FIRST AD

To create ads for your site, you’ll need to be logged into your AdSense account. Then:

Navigate to My ads
Select the Content option
Click on +New ad unit

At this point, you’ll need a name for your ad. Pick something descriptive and easy to identify. You can then set its dimensions under Ad size. To be safe, stick with the Recommended sizes. The Responsive option is usually a good starting point, though you can always experiment later on:



Next, you can choose what type of ads you’d like to use. It’s advisable to pick the Text and display ads option, so you get access to as many ads as possible. However, you can stick to either text or display ads alone if one or the other feels right for your website.

There are a few optional settings here, which you can use to tweak your ads further if you’d like. Finally, select what you’d like to see displayed if Google can’t find any relevant ads from the If no ads available drop-down.



Then, click on Save and get code. This will save your ad settings and provide you with an ad code. Copy this and save it somewhere safe, since you’ll need it for the next step:



STEP 3: PLACE YOUR AD ON YOUR WEBSITE WITH CUSTOM HTML WIDGET

It’s finally time to integrate AdSense with WordPress. Just log into your WordPress dashboard, and navigate to Appearance > Widgets. Add a new Custom HTML widget by dragging one into your site’s widget area:

After that, you just need to paste in the ad code and save the widget:



The code will pull all relevant information from your account and start displaying ads of the appropriate size and type. Make sure to check out what your ad looks like on the front end.

That’s all you need to do to integrate AdSense with WordPress.

However, for best results, there are a few extra steps that you might want to take. For one, you can apply some best practices to optimize your ads and earn more revenue.

Beyond that, if you want more control over where your ads appear, you should consider using a dedicated WordPress AdSense plugin.

https://wpbind.com/how-to-set-up-adsense-with-wordpress-in-3-simple-steps/

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The digital world can be a very dangerous place. This is true for everyone who is online, including those who run their own websites.



There are many hackers looking for sites, even relatively small sites and blogs, that they can take advantage of and often steal information from. One of the reasons that WordPress is targeted is not a fault within the platform. Rather, it is because the platform is so popular.

As much of a potential problem as this could be, it is fortunately not overly difficult to protect your site. Utilize the tips gathered in the following article to shore up your defenses against these hackers.

Keep Your Login Page and Info Secure

Many hackers attempt to gain access to the backend of your site right through the login page – the same page you use to get onto your site. This allows them to cause a host of problems with your site, and even alter or remove your content.



Rather than using the default admin name, you will want to change it from within the database. In addition, you want to utilize a very strong password that cannot be hacked. Never use any words or phrases that spell out anything, and never use any words that could be connected to you. Instead, you want a combination of numbers/letters/symbols to make it impossible to guess. In addition, you will want to change the password at least once every three months.

You can also set up two-factor authentication. In addition to logging into your site, you will also be sent a code to your mobile phone, which you will need to use to log into the site. It requires an extra step on your part, but it can keep hackers from accessing your site.

The Right Themes

You want to have a great theme for your WordPress site, naturally. You probably spend a bit of time pouring over all the options to find one that looks great, has the features you want, and is either free or cheap. However, this can cause problems for you. Some of the sites out there that are supposedly offering quality themes or plugins are filled with malware that could cause serious damage to your site.

When you are looking for a theme for your WordPress site, if you want to have something that works well and helps to keep you safe from hackers, you need to make sure they are from reliable sellers, such as ThemeForest



Keep It All Updated and Remove Unused Plugins and Themes

Another easy way to keep your site safe from hackers, and to make sure it is running properly, is to make sure you have your themes and plugins updated regularly. They will often contain fixes and patches that will help to clear up any bugs that might be in the software, and they will often contain patches for security, as well. In addition, you want to make sure you are always using the latest version of WordPress for the same reasons.

If you are like many, you probably have a few plugins and maybe even a theme or two installed that you are no longer using. If you have these installed, whether they are activated or not, your best course of action will be to remove them. It’s likely that they have not been updated in ages, since you are not using them, and this could cause security issues for your site. Deactivate them and then delete them. You can do this easily via the admin dashboard.


Quality Hosting

One of the best ways to help improve the security of your site is to make sure that you have a quality host that can provide you with additional security features and options. When you are choosing between the various hosts; make sure security is one of the top factors in your mind.

Check to see what types of security features they can offer, and what they can do for you in the event of a problem with your site. Make sure they provide regular updates, and that they can offer assistance around the clock to help with any security issues you might have. Never choose a host just because they are a cheaper option than others. You need quality.

As you can see, there are some very simple things you can do to help ensure your WordPress website is protected from hacking. Even though you might not feel that your site would gain the attention of hackers because it is still relatively small and new, the truth of the matter is that all sites are potential targets. Use these tips, and continue learning about more ways to keep your site as safe as possible.

https://wpbind.com/secure-wordpress-website-hacking/

Nothing is causing quite as much of an upheaval in the WordPress world as the Gutenberg editor. Revealed by Matt Mullenweg at WordCamp Europe 2017, the prospect of merging it into core for version 5.0 is causing quite a ruckus.

Not only will Gutenberg do away with the familiar TinyMCE content editor but also replace a whole bunch of other modules in the WordPress backend. If you believe the chatter around the web, it could be the end of WordPress as we know it.

The new editor is already available as a plugin along with a call to install it and provide feedback. By now more than 13,000 people have followed the call and the Gutenberg editor review count has gone up sharply.

Time to take a temperature test. In this post, we want to get a gauge on how the WordPress community feels about the upcoming change. For that, we have scoured the web for public opinions which we will try to summarize in this article.

We will look both at feedback in the WordPress directory as well as Gutenberg reviews from a number of reputable WordPress blogs. By doing so, we hope to find out what people like and dislike about Gutenberg as well as how they feel about making it part of the WordPress core.

Does the WordPress community give Gutenberg the thumbs up or thumbs down? We are about to find out.

The Big Gutenberg Editor Review Roundup

So, let’s look at how others feel about the new Gutenberg editor. For a first glance, we will start with the WordPress directory and the reviews plugin users have left there.

The WordPress Plugin Directory

At the time of this writing, the Gutenberg plugin has a rating of 2.3 stars. Overall, it has received 87 reviews with the following distribution of stars.


From here, you can already see a great division in the WordPress user base. Opinions are mostly on both sides of the extreme. It’s also apparent that currently, negative views somewhat outweigh favorable ones.

The Good

When digging a little deeper, those who like Gutenberg feel that it is a sensible next step in the evolution of WordPress. They express enthusiasm about the possibility of integrating the editing experience more closely with the end result and call Gutenberg intuitive to use and a simplification of other visual editors.

They also like the idea of content blocks and doing away with shortcodes. In addition, they praise the modern design and call it more beginner friendly than the current solution. Many also offer concrete ideas on what to improve.

However, even some five-star ratings already call for giving users the choice which editor they want to use. Solutions range from making it optional, leaving Gutenberg as a plugin or putting it into Jetpack instead of core.

The Bad

The negative reviews are a lot more vocal about this latter part. Overall, there are two main concerns. The way the editor works currently and what it means for the bigger picture.

Concerning the first part, many feel that Gutenberg is making things more complicated. They say it introduces more steps for tasks that are already simple to do in TinyMCE. Critics also talk of an overloaded user interface, the lack of intuitiveness and making everything a block, including bulleted lists. Many prefer the current editor’s resemblance of other word processors, especially because it’s easy to teach to clients.

When it comes to the bigger picture, we frequently hear concerns that the editor will take away the flexibility that WordPress currently offers. What often comes up is that Gutenberg will be good for bloggers but reduce the platform’s capabilities as a CMS.

The biggest fear, however, is that it will sacrifice backwards compatibility for an improved user experience and break millions of sites and plugins. Oh, yeah and somebody actually wrote a poem.


Overall, it’s clear that the WordPress community is divided and that so far the negative voices prevail. At the same time, the developers’ efforts to try and address concerns and ask for concrete feedback is to be commended. Alright, now on to other voices.

Please Don’t Include This in WordPress Core – Brenda Barron (WPMU DEV)

From the title of the post, you can already guess where this is going. While Brenda does mention that she likes the minimal writing interface, she is not a fan. The block architecture turns her off and she doesn’t feel like Gutenberg is an improvement on the existing interface.

In particular, her review mentions that creating and editing things like bulleted lists is a bit tedious. She also laments the absence of a copy and paste functionality and that inputting videos and other media is more complicated with the new interface.

Overall her opinion is not very positive even though she commends the effort of the developers. She concludes that she is highly in favor of leaving Gutenberg as an optional WordPress plugin.

Questions & Concerns From My First Impression of the WordPress Gutenberg Editor – Josh Pollock (Torque)

Josh Pollock starts off that he likes creating content with Gutenberg and is generally in favor of improving the current editor. However, he is concerned whether this is the way to go. One of his main concerns is that it might be a step back from a highly customizable content management system to a blogging platform.



His review praises the UI and says Gutenberg is definitely a good thing for writers. Yet, in his own words, he is “more concerned about everything around the writing process”. Josh especially addresses the issue of backward compatibility after the switch to a more JavaScript-based interface.

While he states that Gutenberg would be a chance to get over some of WordPress’ technical debt, he also cautions that maybe a more gradual approach would be better. Some type of middle ground between standardization and customizability.

Misunderstanding the Goal of the Gutenberg Experience – Chris Lema

Chris Lema was initially excited about trying out Gutenberg and taking WordPress in the direction of what makes Medium popular. However, in his opinion, right now it doesn’t hit the mark yet. Like Josh, his biggest concern is “didn’t we want to tell the world that WordPress was more than just for bloggers?”.

He agrees that for content creators, Gutenberg is a good thing. However, for creating pages and websites, it leaves much to be desired.

In fact, in his opinion Gutenberg doesn’t go far enough. Chris would like to see efforts go toward eliminating the dissonance between what you see in the editor and the finished product on the page. WordPress should aim for true what-you-see-is-what-you-get content creation.
Currently, too much still depends on the theme.

Diving Into the New Gutenberg WordPress Editor – Brian Jackson (Kinsta)

Brian starts off stating that he likes the similarity between Gutenberg and the editing experience in Medium. He enjoys the additional writing space and the “writing first” attitude. Plus, he was positively surprised at how well it already works in mobile. Brian also thinks beginners will be able to find their way around the interface quickly.

His criticism is mostly about functionality that is currently missing but likely on the roadmap. It includes missing support for markdown, custom meta boxes and responsive columns. His biggest concerns is also the backwards compatibility issue, especially in regards to plugins related to TinyMCE.

However, overall he appears positive and optimistic about Gutenberg, sees the editor as a step forward and is excited to see what will come out of it.

Thoughts on the New WordPress Editor – Colin Newcomer (Create and Code)

in his Gutenberg editor review, Colin tries to be discerning in his thought process and look at the editor through two different lenses: Gutenberg as a WordPress editor vs as the default WordPress editor.

In Gutenberg as just another editor he likes the uncluttered interface and the simple editing experience. Overall he finds it quite enjoyable and simple to use. As a plugin, he states he would review it favorably.

However, his opinion changes for Gutenberg as the only available editor in WordPress. Especially the currently missing support for copy and paste goes counter to his and many people’s workflow who like to write their content outside of WordPress. Apart from that, he also sees the danger of backward compatibility with billions of existing posts and millions of shortcodes in use out there.

In essence, Colin enjoys Gutenberg but is highly skeptical of it as a replacement for TinyMCE in its current
form. For that reason, he, too, is in favor of keeping it as a plugin and voluntary option.

Gutenberg: First Impressions – Matt Cromwell

Gutenberg is the future of content in WordPress. It will deliver the elegance of Medium but with far more power and flexibility of layouts and content types. – Matt Cromwell

Gutenberg – The Great Divide


The emergence of the Gutenberg editor is dividing the WordPress community. So much is clear even if you just look at the rating of the official plugin. It becomes more apparent when reading the actual reviews.

What’s interesting to see is that opinions often differ between content creators and developers. The first group is often excited about giving the WordPress editor a much-needed facelift, even if the current iteration still leaves a lot to be desired.

Those looking at WordPress more as a CMS and from a technical point of view have bigger concerns. Their biggest fears are loss of flexibility and, as stated over and over again, backward compatibility. Many dread that Gutenberg will break WordPress as we know it and not in good way. As a consequence, there are lots of voices calling for making it non-mandatory.

When looking at the debate, it’s important to remember that every change will bring some inertia and resistance. WordPress needs to move forward in order to compete in a changing environment.

However, that doesn’t mean that the concerns being voiced are not valid and don’t need to be addressed. Thankfully, the developers are doing their best to do just that. Yet, seeing how many people are concerned and feel left out, maybe some additional communication is necessary.

We should also take note that the Gutenberg editor is still in its early stages and a lot of change will still happen. Maybe later version will calm some people’s nerves. We will just have to wait and see.

What is your opinion on the Gutenberg editor? Are you concerned or excited? Let us know in the comments section below.

https://wpbind.com/heres-everything-thats-happened-to-wordpress-in-2017-so-far/

Our Top Profitable Ecommerce Business Ideas For 2018
A new year is a new beginning and the best time to start your ecommerce business.
Why?

Because of the rapid pace of innovation, low setup and management costs, and easy access to shipping facilities. According to Hufffingtonpost, ecommerce revenues are expected to reach an all-time high of $460 billion in the 2018.

The number one worry that stops many people from launching their business is the saturation of the market. What product could your business sell in 2018?

To answer this question, I scoured the web and compared ecommerce ideas that have proved to be a success in the market. My emphasis was on products that still have potential to capture the market.

Here is a list of products that are expected to be great hit in 2018 and beyond!.

Niche Fashion/Jewelry Product Market
Niche products will always remain strong regardless of any business. With that said, the year 2018 will see more niche ecommerce stores popping up. The local ecommerce niche segmentation will surge because of the introduction of technologies like ibeacons, robot managed warehouses, and drone delivery systems. It is crucial to start planning niche ecommerce sites that introduce a specific style of jewelry or appeal to a wider audience. Take the example of Onychek, a fashion website that offers tribal-inspired designs from Africa to the world.

Smart Home Products and Accessories
Despite the rise in the demand for smart products, not many ecommerce stores are devoted to these products. In the last year alone, at least 40 percent millennials in America used a smart home speaker. This trend will increase to 50 percent in 2018. Now is the time to plan your online presence in this exciting niche.

AR/VR Headsets, Apps, and Accessories Store
It is unfortunate that Augmented/Virtual Reality (AR/VR) took this long to become available to the masses. But, now, the demand has gone up considerably after initial user adoption. This means more companies are going to invest and build AR/VR apps in the coming months as the growth of VR/AR is estimated to reach $108 billion by the end of 2022. This niche offers you a chance to become an early advocate of an exciting technology that will soon become an important ecommerce business.

Vape Hardware, Flavors, and Liquids
The vape industry is fast become highly lucrative as the vaping become a mainstream hobby. Already there are dedicated communities around various aspects of vaping. Althoughthousands of vaping focused ecommerce stores are already active, there is still a gap in the lineup of stores that cater exclusively to local communities.

Online Learning Platforms
Before you say, ‘there are already many education portals available…,’ just keep in mind that where there is demand, there is no cap or entry restrictions. Online learning platforms are still evolving, providing a great niche for your business. One thing to note in 2018 is the increasing number of students who will be looking for unconventional ways of accessing educational resources. At this point, the field is wide open and you have your pick of academic, vocational and other sub niches.

3D Assets Stores
Three years ago, Unity – a 3D cross-platform game engine – launched its own asset store. Today, 3D assets are fast becoming a hot commodity, with an increase in the trade of 3D assets for games and AR/VR apps. The good thing is that you can launch your own 3D assets store by adding assets from third-party developers or (preferably) by making your own. Put the assets for sale or a monthly or yearly subscription.

Electric Scooters, Skateboards, and Hoverboards
Electric scooters and skateboards have now become mainstream. This is a great opportunity to enter a market that has a huge number of enthusiasts that are in search of high quality products and accessories. An important obstacle in this niche is the logistic of getting the products from the manufacturers to the customers. Dropshipping is a great way of lowering the cost of setting up the business in the niche.

Online Grocery and Foods
The profitability in this niche depends upon vendor relations and relentless drive for increasing the customer base. However, given the wide range of the products and the equally huge target market, this niche will continue to be a great business idea in coming years. Local sourcing is a rising trend that benefits both your business and local stakeholders. You could start small with just the local produce and products at your store. As the profits increase, you could decide on scaling up the business.

Niche Subscription Boxes
In the last three years alone, the subscription boxes selling websites have seen an 800 percent increase in their sales. Even in areas with established players, you have a chance to make an impact because of the simple fact that people crave novelty. Subscription boxes add this factor to the lives of many people who often opt for multiple subscriptions in different niches.

Enamel Pins
If you can connect with a lapel pin manufacturer, setting up an enamel pin business will be worth it in 2018. Custom made enamel pins are fast becoming a huge business, and you can go in either a particular design offering or serve the customers as they come to your store.

interest in enamel pins

Check out how the interest in enamel pins has risen over the years.

To Wrap Things Up
Latest innovations, upward trends, and ever-green products, I have tried to cover all major areas that offer the best opportunities for starting ecommerce business in 2018. I hope that you would be able to make an informed decision, and reap profits from the snowballing factor of online commerce.

https://wpbind.com/top-profitable-ecommerce-business-ideas-2018/

Just in case you had forgotten, WhatsApp will be dropping support for devices running on BlackBerry OS, BlackBerry 10 and Windows Phone 8.0 and older devices on December 31, 2017. Starting next year, you will not be able to use WhatsApp on these platforms.

Earlier this year, WhatsApp confirmed its plans to sunset the BlackBerry and Windows Phone versions of the service. The company also announced deadlines for other platforms. Nokia's Series 40 devices, for example, will be supported till December 31, 2018 while Android 2.3.7 and older devices will be supported till February 1, 2020.

WhatsApp is quite remarkable in its support for older platforms and devices. However, there is a limit to everything and we can't blame them for dropping support for these platforms, even though it is coming long after their makers dropped support for them.

On the upside, this might be the reason for some users to finally upgrade to newer devices.

reading from a screen can be hard. If you want your readers to read your entire blog post, you should make sure your post is easy to read.

Posts that are nice and easy to read will result in more returning visitors and a higher conversion rate. In this post, I’ll give five tips on how to improve the readability of your articles.

To help you improve the readability of your post, Yoast SEO now offers a readability check! At this moment it’s fully available for English and German, and partly available for all other languages.


Focus on your audience!
The most important advice I would give you is to make sure your text isn’t too difficult for the audience you’re writing for. If you write about LEGO and focus on kids, your text should be easy to read. But, if your audience consists of scientists with a Ph.D., your text could be much more challenging and still be suitable. The five tips I present below should thus be seen as general rules. For some audiences, a text could be made even simpler, while for other audiences the rules will be a bit too strict.

Tip 1: Clear paragraphs
Make sure to write clear paragraphs. For a blog post, we would advise you always to start your paragraph with the most important sentence. Then explain or elaborate on that sentence. This way a reader will be able to grasp the most relevant content from your article, just by reading the first sentences of your paragraphs. Make sure paragraphs aren’t too long (7 or 8 sentences is quite long already).

Tip 2: Short sentences
Try to write short sentences. Short sentences are easier to read and understand than long sentences. Above that, you will be less likely to make mistakes in grammar as your sentences are rather short. We consider sentences containing more than 20 words as lengthy. Try to limit these long sentences. If you’re writing in English, make sure you only have a few sentences in a blog post that count more than 20 words. Every language has its own limits. Also, make sure a paragraph doesn’t contain more than one long sentence.

Tip 3: Limit difficult words
Limit the use of words that are difficult to read. Remember that reading from a screen is harder for everyone. Words that contain four or more syllables are considered difficult to read. Make sure to limit the use of such difficult words.

Tip 4: Use transition words
You can make a text much more readable by using proper transition words(or signal words, same thing). Transition words are words like ‘most important’, ‘because’, ‘thus’, or ‘besides that’. They give direction to your readers. These words give a signal that something is coming up: if you’re summarizing, you’ll use first, second, third, etc. If you want to contrast you’ll write same, less, rather, while or either. If you want to conclude, you’ll use hence, consequently or therefore.

Using transition words will be like putting cement between your sentences. The relation between two sentences becomes apparent by the use of transition words. Readers will understand your content much better if you make proper use of these kinds of words.

Tip 5: Mix it up!
For a text to be attractive to a reader, it should be very varied. This means that you should try to mix it up a little! Alternate longer paragraphs and sentences with short ones and attempt to use synonyms if you tend to use a word very often. Some people use the word ‘and’ or ‘too’ very often. Mixing it up with ‘also’ or ‘moreover’ could make a text more attractive and much more readable too.

Use Yoast SEO
To assist you in writing readable copy we added a readability check in Yoast SEO. It checks the length of your sentences and paragraphs, and whether you use transition words or subheadings. Moreover, it assesses if you don’t use passive voice too often. On top of that, it calculates the Flesch Reading Ease score, a score that indicates how easy to understand your text is. Check out the readability score of this text:

readability check screenshot


At this moment it’s fully available for English and German, and partly available for all other languages.

Conclusion
If you want your readers to read your entire blog post, you should make sure that your text is easy to read. Don’t make a text more difficult than necessary. Avoid long sentences and write clear paragraphs.

https://wpbind.com/5-tips-write-readable-blog-posts/

In this post, we round up the latest cool and useful (oh, and free!) WordPress plugins now available on the WordPress Plugin Directory. This month’s WordPress Plugin Roundup includes everything from a way to add responsive video embeds to a new email optin plugin for your WordPress website or blog.


1. Classic Editor THE FIRST OF (PROBABLY) MANY GUTENBERG REPLACEMENTS

The Classic Editor plugin restores the previous Edit Post screen and makes it possible to use the WordPress plugins that extend it, add old-style meta boxes or otherwise depend on the previous editor.

Nathan’s Notes:

This plugin allows you to turn off the Gutenberg WordPress editor entirely or use the classic editor on only certain pages or posts.
Uses Add New (Classic) and Edit (Classic) in a mixed use scenario.
Checkbox to turn off Gutenberg is under Settings > Writing.

2. Login or Logout Menu Item

With the Login or Logout Menu Item plugin, you can easily add a dynamic login/logout menu item to any menu on your WordPress site. The menu item will change based on whether the current user is logged in or logged out.

Nathan’s Notes:

Creates a new area in Appearance > Menus that allows you to add a log in, log out or log in/log out menu item.
The latter is dynamic based on whether the current used is logged in or out.
Very simple but useful addition to a site with users who log in.

3. Tabify Edit Screen

With the Tabify Edit Screen plugin, you can make your post edit screen easier to navigate and manage by creating a set of tabs.

Nathan’s Notes:

It may take a moment to see how this plugin works, but once you do, it offers some splendid customization options for the page and post editor screens.
Move metaboxes to tabs within the settings screen.
Works for custom post types.
Control who can see tabs based on role.

4. Floating Video
The Floating Video plugin allows you to embed an ogg, mp4 file or YouTube or Vimeo video into your page. As the user of your website scrolls down the page to read the rest of your article and they can’t see the video anymore, the video will automatically move and stick to one of the corners of the window so they can watch the video and read the page at the same time.

Nathan’s Notes:

A nice touch for sites that have video and text content.
Options allow you to specify floating video size and placement.
Video must be displayed via the plugin’s shortcode which has a TinyMCE icon.
Only the first video on a page can have the floating functionality.

5. 404 Solution

The 404 Solution plugin logs 404s and allows them to be redirected to pages that exist. Redirects can also be created based on the best possible match for the URL the visitor was most likely trying to reach.

Nathan’s Notes:

Feels a lot like the venerable Redirection plugin but focused on 404s.
Can automatically match a 404 request with the most likely page URL.
Monitors 404s and allows you to specify redirects.
Allows you to specify a particular page to display for unhandled 404 errors (which can let you customize a cool 404 page).

6. Popup Email Optin Creator – Optin Hound

The Optin Hound plugin is here to help you grow your mailing list without you knowing any code at all. Optin Hound is a powerful tool for creating popup opt-in forms that you can customise to your needs and offer your visitors a simple, beautiful way of subscribing to your newsletter.

Nathan’s Notes:

Makes designing a decent looking popup opt-in pretty easy, even for beginners.
Free version allows for static widget and a popup.
Free version collects opt-ins on your website which you can later download as a CSV.
Pro version (starting at $49/yr for 1 site) adds more options for how and when the opt-in displays and connects directly to email services like MailChimp and Aweber.

7. Super Blog Pack: Like, Share, Review, Ratings All In One

The Super Blog Pack plugin offers the following features: Post like button, Post views counter, Post reviews system with 5 star rating system (paginated), Related posts, and more.

Nathan’s Notes:

Settings page allows you to specify which features are used on your site.
A nice addition to any blog.

8. Install FitVids – Embed fluid width Videos

The Install Fitvids plugin allows you to add responsive video embeds on your blog.

Nathan’s Notes:

The ability to oEmbed videos from YouTube and other media by simply placing the URL on its own line in the content is a nice feature of WordPress.
However, embedded videos are usually smaller than the content width and may not look fantastic as a result. And changing the width can be confusing for some.
This plugin installs the FitVid javascript which will automagically make all your videos go full width.

9. WordPress Copy Content
The WordPress Copy Content plugin allows you to search and copy content from pages and posts.

Nathan’s Notes:

Very helpful if you need to quickly duplicate the content of a page or post.
Also works with custom post types and Woocommerce products.
Note: plugin only copies post content, not meta data (like product price, etc.).

10. Admin Menu in Frontend

The Admin Menu in Frontend plugin allows you to show administrator menu when viewing site. It is a simple solution to speed up your developing time.

Nathan’s Notes:

If you find yourself flipping back and forth from the front end to the back end while you’re building a site, this might be a good plugin for you to try out.
Save time by showing the full admin menu on the front end of the website for immediate access to settings, etc.
Note, you’ll need to click the “Show Admin Menu when Viewing Site” box on your profile to see this work.

11. Hello Hamilton THIS MONTH’S HELLO DOLLY REPLACEMENT
This is not just a plugin, it takes and it takes and it takes and we keep living anyway. We rise and we fall and we break and we make our mistakes. With the Hello Hamilton plugin, you will randomly see a lyric from Hamilton the musical in the upper right of your admin screen on every page.


https://wpbind.com/wordpress-plugin-roundup-december-2017/

we cover 5 ways to make more money with WooCommerce.

Introduction

WooCommerce is the most dominant ecommerce engine on the planet. Right now it powers a reported 42% of ecommerce sites. That’s pretty staggering. It’s a testament to the continued growth of ecommerce, which has been steadily rising.

Lately news headlines often proclaim the death of real world retail, pointing to the rise in online sales. It’s probably more complicated than that, but the point is that ecommerce is growing in leaps and bounds.

How Can You Maximize the Income of Your WooCommerce Website?
A lot of people are now running online stores and find themselves in the new position of being shopkeepers. And a common question is how do they maximize their income.We’ve got a few suggestions to help WooCommerce store owners make more money.

There are a lot of ways to do just that—we could write an entire book—so we’ll just offer five simple ways to make more money with WooCommerce:

1. Experiment
2. The Up-Sell
3. Create Urgency
4. Create Content
5. Email Newsletter



1. Experiment
The science of shopping is fascinating. There are all kinds of factors that influence our buying decisions, and you better believe that retail shops have tested just about everything to maximize profit.



Retail shops often experiment with lighting, temperature, music, layout, color— just about anything that will influence customers to spend more money.



It’s no different online. Major stores like Amazon have tweaked and tested all kinds of things, from the color of the ‘buy’ button to the placement of the images. They’ve optimized everything. You should too.



How to Do It

Different tweaks will require different tools. If you want to change the ‘add to cart’ button, it will depend on what theme you’re using. Some themes make it a simple customization, while others will require a plugin or CSS coding (here’s an overview of all three approaches).



There are also A/B testing tools that can help you compare your changes and see what’s most effective.

More Options

For a more robust approach, you can use the Storefront Powerpack extension to customize just about anything in your store (assuming you’re using WooCommerce’s Storefront theme).







Easy Money

Try making minor changes to your product page to see if you can increase conversions. One ecommerce site had a 5% boost in conversions simply by changing the ‘buy’ button from blue to green.



Different sites will have success with different things, so you’ll need to experiment and see what’s effective on your site. Be sure to pay attention to your stats so you can make a decision based on what actually works



2. The Up-Sell
An age-old retail practice is the up-sell. It can come in many forms, but in general it’s about getting a committed customer to spend more. They’ve already made the decision to buy, so now it’s about increasing profit.

Here are a few different approaches to the idea:

The up-sell: Recommending a different version of what the customer is already buying, often something with more features that either costs more or has a larger profit margin. This is a suggested product to replace what the customer is currently considering.

The cross-sell: Offering a complementary product to go along with the customer’s purchase, something the customer would likely need anyway— HDMI cables with a new TV, a case with a new phone, etc. These are
suggested products in addition to what the customer is currently considering.

The bundle: Similar to the cross-sell, this is offering an item the customer wants along with another frequently purchased item, often with a discount. So this might be a second book by the same author, a movie sequel, or a printer to go with the new computer.

However you approach the up-sell, the idea is that it’s ultimately a help to the customer. It might be offering them a convenience, pointing out extra features they may want, or saving them money. Yes, you want to increase profit for your store, but it also has to help the customer.

How to Do It

The good news is that WooCommerce can do up-sells and cross-sells out of the
box. They’ve got documentation to help you through it.

More Options

If you want to invest more in your store, WooCommerce has a number of extensions you can purchase that offer even more flexibility for adding cross-sells and bundles, including Product Bundles, Chained Products, Force Sells,
Composite Products, and Mix ‘n Match Products. They also offer a helpful chart explaining the differences.

Easy Money

Look at your current offerings and find an obvious step up that would make for a good up-sell. Or maybe a cross-sell is a better fit. Are there common combinations of products that your customers often buy? Set up a cross-sell to encourage those combo purchases.

3. Create Urgency
Another standard retail tactic is to create urgency: “Buy now!” “Limited time offer!” “Buy before they’re gone!

You don’t need to use quite as many exclamation points, but creating a time limit or limiting quantities can be a way to put pressure on customers and encourage them to buy now.

How to Do It

There are a number of ways you can create urgency. The simple, non-coding approach would be to create a sale with a deadline. That functionality is built into WooCommerce. Then you just need to spread the word and emphasize the deadline. Make sure it’s clearly announced on your homepage. Spread it through your marketing channels.

More Options

A more effective approach would be to add a countdown timer. There are several plugins that offer that functionality, including WooCommerce Sales Countdown, WooCommerce Coupons Countdown, and Product Countdown WordPress Plugin. A generic countdown timer plugin would also work, paired with the sale and deadline in WooCommerce.

Easy Money

Set up a 24-hour sale with a countdown clock on your homepage. Schedule a few emails announcing the sale a few days ahead of time, when the sale begins, when it’s half over, and then just a few hours before it ends. You can schedule the same updates on social media, maybe even adding a few more (especially on a
timely channel like Twitter).

4. Create Content
Content isn’t just king, it also sells. So if you want to make more money selling stuff, start creating content about your products.

Content can help in three ways:
1. You’re enhancing your search engine optimization (SEO) to help potential customers find your site.

2. You’re educating those customers and helping them make a decision.

3. You’re building your brand.

How to Do It

WordPress does SEO pretty good out of the box, but you can also use the Yoast SEO plugin to further improve your SEO. Make sure you’re writing helpful meta descriptions and coming up with good headlines. You should also consider the Yoast WooCommerce plugin to further boost your SEO efforts.

When it comes to actually creating content, share what you know. Write about your products and help customers understand the ins and outs. Think about it from the customer’s perspective.

Be sure what you write and the way you write matches your company’s brand. If you sell nerdy T-shirts, embrace it and write about things nerds love. Make sure your writing has a clear voice. You want it to be distinctive and draw people in. You need to stand out from all the other content out there.

More Options

A You can always get creative and come up with content that best fits your products. Maybe video is a better approach than written blog posts. Go for it.

Easy Money

You’re probably thinking, “Wait a minute, this doesn’t seem easy.” Yeah, creating content can be a lot of work. And let’s be honest, you’re not likely to see a boost in sales after a single blog post.

But it’s all about the long game.

The easy part? Creating content doesn’t require coding. It also relies on one thing most shop owners have in abundance: A genuine love for the products they sell.

So start writing one blog post per week. They don’t have to be long (300 words minimum), and you can simply share your love with the world. That should be easy.

5. Email Newsletter
It can be awfully hard to get customers in the first place, so once you get them, make sure you hold on to them. Adding your customers to an email list and staying in touch with them can be an effective way to get repeat customers.

Having a consistent email newsletter is often the challenge. Make a plan to regularly send your customers updates. Send them the content you’re creating, share discounts, tell them about new products, etc.

How to Do It

There are a number of different email newsletter providers and most of them will integrate with WooCommerce: MailChimp, Aweber, Constant Contact, etc.

In most cases these integrations will let you do a lot of cool stuff, including reaching out to customers who have abandoned their shopping carts, making product recommendations, segmenting based on purchase history, and more.

More Options

You can also bring customers back with a rewards program. Use WooCommerce Points and Rewards or WooCommerce Loyalty Rewards to reward your customers for creating an account, making a purchase, writing a review, and more.

Easy Money

Don’t just add customers to your list and start sending them glorified ads. Use this opportunity to welcome them. It’s a chance to set the stage, build your brand, and cement your connection with the customer.

Set up an automated email right now to welcome new customers. Thank them for shopping at your store, and let them know how they can reach you if they have any issues. Be sure to set expectations for future emails (how often will you email them).

Then throw in a discount. You’ll be enticing them to come back right away, plus you’re teaching customers that your emails are valuable.

https://wpbind.com/5-easy-ways-to-make-more-money-with-woocommerce/

Google announced an initiative to begin blocking ads with its Chrome browser back in June . This announcement entailed that the usage of ad blocker extensions on Chrome has been on the rise and continues to do so. Since Google is a company that makes the majority of its money on advertising, it wants to make sure that web surfers can have a pleasant, unobtrusive experience without overly annoying ads

Google will begin to block all ads from websites seen with the Chrome browser (including its own ads) starting on February 15, but only on one condition: the website doesn’t pass Google’s “Better Ads Standards”. This means that any website that displays ads that might be overly annoying won’t show any ads when the viewer uses Chrome.

You’ve seen these annoying ads before: full page ads, ads that flash, or ads that unexpectedly play sound or video. These types of ads taint an otherwise pleasant surfing experience. In turn, users might flock to Chrome to get away from those kinds of ads, and websites are pressured to get rid of obnoxious ads.

Website admins can use Google’s Ad Experience Report to identify which ads don’t comply with Better Ads Standards. If the website has a “passing” status, ads will show business as usual. If the status is “failing” for 30 days or more, Chrome will stop displaying ads on that website. The website will need to use the Ad Experience Report to request a revision of the website before it can start showing ads again.

This strategy does two things: it keeps people who care about their surfing experience on Chrome, and it encourages websites to serve more acceptable ads for everyone. Let’s see if Google’s initiative pays off.

Time Magazine released a list of women who broke grounds in their respective fields and career. The campaign #SheIsTheFirst is so inspiring as it profiles these women and all they did to achieve what they have now.

The magazine states that their goal with Firsts is for every woman and girl to find someone whose presence in the highest reaches of success says to her that it is safe to climb, come on up, the view is spectacular.

Scroll down for the full list.

Madeleine Albright – is the first woman to serve as U.S. Secretary of State

Mary Barra – is the first woman CEO of a major car company

Patricia Bath – is the first person to invent and demonstrate groundbreaking eye surgery

Elizabeth Blackburn – is the first woman to become president of the Salk Institute

Ursula Burns – is the first black woman to run a Fortune 500 company

Candis Cayne – is the first transgender woman with a major role on primetime TV

Hillary Rodham Clinton – is the first woman to win a major party’s nomination for President

Eileen Collins – is the first woman to command a space shuttle

Kellyanne Conway – is the first woman to run a winning presidential campaign

Mo’ne Davis – is the first girl to pitch a shutout and win a game in a Little League World Series

Ellen DeGeneres – is the first to star as an openly gay character on primetime TV

Gabby Douglas – is the first American gymnast to win solo and team all-around gold at one Olympics

Rita Dove – is the first black U.S. poet laureate

Ann Dunwoody – is the first woman to rise to four-star general in the U.S. military

Ava DuVernay – is the first black woman to direct a film nominated for a Best Picture Oscar

Sylvia Earle – is the first woman to become chief scientist of NOAA

Aretha Franklin – is the first woman to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Melinda Gates – is the first woman to give away more than $40 billion to charity

Selena Gomez – is the first person to reach 100 million followers on Instagram

Nikki Haley – is the first Indian-American woman to be elected governor

Carla Hayden – is the first woman and first African American to be the Librarian of Congress

Mazie Hirono – is the first Asian-American woman to be elected to the U.S. Senate

Mae Jemison – is the first woman of color in space

Maya Lin – is the first woman to design a memorial on the national mall

Loretta Lynch – is the first black woman to become U.S. Attorney General

Rachel Maddow – is the first openly gay anchor to host a primetime news program

Rita Moreno – is the first Latina to win an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony

Jennifer Yuh Nelson – is the first woman to solo-direct a major Hollywood animated feature

Ilhan Omar – is the first Somali-American Muslim woman to become a legislator

Danica Patrick – is the first woman to lead in the Indianapolis 500 and the Daytona 500

Nancy Pelosi – is the first woman to become Speaker of the U.S. House of Representative

Michelle Phan – is the first woman to build a $500 million company from a web series

Issa Rae – is the first black woman to create and star in a premium cable series

Shonda Rhimes – is the first woman to create 3 hit shows with over 100 episodes each

Lori Robinson – is the first woman to lead a top-tier U.S. Combat Command

Sheryl Sandberg – is the first woman to become a billionaire from a social media company

Katharine Jefferts Schori – is the first woman elected as presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church

Cindy Sherman – is the first woman to break $1 million in a photography sale

Kathryn Smith – is the first woman to become a full-time coach in the NFL

Kathryn Sullivan – is the first American woman to walk in space

Barbara Walters – is the first woman to co-anchor a network evening news program

Alice Waters – is the first woman to win the James Beard Award for Outstanding Chef

Geisha Williams – is the first Latina CEO of a Fortune 500 company

Serena Williams – is the first tennis player to win 23 Grand Slam singles titles in the open era

Oprah Winfrey – is the first woman to own and produce her own talk show

Janet Yellen – is the first woman to chair the Federal Reserve

SOURCE http://www.asukumagazine.com/time-magazines-list-of-groundbreaking-women/

The #BBNaija finalist’s makeup only got more spectacular every day. We’re crowning this one the winner, though: Makeup artist Radiez by Eve gave the star a starkly dramatic pink-lips/black-rimmed-eyes combo for Instant Pickup launch.

TBoss loves to mix it up with her makeup, but we couldn’t stop staring at her classic smoky eyes and flushed lips and cheeks












http://www.asukumagazine.com/tboss-giving-us-amazing-bridal-inspiration-new-photos/

Question:

I have strong sexual desires but can’t get married at the moment. I try to fast but I keep having these desires and sometimes feel like acting on my desires. Can you advise me how I can stop?

Answer:

Assalamu Alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa Barakatuh
Thank you for your question.

May Allah Almighty keep you in His protection.

Here below are some suggestions in your dilema:

• Try to be punctual with Islamic injunctions such as daily prayers, Quranic recitations, dhikr and duas

• Abstain from all forms of obscenity, nudity, pornography and sinful interaction with the opposite gender

• Attempt to fast constantly in the proper sense by not only abstaining from food and drink, rather all sinful activities

• Stay in the company of the pious as much as possible

• Keep yourself occupied in good so your mind does not drift off to something impermissible

• Make duas and efforts to get married at your earliest
May Allah Almighty keep us all protected with morality, modesty and guidance. And Allah knows best.

Answered by Shaykh Yusuf Badat
Hadith of the Day Imam
Imam of the Islamic Foundation of Toronto and Director of Mathabah institute