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WordPress 3.5 Have Very Polished Media Section

Posted on January 4, 2013 // Leave a Comment

WordPress 3.5 have many great tweaks but the one I really live is Media Section, it is so natural and seamless process of uploading, and adding new photos and images to the wordpress posts and pages.

After uploading you can click edit image link and this takes you to next screen where you can resize, crop or rotate image. What a wonderful time saver feature. You can now modify images right in WordPress to make them fit exactly in the area you want to use.

I am happily using this feature and find it great time saver when I need a quick fix to some image, no need to download, resize or crop in PhotoShop and then upload again back into WordPress. I am sure you will also love new MEDIA SECTION of WordPress 3.5, the latest version of this great open source blogging and online publishing software aka CMS .

Best Regards ,
Mohsin

Filed Under: Wordpress Blog, Wordpress Tips // Tagged: , , , ,

Four Must Have WordPress Plugins For Your Website To Make It Succeed Online

Posted on October 21, 2012 // Leave a Comment

Do you know WordPress is so great and popular CMS that 1/4th of the internet’s top websites are based on it? Yes in the recent published report by Matt, founder of WordPress, it was revealed that 22 of every 100 active domains created in the U.S. are running WordPress.

If your website is powered by WordPress you may be thinking which plugin to install and which to leave. I have five year experience in WordPress development and has helped hundred of client launch WordPress based website, it is my daily job to help them decide which plugins to use and which to avoid. Also I always discourage installing so many plugins on a single website.

Why do I advise that to keep plugins count to minimum (SEVEN or TEN in maximum)? Because when you add a plugin to your website, it introduces a third party code which can affect your website’s speed (page loading time) SEO and website security so it is always recommended to keep them to minimum to avoid such risks.

Every website to succeed online in today’s competitive world , have to have great content, secure website, with fast loading pages, and properly optimized pages for SEO. Yes WordPress cannot write content for you, but it can help you with other important aspects to make your website speedy, secure and have SEO optimized pages.

I recommend following four types of plugins to cover four important factors of websites’ online success namely Speed, SEO, Security and ZERO Spam content or comments:

1- Anti-Spam plugin: You can use any good anti-spam plugin however I recommend WordPress’s official plugin for this purpose called Akismet it is already installed in every WordPress website, you just need to activate it using the API key ( you can get API key free of cost by signing up for it with them, please check help link inside the plugin for more details.)

2- Security plugin: there are many security plugins but my two favorite are WordPress Firewall 2 and WordPress File Monitor. WordPress firewall stops all hacking attacks like SQL injections and much more. WordPress File monitor plugin keeps you informed if some hacker or virus changes any of your WordPress files so you can look into that and see if your site is attacked or hacked.

3- Cache plugin: It is must to have fast loading pages and avoid high server load at your hosting. To serve successfully all your visitors without overloading your server, which can take your site down or make it very slow, you need to have cache system in place.

Cache plugin can help you in this regard to keep your sites fast and speedy. Two popular cache plugin are W3Total Cache (W3TC) & WP Super Cache , I have used both at different site both are awesome and have own working style and cache approaches. I recommend to test drive both on some test blog and see which one you like and use that on your websites onward to make them speedy with caching capabilities.

4- SEO Plugin: WordPress is already very much optimized for SEO. However a good SEO plugin can guide you through the process to keep your content properly optimized.

Three popular SEO plugins are AIOS (All-in-one SEO) plugin, Platinum SEO, and WordPress SEO. I have used all three in the past and my (currently) favorite is ‘WordPress SEO’ by Yoast.
Yoast is top SEO guy who knows his stuff and keeps his SEO plugin up to date and simple to follow even for beginners.

That’s it for this tutorial. Again I warn to resist the temptation of installing too many cool plugins. Always be very concerned about your WordPress website’s SPEED, SEO and Security. And use only the absolutely necessary plugin which do not make your site slower or weaken its security.

After having above four types of WordPress plugin in your site, your site is way ahead of 90% sites out there which are slow to load, unsecured(easy to hack) and filled with hundred of spam comments. In conclusion having these four plugins in place you make sure your site is secure, speedy and take care of all spammed comments which are some of fundamental factors of a website to succeed online.

Filed Under: Wordpress Blog, Wordpress Plugins, Wordpress Security, Wordpress SEO, Wordpress Speed //

WordPress Security Risk Strategy for Your Internet Business Success

Posted on April 9, 2012 // Leave a Comment

If you are using WordPress for any of your money making websites in your Internet Business, then it will be the most important article you will read about WordPress risk strategy.

Using WordPress comes with some risks and you need to take care of them with sound risk management strategy to avoid any issues in future. After all you do not want your website to get hacked or become comments spam hub.

I call it 5ws Strategy for WordPress. It is as followings:

  1. WordPress Security
  2. WordPress SEO
  3. WordPress Spam
  4. WordPress Speed
  5. WordPress Stats

Here are the quick details for each WS in this strategy. You get to know what needs to be done and why it should be done and for how to do it guides and resources checkout the links in the footer of this article.

1- WordPress Security

There are about 70+ Millions WordPress websites online and most of them are not secure. As reward for hackers is great due to the number of sites they can infect. They are always trying to exploit the WordPress and release some type of virus.

You must make sure that your website is secure, using latest WordPress version. Also make sure that you are using secure theme and secure plugins.

Try to keep plugins to the minimum and use only which you install directly from WordPress directory but still there is risk so avoid using any plugin you do not know if it comes from reliable source. Also best option is to have security plugins installed and your website’s database and files backup taken daily or at least weekly. How to take backup and what specific security plugins to install is out of the scope of this article but you will find the links in the footer for detailed posts and resources where you have find all the details you need to know to implement the wordpress security measures for your website.

2- WordPress SEO

WordPress is great for SEO, Matt Cuts of Google loves it and endorses it but if you are not using right theme then SEO of your website is screwed. It is the theme installed on your WordPress site which, most of the time, take cares of your on-site and on-page SEO.

So make sure that the theme you are using comes from professionals who know what they are doing. It will be great if you keep SEO in mind while selecting the theme for your website.

Also make sure you have got SEO plugin installed and SEO urls turned on for better SEO rankings.

3- WordPress Spam

There are tools and softwares released often to spam WordPress powered websites. You must take care of your website to avoid getting spam comments live on your website.

Make sure akismet plugin is activated. It will take care of 50% comment spam on your website. But most of the comment spam will keep coming, you better approve manually and also be very picky which author’s comment you approve so you discourage commentators which are there just for backlink and no other reason.

It is also better practice to close comments on old posts as most of the time spammers target your old posts which are now ranking in Google. Better have link to contact page there and comments closed. So if somebody wants to add something critical, they contact you and let your know about that.

4- WordPress Speed

It is very tempting to install all those latest plugins to add bells and wistels to your WordPress website. But remember this can slow your website. And everybody knows that Google loves sites which load speedy.

If your website does not load faster, visitors are going to hit back button, and google again, and Google is going to take note of this. And next time if you do not take care of Speed issue yourself, they will and they will stop sending visitors to your website.

It is suggested you must use some caching plugin and also try to have the minimum plugins and stuff on your most important pages like sales pages and lead generation pages. So that pages load faster and visitors get your message quicker and then take the action which you want them to take.

5- WordPress Stats

As you take care of all above issues, you are going to get more traffic to your website. You must be already using some traffic stats solution like Google Analytics. But I recommend that you have some stats plugin installed on WordPress too. This helps compliment your other efforts and result into growth.

As you login to your wordpress often for posting new content, checking new comments, you also must spend some time to browse the traffic logs provided in the WordPress dashboard with a simple stats plugin so you know which page is getting most traffic. For which keywords your pages are ranking. From which page most of the visitors are leaving your website so you can improve that page.

Hope this will help you devise your own S5 Strategy for WordPress site and get your Internet business protected, and ready for growth. For detailed tutorials and checklists to implement all the steps suggested in this article checkout the links in the footer.

Filed Under: Wordpress Plugins, Wordpress Security, Wordpress SEO, Wordpress Speed, Wordpress Themes, Wordpress Tips //