In the world of WordPress development, there are often many choices on how to achieve a certain function. From block editing tools to form builders there are a bevy of options to choose from, often requiring a keen eye and years of WordPress experience to suss out which is the best for your particular application. … Read more
WordPress is a great solution for most website needs. It’s easy to install, versatile, and it’s backend makes it easy for relative neophytes to add and edit content to websites without needing an advanced degree in Computer Science. This is reflected in its market share: some 40% of all websites are powered by it.
Microsoft Access databases, along with the Backstreet Boys, Sony Discman and Beanie Babies were everywhere in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. Convenient and easy to use, Access became the data bedrock of many small businesses. Fast forward to 2021, and many small businesses and nonprofits have seen the need to leave them Backstreet Boys behind and adapt to the modern era. After all, data often becomes more useful (and easier to manage) when it can be integrated across an organization. WordPress is versatile and powerful enough to do just that, and to automate some functions that used to be manual in Access.
It may sound counter-intuitive, but the successful completion of a web project requires more than just building a website: it is a balancing act of fulfilling a client’s expectations within a specific timeframe and budget and making sure it works across a wide array of browsers and devices.
One of the many wonderful things about WordPress is that its barriers to entry are very low. Anyone willing to roll up their sleeves and spend a bit of time viewing YouTube tutorials can build up a site themselves using the many available WordPress themes and plugins and create and manage their own content. While we certainly recommend working with a professional team whenever adding new features/plugins to a site (especially when needing to modify code), and we recognize that not everyone has the time or disposition to take on the work themselves, we also know there are those who like a “hands on approach” to their website, and for those we present you with a list of useful tools and resources to help along the way.
There will be many people whose New Year’s Resolution is to make a WordPress website. Whether it be for a new business or as a hobby, it will be beneficial to take the time to consider common new site owner pitfalls that we see all the time.
WordPress is the world’s leading content management system, and as you would expect, it has loads of built in easy to use features to help you publish your site content how and when you want. However, it surprisingly does not have a method out of the box to schedule content updates to your posts or pages. When we recently needed to enable this feature for a client, I quickly looked to the WordPress plugin repository which is among the greatest advantages of using the platform. Thousands of plugins are available to expand upon the base set of features for everything that you can imagine: eCommerce, event management, user forums, learning management, and the list goes on. Virtually anything you can envision doing on a website typically has at least three or four very well supported, feature rich, and heavily used and vetted plugin alternatives to choose from depending on your specific needs. This is why we were rather surprised to find the available options for the relatively simple and presumably common task of scheduling content updates to be decidedly slim. Even many of our old friend content management systems that time has passed by, such as Website Baker, offered this feature out of the box in a simple to use format. After some deeper digging we finally found a plugin based solution that, though not installed on that many sites (600+ as of this writing), had some very quality positive reviews and a well established legacy so we decided to give it a closer look and try it out. The plugin we chose is Content Update Scheduler by Infinitnet.
Google Analytics is the default choice for tracking traffic on your website. If you want your site to rank on Google’s search results, you really can’t go without it. It’s free, easy to use, and easy to install. It’s so easy to install, in fact, that there are countless WordPress plugins designed just for that. But with so many choices, it’s not always clear how to set up Google Analytics the right way.
Having a WordPress site is a great way to present your ideas with the outside world. However, there comes a time when this one-way communication is insufficient for your organization’s needs. bbPress is an excellent tool to engage your user community in a variety of ways.
Many business owners think Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a one-and-done thing. You do the work to optimize your site, and then Google does the rest. Now that sounds like a pretty sweet deal, but the problem is it’s not true. If you are interested in improving your SEO for your WordPress, Magento, or other website, read on!
