Wordpress Archives - Page 2 of 2

Does Your Blog Need a Web Developer?

Blogging is a great way to share your brilliant insights to the world. But if you’re a writer and not a web developer, you probably don’t particularly enjoy all of that technical stuff that comes along with maintaining your blog's web presence. (I know I don’t.) Setting up a blog, managing hosting (including security and backups), customizing your theme and webpages all take time. And when you’re trying to live the life or run the company that your blog centers around, the things you need to do to maintain your blog can easily sap the precious moments you’d rather use for writing. That’s why your blog needs a web developer. So you don’t waste your time managing the technical details of keeping your blog running. Here are some of the key areas where a web developer can improve your web presence and boost your blog’s reach: [text_with_frame id="368c1dbfefba91dceb946d322e0e86bc" content="‹¨›p‹˜›‹¨›em‹˜›If you find this article helpful consider giving it a share‹¯›nbsp;‹¨›/em‹˜›?‹¨›/p‹˜›" line_color="rgba(0,0,0,.07)" text_font="body" heading_font="heading" animation="none" animation_speed="2" animation_delay="0" __fw_editor_shortcodes_id="e6852c2dacc162bc8c34ba646905e841" _fw_coder="aggressive"][/text_with_frame] Let Your Web Developer Handle Hosting, Backups, Uptime Monitoring and More Right out of the gate, there are some technical issues that a blogger must handle before even drafting a first post. From choosing a domain to finding a reliable host and putting systems into place to maintain security, it might take a few hours or days before your blog is up and running. And that’s before you even do the fun stuff, like choosing a theme or sticking your logo on everything. Depending on how much research you want to do to find the best host or security plan, you might spend a good amount of time trying to figure out just…

15 Common WordPress Mistakes Small Businesses Make (and What to Do About Them)

WordPress is a powerful content management system (CMS) that meets the needs of countless small businesses. Many small businesses launch the first version of their website themselves. You slave over it, tweak it, launch it, and sit back basking in your shiny new website's glory. Yet we all make mistakes from time to time... and too often, with the Web, we don't realize our mistakes until they've come back around to hurt us. We at Rystedt Creative have worked on small business WordPress websites for bloggers, dietitians, restoration contractors, and more. Throughout our work we've come to just expect some mistakes on websites we stubble upon, review, or work to improve. [text_with_frame id="368c1dbfefba91dceb946d322e0e86bc" content="‹¨›p‹˜›‹¨›em‹˜›If you find this article helpful consider giving it a share‹¯›nbsp;‹¨›/em‹˜›?‹¨›/p‹˜›" line_color="rgba(0,0,0,.07)" text_font="body" heading_font="heading" animation="none" animation_speed="2" animation_delay="0" __fw_editor_shortcodes_id="e6852c2dacc162bc8c34ba646905e841" _fw_coder="aggressive"][/text_with_frame] Here they are! The 15 most common WordPress mistakes small businesses make. Try to avoid these mistakes as you build your site or improve upon it. #1. Starting With the Wrong WordPress Platform There are two ways you can build a WordPress website: WordPress.com's hosting service or WordPress.org's open source software hosted on a server of your choosing. Many small businesses looking to launch a WordPress website assume that these options are identical... they aren't. WordPress.com is the official WordPress hosting service and thus wants to provide their customers with the smoothest experience possible. In order to do so they limit what you can do with your WordPress website. Want a custom domain name? You'll need at least the Personal tier for $4/month Think you may need to edit your website's look with CSS (or have a web designer do so)? You'll need at least the…

The 25 Best WordPress Plugins for Small Business

Getting your small business website up and running opens a whole new world of possibility: online marketing and e-commerce. WordPress is a powerful tool that powers over 30 percent of websites currently online and has big names using its interface, including the New York Times, Disney and Mercedes-Benz. When you join the ranks of businesses and bloggers that trust their brand’s online presence to WordPress, you enter a world of opportunity. WordPress websites are incredibly versatile and customizable, primarily through bits of code called plugins. From helping you build an online shopping cart for customers to fill to giving tweetable tidbits of your blog posts with the push of a button, WordPress plugins transform the user experience when visitors come to your site. There are limitless ways that you can customize your site, but today we’re going to look at the 25 best WordPress plugins for small business. [text_with_frame id="368c1dbfefba91dceb946d322e0e86bc" content="‹¨›p‹˜›‹¨›em‹˜›If you find this article helpful consider giving it a share‹¯›nbsp;‹¨›/em‹˜›?‹¨›/p‹˜›" line_color="rgba(0,0,0,.07)" text_font="body" heading_font="heading" animation="none" animation_speed="2" animation_delay="0" __fw_editor_shortcodes_id="e6852c2dacc162bc8c34ba646905e841" _fw_coder="aggressive"][/text_with_frame] 1. Sumo.com One of the fastest ways to grow your audience is to build your subscriber list. But to build your subscriber list, you need ways to capture visitors’ email addresses. To do that, use the Sumo.com package of plugins, like their nifty email capture CTA popup that non-annoyingly pops across your screen and encourages visitors to enter their email addresses to stay in the loop. 2. Yoast SEO When you write a post or develop a page, the last thing you want is to put all that effort in and lose out on prime SEO rankings. Yoast SEO is a plugin that sits in your dashboard and monitors the SEO…

WordPress for Businesses

WordPress may have been released in 2003 as a blogging content management system (CMS) but it has grown up since. No longer is WordPress only for blogs. More than 60 million WordPress websites testify to its versatility. WordPress is helping businesses succeed including dog trainers, custom sign makers, branding agencies, and active gear retailers.Why is WordPress a good choice for a business website? Control and Ownership Control and ownership matter to business owners. Your products and services wouldn't be what they are without you. The same is true of your website. Large businesses may be able to afford a unique CMS (although even the BBC, Bloomberg, and Disney use WordPress) but small businesses usually opt for customizing a CMS already available. Most small businesses turn to WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, or Weebly. Yet only one of these gives business owners robust control and ownership.WordPress is open source meaning that anyone can use it or modify it. You aren't beholden to the hosting solutions (and pricing tiers) of a single company. Choose virtually anyone to host your WordPress website and move it anytime. WordPress' open nature also means that it is easy for a developer to modify your website. You aren't stuck living within the walled garden of a single company. WordPress puts you in control.WordPress also takes your ownership of your data seriously. You own your business and you own your website. You should have complete control of your website's data. WordPress allows you to access (and export) your website's data anytime. So if you were ever to move your WordPress site (or leave WordPress behind) you can take your data with you. That isn't always true of other popular content…

Weebly vs WordPress

So you are thinking of building a website (or having one built for you). You've heard of popular software like Weebly and WordPress. You know that you want to make changes to your site on your own after it is launched. Which do you choose (if either)? Here we pit Weebly vs WordPress so you can make the most informed decision. Content Management Systems Both Weebly and WordPress are Content Management Systems (CMSs). A CMS gives website developers, owners, and admins the ability to build, write, modify, and extend web content. Using a CMS means that you may not need to write any code to modify a page, publish a blog post, add a product, or change simple settings. Both Weebly and WordPress do these things and more. Weebly Weebly is one of the most popular drag-and-drop DIY web builder services. It has grown by leaps and bounds since 2007. Their (mostly) intuitive builder, simple pricing tiers, and one-stop-shop model has propelled their growth. According to Weebly, their software now powers more than 40 million sites. Weebly is proprietary software and is tightly controlled by the company. WordPress WordPress is still the king of content management systems. It powers more than 60 million sites including 35% of the top 10k sites on the web. WordPress powers such sites as TechCrunch, The New Yorker, BBC America, Bloomberg Professional, The Official Star Wars Blog, Variety, Sony Music, and MTV News. WordPress is open-source. Anyone can view the code, contribute to the project, or build onto the software. Weebly vs WordPress Let's put these two in the ring and see who emerges the victor. Theming and Styles Both WordPress and Weebly support themes.…

How to Secure Your WordPress Website

Security is a hot topic in tech and WordPress is no exception. It seems that no one is safe from the risk of being hacked. Governments, banks, retailers, bloggers, and virtually everyone else has reported being hacked at some point. And these are just the successful hacks we are aware of. Perhaps you have already experienced the frustration of being a hacking victim. Most Americans have had payment info stolen or their email or social media accounts hacked. Don't let your WordPress site be next. Most hackers leverage simple and easily patchable vulnerabilities to hack into your site. Here are some simple ways you can make your WordPress website more secure today. Update Security patches are one of the primary reasons for updating software. Keeping your WordPress install and plugins up to date is one of the easiest ways to keep your website secure. By default WordPress automatically installs minor security updates. However, major updates are not installed automatically. You should be regularly checking your website and installing available WordPress and plugin updates. If you are letting those updates pile up you are probably missing some essential security patches. Let the developers behind this software keep you secure - install their updates. Use Strong Usernames and Passcodes Weak login credentials are to blame for most hacks. According to one study conducted by Verizon in 2016, “63% of confirmed data breaches involved leveraging weak, stolen or default passwords.” There are three ways to make your WordPress login more secure: 1) Use a Unique Username That is, don't use "admin". Many WordPress beginners install their site with "admin" as the admin's username. Hackers can leverage this to hack into your site because…

The Best Content Management System: WordPress

What do Tech Crunch, BBC America and the official Disney owned Star Wars Blog all have in common? Sure, they publish stuff you can read, they're well known and their owners make money but there is something else... WordPress All of these sites are powered by WordPress. As are sites owned by Sony, Bloomberg, the New Yorker... and many, many more. WordPress Has Transformed the Web WordPress was released in 2003 and the Web hasn't looked back since. Now nearly 30% of the Web is powered by it. According to WordPress, there are 60 million active sites using their services. But by a rough calculation of the nearly 1 billion websites online, that number could easily be much higher. What is WordPress? WordPress is a Content Management System (CMS) and functions as the backend of a website. It does the heavy lifting - like the primary database functionality, user accounts, post scheduling, email subscriptions, admin panels and more. It is also open source and customizable. Some companies customize their WordPress installs to fit their needs more specifically rather than build a CMS from the ground up (and they save a lot of money). Yet most website owners don't need a custom CMS - they need a custom website. That's where companies like Rystedt Creative Services comes in. Individuals, freelancers, and creative firms (like us) use WordPress as the digital foundation for custom designed and developed websites. WordPress allows creative web professionals to spend their time focusing on what the client really needs on the front-end (a beautiful, adaptive and functional search engine ready website) while letting WordPress do the heavy lifting on the backend. Sure, we install professional plugins and…

End of content

No more pages to load

Newer Posts