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If you love preserving your files, the best way to achieve this is by printing them out with the best printer for documents. Regrettably, there are a lot of printers out there that can be used to print out documents; however, not all of them will work well and efficiently when it comes to printing...
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Over the last year, artificial intelligence (AI) has become a huge part of our everyday lives, which is something of a mixed bag that has brought along a wide variety of both positive and negative influences. On one hand, there are algorithms that are designed to perform a largely marketing-related series of tasks, which are perhaps those best known to individuals outside of the technical space. Think of the algorithms curating your TikTok feed and personalizing suggestions on YouTube. The AI that calculates your fastest morning commute based on virtual maps, your vehicle, and current traffic conditions is also a fairly visible one that has had its share of media attention.
A particular area, though, in which AI has become crucial is cybersecurity. Cybercriminals are increasingly harnessing AI to automate breaches and crack complex systems. Sophisticated, large-scale social engineering attacks and deep fakes are prime examples of this trend. Perhaps more subtle techniques, such as those involving AI-driven data compression algorithms, will soon become an even more important part of the space in the year to come.
Incident management is one of the most critical processes a software development team has to get right. Service outages can be costly to the business and teams need an efficient way to respond to and resolve these issues quickly. For example, many organizations report downtime costing more than 300.000 euros per hour, according to Gartner. For some web-based services, that number can be dramatically higher. In this article, we will discuss how critical it is to have a reliable method to prioritize incidents, how to get to resolution faster, and offer better service for the end-users.
First of all, what is incident management exactly? It is the process used by DevOps and software development teams to respond to an unplanned event or service interruption and restore the service to its operational state.
My wife (Nicole) has been by my side for several years – watching me architect, design, and develop applications. She has witnessed ideas born from cocktail napkins become part of the hundreds of articles I have written as a freelance writer. Nicole was there when I designed quite successful applications for her mother and twin sister.
She is also the decorator of our home. Above my desk is a very cool reminder she had made, which simply states "everything begins with an idea." To help you visualize this piece of artwork, I took a photo using my smartphone:
Software development is complex, and for your project to succeed, it’s essential to understand what it can and cannot do. If you remember the following ideas, your software development project is more likely to succeed.
Software developers tend to be fans of the programming languages they use every day. Python is a prevalent language today, but so is C++. The truth is that every programming language is used for a specific reason. That’s why we cannot say with certainty that one language is superior to another. It’s like saying that Spanish is a better language than English – it boils down to where you are.
Compile Time Safe Code is the code that has a guarantee that after compilation it will work as expected. Such code is valid by design. Some languages and frameworks give Compile Type-Safe (not Time) solutions but this article covers more than just Compile Type Safetiness. Keeping your code Compile Time Safe reduces the number of potential bugs and makes code more reliable.
Compile Type Safeness gives a guarantee that all variables are assigned to values with the correct type. Meanwhile, Compile Time Safe code is a more general notion that assures developers that code is not just type-safe but consistent in general.
Are you wondering what strategies your competitors are using to grow their organic traffic?
Doing an SEO competitor analysis can uncover a world of information. Instead of guessing which keywords to target or links to build, you can see what your competition is doing and use that information to improve your site’s SEO.
In this article, we will show you how to do an SEO competitor analysis in WordPress.
Getting your WordPress SEO strategy right can be tricky, especially if you don’t know which type of content to create, which search terms to focus on, and which backlinks to build.
This is where looking at what your competitors are doing can help you out.
By performing a competitor analysis, you can see what’s working for others and how they attract organic visitors to their websites.
Building on the success of these strategies, you can grow your own WordPress site’s organic traffic and outrank your competitors for different keywords.
There are multiple ways to perform a competitor analysis. For example, you can use a WordPress plugin like All in One SEO (AIOSEO) to do an SEO competitor analysis inside your WordPress dashboard or use an SEO tool.
We will cover both these methods in our guide, and you can use the links below to jump ahead to the section you prefer:
If you’d prefer written instructions, then just keep reading.
The easiest way to do an SEO competitor analysis in WordPress is by using the All in One SEO (AIOSEO) plugin. It is the best SEO tool for WordPress and is trusted by over 3 million businesses.
AIOSEO makes it super easy to optimize your site for search engines without needing to hire an expert or any technical knowledge. The plugin offers an SEO Analysis tool that you can use to identify what your competitors are doing to grow their organic traffic.
You can read our complete AIOSEO review for more details.
For this tutorial, we will be using the AIOSEO free version, as it includes the SEO Analysis tool. There is also a premium version of AIOSEO that offers more features like sitemap tools, redirection manager, schema markup, robots.txt editor, and more.
The first thing you will need to do is install and activate the AIOSEO plugin on your website. For more details, please follow our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, the plugin will automatically launch its setup wizard. You can go ahead and click the ‘Let’s Get Started’ button to continue.
For detailed instructions on AIOSEO setup, please refer to our tutorial on how to set up All in One SEO for WordPress.
Next, you can head over to All in One SEO » SEO Analysis from your WordPress dashboard and then go to the ‘Analyze Competitor Site’ tab.
After that, you can enter the URL of your competitor’s site and click the ‘Analyze’ button.
AIOSEO will show you an overall score of your competitor’s website along with a preview of the meta title and meta description that appears in the search results.
You can also view the keywords your competitor is targeting on their site. This information is helpful, as you can get clues about different search terms to focus on your own website and improve your rankings.
Next, AIOSEO will analyze your competitor’s site according to different parameters. It will highlight critical issues along with things that are working well on their website.
You can start with the ‘Basic SEO’ section to view the SEO title and meta description along with their character lengths.
The plugin also shows the keywords used in the meta tags, H1 and H2 heading tags, whether your competitor uses image alt attributes, and the total number of internal and external links found on the page.
Now, using the data from the Basic SEO section, you can compare it with your website and find areas for improving your rankings and organic traffic.
For example, you might see that your competitor has missing image alt attributes. Image alt text helps search engines understand images and rank them in the image search results.
You can capitalize on this opportunity and use alt attributes to optimize images on your own site. This way, you can attract more visitors by grabbing top rankings in the image search results.
After that, you can scroll down to the ‘Advanced SEO’ section.
Under this section, you can find out if a competitor uses a canonical link tag, if a page contains any noindex headers or meta tags, and if the www and non-www versions of the URL redirect to the same site.
Besides that, AIOSEO will also show whether your competitor is using a robots.txt file to improve their site’s crawling and indexing or using schema markup to display additional information in the search results.
By comparing your website to these factors, you can find out which areas to focus on and outrank your competitor.
Next, go ahead and view the ‘Performance’ section in the AIOSEO SEO Analysis tool. Here, the plugin will analyze your competitor and show what they are doing to speed up their site or eCommerce store.
Your website speed is critical for SEO success. That’s because Google uses page load time as a ranking factor. So, if you can make your site load quicker than your competitor, then you can gain a significant advantage in terms of search engine rankings.
For more tips on how to speed up your website, check out our guide to boost WordPress speed and performance.
Lastly, you can view the ‘Security’ section in AIOSEO.
Under this section, the plugin checks if the competitor has disabled directory listings on the server. This setting can protect your sensitive information from falling into the hands of malicious hackers.
You can go through our guide on WordPress security for more tips and tricks to secure your website and gain a competitive advantage.
Besides that, AIOSEO will also analyze your competitor and look for malware that Google would flag. If Google detects that your site has malware or harmful programs, then it may lower your search engine rankings.
Another important thing that the plugin checks is if your competitor is using HTTPS. Search engines give priority to sites that use HTTPS over sites using HTTP.
If you are still using HTTP, then check out our guide on how to get a free SSL certificate for your WordPress website.
Finally, once you have looked at all of these factors on your competitor’s website, we recommend running a full SEO audit on your own site. This will ensure that you haven’t missed anything and that you are optimizing your content to its full extent.
Another way you can conduct SEO competitor analysis is by using an SEO tool like Semrush.
It’s one of the most popular SEO checker and website analyzer tools on the market and is used by SEO experts, bloggers, marketers, online store owners, and businesses of all sizes.
Semrush offers a powerful competitor analysis tool that helps you uncover keywords the competition is using, their backlinks, top content, and much more.
You can start by heading to the ‘Domain Overview’ section under Competitive Research in the menu on your left. After that, simply enter the URL of your competitor and click the ‘Search’ button.
Semrush will now give you an overview of your competitor’s website. You can view its authority score, organic search traffic for the current month, paid search traffic, backlinks, and more.
It will also show you which country contributes to the most significant traffic share, along with a monthly breakdown of organic traffic.
Besides that, you can also view other reports in the Domain Overview section, such as the number of SERP (search engine results page) features, top organic keywords, organic position distribution, main organic competitors, top paid keywords, and much more.
The best thing about using Semrush is that it lets you view each of these reports in more detail so that you can get insights into your competitor’s SEO strategies.
For instance, you can use the Domain Overview report to see how your competitor is performing at a glance. Using the information from these reports, you can set goals for your website and identify areas for improvement.
For more detailed analysis, you can go to the ‘Traffic Analytics’ section from the menu on your left. In this section, Semrush gives you a detailed breakdown of your competitor’s traffic sources.
To start, view the total visits, unique visitors, purchase conversion, pages per visit, average visit duration, and bounce rate.
If you scroll down, then you can identify the top traffic sources and see which source attracts a lot of visitors.
For example, if the competitor is getting many users from social media and you aren’t, then you can look for ways to boost traffic from social platforms.
After that, you can head over to the ‘Organic Research’ section from the menu on your left.
In this section, you can discover your competitor’s top keywords, position changes, top pages, search engine results page (SERP) features like featured snippets, and more.
You can view the Top Organic Keywords to see which search terms users are using to find your competitor’s website.
Semrush also shows the position of the search term, its search intent, whether the keyword is informational or transactional, total volume, and more.
Now, this is extremely useful information for boosting your WordPress SEO. It helps you find new keywords to target on your website, identify opportunities to capture SERP features, and come up with new content ideas.
For instance, you get to see the most important pages that drive the most organic traffic for your competitor. Once you have identified them, you can then cover similar topics on your own site.
Next, you can head over to the Keyword Gap section from the menu on your left and get more insights about the search terms used by your competitors.
Semrush allows you to enter up to 5 domains in the Keyword Gap tool. You can start by entering your website and your competitor’s websites, selecting the ‘Organic keywords’ option, and then clicking the ‘Compare’ button.
After that, Semrush will show a list of keywords that are shared between you and your competitors. The key here is to look at the ‘Missing’ keywords report.
These are search terms that are missing from your website but are being used by your competitor. They provide an excellent opportunity to find new keywords to use on your website and grow your organic traffic.
Aside from keywords, you can also identify backlinks using Semrush. Backlinks or referring domains are an important Google ranking factor, and they provide a vote of confidence for your site.
Since backlinks positively impact your site’s SEO, it’s important to find out where your competitors are getting their backlinks from. Then, using the data, you can also try to get more backlinks for your own site.
To start, you can go to the ‘Backlink Gap’ section, enter up to 5 competitor websites, and then click the ‘Find prospects’ button.
Semrush will show a list of referring domains that are linking to your competitors. Next, you can select a competitor from the ‘Prospects for domain’ dropdown menu.
After that, you can filter the referring domains by best, weak, strong, shared, and unique. To uncover backlinks that only point to your competitor and not you, go ahead and select the ‘Best’ option.
This way, you will find new opportunities to get more backlinks for your site and boost your keyword rankings.
Another way you can use Semrush to capture backlinks from your competitors is by looking for lost links.
Simply go to the ‘Backlink Analytics’ section from the menu on your left. Then, enter the website URL of your competitor and click the ‘Analyze’ button.
Next, you can go to the ‘Backlinks’ tab and select ‘Lost’ from the available filters. Semrush will display all the backlinks of your competitor that no longer exist.
This provides a great opportunity for you to get more backlinks. You can pitch your own blog post or landing page to replace the lost backlink to the referring site.
Tip: If you are looking for an easy, free tool to learn more about your competitor’s keyword strategy, then you can also use WPBeginner’s Keyword Density Checker.
Simply enter a URL or content into the Keyword Density Checker tool, and it will tell you what keywords your competitors are optimizing for.
Now that you know how to perform an SEO competitor analysis, you may like to see some of our other guides on WordPress SEO:
We hope this article helped you learn how to do an SEO competitor analysis in WordPress. You may also want to see our guide on how to move WordPress from HTTP to HTTPS or our expert picks for the best managed WordPress hosting.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
The post How to Do an SEO Competitor Analysis in WordPress (2 Easy Ways) first appeared on WPBeginner.
Front-end developers have to interact with private or public APIs whose method of authorization requires a secret key/API key that enables developers to use these APIs. The key(s) are important, hence the need to store/protect the key(s) arises. Creating an environment variable that stores the key is the “go-to” solution that most developers tend to embrace, but there’s a catch. The environment variable does not protect the key(s) from anyone that knows their way around the dev-tools of their browser. That’s why we need to use our keys at server-side when we’re writing our API calls.
In this article, we’ll be using Next.js to bootstrap our app. This does not mean that the create-react-app library will not work. You can make use of any one that you find convenient. We’re using Next.js because of the many perks that come with it. (You can read more about Next.js here.)
Let us start by installing the dependencies that we need in this project. We’ll start by creating a Next.js app. The command below does that for us:
npx create-next-app [name-of-your-app]We’ll make use of the native JavaScript "Fetch API" library to get data from the API. We won’t be covering much of the styling aspect in this article. (If you want to take a look at an example project I built using the Next.js API route pattern, you can find the repository here.)
Now let’s have a look at the file structure of the app. We’ll be focusing on the important files needed in this app, so it’ll be concise.
|--pages
| |-- api
| | |-- serverSideCall.js
| |-- _app.js
| |-- index.js
|__ .env.localIn this section, we are going to see the different files that make up the architecture of this project, and their respective functions below.
The pages directory is where all the routing of the app takes place. This is an out-of-the-box feature of Next.js. It saves you the stress of hard hard-coding your independent routes.
pages/api
The api directory enables you to have a backend for your Next.js app, inside the same codebase, instead of the common way of creating separate repositories for your REST or GraphQL APIs and deploying them on backend hosting platforms like Heroku, and so on.
With the api directory, every file is treated as an API endpoint. If you look at the api folder, you’ll notice that we have a file called user.js in it.
That file becomes an endpoint, which means an API call can be performed using the path to the file as the base URL.
const getData = async() => {
fetch("/api/users")
.then(response => response())
.then(response => console.log(response.data))
.catch(err => console.log(err)
}pages/_app.jspageProps to the Component props too.function MyApp({ Component, pageProps }) {
return (
<React.Fragment>
<Head>
<meta name="theme-color" content="#73e2a7" />
<link rel="icon" type="image/ico" href="" />
</Head>
<Component {...pageProps} />
</React.Fragment>
);
}
export default MyApp;If you are new to Next.js, kindly go through this article that will guide you through the process.
index.jsindex.js are rendered on the web page.npm run dev.env.localThe previous section exposed you to the files that we’ll be interacting with and their specific functions. In this section, we will move on to how we can consume the API.
The reason why we’re writing the API call at the server-side is for securing our API key, and Next.js already makes it an easy task for us. With the API routes in Next.js, we can perform our API calls without the fear of our API keys being revealed on the client-side.
You may have been wondering what the essence of the environment variable in the .env file is, in this scenario.
The environment variable (which is our API key) can only be available in development mode.
That is why we can do something like process.env.api_key, and get access to the environment variable.
But, the moment you deploy your app to platforms like Netlify or Vercel, the mode changes to production, which makes the Node.js process object unavailable on the client-side.
Now that you have seen the reason why need to write a server-side API call. Let’s get to it right away.
export default async function serverSideCall(req, res) {
const {
query: { firstName, lastName },
} = req;
const baseUrl = `https://api.example-product.com/v1/search?
lastName=${lastName}&firstName=${firstName}
&apiKey=${process.env.KEY}
`;
const response = await fetch (baseUrl);
res.status(200).json({
data: response.data,
});
}In the snippet above, we created an asynchronous function called, serverSideCall. It takes in two arguments, req which stands for “request” in full, and res which is “response” in full.
The req argument has some properties, (or “middlewares” as the Next.js docs call it) that can be accessed when we’re consuming our API, one of them is req.query.
You’ll notice that we destructured the query property in the snippet above, so we should now be able to pass those variables as values to the query properties of the API endpoint. Take a look at it below.
Note: You can read more about the in-built middlewares that come with the req argument here.
const {
query: { firstName, lastName },
} = req;The base URL takes the destructured query properties as values and the apiKey is gotten from the .env file via the Node.js process object.
The destructured query properties are taken as requests that will be sent from the input values of the form component (which we’ll be creating in the next section) to the API, once it is received, we get a response that corresponds with the request we made.
const baseUrl = https://api.kelvindata.com/rest/v1/searchv2? lastName=${lastName}&firstName=${firstName}&apiKey=${process.env.KEY};The next process the function has to complete is the response from the asynchronous API call. The snippet below assigns the API call which we are performing with the axios library to a variable, response.
On the next line, the res argument uses the status method which is used to send a JSON response to us, then we can assign the response variable as a property of data.
const response = await axios.get(baseUrl);
res.status(200).json({
data: response.data,
});You can read more about the various HTTP status codes here.
Practical Usage Of The Server-Side API FunctionIn this section, we’ll have a look at how we can utilize the server-side API call by creating a form with two input fields. The input values will be sent as query parameters to the API endpoint.
import React from "react";
const Index = () => {
const [data, setData] = React.useState([]);
const [firstName, setFirstName] = React.useState("");
const [lastName, setLastName] = React.useState("");
const getuserData = async () => {
// api call goes here
};
const handleSubmit = (e) => {
e.preventDefault();
getuserData();
};
return (
<React.Fragment>
<form onSubmit={handleSubmit}>
<label htmlFor="firstname">First name</label>
<input
type="text"
name="firstname"
value={firstName}
placeholder="First Name"
onChange={(e) => setFirstName(e.target.value)}
/>
<label htmlFor="lastname">Lastname</label>
<input
type="text"
name="lastname"
value={lastName}
placeholder="Lastname"
onChange={(e) => setLastName(e.target.value)}
/>
<button>Search</button>
</form>
<div className="results-from-api"></div>
</React.Fragment>
);
};
export default Index;Since this is a React component that is receiving data from an API endpoint, it should have an internal state of its own. The snippet below shows how we defined the different state variables with React Hooks.
const [userData, setUserData] = React.useState([]);
const [firstName, setFirstName] = React.useState("");
const [lastName, setLastName] = React.useState("");The firstName and lastName variables will store the text values that are typed into the input field by anyone into the local state variables.
The data state variable helps us store the response that we get from the API call in an array, so we can use the JavaScript map() method to render the response on the webpage.
Below, we’re using axios to get data from the API endpoint. But here, the base URL is not a typical https:// URL, instead, it is the path to the file where we made the server-side API call before.
const getuserData = async () => {
fetch(`/api/usersfirstName=${firstName}&lastName=${lastName}`, {
headers: {
Accept: "application/json",
},
})
.then((response) => response)
.then((response) => {
setData(response.data.data);
console.log(response.data.data);
})
.catch((err) => console.log(err));
};The same process in the serverSideCall.js file is repeated, but this time around with the necessary fetch API headers and assignment of the input state variables to the API query parameters.
There are other approaches that can help achieve this feat. Here are some of them:
Thank you for reading this article. Kindly share it and also feel free to take a look at a practical example project that I built using the Next.js API route here.
The best programming language for game developers
Any programming language or software that can help in database design and manipulation
Open Policy Agent is an open-source engine that provides a way of declaratively writing policies as code and then using those policies as part of a decision-making process. It uses a policy language called Rego, allowing you to write policies for different services using the same language.
OPA can be used for a number of purposes, including:
Local SEO is no longer a trend but still a primary goal that any WordPress business site owners try to work toward. With the power to increase your visibility on SERPs, local SEO proves a magic bullet to drive more traffic, sales, and revenue to your brick-and-mortar store. According to Blue Cactus, the local search […]
The post 10 Best Local SEO Tools for WordPress Sites appeared first on WPExplorer.
Striking the right balance between maintaining the software quality and taking care of the release date is one of the many challenges that we partake in the software development life cycle. As a result, it becomes extremely necessary in building the right test cases to address and resort to addressing the product risk with the adjoined test case. While this is standard practice and should be given the maximum value, dissecting each requirement with the test case will seemingly postpone the end date of delivery and subsequent launch of the product. This is where proper planning comes into action. Estimating the testing time takes proper planning and treating the SDLC as a puzzle, wherein you will have to compartmentalize each part of the puzzle and think it directly in terms of testing.
Planning makes it feasible to utilize the already available resources to the best of your capabilities and also helps in predicting your long-terms as well as short-term project goals. The closer and accurate your planning data turns out to be the closer you are going to get to higher quality project management.
Converting audio into text has a wide range of applications: generating video subtitles, taking meeting minutes, and writing interview transcripts. Machine learning makes doing so easier than ever before, converting audio files into meticulously accurate text, with correct punctuation as well!
For details about configuring the Maven repository and integrating the audio file transcription SDK, please refer to the Development Guide.
In JavaScript, short-circuiting refers to the partial evaluation of expressions to avoid unnecessary computation. This blog post describes the short-circuiting operators and assignments in JavaScript and how to use them.
Short-circuiting operators only evaluate the right side of an expression when necessary.
I think if you’re a DevOps person in any capacity, the utility of Docker is very clear. Your things run in containers that are identical everywhere. Assuming Docker is working/running, the code will execute in a reliably consistent way whether that is Docker running on some developer’s computer, or a sky computer. The (massive) appeal there is that bugs will happen consistently. “Production-only” bugs become a thing of the past. There are other benefits, too, like shipping a dev environment to a team of developers that is entirely consistent, even across platforms, rather than battling with individual developers computers.
So… great? Use it all the time for everything? The stopper there is that it’s complicated, and web dev is already friggin complicated and it often just feels like too much. Andrew Welch, however, makes the case that you don’t have to learn Docker super deeply in order to use it:
Docker is a devops tool that some people find intimidating because there is much to learn in order to build things with it. And while that’s true, it’s actually quite simple to start using Docker for some very practical and useful things, by leveraging what other people have created.
Fair point. I don’t deeply understand most of the technology I use, but I can still use it.
While I run Docker all day for CodePen’s fancy dev environment, that’s what my use is limited to. I don’t reach for it like Andrew does for everything. But I can see how it might feel liberating having all that isolation between projects. One of my favorite of points that Andrew makes is:
Switching to a new computer is easy. You don’t have to spend hours meticulously reconfiguring your shiny new MacBook Pro with all the interconnected tools & packages you need.
I find myself bopping around between computers fairly often for various odd reasons, and being able to make the switch with minimal fussing around is appealing.
Sencha GRUI is a perfect modern enterprise solution for React UI that comes with 100+ data grid features. With GRUI, Sencha has re-built the Ext JS grid from the ground up to use modern JavaScript, and a whole new architecture that will deliver all the same great features and even better performance in an easy to use React API.
Here is a quick overview of some of the features:
With incredibly fast data processing, massive amounts of data is never a problem. Utilizing client and server side buffered store, the Sencha Data Grid is able to load and manipulate large data sets within milliseconds!
Virtual Columns
Infinite Scrolling
Slider Paging Toolbar
Column Drag and Drop
Column Editors
Sencha GRUI has robust documentation to help you get started quickly, and it is built with Sencha GRUI as an interactive demo so you can see how it works while you learn how to use it.
The pricing for Sencha GRUI is simple and transparent, on a per developer basis. $499 per developer gives you a perpetual license, unlimited end users and products, and a year of updates and technical support. There is also a Free plan that offers all of the same features and benefits, but it requires an attribution watermark. However, you can sign up for a free 30-day trial to see if Sencha GRUI will work for you and your projects, so that makes it very easy to get to know the product and determine the route you will take.
Mission critical apps rely on the performance of their data grid components. With custom layouts and simple integration with React, GRUI by Sencha renders unparalleled performance to enterprise applications. The extensive documentation should make this easy to get acquainted with and utilize in your projects, and the pricing – especially the free trial – makes it a no-brainer to give it a try. We recommend you give Sencha GRUI a run and let us know what you think!