Martin Aranovitch – The Blog Pros

September 10, 2023September 9, 2024

Put Your Forms On The Map with New Forminator Geolocation Add-On

Our formtastic team’s done it again! Forminator’s new Geolocation Add-on with Google Maps API integration lets you effortlessly gather geolocation data from your form submissions and provide address auto-completion for a smoother user experience.

Forminator map with geolocation feature. — See where form users are located with Forminator’s new geolocation feature.

After releasing the highly anticipated PDF Generator Add-on, we’re proud to announce another powerful addition to our form-building plugin…Geolocation add-on!

If your business needs to collect location information from users, Forminator Pro with Geolocation Add-on is the only form-building plugin you’ll need.

In this post, we’ll look at:

Key Benefits of Using Forminator’s Geolocation Add-on
How to Use Forminator’s Geolocation Add-on

Key Benefits of Using Forminator’s Geolocation Add-on

With Forminator’s Geolocation Add-on enabled, you can enhance forms on your site in the following ways:

Accurate Location Detection

Forminator can precisely pinpoint the user’s location by harnessing the device’s GPS or IP address.

This information is seamlessly integrated into your forms, giving you real-time access to where your users are located.

Moreover, the Geolocation feature includes a convenient address lookup function, allowing users to search for and select their location using postal addresses, city names, or zip codes.

Forminator form submission — See the user’s location in your form submissions.

Interactive Map View

One of the standout Aspects of the Geolocation feature is its map view. Not only can users see their location on a map but also interact with it.

Users have the option to manually input their location or select it directly from a map marker. This dynamic map view enhances user engagement and makes it easy for users to provide accurate location details.

Customization Options

Forminator’s Geolocation offers a range of customization options to suit your needs. You can configure the display of Google Maps next to your address field, choose whether to position the map above or below the address field, and even adjust the map’s size, ensuring a responsive or custom fit for various devices.

Additionally, you have the flexibility to set a default map location based on specific latitude and longitude coordinates.

Geolocation Map Customization — You can easily customize your map’s geolocation options.

Seamless Integration

To utilize the Geolocation feature, simply enter your Google Maps API key in the Geolocation settings, ensuring a seamless and reliable experience for your users.

Global Settings

For ease of use across all your forms, you can enable Geolocation as a default setting on all address fields throughout your site. This simplifies the process of collecting location information from your users.

Forminator Geolocation Settings — Enable Geolocation as a default setting on all new forms.

User-Friendly Configuration

If you require users to provide location access before submitting a form, the “Require access to users’ location” option can be enabled. Additionally, you can customize the error message displayed if users choose not to provide location access.

How To Use Forminator’s Geolocation Add-on

To install and use the Geolocation Add-on, you’ll need to have Forminator Pro installed and activated on your site.

Forminator Pro is included in all paid memberships, so if you’re not a WPMU DEV member yet, consider becoming one by choosing one of our risk-free membership plans.

With Forminator Pro installed, go to the Add-Ons section of the plugin’s menu and click Install.

Forminator Add-Ons screen: Geolocation Addon highlighted. — Install Geolocation in the plugin’s Add-Ons screen.

Once the plugin has been installed, click Configure.

Formoinator Add-Ons - Geolocation - Configure button highlighted. — You’ll need to configure the Add-On before you can use it.

You’ll need to add a valid Google Maps API key to enable and set up geolocation on your forms. Refer to our Forminator Docs for instructions on obtaining this key if you need help with this step.

Enter your key into the Google Maps API field, switch the toggle on to enable geolocation as the default option for all your new forms (optional), and click the Save button to continue.

Configure Geolocation — Enter your Google Maps API key.

Once the API key has been validated and the configuration has been successfully saved, a confirmation message will display briefly on your screen letting you know that you’re all good to go.

Note: You can access additional Geolocation configuration settings for individual forms (e.g. disabling geolocation or making it mandatory for users to provide their location details in order to submit a form) in the Forms > Edit Form > Settings section.

Forminator Form Settings screen — Configure additional Geolocation settings in the Form Settings section.

With the addon configured, let’s go through an example of adding Geolocation field to a form.

Adding Geolocation Fields To Forms

In the Forms section, select a form or create a new form and select Edit > Fields.

Forminator: Edit Form - Insert fields button. — Click on the Insert fields button to add Geolocation to a form.

Select the Address field and click the Insert Fields button.

Forminator form fields selector — Add an address field to your form.

The Address field is highly customizable and includes a Geolocation tab with advanced options for configuring maps, such as:

Autocomplete: Provides real-time suggestions as users enter an address into the field.
Display address in Map: Displays a map next to the address fields
Map Position: Choose whether to display the map above or below (default) the address field.
Map Size: Set a responsive or custom size for your map.
Default Map Location: Set a default of custom location for your map.

Forminator Address field settings - Geolocation options. — Forminator Address field settings include advanced Geolocation options.

Configure the above settings to suit your needs and to facilitate user interaction with your form maps and a great user experience.

For example, enable autocomplete to display matching locations as users start typing and to fill in the address fields automatically when an address is selected from the options displayed.

Forminator geolocation - autocomplete fields — Enable autocomplete for a smoother and more interactive user experience with form maps.

Once the browser loads the form page, it will prompt users to give access to their location. Allowing this access will then show the user’s current location on the map and auto complete the address fields.

Forminator form with map — Enabling autocomplete also prefills all address details on the form.

By simply clicking on different points on the map, users can also change their location and update address fields.

Clicking on different points on the map changes the address on the form fields.

All form information including the user’s geolocation details and a map will also display on Forminator’s submission page.

Forminator submission page with example of form submission. — An example of a Forminator form submission showing a map with the user’s location and coordinates.

It’s All About Geolocation, Geolocation, Geolocation

Forminator’s new Geolocation feature empowers you to collect and leverage location information from your form users, gain valuable insights into your audience, whether they are customers, employees, or suppliers, and make more informed business decisions.

Check out this feature in Forminator Pro and if you need any help, see our documentation or contact our expert 24/7 support team.

April 6, 2023

Improve Site Navigation and WordPress SEO with New SmartCrawl Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs are now baked into SmartCrawl, along with another hotly requested feature… setting primary categories for posts and products!

SmartCrawl 3.5 gives you the ability to improve your WordPress site navigation for users and search engines with two new powerful features: breadcrumbs, and the ability to specify primary categories when assigning multiple categories to your posts or product pages.

In this article, we explain the benefits of using SmartCrawl’s latest new features and how to get the most out of them. We’ll cover:

What’s a Breadcrumb?
Why Use Breadcrumbs?
Where Can You Use Breadcrumbs?
Breadcrumbs and Multiple WordPress Post Categories
How to Add Breadcrumbs to WordPress Using SmartCrawl
- Configuring Breadcrumb Settings

Let’s get cooking…

In the classic fairytale, siblings Hansel and Gretel left a trail of breadcrumbs when they went deep into the forest so they would not get lost and have a path to navigate on their return.

Aptly named, breadcrumbs are an essential navigation aid that can help visitors and search engines better understand your website’s structure.

Why Use Breadcrumbs?

According to research, 38% of first-time website visitors look at navigational links on a page. So, the easier you make it for users to navigate your site, the better their experience. Especially if your website has a hierarchical structure with lots of nested pages.

And it goes without saying that improving your site’s navigation is also good for SEO, as it helps search engine bots crawl your pages and index your content more efficiently.

Here are some other reasons why you should use breadcrumbs on your WordPress site:

Breadcrumbs help users figure out where they are on your site. Visitors usually land on your site through an article link or search result and need a way to orient themselves quickly. A breadcrumb path can provide this orientation, making it easier for visitors to find what they’re looking for. It can also help to reduce bounce rates (i.e. the percentage of visitors who navigate away from your site after viewing only one page).
Breadcrumbs improve user experience. By providing a clear and concise path, users can understand not only where they are on your website, but also how to get back to previous pages or go up a level or two in your site’s hierarchical structure.
Breadcrumbs can improve your search engine visibility and potentially increase traffic to your site. Google uses breadcrumbs to categorize information on your site, helping it to index and organize your content and present it correctly to users. In fact, search engines like Google display breadcrumbs in search results pages, making them a valuable tool for improving your click-through rates.

Google search results example — Google displays breadcrumbs in search results.

Where Can You Use Breadcrumbs?

Breadcrumbs are a type of secondary navigation scheme that show users the path they have taken to reach a particular page on a website.

They don’t replace your site navigation menu, they support and complement it. So, a good place to put them is at the top of a page, just below your site’s primary navigation menu or the main header section.

Breadcrumbs displaying at the top of the page. — You can display a breadcrumb trail at the top of your content.

However, you can also use them at the bottom of your page or even on your sidebar.

As you will see later in this post, you can pretty much add a breadcrumb anywhere on your site using a shortcode.

Example of adding a breadcrumb into content using a shortcode. — Don’t know why you’d want to do this, but you can.

The best way to find what works best for your site is to test different locations and use tools like heatmaps or analytics to measure your results.

A website page with breadcrumb navigation. — Test different locations to sprinkle breadcrumbs on your site.

Breadcrumbs and Multiple WordPress Post Categories

What happens if you assign multiple categories to a post? How do breadcrumbs choose which path to display?

Example of a WordPress post assigned to multiple categories. — Which of these categories gets the breadcrumb?

The answer is… breadcrumbs will choose whichever category you have specified as the primary category for the post.

Example of WordPress post assigned to multiple categories with the option to assign a primary category. — Make sure you can assign a primary category to posts with multiple categories.

Primary categories are the main classification of your business, product, or service and can help search engines understand the primary focus of your website, so the ability to select primary categories in SEO is important.

Example of post with a primary category assigned. — This is the category your breadcrumb patch will display.

If you assign a primary category to your posts, breadcrumbs don’t have to guess. It’s as simple as that!

An example of a web page with breadcrumbs. — A breadcrumb makes your site less humdrum.

How to Add Breadcrumbs to WordPress with SmartCrawl SEO Plugin

SmartCrawl not only makes it easy to add breadcrumb navigation to your website and assign primary categories to your posts and product pages, but it automatically adds structured data to your breadcrumbs. This helps search engines to understand and categorize your content and present it correctly to users.

Plus, SmartCrawl gives you complete control over how your breadcrumbs appear, making it easy to provide visitors with the information they need to navigate your site.

Example of web page with SmartCrawl breadcrumbs feature activated. — SmartCrawl’s breadcrumbs give you more SEO for your dough.

To activate SmartCrawl’s breadcrumb feature, go to SmartCrawl > Advanced Tools > Breadcrumb and click on activate.

SmartCrawl - Activate Breadcrumb screen — Activate SmartCrawl’s breadcrumb feature to configure and use it on your site.

Activating the feature gives you access to a range of settings and options for configuring your breadcrumbs.

SmartCrawl breadcrumbs settings screen. — SmartCrawl gives you loads of breadcrumb customization options.

Let’s go briefly over SmartCrawl’s breadcrumb settings:

Add Breadcrumbs to your Webpage – Add breadcrumbs to any page and anywhere on your website using a shortcode or adding PHP code to the template page.
Preview – This section lets you preview how breadcrumbs will display on your pages.
Breadcrumb Separator – Choose a breadcrumb separator from the list of presets or add your own custom separator using HTML characters.
Configurations – This section lets you enable additional breadcrumbs settings for your site, such as adding a prefix at the beginning of the breadcrumbs, adding home breadcrumbs to the trail, hiding the post title from the breadcrumb trail, or hiding the default WooCommerce product breadcrumb from your site if you use WooCommerce.
Breadcrumb Label Format – Here you can customize various breadcrumb label formats across your site, such as Post, Page, Archive, Search Results, and 404 Error Page label formats.
Deactivate – Deactivate the feature if you no longer want to display breadcrumbs on your site.

Let’s look at a few ways to customize breadcrumbs by tweaking SmartCrawl’s settings.

Choose a Breadcrumb Separator

The Breadcrumb Separator section lets you specify a separator symbol from a list of presets, but you can also add your own by entering HTML characters.

So, for this example, let’s add an emoji into the custom separator field…

Custom Breadcrumb separator — Add your custom separator HTML.

Here’s the result…

Webpage with custom breadcrumbs. — Create fun trails for users with custom breadcrumbs.

Add a Prefix

You can also add a prefix to your breadcrumbs in the Configurations section…

SmartCrawl - Breadcrumb settings: Add Prefix to Breadcrumb. — Add a prefix to your breadcrumbs.

And here’s the result…

Breadcrumb trail with prefix added. — Happy trails…

Hide Title in Breadcrumb

Let’s do one more tweak and hide the post title from our breadcrumb trails…

SmartCrawl breadcrumb configuration settings - Hide Post Title option. — You can hide the post title from displaying your breadcrumbs.

And here’s our customized breadcrumb sans title…

Breadcrumb trail with prefix and hidden title. — This humble breadcrumb is neither titled nor entitled.

Breadcrumb Label Formats

SmartCrawl gives you additional options to customize breadcrumb label formats across your site.

Customize breadcrumb label formats with a wide range of options.

This allows you to add additional information to your breadcrumbs such as post authors, dates and time, your site title, etc.

Example of customizing breadcrumb label formats. — Customized breadcrumb label formats? Is there anything SmartCrawl won’t do?

SmartCrawl… the Crumb de la Crumb of Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs improve your website’s SEO and search engine visibility, provide visitors with an easy way to navigate your site, reduce bounce rates, and increase click-through rates.

Smartcrawl’s breadcrumb feature is customizable, flexible, user-friendly, SEO-friendly, and compatible with all WordPress themes and plugins.

Additionally, SmartCrawl automatically ads breadcrumb schema markup and the ability to specify a primary category for posts and product pages with multiple categories assigned.

SmartCrawl is the free SEO plugin that lets you have your cake and eat it too… right down to the tastiest breadcrumbs!

See our documentation section for more information on using this feature and, if you have any questions, ask our 24/7 support team or check out our new AI Assistant by clicking the Support tab inside The Hub.

July 10, 2022

It’s A Hit! Client Billing Reaches $500K Volume Processed and Is Now Completely Free 🎉

Billing your clients with WPMU DEV’s complete white label subscription and invoice solution is hitting goals. So, to celebrate, we have made it… completely free (no credit card required!) for anyone to use, with 0% commission fees for business-level members.

The Hub - Client Billing screen — Client Billing … your complete (and free) billing and invoicing management solution!

“I love the client billing system. In the past I used Paypal to charge my client and it was just a mess. I started using WPMU DEV’s client billing system and I have a more automated billing process.”

Giovani R – G2

Let’s get right to the point…if you are a web developer, and you like getting paid for your services, and you’re not using WPMU DEV’s Client Billing to set up automated client billing (or standalone invoicing!), then you’re missing out on a powerful free tool that can make a huge difference to your business.

Example of an invoice generated from the Client Billing tool. — Set up your products and services, generate invoices, and get paid…all without leaving The Hub!

“The site management tools are amazing, all your sites in one dashboard with any and every tool you could think of to manage your websites, from client billing to performance analytics, its all there.”

Web Host Wizards – Trustpilot

Client Billing is a complete white label subscription and invoice solution that integrates fully with your site and The Hub Client and lets you streamline the way you manage and bill your clients with a full payment system for your business.

Client Billing - Confirm & Send Invoice screen. — Create automated recurring invoices or send one-time payment requests to clients with one click.

Think of an “automated client billing management” system with automated subscriptions, white label client portal, secure checkout, branded invoices and emails, and a whole lot more, and you’ll be close to imagining what our Client Billing tool lets you do (oh…and did we also mention that it’s free?).

But you don’t have to imagine. You can learn all that Client Billing does and take it out for a spin to see for yourself!

An example of a white label invoice generated with WPMU DEV's Client Billing tool. — Use Client Billing’s white label tools to generate and send client invoices under your own brand.

“Using WPMU Dev, I have benefitted from their convenient client billing and client management system”

Sian E- G2

Just How Good Is WPMU DEV’s Client Billing Anyway?

Since launching Client Billing in November 2021, our members are now close to generating almost $100,000 p/mth in gross monthly recurring revenue (MRR).

Monthly Gross Volume Processed Through Client Billing — Monthly recurring revenue keeps going up…that’s a good thing, right?

And we have processed over $500,000 in client billing and invoicing payments so far…

Monthly Payments Processed Through Client Billing — WPMU DEV members have used the Client Billing tool to pocket over half a million dollars in services.

The results speak for themselves. More members are using Client Billing to invoice their clients and get paid and monthly recurring revenue is going up and up. Our members are making money and we have many other great features planned for Client Billing, so we are breaking out the bubbly!

“Their suite of plugins is amazing and I love that I can connect all of my clients using their hub and billing.”

Megan W – G2

Save Time with Free Client Billing and Make More Money with 0% Fees!

Client Billing is available to all WPMU DEV members, regardless of the membership level you are on.

If you are a WPMU DEV member on a Freelancer or Agency plan (our business-level plans), use our powerful free Client Billing tool to set up automated client billing for recurring subscriptions and services or standalone invoices for any service or package you offer and we won’t charge you any commission fees…ever!

This means that as a business-level member, we will absorb the admin costs of the service , and the only fees you will pay for billing or invoicing your clients through our Client Billing system are whatever your payment processor (e.g. Stripe) charges, as we have no control of what 3rd-party payment providers do.

“Just now I input all of my websites and hooked it up to client billing, to see my MRR right there motivates me so much I think I will upgrade to the agency plan and push hard with business.”

Web Host Wizards – Trustpilot

Note: If you are a Free, Basic, or Standard Member, you also get Client Billing included for free in your WPMU DEV membership, and we’ll only charge you a 5% fee on the transaction amount for administering the service.

“The customer billing integration with stripe has been a huge help with all of my web design clients saving me a lot of time.”

Clarence H – G2

Get Started With Free Client Billing Today!

If you haven’t started using Client Billing yet, don’t wait any longer to start getting paid automatically for your services and generate monthly recurring revenue (MRR). You can get started right now from The Hub if you are a member, or join the WPMU DEV community and start billing your clients the smart and automated way!

Check out our in-depth step-by-step documentation, read our tutorials on how to get the most out of client billing, and if you need any help, you’ve always got 24/7 access to our expert support team.

Getting paid for your services just keeps getting easier with WPMU DEV’s built-in client billing system!

October 4, 2021

Make Headlines on Google News with SmartCrawl’s Free Google News Sitemap

Do you run a news site or blog or publish newsworthy content with WordPress? Then put your site on the Google News map with SmartCrawl’s Google News Sitemap…for Free!

Have you heard the good news?

If you are already using our powerful SmartCrawl WordPress SEO plugin and you want to add a Google News sitemap to your site, then look no further…SmartCrawl comes with its own built-in Google News sitemap so there’s no need to install an additional plugin.

So, if you run a news site, news blog, or publish newsworthy content with WordPress, read on to learn more about:

Why Use Sitemaps
How To Use SmartCrawl’s Google News Sitemap
How To Add Your Website To Google News

Use SmartCrawl’s Google News sitemap to get your news content published on Google News!

Why Use Sitemaps

We’ll keep this section short and sweet…

Sitemaps are useful tools for helping site visitors and search engines find content on your site.

An HTML site map helps human visitors navigate faster to content on your site and an XML sitemap helps search engine robots crawl and discover all of your content.

In addition to providing an XML sitemap that offers many advantages over the WordPress core sitemap such as performance caching, including images from post content, adding styling to the sitemap, automatic updates, and auto-notifying search engines, SmartCrawl also offers a configurable Google News sitemap.

SmartCrawl’s Google News sitemap is specifically designed to meet all of Google News technical requirements for a news sitemap feed.

How To Use SmartCrawl’s Google News Sitemap

To enable or disable SmartCrawl’s Google News Sitemap feature, select Sitemaps > News Sitemap in the SmartCrawl plugin menu.

SmartCrawl plugin menu - Sitemaps — Select Sitemaps in SmartCrawl’s menu.

Click Enable…

Once the feature is enabled, you will find fields for entering your Google News publication name (Note: your publication name must match the one you have set up on news.google.com) and the option to include post types (e.g. Posts, Pages, Products, etc.) or exclude posts by category or individual posts.

SmartCrawl Google News Sitemap settings screen. — SmartCrawl’s Google News sitemaps lets you control which posts are submitted to Google News.

Remember to click the Save Settings button when done.

View your Google News sitemap at yourdomain.tld/news-sitemap.xml.

SmartCrawl Google News Sitemap Feed — Your Google News Sitemap feed…powered by SmartCrawl!

Note: Only content published in the last 48 hours will be included in your News Sitemap. If no content is published during this time, your feed page will display an empty sitemap with no URLs.

For more details about using this feature, check out SmartCrawl’s News Sitemap documentation.

How To Add Your Website To Google News

You don’t necessarily need to have a news site to get approved as a publisher on Google News, but you must be publishing timely, topical articles, and newsworthy content on a regular basis.

Your site must also be an authoritative source of news in your industry or niche and your content must meet Google’s technical and quality guidelines to get approved.

Note: no amount of whitehat SEO tweaking (or blackhat SEO shenanigans) will get you listed on Google News if your site does not actually meet Google’s stringent criteria for inclusion.

Once Google approves you as a news publisher, you will have access to the Google Publisher Center – an interface where you can submit, manage, and monetize your content in Google News.

You can then copy your news feed URL and paste it into your Google Publisher account, under the publication you set up for your news site in your Google Publisher Center.

Rather than make this a lengthy post, we recommend visiting the Google Publisher Center Help section. It will explain everything you need to know and take you through the entire process of getting started with Google News and setting up your news publication.

In addition to the above, we also recommend checking out this article from the Search Engine Journal and Neil Patel’s excellent tips on getting your website listed on Google News.

Extra, Extra, Read All About It!

If you run a WordPress-based news site, make sure to use SmartCrawl’s Google News Sitemap (available in both the free and pro versions) to get your good news published instantly and automatically.

And if you need any help installing or configuring SmartCrawl, check out our plugin documentation or contact our support team any time of day or night.

September 23, 2021

How to Compress and Remove Original Images with Smush

Want greater control of your uploaded images? Smush lets you compress uploaded images, backup uploaded images, scale images to a desired threshold, disable scaling altogether, and more.

With Smush, you can now override WordPress Core functionality in the plugin’s settings to compress and remove original images.

We have tweaked the bulk smush engine and added several options that lets you choose how to manage this.

Before getting into the nitty-gritty, let’s explain what “originals” are (yeah, it can be confusing even for us).

Originals and Scaling

When WP version 5.3 was introduced in October 2019, WordPress decided to change how they handled big images.

Basically, WordPress defined a threshold (2560px is the default) and all images that were bigger than that would be scaled down, leaving users with all the usual generated attachments, plus the scaled version, plus the actual big image that you uploaded.

To quote the WordPress team:

If an image height or width is above this threshold, it will be scaled down, with the threshold being used as max-height and max-width value. The scaled-down image will be used as the largest available size.

Note: The scaling only works with JPEG images as the WP Core Team removed this functionality from PNG files due to a number of issues.

Use Cases

There are various reasons why you would want to compress your uploaded images or even go one step further and disable the default WordPress scaling functionality altogether.

For example, you may have users that don’t know that uploading 20MB images directly from their camera is not a good practice when it comes to using images with WordPress.

Or, images may be taking up a lot of space on your server and for various reasons, you can’t do anything but try to compress these.

The point is…you have your reasons and Smush allows you to choose how to handle images to better suit your workflow. :)

How Does it Work?

Whether you have Smush free or Smush Pro installed, go to Bulk Smush > Settings and scroll down a little.

You will find several new options:

Resize uploaded images lets you change the default max image width and height threshold defined by WordPress (2560px) to other dimensions.

Disable scaled images allows you to completely disable the scaling functionality, which means that WordPress won’t create scaled versions of your uploaded images if they’re larger than the threshold. Basically, this lets you go back to how WordPress managed large-sized images before v5.3.

Enabling Compress uploaded images allows you to smush those huge images that we talked about earlier. No more 20MB+ images taking up space in your server (unless you really want it to!).

Smush also gives you the option to back up your uploaded images.

If you want to compress your scaled images, you’ll see the threshold size you defined (for example, 2048×2048) as another item under Bulk Smush > Image Sizes > Custom.

Bulk Smush Settings - Image Sizes — Compress your scaled images, including your defined image threshold size.

Under Tools > Bulk restore, you can restore your thumbnails as long as you enabled the option to back up your uploaded images.

Smush Bulk Restore — Regenerate your image thumbnails from your original uploaded images.

Give this feature a spin and start managing your uploaded images better in WordPress. If you need additional information, check out our Smush plugin documentation or contact our support team.

February 24, 2021September 8, 2024

Introducing…Blog XChange! Contribute Your Knowledge To Our Blog And Get Hero Points Plus Links To Your Site

Are you looking for great tips, tutorials, and hacks from experienced web developers to take your skills to the next level and help you solve client problems faster? Well, so are we! That’s why we are launching The BLOG XCHANGE!

WPMU DEV Members Blog XChange — Chun-chun-chun-chun…Blog XChange! (Members Only)

tl;dr – The Blog XChange is a new initiative for WPMU DEV members aimed at providing better engagement with our member community by focusing on the content that matters most to you. Help us to help you and we’ll reward you with Hero points and links to your site.

Blog XChange…What The Heck Is That??

Here at WPMU DEV’s secret content lab, we are always searching for new blog content ideas.

You would think that hiring the most brilliant writers in the WordPress universe would result in endless blog content, but alas, this isn’t so.

Which is ironic, I know, given that one of us is the author of a ~~best~~ ok-selling book called “Infinite Content Creation (How to Never Run out of Content Ideas for Your Blog).”

The WPMU DEV blog, however, is a different beast. We don’t publish fluffy filler content about WordPress. We know that our audience (yes, YOU!!) would never stand for it.

We know that you expect us to write articles and tutorials with substance. Beefy content (or tofurkey if you prefer non-meaty adjectives) that you can apply in your business to improve not only your skills but also solve real challenges for your clients and deliver them better and faster websites that will help them get results.

Writing blog content targeted to your needs requires us to spend a lot of time researching previous post comments, scouring our members’ forum, analyzing analytics, doing keyword research, peeking into our competitors’ sites, reading through tons of industry newsletters, etc.

Sometimes, we come near, but near just isn’t close enough.

We want to post content on our blog that reflects who you are, what you do, and how you solve everyday challenges in your business working at the coalface and deep in the trenches.

Since we can’t be you (somebody’s gotta write the blog, right?) we came up with an ingenious idea:

“Why not tap into your knowledge and experiences as a WordPress web developer and reward you for all contributions you make to our blog?”

A Fair Trade

When we recently floated the suggestion to create an area where members could exchange their knowledge for hero points and links to their sites, we received overwhelmingly positive feedback and support from our members…“provided it’s a fair trade,” said all of you in unison.

We know you’re busy running a business and that you pay us to serve you, so we don’t expect you to give us something for nothing.

We’re all about fair trading here at the DEV…(you’re probably not even aware of this, but did you know that you can now get hero points just for commenting on our blog posts?)

Hence, Blog XChange (and not Blog XPloitation!)

By sharing your knowledge and experiences on the Blog XChange, you will be helping other members and helping us too! In return, we will reward you for your contributions with loads of hero points and, if we use your content on our blog, with links to help promote your business.

Web Developer. — Don’t let all that great knowledge go to waste…xchange it for hero points and links at the Blog XChange!

In this post, I’ll briefly tell you how it works and how to get started if you’d like to contribute. For full details, including guidelines for posting content and exactly how we will reward you for your contributions, see the pinned post inside the Blog XChange. (Check it out…it’s now live in your Member’s Area!)

Blog XCh-ch-ch-Changes – How It Works In A Nutshell

First off, we’re not looking for Pulitzer-prize-winning authors. You don’t have to submit polished prose or perfectly-presented publish-ready posts…we’ll take care of that.

What we’re looking for is a good ‘chunky’ piece of content that comes from your experience as a WordPress web developer, website builder, digital agency, tech support services provider, etc.

In your own words, tell us about a problem you have solved or a solution, fix, or hack you discovered that improved some Aspect of your or your client’s website or business.

Test and compare different plugins you are currently using against ours and share your results.

If you like, also feel free to share code snippets, screenshots, links to your favorite time-saving tools and resources, etc.

Preferably, it would be ideal if the content you share on the Blog XChange includes using our plugins or services (you’ll get extra points for that!) but it’s not a requirement.

Every contribution you make on the Blog XChange will earn you points. After all, just by posting it, you are helping other members.

Hustle — The Blog XChange can be your little side hustle.

What the blog team will do, is regularly scan the contributions posted on the Blog XChange. We will then reward you for anything we use on the blog. This includes quotable sentences, paragraphs, or sections of text, code snippets, mini-tutorials, video reviews,…even links to great tutorials published on your own sites, or a great headline idea for a new post will earn you a point.

In some cases, we may contact you to discuss publishing a full-blown article, tutorial, or case study. This is exactly what happened when one of our members posted a comment on one of our discussions. We then created a case study and promoted her business throughout the post…so, win-win!

Obviously, there are some things we will not publish, like content designed to promote affiliate links or hyped-up self-promotional stuff…basically we’ll apply the same editorial guidelines and criteria to whatever you submit that we ourselves use to ensure that we maintain our blog to the highest standards.

The Times, They Are A-Blog XChangin’ – How To Get Started

Contributing content to the Blog XChange is super easy. Any WPMU DEV member can do it.

As soon as you get an idea for a post, head on over to the Members section and click on the Blog XChange link (or click here to go there now.)

Click ‘Start Discussion’.

WPMU DEV Members Blog XChange - Start Discussion — Almost there…

Enter the title of your post in the ‘Subject’ field (it doesn’t have to be a snazzy title or an SEO-optimized headline…just tell us what it’s about!)

Under ‘Topic’ select ‘Blog XChange’.

Type or paste in your content in the ‘Discussion’ field. Feel free to use the formatting, quotation, and hyperlink tools too!)

If you’d like to keep track of any discussions on your thread, check the ‘Notify me by Email’ box.

Click the Post button to submit your contribution.

Blog XChange - Content submission form. — Type, select, paste in content, check, and click the button and you’re all done…too easy!

Your contribution is now added to the Blog XChange. If you need to make any adjustments to your post, just click on the Edit link.

Example of Blog XChange submission. — You’re a blog writer now…congrats!

That’s it! you’re all done.

Thank you! Hero points coming right up…check your sidebar!

We’ll get in touch with you if we use your content on our blog (e.g. to confirm the URL we’ll be linking to) and to discuss things further if we have any questions.

WPMU DEV - Blog XChange section with content added. — Hero points and links…thank you WPMU DEV!

To XChange is to Grow

As web developers and WordPress service providers, you know the challenges that you and your clients face every day. Better still, you know how good it feels to solve these challenges and come up with better, faster, more efficient ways to get things done.

By sharing your knowledge and experiences with us, you’ll be helping us write the exact content you’d like to see on our blog, helping other members, and helping yourself too!

As Winston Churchill famously ~~never~~ stated…

“To improve is to XChange; to be perfect is to XChange often.”

We look forward to seeing your contributions and to working more closely with you to benefit our valued members and help improve your businesses.

See you at the Blog XChange!

October 25, 2020

Keeping Your WordPress Sites Fully Backed-up with Snapshot and The Hub

Backing up your WordPress site(s) has never been easier. Regardless of your hosting setup, The Hub and Snapshot make keeping your sites fully backed up a breeze. Here’s how…

Whether you manage one or multiple WordPress sites, keeping your site’s files and data regularly backed-up is an essential part of website maintenance and security.

So, it’s important that the backup process be made as simple, easy, safe, and reliable as can be.

In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to keep your WordPress sites fully backed up using The Hub, our WordPress management console, and Snapshot, our automated backups plugin.

Specifically, we’ll look at how to:

Access Backup Info from The Hub
Manage WordPress Backups Using The Hub’s Backups Tab
Create a WordPress Backup in One-click
Schedule WordPress Backups Automatically
Check Detailed Backup Information
Safely Restore Your Backups

With Snapshot and WPMU DEV’s hosted backups, your WordPress sites are safely and fully backed up!

Access Backup Info from The Hub

With The Hub, you can easily manage multiple WordPress sites from one central location. This includes managing, deleting, downloading, backing up, and restoring site backups.

The Hub - Sites list — The Hub lets you easily see which sites use Snapshot or WPMU DEV backups.

The types of backup you will manage from The Hub depend on whether you choose to host your sites with WPMU DEV or a third-party host.

If you host your sites with WPMU DEV’s managed WordPress hosting, your sites’ files and data will be fully backed up every night automatically using our secure, reliable, and super-fast Hosted Backups service. See our Hosting Backups Guide for more details.

Note: You can also use Snapshot to schedule additional backups (e.g. store your backups on a third-party storage service like Amazon S3, *Google Drive, *Dropbox, etc.)

*coming soon

If you host your sites with a third-party host, you can install Snapshot and use it with The Hub to manage all of your backups. See our Snapshot documentation for full details on using the plugin.

Tip: The Hub icons show you which backup service each of your sites is using (i.e. WPMU DEV backups or Snapshot). These icons display in your site’s Hub menus and panels.

Th Hub - Backup icons — Snapshot and WPMU DEV backup icons.

With The Hub, you can view information about your sites’ backups as soon as you log in.

Simply hover over the backup icons on your Sites screen and a small pop-up window will display the backup details for that site.

The Hub - Sites screen — View backup details for your sites from the main Hub screen.

WPMU DEV Hosted Backups vs Snapshot Backups

Depending on the backup service your site uses, The Hub’s Overview section will display your Backups module differently.

For example, here is the Overview screen of a site hosted with WPMU DEV using our Hosted Backups service…

The Hub - Overview screen of a site that uses WPMU DEV's Hosted Backups service. — This site is hosted on WPMU DEV’s servers and uses our Hosted Backups service.

And here’s the same Overview screen of a site hosted with a third-party service using Snapshot, as indicated by the icon on the Backups panel…

The Hub: Overview screen of a site using Snapshot backups. — This site is hosted with a 3rd-party hosting service and uses Snapshot for backups.

As you can see, there is a slight difference in how information displays about your backups in The Hub’s Overview panel.

If you use Snapshot to manage your site’s backups, the Overview panel displays how much storage you have used in your current plan.

Manage WordPress Backups Using The Hub’s Backups Tab

To manage site backups, view a list of available backups, configure backup settings, etc., select a site from The Hub and click on the Backups panel in The Overview screen or the Backups tab in the main menu.

The Hub - Backups tab. — The Hub’s menu – Backups tab.

Clicking on either of these options will bring you to the Backups Dashboard.

The Hub - Backups tab: WPMU DEV hosted backups dashboard — The Hub – Backups tab: WPMU DEV hosted backups dashboard.

Again, the Dashboard you see here will depend on your choice of hosting.

Here is the Backups Dashboard of a site hosted with WPMU DEV…

Backups Dashboard screen of a site hosted with WPMU DEV

And here is the Backups Dashboard of a site using a 3rd-party host with Snapshot installed:

Backups Dashboard screen of a site using Snapshot

See our documentation for more information on using the Backups tab.

Create a WordPress Backup in One-click

To create a full backup of any site directly from The Hub with just one click, go to the Backups tab and click the button in the Backups Dashboard.

The Hub: Backups tab - Create Backup — Click the button to fully back up your site!

You can also do this by clicking on the Settings icon (three dots) and selecting Create Backup from the menu.

The Hub will automatically begin to back up your site. As soon as the backup is completed, it will display on the list of available backups.

The Hub: Backups tab - Backups in Progress. — The Hub instantly backs up your site.

Notes:

Your backups will be stored securely offsite on WPMU DEV’s backup storage and/or a third-party storage service as per your configuration settings.
Hosted backups are stored for 30 days (50 days on Snapshot). If you reach your storage limit, your oldest backup will be replaced with a new one.
If a backup fails for any reason, it will be highlighted in red on the Dashboard’s backup list.

Failed Backups — The Hub lets you see if a backup has failed.

See our Backups Dashboard Overview documentation for more details on creating backups.

Schedule WordPress Backups Automatically

If you’re using Snapshot to backup your sites, you can create a backup schedule (monthly, weekly, daily) from The Hub by going to your Backups tab and selecting Set Schedule from the Settings menu.

The Hub: Backups tab - Snapshot backups schedule — Create a backup schedule with The Hub and Snapshot.

Configure your schedule and click Save to update your settings. Alternately, if you do not want The Hub to back up your sites, click the Remove Schedule link to set the frequency of your backups to None.

Schedule backups for sites using Snapshot from The Hub.

Note: You cannot set a schedule for backing up sites hosted on WPMU DEV, as your sites are automatically backed up daily.

Check Detailed Backup Information

To view details of your backups, go to The Hub > Backups tab and click on a backup item.

The Hub: Backups tab - Backup details with Settings screen. — Click on a backup to view more details.

This will bring up a pop-up window with your backup details.

Click on the Settings icon (three dots) to bring up additional options that let you download and restore your backups.

Note: If you’re viewing details about backups created using Snapshot, you can also delete the backup to free up storage space, and send an email with a downloadable copy of your backup by clicking on the Filename.

The Hub: Backups tab - Backup details with Snapshot Settings screen. — Snapshot gives you the option of deleting and emailing your backups.

If you are using Snapshot, you can also view detailed logs about your backups. Just log into your site from The Hub, go to the Snapshot Backups > Logs section, and click on a backup from the list on the Available Logs screen.

Snapshot Backups Screen - Logs — View detailed backup logs with Snapshot.

For more info, see our Snapshot Logs tab documentation.

Safely Restore Your Backups

With The Hub, you can easily download and restore your backups.

To restore your website from a full or incremental backup, select your site from The Hub, click on the Backups tab and then click on a backup from your list of available backups.

Next, click either the Restore button or select the option from your Backup Details > Settings menu.

The Hub - Restore Backups — Restore backups from The Hub.

If you can access your website, The Hub will restore your backups automatically as soon as you click the button.

If your website is unavailable, there are several methods you can use to restore your site, and The Hub will instruct you on what steps to take.

The Hub - Restore backup instructions. — The Hub can restore your backups in one-click.

If you’re not hosting your websites with WPMU DEV, see our documentation on how to restore your website with Snapshot.

We’ll Back You Up All The Way

Whether you choose to host with WPMU DEV (and we highly recommend you do – we’re better and cheaper!) or a third-party host, you can enjoy complete peace of mind knowing that your WordPress sites are being fully and securely backed up.

Also, we’re continually improving The Hub and Snapshot (check out our roadmap) and if you need help creating or restoring your backups or have any other WordPress-related questions or issues, our 24/7 support team is always available.

June 30, 2020

Web File Management Comes to WPMU DEV Hosting

We ran our 2020 survey. We asked you what you’d like. You told us, among other things, a web based file manager for your managed WordPress hosting. So, here you go.

Basically you were looking for the ability to simply upload and edit files in your hosting account using a file manager interface instead of SFTP. We get that. It’s a pain having to set up a client etc. and so we put this one in the ‘do it now’ queue.

And now it’s ready for you.

How Do I Access File Manager?

To access File Manager, your site(s) must be hosted with WPMU DEV.

After that, it gets all too easy!

First, log into your account, go to The Hub, and click on the main Hosting menu.

The Hub - Hosting — Access your hosting inside The Hub.

Next, select your site and click on either the hosting menu link or hosting panel to access the tools and settings for your domain.

Scroll down to the bottom of your screen and click on Manage Files.

And voila…File Manager!

Note: File manager is available for both production (live) and staging sites.

The Hub - Staging site - File Manager — You can also manage your files in staging sites.

For more details on how to upload, edit, and delete your files using File Manager, see our documentation.

Manage More Than Just Files…

File Manager is just one of the many time-saving tools and profit-increasing services we make available to WPMU DEV members.

We’ve also recently added other features to our managed WordPress hosting service that our members requested, like email, DNS manager, cloning templates, WAF, and more!

So, stay tuned and watch this space for more exciting announcements coming soon!