Tips, Expertise, Articles and Advice from the Pro's for Your Website or Blog to Succeed
While a webmaster is responsible for most of your foundational, technical SEO, you can help improve search engine rankings regularly by sharing high-quality content. This does not necessarily mean that you have to turn out 2,000-word pieces on a weekly basis. “Content” in this context can be videos, slide presentations that guide visitors, and more. Visual content is powerful, so mix up your blog posts with content audiences can feast their eyes on.
There are a few additional things to keep in mind here. No matter what kind of content you’re sharing, make sure the headline is relevant and interesting. Also, try to have a high-quality image accompanying the headline. And above all else, do not recycle your content. Google can tell when you do, and this will not help improve your visibility.
Yes, the modern digital marketer does have to keep their eye on customer service. That’s because it’s so much more than a buyer reaching out via email or chat. Customers expect that they will have multiple avenues through which to reach you, including social media.
Moreover, we have to provide customer service even when the customer is not consciously aware that they are receiving customer service. These efforts include “you may also like” personalized recommendations, as well as marketing efforts that include their name. Marketing emails, pages following sign-in, and more can be much more effective when they address your customer personally.
Ultimately, all of this may not be something you should take on yourself. A Chicago digital marketing agency should keep all of your needs covered for you nicely. Whether you do hire a full-time, in-house team, or decide to outsource, there are some key roles your digital marketing team should be able to fill.
Two of the most important people would be the social media manager and the dedicated customer service manager. Both of these roles require great timing. A social media manager will be aware of the most optimal times to share content, while a customer service specialist knows that time is of the essence when it comes to responding to inquiries. Additionally, you’ll need someone to serve as an analyst to measure what your efforts yield. Finally, you must have a team member or two focused on content creation and curation.
More and more companies are paring down their advertising budgets and concentrating instead on exceptional digital marketing. It’s much more cost-effective and is a better choice when you’re serious about raising conversion rates. Share better content, personalized customer experience, and always ensure you’ve chosen a team of experts who have the most important digital marketing components covered.
This is a guest article by Sophia Williams.
Generally, you would purchase a boxed duplicate of Office for $100 or more and install it from the CD on your PC. That would give you Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, alongside additional tools like Outlook and Access.
Office 365 changed that all. From $6.99/month, you can get each Office application on all your devices. Or then again you can use the free Office Online versions of those programs from your browser or the nearly full-featured mobile applications so you can complete your cheap essay writing thirst anywhere.
Start writing a Word document on your desktop PC, make some edits on your phone, and then print it out from the program once you get to the workplace. You can collaborate in Office Online, and edit a document along with associates in Word Online or adding remarks to an Excel Online spreadsheet that your collaborators can check later.
Office applications each incorporate a larger number of features than those in most of the suites featured in this roundup, with many years of improvement behind each one. Excel includes an amazing number of functions and data analysis tools, while OneNote is a standout amongst the most innovative note applications with a paper-like design that gives you a chance to compose what you need.
If you intend to work using a PC or a tablet more often and don’t have any desire to work using your browser, Microsoft Office is still likely your best option for most office work. Its applications are some of the best ways to create documents and spreadsheets, with enough collaboration features and new applications to make them work in the modern workplace. Office 365 also incorporates 1TB of capacity in OneDrive so you can back up your documents online.
Microsoft Office may have been the first and most often the default “office suite” in the enterprise, yet it took Google to take it beyond desktops and into the cloud. G Suite was once named Writely, a basic internet composing application from 2005, which Google obtained and transformed into the foundation of the present best Microsoft Office competitor.
G Suite’s individual applications are modern tools with all that you need to make documents, spreadsheets, and presentations.
What makes G Suite incredible is the way it works for collaboration. You can share your records to anybody — even freely on the web if you like — and let them all jump in and help make a masterpiece. You can live edit with others in the meantime or leave remarks that Google will email for input later. Since it accompanies any Google account, G Suite is for all intents and purposes universally.
It’s getting smarter, as well. The new Explore tool in Google Docs and Sheets can discover bits of information from your data, making outlines from your spreadsheets and finding related documents automatically. It can even work while you sleep. Add a Google Form to your Google Sheets spreadsheet and new answers will appear in your sheet consequently, ready for whenever you sign in.
G Suite is one of the best on the web. It has versatile applications, however with fewer features than the core web applications. You can’t add recommended edits or most formatting to a document on mobile, for instance. Also, G Suite possibly works offline when you use it in Chrome. But if you mainly work from a PC and are online most of the time, G Suite is one of the best options to work on documents online with your team or any individual who has a Gmail account.
Need to make catchy documents, spreadsheets, and presentations? Apple iWork applications (Pages, Keynote, and Numbers) are the easiest way to create them, and they’re free with Macs and iOS devices. You’ll either discover them preloaded on your new devices or in the App Store as a free download.
Each includes various formats and templates to help you instantly make the files you want in a simple interface that conceals the most part of its tools until the point when you require them. You can begin with a template, pull in your very own pictures and illustrations, and wind up with a print-quality file in minutes. Or then again, transform your file into a book, as Pages give you a chance to export any document as an ePub book that is immaculate to distribute to an eBook store.
Numbers is an amazing spreadsheet application, acting more like a document than the common matrix filled sheet you’ll discover in Excel or Google Sheets. Do the math you require, include content and graphs around it in the blank document to create a full report around your core table.
Keynote, also, is amazing for something other than your standard slideshow. Its animations are so fluid that it can be used as a tool for prototyping new applications and making short animated videos. Or on the other hand, you can use it to make your next meeting more interesting: With the new Keynote Live, you can stream your presentation online directly from the application.
iWork is best in its local applications on Mac and iOS, however, you can also use it online from iCloud.com. This is an amazing way to impart your documents to colleagues who don’t use iWork or to quickly tweak a presentation from a work PC when you forget your laptop.
Zoho offers a whole bunch of applications, yet everything began with their online word processor, Zoho Writer. New applications joined the group step by step, in the end transforming into Zoho Workplace — a full office suite on the web, with many other Zoho applications that you can add on if necessary.
Writer keeps on being the leading application in the suite, with another design that rethinks how a word processor ought to be designed. It keeps about the majority of its features hidden by default, for a distraction-free interface. Need to change something? Open the left sidebar to discover the wide array of tools sorted out in toolbars. Acquire Microsoft Office documents, and Zoho completes an amazing activity at retaining the most of the original formatting.
For anything else you have to do, there’s a Zoho application to take care of it. Its presentations and spreadsheet applications pursue a progressively conventional style, with menus and toolbars blended so you can work in the way you want. Each application includes a Zoho chatbox where you can chat with your collaborators and keep the discussion going on regardless of which Zoho application you’re using.
This is a guest article by Xenia Infinity.
One way of doing that is by ensuring that you have an active website. However, that alone is not enough. You need to create traffic that will increase the number of people who visit your website. But how to do this is the challenging part. Stick with me to get some basic tips on how to get constant traffic towards your website.
Many bloggers may be writing articles related to products that you are selling yourself. For instance, if you are a wedding blogger and want to promote save the date templates, reach out to other bloggers who share similar interests. Getting in touch with them widens your market share and make you reach more people who may be interested in the products that you are offering. Reach out to the bloggers and ask them to write product reviews of what you sell and provide links that will lead potential clients to your website.
So how do you find these bloggers? Pretty simple, search for keywords related to the product that you’re selling, and you will see a bunch of suggestions and articles written by different bloggers. Quite often, the bloggers will provide their contact details at the end of the posts. You can simply send them an email, or even call them and provide a basic description of what you want them to write about. You’ll probably have to pay a small fee, but it is worth it.
Social media has made the world feels like a small village where ideas or concepts can be shared with a multitude of people by one click. Use those platforms to advertise your website. Sites such as YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram have advertisement options where you will pay as per the number of people that you want to reach. This move will enable you to reach many people who may find your website interesting and definitely make a few orders or even refer their friends.
People mostly visit websites to find something interesting. It is therefore vital to make sure that you come up with a captivating headline that will make them want to find out more about the topic in question. Research has shown that click baits lead to enormous traffic, providing an increase in sales and engagement with potential customers.
Search engine optimization (SEO) plays an important role in driving people towards your website. This strategy enables you to get relevant traffic that will boost your sales to extraordinary levels. Also, try to engage with web professionals that could provide you with guidelines on what to include in your SEO.
Creating traffic to your website can be challenging, but the above techniques can lead to you to great success. Try them and watch your business grow.
This is a guest article by Dhanak Fatima.
So, you could ask me about the best and cheapest hosting you can find. Therefore, today I’ll share my thoughts with you about 7 important aspects of quality web hosting. Let me tell about my experience and introduce you to Veesp.
After days of research on finding the ideal host for my project, I found out that it’s not always as easy as I used to think. First things first.
Depending on your project, the server’s hardware and software requirements can be quite different. Analyze your needs carefully, and read on to have a better understanding of what your website may need.
If you are creating a blog or a site based on WordPress, many people would actually recommend you a regular shared hosting plan or a special optimized WP hosting. There are also a lot of cloud hosting offers but many of them just are marketing tricks.
I’ve encountered a lot of scams, that’s why I always favor a simple VPS which I can easily manage from a control panel. The main difference between shared hosting and a virtual private server for me is that I’m not sharing any resources of my server with anybody and the price is often the same. Veesp has a wide range of Linux and Windows VPS, and all of them have KVM virtualization which is reliable and stable. Click here to Check out their SSD VPS.
If you are planning to make an e-commerce or a resource-demanding web project, a dedicated server is a much more favourable option.
Veesp also provides dedicated servers, but those are unmanaged servers, which means that you need to have sufficient knowledge or have an administrator in your team. Actually, sometimes it’s even cheaper to hire a specialist for the project and get an unmanaged server than buy a managed service.
And ultimately, you can create your own custom solution with the Veesp server constructor.
What I liked a lot with Veesp is their support. While being a client of a big brand company can be hard to get any help when needed, Veesp support team always got back to me within one hour or less, efficiently solving issues that I had with my set up.
Veesp has a very good uptime, and has in fact been rewarded with the HostAdvice Uptime Award.
Nowadays, you can get a SSL certificate right through your hosting provider which is a very good thing. Please refer to this article if you need more info about the process.
You can choose any hosting provider and ask about a trial period – it should be free. Veesp has a 3-day trial. I ran a few tests to test my servers such as Apache Benchmark and JMeter and they went smoothly.
Finally, Veesp has a money back guarantee and they can refund your money if needed. What comes to myself, after five months of using it, I absolutely don’t regret my choice!
Good luck and Happy New Year!
This is a guest article by Vadim Eremeev.
WebsitePolicies is an attorney-level legal policies generator that helps you make your websites and apps compliant with the law without paying hefty lawyer fees. Every legal policy is unique and is built around the information you provide for the best results.
With the ever-rising importance of privacy-related concerns and issues, it’s vital that you have a valid privacy policy available on your website as a bare minimum to comply with various government laws and regulations.
Have affiliate links on your site? Well, then you are pretty much required to have a privacy policy and disclaimer to avoid losing your commissions with your affiliate partner.
Our policy generator is completely FREE for personal and non-commercial use so there’s no reason for you not to at least give it a try.
Need something a bit more comprehensive to cover commercial activities and include additional disclosures for the best possible legal coverage? No problem, each policy is only $14.95 one-time fee. Absolutely no recurring payments, ever! Looking to purchase more than one policy? It gets even cheaper with our discounted bundles.
Today might be your lucky day. 3 CatsWhoCode readers will get to receive a bundle of 5 premium policies suitable for commercial use. It will include a privacy policy, disclaimer, terms of service, refund policy, and cookie policy.
Simply leave a comment on this post to let us know that you’re in. In one week, I will randomly pick three lucky winners who will receive their prize directly from WebsitePolicies staff, by email.
Created by Robert Harm in Austria, MapsMarker Pro is a WordPress plugin that allows you to pin, organize, and share places on your WordPress blog or website.
Made as an alternative to gigantic, proprietary mapping companies with questionable privacy policies, MapsMarker Pro integrates with Google Maps, Google Earth, OpenStreetMap, Bing Map, and more; allowing you to then pin locations, display itineraries, or showcase nearby places of interest.
In 2019, it’s pretty rare to find a serious website that doesn’t display at least one map. Most sites, such as Netzen, are using maps to display their offices’ locations.
But there’s much more you can do with MapsMarker Pro.
MapsMarker Pro is loaded with useful features that will allow you to do more or less anything as long as you have a need to display maps and markers or share places on your site. Here is a quick list of my favorite features of the plugin.
You can view the full feature list on this page.
As you probably already know, nowadays the majority of your site traffic is coming from handheld devices as such as smartphones or tablets. Therefore, it is a must in terms of ease of use and SEO that your website loads quickly and is easy to use on a smaller device.
MapsMarker Pro is definitely taking responsiveness into account. Maps created with the plugin are fast and easy to use on any mobile device – which is certainly a good thing as visitors like to check maps to discover interesting places around them. And as we have mentioned SEO, MapsMarker Pro is SEO-optimized.
Another feature I’m a big fan of is how well MapsMarker Pro integrates with the most popular maps. You can use Google Maps as it is by far the most common map type, but you can painlessly use many other maps such as OpenStreetMap or Bing Map. It’s up to you!
Thanks to over 100 contributors from all around the world, MapsMarker Pro is available in 46 languages. While I haven’t checked the quality of the available translations as I primarily use English online, this is clearly a great feature as maps are chiefly designed for a particular place, where people don’t necessarily use English.
If you have already worked with Google Maps or a similar map service, you know the need for API keys. While obtaining and using API keys is generally a painless process, the fact that MapsMarker Pro doesn’t require additional API keys with included keyless geocoding providers Algolia Places and Photon@Mapsmarker which is good news as it will make you save time and effort.
While there are quite many options for creating maps and markers, MapsMarker Pro is probably the most complete solution. If your site is running on WordPress, using the plugin will save you a lot of time and hassle as compared to setting up a more generic solution.
If you are interested to try MapsMarker Pro on your website, here’s some good news! MapsMarker Pro has provided an exclusive discount for all CatsWhoCode readers.
Simply head over the pricing page and pick any license you like. At checkout, use coupon CATSWHOCODE to receive 10% off your purchase.
So, what to think about MapsMarker Pro? Its strong point is definitely the number of useful features that allow you to do basically anything you can think of, as long as it’s based on maps and markers, from simply displaying a map of your company office’s area to complex maps with filtered markers.
As for the weak point, I’d say the overall design could be improved. This, of course, doesn’t change anything to the functionality of the plugin, but a little eye candy never hurts.
In conclusion, I can affirm that MapsMarker Pro is a safe choice for any website owner looking for a map/marker solution that works out of the box and provides all the options you might need.
30 lucky winners will get a chance to use GetSiteControl for a month for free. That means you can add subscription, contact, and survey forms, promo popups, floating bars and Live chat to your website and boost user engagement.
Keep reading to learn more about GetSiteControl and find out how to win a monthly account.
GetSiteControl is a set of 7 call-to-action widgets that help increase user engagement and generate leads. You can use it on any website by adding a short code snippet right before the </body> tag or by installing a dedicated plugin from the WordPress directory.
What you get is 7 marketing tools managed from a single dashboard:
You can adjust widgets to the style of your website and fine-tune the way they are displayed to the visitors. For example, there is an easy way to add a cookie banner, promote lead magnets, offer a callback, create an exit-intent popup or a survey for any webpage.
Real-time statistics is available right in the dashboard, plus you can integrate GetSiteControl with Google Analytics to track its performance. And if you feel geeky about conversion optimization, you can A/B test multiple variations of each widget to achieve maximum results.
The app integrates with all the popular email marketing services including MailChimp, AWeber, Constant Contact and others – to easily send the captured emails to the tool of your choice. Plus, you can connect the Live Chat widget to Slack and communicate with website visitors on-the-go.
Clearly, this is not the newest concept on the market, and you will probably be able to name a few other form builders right off the top of your head. So, why should you be interested in checking out another solution? Well, here is a couple of advantages you might want to know about.
First, GetSiteControl combines 7 standalone tools under one roof, whereas many other solutions that only bring just email opt-ins, surveys, or contact forms. Second, you get flexible targeting capabilities for creating more personalized calls-to-action. Not only can you trigger widgets based on the user on-page behavior – time spent, scroll depth, or exit-intent – but you can also target specific audiences based on their characteristics such as language, location, UTM, the number of pages viewed, referral source, devices, and more.
And because you’re not limited by the number of widgets, there’s literally no limit for optimization opportunities either.
If GetSiteControl sounds like the app that could help your website grow, we encourage you to participate. There are 30 accounts to give away, so the chances to win are pretty high! Here is what you need to do:
The first 30 commenters will be able to use GetSiteControl Plus for a month. The plan includes all the above-described advanced features, an unlimited number of widgets, and up to 500K widget monthly views. So, you’ll have enough functionality to make use of.
Good luck!
One of the certifications that most of the IT companies demand is the Linux Professional certification. Linux has grown and become one of the most common software brands in the companies and individuals with Linux certifications are getting better job opportunities and what not.
In this article, we will be talking about the Linux Essentials Professional Development Certificate (PDC) and 010-160 exam which is held by Linux and how one can prepare for it.
Linux has become one of the most used certificates in the world and many private, as well as government companies, have been making use of it in their daily tasks. This is the reason that more and more people who know Linux and its basics are being required by the companies. People who are just starting their career should get the Linux certifications and the best of the Linux certification for the beginners is the Linux Essential Certification. This is also one of the stepping stones for the people who want to get other specialization certification from Linux. To get this certification, the candidates have to pass an exam and get the passing score.
010-160 exam is the test that candidates should pass if they want to be eligible for the LPI Linux Essentials Certifications. This is an easy primary level exam that can be passed if the candidates have the fundamental knowledge in the subject. Note, that the previous version of the exam is 010-150 (version 1.5) and it is available until the 1st of July 2019.
To know more details about 010-150 exam, visit LPI website.
Since 010-160 is a newer version, let’s focus on some other important information about this exam.
The exam is a multiple choice questions exam. Each question will consist of 4 answers and the candidates will have to choose from them.
The candidates will be given 60 minutes to solve all the questions. They will be given 40 questions in total that they need to solve within an hour time frame.
The registration is easy and the ticket can be bought at the official website. The price of the ticket is $110 USD, but it can vary from region to region because of the currency difference.
All candidates with the basic knowledge of Linux software’s are eligible to give this exam. There is no qualification required. The candidates have to be 18 years or older.
The exam is available in three different languages including English, Japanese and German. However, more languages are being launched in the coming time.
LPI Linux Essentials Certification exam is a fundamental level exam, but this does not mean that it is easy. The question asked is pretty detailed and one needs thorough knowledge to score well. Here are some ways in which you can prepare for your exam.
The first way to study is the self-study which a lot of working individuals prefer. This is also the cheapest way you can prepare for your exam. Get the syllabus and by the related books that you will need to prepare. Now make a timetable and start studying in your own time. Make sure that you start as early as possible.
If you want a little help but do not have the time to attend full-time classes, the online classes are the best for you. These will cost you some money, but you will be able to get all the information specially designed for you. You will be given notes and lectures and also some tests to check your progress.
If you want a better understanding of the topics, the one on one classes are another option that you can take. These on one class are taken by learned professionals who will be teaching you about every topic in detail which will help you build a strong base of knowledge.
The last and the most important preparation material and strategy are solving practice papers. You need to solve the practice papers on a regular basis. The practice papers are really helpful in determining the growth of the individual and help you check what places you are lacking. At the beginning of the preparation, make a habit of solving at least one practice paper a week and then go to one a day.
To get reliable practice test questions for your certification exam, browse https://prepaway.com website.
Here are some important tips that will help you with the better preparation of the exam and in scoring better.
People who are just starting out with their IT careers should go for the LPI Linux Essential Certification since this is the foundation certificate that will build your base for getting the higher level certificates in the years to come. This certificate is surely really helpful for the people in the IT industry and will bag them better jobs and salaries. Keep the above tips in mind and score your best in 010-160 exam.
This is a guest article by Darren Demers.
Here is a quick list of tips to optimize your WordPress site. Those are easy to implement by yourself, but you can also get in touch with a web development team as such as tsh.io to help you implement them.
It might sound very obvious, but keeping your WordPress site fully updated is a must when it comes to make sure your site is secure.
Always pay attention when an update is available, not only for WordPress core, but also for all of your plugins and themes. As most security problems occur on outdated WordPress sites, staying up to date is simply the best security tip I could give you.
In case something goes wrong, having frequent backups of your site files and database is vital. Most serious hosting providers (as such as WPEngine, Tsohost, Dreamhost etc) offer daily site backups and can help if something happens to your site.
If your current hosting provider doesn’t offer backups, you can rely on a few WordPress plugins which aim at creating backups of your site that you can restore later. Popular WP backup plugins include BackUpBuddy, BackWPup and BackUpWordPress.
In 2019, there’s no doubt that most website visits will be done using a smartphone or tablet, rather than a desktop computer. For this reason, you have to make sure your site displays well on smaller devices.
The vast majority of modern WordPress themes are fully compatible with smaller devices. If the theme you are using isn’t, it’s time to change or update.
Nowadays, the faster the better. Why? First, because as I previously stated, most website visits are done on phones or tablets, often using not-so-fast WiFi connections. As internet users don’t like waiting, a fast-loading website will ensure your visitors aren’t simply going to leave before your site has fully loaded.
And secondly, Google is favoring faster websites when ranking them. Therefore, a faster website equals a better SEO.
To see how fast your website loads on both desktop and mobile devices, check out Google Pagespeed Insights. If your loading speed isn’t good according to Google Pagespeed Insights, you can refer to my site speed optimization guide to fix what needs to be fixed.
WordPress is a very secure platform in itself, and so are most of the available plugins. But that being said, as a website owner you’re simply never too careful.
I definitely recommend using the free WordFence plugin to protect your site against various malicious attacks. Wordfence includes an endpoint firewall and malware scanner that was built to protect WordPress.
As you already know, SEO plays a big role in how successful your website is. If you haven’t already, I recommend installing a WordPress SEO plugin as such as Yoast SEO or All-in-One SEO Pack.
For a successful SEO in 2019, make sure that your website is fast and optimized for mobile devices, understand how your visitors are searching for it, and most importantly, while your site should be optimized for SEO, it should be built primarily with humans in mind.
WordPress 5.0 “Bebo” was released in December. The most interesting addition to WP brought by this update is definitely the new editor, nicknamed Gutenberg.
The new block-based editor won’t change the way any of your content looks to your visitors. What it will do is let you insert any type of multimedia in a snap of fingers and rearrange it to your liking. Each piece of content will be in its own block.
If you need more information about WordPress 5.0 and Gutenberg, just read this article.
You don’t need all internet users to visit your website for success, but your goal should be to grow your target audience. With the right strategy, you can drive traffic to your website. Here are six proven ways to achieve it.
Hope is not a strategy when it comes to getting traffic to your website. If you produce great content, you must be proactive in getting your target audience to find it. Social media channels provide a wonderful way to promote your content and increase traffic to your website. Facebook, for example, is one of the most effective platforms that you can utilize to reach your target audience. Twitter can be used for short, snappy links to draw people to your site and gain traction.
Headlines are an essential part of your content and they help determine if your target audience will take an interest in what you are promoting. Lacking compelling headlines will cause your content to be overlooked, and your potential audience will move on to something more interesting. Think about writing headlines that are thought-provoking, witty and that stir emotions. You want to pique the interest of as many people as you can with a magnetic headline.
Content optimization still plays a valuable role in driving traffic to websites. You want to make the most out of elements like image alt text, internal links to new content and meta descriptions. Optimizing on-page SEO is a worthwhile traffic delivery strategy that could help gain more relevant traffic in search engines. This can be used to give your website competitive power and a stronger audience. You can have your pick of the best web hosting 2019 providers to improve traffic to your website.
Guest blogging is a great way to gain exposure and get in front of an audience. By securing a guest post on a reputable site, you help establish your credibility and authority by providing valuable content that will compel the audience of your guest post to visit your own site.
You can gather an email list of people who have opted-in to receive your communications. It’s vital to have quality contacts of people who are interested in what you are promoting. In this sense, email marketing will help to drive website traffic and increase repeat visits. Promotional emails can be used to attract a new audience, while personalized emails can be used to cater to your subscribers’ exact preferences and needs.
Infographics have the potential to draw your target audience to a topic they find interesting and keep them engaged. For infographics to be effective, they must be easily understood, typically tell a story, comprise of unique content, be eye-catching in design and detailed yet concise. It’s a solid way to build engagement.
Driving traffic to your website can be a real challenge, but with the right strategies, you can get it done. You have to work at it, putting in a constant effort in order to appeal to your target audience’s interests. You want to provide value, gain trust and have new and repeat visitors.
This is a guest article by Sophia Williams.
Modern brands seek to interact with their audience. Thus, website design must be expressive and lively. Today, you can’t impress your audience with bright images only. People want to get a certain combination of emotions when visiting your website. For example, when users buy garments through social networks like Instagram, they feel like they will look exactly like the model promoting the clothes. Let’s see what web design trends are anticipated to occur in 2019.
In the next year, websites will be greatly affected by a chaotic nature and randomness of visual information. For example, non-standard placement of visual blocks can hone the user’s appetites for your brand, goods, or services.
A full-screen video will take a leading position in web design. That’s because this content is informative and useful for readers as there is no need to scroll the entire page down and read a long post. Instead, you may take your time and watch or listen to the information you consider to be useful for you.
The use of geometric shapes in web design is not a new thing. This trend appeared in 2016 and it’s presumed, that it will gain the highest popularity in 2019. The websites designed in such a way look friendly, thus, attracting more and more users.
People often confuse cinemagraphs with gifs but in fact, these two effects are quite different. Cinemagraphs are static images containing only a single dynamic element. Marketers generate lots of bright ideas for cinemagraphs. Traditional animation still works well. All these web effects attract more users and motivate people to check out the rest of the content on your website.
Bright colors will remail actual in 2019. They can make your site look more stylish and rich. Gradients can be also used to make a page more fresh and unique. An interesting innovation is flashing and vibrating colors. If you are at the start line with redesigning your website, think about outsourcing to Ukraine. Contacting overseas developers can save your time and money. Offshore development companies have lower rates for software engineering, web development, and design.
Unique fonts are in high demand in the web design industry. Along with a minimalistic design, unusual fonts enhance websites and emphasize the importance of the content. Non-standard fonts will gain their popularity in 2019.
In today’s busy world, people don’t want to pay too much attention to the long guidelines or blog articles on the web. They will likely read a pair of words about what you do and what useful services you can offer to them. Thus, more and more website owners aim to deliver valuable content. The philosophy of minimalism – less is more – becomes popular.
People become central figures in advertisements produced by brands. That’s because people want to see other people in ads to understand how this or another thing will meet their needs in real life. Realistic ad campaigns stir emotions and associations with style and aesthetics.
We prefer natural lines, shapes, and forms to straight lines. The natural design makes users calm and, at the same time, it encourages them to check out your content.
Surely, you don’t have to follow all the trends in web design, yet, it’s useful to be aware of them. Let’s sum it up!
You can easily use one of these concepts or mix them carefully to get the most out of the upcoming trends.
This is a guest article by Irina Kravchenko, a content writer from Diceus.
Making a multi-language website is a surprisingly simple way of reaching new audiences and scaling into new markets: it allows visitors to navigate in their native language (adding a deeper sense of trust); it also helps you to tap into emerging markets and gain an edge over the competition.
Other benefits of adding translated languages for a multi-language website include:
Now we’ve touched on some of the benefits of creating a multi-language website on WordPress, let’s check out Weglot, one of the best (and top-ranked) plugins available on WordPress (also available for other platforms, including Shopify and direct JavaScript integration), before running through a multi-language website plugin setup. See for yourself you just how easy it is to set up your own multi-language website, and get up and running in no time.
Let’s start by looking at what Weglot has to offer website owners.
Weglot is one of the highest-rated multi-language website plugins for WordPress. It supports over 100 frequently updated languages, with new languages added constantly, too. Automatic translations are supported by live human editing, taking the setup process one step above when you need a high level of professionalism and accuracy.
The plugin also covers multi-language website SEO, which will make your site even more easily searchable by a wider audience. Each language is placed into an automatically-generated subdirectory – for example, /es/ or /fr/. A personalized language button sits on the page, so users can easily select the language of their choice, with hreflang tags added to the
section of your site which makes it easily recognisable by Google.Weglot works with any WordPress theme and offers automatic compatibility with plugins (including WooCommerce). It also gives you the option of translating everything at page level. Extra posts, pages, custom post types, custom taxonomies and custom fields are translatable; including straightforward integration with Yoast’s SEO plugin.
Now for pricing: Weglot’s pricing is based on how much traffic goes to your site, and the quantity of words and languages you need. The free tier adds one language with 2,000 translated words, and you can go all the way up to unlimited languages and 5,000,000 translated words. There’s also a trial period which allows you to try Weglot’s features for free. There’s something for everyone 
It’s important to have a clear idea of what you need for your multi-language website before choosing your plugin for installation. Weglot is a good fit for these, but you need to know which package to choose
If you’re a small business owner, then choosing the freemium, lower word-count “packages” (provided by Weglot) or simple, automated translations could be enough to set the ball rolling.
But – if you already own a successful business and a large WordPress site, then you’ll want one of the premium tiers, and should also opt for manual editing by a native translator to ensure every piece of website copy is crystal clear in your language(s) of choice. Automatic translations are a great starting point for translating language(s) individually, but you can’t beat the services of a professional to double-check and ensure translations are of the highest quality.
We’d recommend starting with just one language to keep things simple, but with Weglot you can add multiple languages with the different plans: your Google Analytics data is a great place to find this.
Now let’s get your multi-language website plugin set up on WordPress! Here’s the easy two-step process.
To get started installing your multi-language plugin, choose your first language to translate to.
Once you have your first target language, head to your WordPress Dashboard, and Plugins → Add New. Search Weglot, then Install → Activate. Click Settings, and follow the prompt to create an account, which you’ll need to do the automatic translations.
Set your original website language, and then choose the first language you’d like to translate into.
Once you’ve chosen, save settings. Et voila! Could it be simpler?
You’ll want to make sure your translations are accurate, so head to your Weglot Dashboard, where you can manually review translations.
You can find professional agencies for your multi-language website by heading to the Professional Translations tab, where native translators will review your translations for accuracy. This service is useful if you don’t have in-house access to translation services. This way you can ensure your WordPress site is professional in your language(s) of choice.
As a side note, look out for text in images. You shouldn’t have these as they’re bad for accessibility and SEO, but you can use Weglot to replace images with translated versions.
To do this, go to the Weglot Dashboard, sort your Translations List by Content Type → Media, and then customize the URLs of images which you want to translate. You’ll need to upload these images separately from your WordPress Dashboard → Media Library → Add New.
Now you can fully customize your site in any language for your audience. Consider these the first steps towards creating a fully immersive, localized experience for site visitors, whenever in the world they may be.
By creating your own multi-language website, you’ll remove barriers between yourself and foreign audiences; making it even easier to access a global marketplace. Not only will you stand out from the competition; you’ll also stand out to customers and site visitors by going the extra mile to communicate in their native language: A lucrative move for all involved.
Multi-language website plugins automate this process for you and alleviate your workload. Not only does Weglot provide personalization for site visitors; you can also fully customize this plugin to fit your own site design; making it as prominent or as subtle as you choose.
You could even take your multi-language website above and beyond by acknowledging cultural specifics in your chosen language. This might range from employing a native customer support manager, to adding local working hours, or celebrating local cultural holidays and acknowledging business etiquette.
However far you decide to take your multi-language website customization; providing site visitors with the option to get to know your product in their language of choice is bound to lead to greater site visibility, higher sales and even happier customers.
This is a guest post by Alex Denning.
If you don’t need to display a PDF file, you can use the Media Library. From the post editor, click the “Add Media” button. Upload the PDF file as you would do for an image and click “Insert into post”:
This will create a link with the name of the PDF file as the anchor text. You can modify it if needed.
Clicking this link will make your browser open or save the PDF document.
This might be a good enough solution for the occasional PDF file, but if you need to display the content of PDF files within your posts, you’ll need a plugin.
From the WordPress dashboard, go to “Plugins > Add New”. Type “pdf embedder” in the keyword search. Click on “Install Now” and then on “Activate”.
From the post editor, insert a PDF file from the media library. The plugin will make a shortcode appear instead of the regular link:
Preview the post to see the PDF document embedded in the WordPress post:
The use of Javascript over Adobe Flash eliminates compatibility issues. The embedded PDF viewer displays a nice toolbar with a page navigator. The premium version of the plugin allows you to customize it if needed.
By default, the viewer width is set to 100%. You can adjust it by appending this to the shortcode:
width="500"
Replace the value with whatever width you want. The shortcode should look something like this:
You can use the following parameters to customize the toolbar:
If you wish to control the viewer width for mobile devices, you will need the premium version.
To avoid setting the viewer options through the shortcode, you can set these globally. From the WordPress dashboard, go to “Settings > PDF Embedder”.
You can modify the global height and width parameters – along with a bunch of other stuff:
You can change the location of the toolbar, the height of the PDF, and determining how the toolbar appears. You can change these on a case by case basis using shortcodes by referring to the documentation.
If you are using a CDN (Content Delivery Network), you will need to do some tweaking. For security reasons, web servers prevent browsers from displaying content from a different source than the website. If you need to embed PDF files hosted on a CDN, you will need to make these changes:
Add this code to the “.htaccess” file located at the root of your website:
<FilesMatch ".pdf"> Header set Access-Control-Allow-Origin "*" </FilesMatch>
Clear the CDN’s cache and check that the PDF viewer is working. If you are hosting the PDF documents on Amazon S3 or Cloudfront, read the documentation here.
The paid version of the plugin provides additional options such as PDF protection. This allows you to prevent visitors from downloading or printing the original PDF document. Other features include the ability to scroll PDFs continuous scroll and full-screen mode.
But if you can do without the bells and whistles, the base PDF Embedder plugin is a great tool. It’s easy to use and gets the job done.
This is a guest post by Stéphane Brault. Stéphane is a programmer and sysadmin with over 20 years of experience. He specializes in Linux server management and PHP development. He is the owner of WebHostingHero.com, a website providing free tools and tutorials for webmasters.
First, let’s look at what you might need to add these features.
WordPress is a great base upon which to build any e-commerce store. What’s more, WordPress comes replete with plugins that enable you to add features and functionalities without the need for complex coding, like Toolset.
Combine it with WooCommerce, and you’ve got yourself a powerful combination of e-commerce management tools on your side.
A custom search is a great way to help customers find the items they seek as soon as possible, avoiding any distractions.
Don’t assume that shoppers know the exact item they’re looking for, especially if they’re just here to window shop. A custom search allows you to provide a number of filters so that customers can narrow down their search and find exactly what they want.
The product page is a critical piece in your website’s sales funnel. Whereas the home page or categories page show off how expansive your inventory is, the product page is your chance to give individual items a chance to shine.
Once shoppers land on the desired WooCommerce product page, you want to give them something impressive to look at.
Not only should you include great images and descriptive text but you should make sure you customize your WooCommerce product page. A custom product template will provide a unique shop window which will help your items stand out.
Not only can you style your page but you can also include other important features to it such as custom fields, taxonomies and special offers.
Another way to help visitors find what they need on your WooCommerce website — and help you upsell or cross-sell customers in the process — is to provide related product recommendations. You can do this in a number of ways and at different points throughout the customer journey.
You can display related product widgets or sliders beneath a product’s photo and description.
You can display a related product pop-up after an item was added to the shopping cart. You can also display related product pop-ups if someone is about to abandon the website before completing their purchase.
The goal is to accurately assess their needs based on their behavior and profile and provide them with an item that is related to the product they’ve shown interest in or an item that can replace the current one they’re looking at (in case it’s not exactly what they were looking for).
Another way to compel visitors to peruse more of your store is to display product categories sliders around the site.
Related product widgets are essential in upselling items that visitors have already shown interest in. But product categories introduce them to inventory they might not have even been aware of or simply hadn’t considered buying at the time.
It’s a great way to inspire customers to stick around and get all their shopping done while they’re on your website.
One of the easiest and most cost-effective ways to expand into new markets is by creating a multilingual website. Not only will new customers be able to understand you but you can also localize your website by using the correct currency, taxation and by offering free shipping.
This is where a multilingual plugin should enter the picture. Specifically, you will need two plugins to accomplish this. WPML is the WordPress multilingual plugin. The free WooCommerce Multilingual plugin is the glue that connects WPML to your WooCommerce website.
With multilingual functionality programmed into your site, international customers can now enter your website and experience as seamless and welcoming an experience as those who are local to your business.
If you’ve spent enough time online as a consumer, you recognize that e-commerce websites come equipped with certain features and functionality you wouldn’t see on an ordinary business website. When building your own e-commerce site, be sure to take the five must-have features above into consideration if you want to compel your visitors to become customers. This WooCommerce tutorial will help get you started.
This is a guest post by Joe Lobo.
In case you’re looking for an agency to create a modern, visually appealing website, check out https://ynd.co/.
CSS variables are a real timesaver when creating a website. Simply define your variables and use them as much as needed in your stylesheet. The code below should be self-explanatory for most of you, but if you need further information feel free to check this quick guide.
<p class="custom-variables">CSS is awesome!</p>
:root {
/* Place variables within here to use the variables globally. */
}
.custom-variables {
--some-color: #da7800;
--some-keyword: italic;
--some-size: 1.25em;
--some-complex-value: 1px 1px 2px whitesmoke, 0 0 1em slategray, 0 0 0.2em slategray;
color: var(--some-color);
font-size: var(--some-size);
font-style: var(--some-keyword);
text-shadow: var(--some-complex-value);
}
Source: Codepen
A very easy way to make your links (or any other element) look better.
a {
color: #000;
-webkit-transition: color 1s ease-in; /*safari and chrome */
-moz-transition: color 1s ease-in; /* firefox */
-o-transition: color 1s ease-in; /* opera */
}
a:hover {
color: #c00;
}
Source: Matt Lambert
These spinners are very popular when it comes to letting visitors know that the content is loading. You might be tempted to use an image, but in terms of website speed it is way better to do it using CSS. Nothing complicated here, just take a look at our HTML first:
<div class="donut"></div>
…and the corresponding CSS. Need some more info about CSS keyframes? Here you go!
@keyframes donut-spin {
0% {
transform: rotate(0deg);
}
100% {
transform: rotate(360deg);
}
}
.donut {
display: inline-block;
border: 4px solid rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1);
border-left-color: #7983ff;
border-radius: 50%;
width: 30px;
height: 30px;
animation: donut-spin 1.2s linear infinite;
}
Source: Codepen
Centering content both vertically and horizontally is nowadays very easy using display:flex. Here is how you do it, using some HTML:
<div class="flexbox-centering"> <div class="child">Centered content.</div> </div>
…and the corresponding CSS:
.flexbox-centering {
display: flex;
justify-content: center;
align-items: center;
height: 100px;
}
Source: Codepen
display:grid makes it easy to create grids. Using the fr unit, the grids can be made responsive in order to fit any kind of display.
Here’s how our grid HTML looks like:
<div class="grid"> <div class="grid-item"></div> <div class="grid-item"></div> <div class="grid-item"></div> <div class="grid-item"></div> </div>
And the CSS:
.grid {
display: grid;
grid-template-columns: repeat(4, 1fr);
grid-gap: 1em;
}
.grid-item {
background-color: orange;
}
Source: Smashing Magazine
shape-outside is a CSS property that allows geometric shapes to be set, in order to define an area for text to flow around.
.shape {
width: 300px;
float: left;
shape-outside: circle(50%);
}
Source: WebDesigner Depot
If for some reason you don’t want visitors to be able to select a certain portion of the content, you can use CSS. Although your text will still be selectable if the user displays the page source, I’ve heard so many clients wanting such functions on their website that I’m sure this will be useful to some of you.
Here’s our HTML:
<p class="unselectable">You can't select me!</p>
And some quick and easy CSS:
.unselectable {
user-select: none;
}
Source: Codepen
The expectations of the modern software user are very high since innovation has come to define the modern world. In order to create the best software programs, developers have to identify the common challenges and solve them. The following are the six common problems in the software development world.
As mentioned earlier, most clients are exposed to technology now more than ever before. This has resulted in clients knowing exactly what they want from a software program and what they do not want to be included.
This has many potential challenges to developers because some of the demands that clients make are simply not achievable through software or they are very difficult to achieve. Since the clients are not familiar with software development, they might not be aware of the complexity of it.
Modern developers thus need to have great communication skills so that they can negotiate effectively with demanding clients.
The software development world is evolving very quickly. Not too long ago, the only programming languages that existed were common all across the globe. It was thus easy for developers to get into the development world knowing that their learning process is a clear-cut one.
Today, however, there are hundreds if not thousands of software development languages, frameworks, and tools. This makes it very difficult for developers to learn the art of development. In addition, keeping up with new and emerging languages also becomes difficult since frameworks and tools are also rapidly changing.
Nowadays, it is important to understand the local market and culture of the software user. The world is made up of many different languages and cultures. Therefore, software programs have to be localized in order to be suitable for users of a certain territory. It takes a lot of time and resources for developers to familiarize themselves with multiple cultures.
The localization software testing process also becomes a challenge when there is not enough information about the specific area that the program is meant to serve.
As the world continues to embrace technology, developers will have to continue learning about different ways they can effectively localize software programs.
Another challenge that modern developers face is securing a job for the skills they have. While software developers are still needed a lot in the modern industry, the demand for certain skills might change over time.
In recent years, for instance, web development and software development have almost become the same thing. With this kind of evolution, software developers who are only familiar with developing programs might lose out on opportunities in the web development world. Web developers who are not familiar with program development might also miss some opportunities that require those skills. Software and web developers thus need to have a wide range of skills in the modern market in order to keep up with the job market.
Software development involves a lot of co-operation with different parties. Communication is thus central to the job. A software developer is needed to communicate with everyone from the development team to engineers and clients as well as other parties. Sometimes, communication challenges arise between these parties making the development work more difficult.
Miscommunication between team members, for example, can lead to huge delays and setbacks in the development process. Challenges in communication are common and a good software developer needs to figure out ways in which to lessen or eliminate these challenges for a smooth development process.
Finally, it is always a challenge for developers to balance work and life. Creating software takes a lot of time and oftentimes, this work extends to your home. Most software developers in the modern world, in fact, work from home offices or near where they live.
The line between work and personal life thus gets thinner and thinner.
This is a guest article by Ines Kohl.
However, it isn’t just the annoyance of ads popping up to consider. You want to consider your safety as well. With all that to keep in mind, the use of ad blockers continues to grow for personal and professional computer systems.
Whether you have considered installing an ad blocker or not, here are some reasons why it is essential to have one.
Ad blockers can be either a program you download or an add-on to the current browser you use. Either way, they provide the same service – to block ads from appearing and compromising your online experience.
There are different ways an ad blocker removes ads from your browser. Some will get rid of cookies and web markers which carry information between website sessions. No matter what the method is, the primary purpose is to stop ads for disrupting your computer.
Digital advertising is a great way to promote a particular service, product or company across a massive space at one time. The downfall, however, you cannot guarantee each ad is genuinely what they claim to be. Now the issues of privacy and safety come into effect.
There has been a rise in something called malvertising – a combination of malware and advertising. Malware (malicious software) is a software developed with the intent of harming and attacking your device and data on it. Malvertising is when the attackers that create the malware buy out popular ad spaces on legitimate websites. What you think is an ad corresponding to a legitimate company is actually a virus waiting to attack your device.
So with your ad blocker software, you are effectively removing and blocking ads that could do major harm to your system and stored data. They don’t remove all ads, but they are the best way to secure your online activity from malvertising.
More and more you will hear consumers complain about websites tracking their movement online. Companies will gather information from the sites you access and use that to target ads. Sometimes it is handy when a product you’ve been searching for appears in a side banner. Other times, though, it is uncomfortable to have ads pop up about something you googled once.
Ad blockers can stop your online footprint from being tracked by ad servers. So while you browse the internet, you won’t have to worry as much about who is watching you and selling your data to third parties.
An added benefit of installing an ad blocker is decluttering your browser for a more enjoyable internet experience. Without an ad blocker, your device needs to load not just the page you want to view, but it also has to load all the attached ads. The result is a slower loading process and a frustrated viewer. Since the ad blocker removes the ability of the ads to pop up, your device no longer has to take the time to load them and can focus solely on your requested action.
On top of that, your favorite websites you love to peruse through have a cleaner look to them. No random sounds, pop up ads or anything else unwelcomed. You will instead have a clean white space to make the website more appealing.
If you are concerned about your online safety and frustrated with all the unwanted ads appearing, an ad blocker will be your best option. Remove anything unwanted and protect your data from being sold to third parties with an ad blocker.
This is a guest article by Jordan Choo.