Wordpress hints, tips and recommendations

[justdave]

Each person has their own preferences regarding hosts etc and that's fine If your website is taking more than 10 seconds to load more than once or twice a year I would be looking at why, especially if your site generates income.

This could be something that's a hosting issue, or down to plugins or stuff running on your site.

 

[Blackpepper1]

Each person has their own preferences regarding hosts etc and that's fine If your website is taking more than 10 seconds to load more than once or twice a year I would be looking at why, especially if your site generates income.

This could be something that's a hosting issue, or down to plugins or stuff running on your site.

Suppose I have never really looked at how long my Blog takes to load. I have never had alerts before from Jetpack before though and that only started a few days ago when I added in Yoast. So maybe could be to do with that?
Can't think what else it could be plugin wise since the only thing I have newly installed is Yoast. But again I really like Yoast and it could be nothing to do with that. Maybe an update somewhere on one of my other plugins has caused it to slow down.
I may try again with turning the e-mail alerts on with Jetpack and see if it does it again.
Maybe it could not cope or something since I have been readjusting my posts to make them more SEO friendly and that is when I suddenly got the e-mail alerts through from Jetpack.
Could be time to move hosts for my Blog anyway if it is a hosting problem rather than anything that I have done.
Just reluctant to go through the hassle of moving my Blog and having everything kept working properly. Last time I did decide to move a site I had elsewhere to try a different host everything was totally messed up.

 

[justdave]

TSOhost are excellent, I use them for a lot of my money sites. They will even migrate your blog for you, for free.

And I haven't even posted an affiliate link

 

[Pheebs]

TSOhost are excellent, I use them for a lot of my money sites. They will even migrate your blog for you, for free.

And I haven't even posted an affiliate link

Absolutely.

TSO Host have been excellent with me.

 

[Blackpepper1]

So I found with the new version of Jetpack that e-mail alerts had been defaulted to on but not receiving any e-mails about my blog being slow. So all seems to be working as it should thankfully.
Plus I removed a plugin which I think was causing a bit of a lag.
Using Wordfence plugin which I saw was recommended on this thread to use. Just the free version which is good enough and that sends an e-mail when there is a plugin needing updating plus it is keeping my blog secure and safe.

 

[Scott@KarmaContent]

SERP MOJO: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.SERPmojo&hl=en_GB

This is a really handy free app to quickly check your rankings on Google, Yahoo and Bing. Simply put a list of the keywords/phrases that you are trying to rank for, and it tells you where you are ranking for each term. You can make it UK specific as well, as I presume most people here will be targeting a UK audience.

There are other tools out there that do the same thing, but this is by far the easiest one I've found yet. It's only available on Android at the moment I think, but there's bound to be something similar on iOS.

I know it's not totally Wordpress related, but it is a really handy tool to use with sites.

 

[Chammy]

Ad Blocker detector...does anyone use one? Is it cheeky to, politely, ask people to disable their adblocker while on your site?

If anyone does use one, which do you use? Reason I ask is I have a banner I am using in my next post which, if ad blocker is active, turns into a giant purple square LOL I might end up changing it anyway but it is a flash one which, I think, looks cool

 

[alditoharrods]

Ad Blocker detector...does anyone use one? Is it cheeky to, politely, ask people to disable their adblocker while on your site?

If anyone does use one, which do you use? Reason I ask is I have a banner I am using in my next post which, if ad blocker is active, turns into a giant purple square LOL I might end up changing it anyway but it is a flash one which, I think, looks cool

I've been debating this, perhaps adding something to my About page asking visitors to disable adblock (and telling them how to do it) if they find my site useful. But I'm a bit confused about adsense T&C as whether this is allowed.

 

[Chammy]

Ad Blocker detector...does anyone use one? Is it cheeky to, politely, ask people to disable their adblocker while on your site?

If anyone does use one, which do you use? Reason I ask is I have a banner I am using in my next post which, if ad blocker is active, turns into a giant purple square LOL I might end up changing it anyway but it is a flash one which, I think, looks cool

I've been debating this, perhaps adding something to my About page asking visitors to disable adblock (and telling them how to do it) if they find my site useful. But I'm a bit confused about adsense T&C as whether this is allowed.

A google is revealing it isn't :'(

"Publishers are not permitted to bring unnecessary or unnatural attention to their Google ads. "

Meh, I shall have to change my banner to a normal image. Damnit!

 

[busybusy]

Being devils advocate here.
But if you ask people to disable an ad blocker, would you put them of visiting you again?

I don't know the answer to this BTW.

 

[Chammy]

Being devils advocate here.
But if you ask people to disable an ad blocker, would you put them of visiting you again?

I don't know the answer to this BTW.

I suppose it depends on the site. Sites I support I will disable the adblocker as long as the ads are not overwhelming and take over the page, and I return

In my case it was mainly because I wanted the pretty banner at the top of my post lol I have changed it to a standard image now.

 

[Pheebs]

Being devils advocate here.
But if you ask people to disable an ad blocker, would you put them of visiting you again?

I don't know the answer to this BTW.

It would certainly put me off.

I'd consider it akin to "Please allow me to spam you with adverts so I can make money".

Obviously that's not the case, but it's what I'd think if I didn't know the site.

 

[Chammy]

Thought I'd resurrect this one a) for the newer bloggers and b) because I have found a plugin I am loving.

This plugin allows you to create different sidebars for different reasons. I have different ones for my categories so I can mix up my adverts.

Example:
Money making/saving: link to TMS and my TCB referral banner
Parenting: Amazon banner for the tablet I wrote about the other day
Food: Degustabox and Approved foods

I will be adding more adverts as I'm approved for affiliates etc but I thought it was rather useful.

It's called "Custom Sidebars"

 

[Blackpepper1]

Thought I'd resurrect this one a) for the newer bloggers and b) because I have found a plugin I am loving.

This plugin allows you to create different sidebars for different reasons. I have different ones for my categories so I can mix up my adverts.

Example:
Money making/saving: link to TMS and my TCB referral banner
Parenting: Amazon banner for the tablet I wrote about the other day
Food: Degustabox and Approved foods

I will be adding more adverts as I'm approved for affiliates etc but I thought it was rather useful.

It's called "Custom Sidebars"

Sounds good.

 

[Jamie-Anderson.com]

Not sure if it's been mentioned or not, but one of my favourite plugins is this one:

https://wordpress.org/plugins/automatic-updater/

Install and click a couple of radio buttons and your plugins, themes and WP versions will all be automatically updated by the plugin.

It's perfect if you manage lots of websites and don't want to have to log in to them every so often when there are updates. Plus keeping your plugins up to date is critical to prevent hackers from exploiting your site too.

 

[doritqueenofspinach]

got adsense and analytics.. but need to start posting more.. been busy with work.. any other tips i could do?

 

[AdamWW]

I love Wordpress because there are plugins for just about any functionality you'll ever need, but this in it's self is a problem. It's too tempting to add loads of plugins which makes your site slow and more at risk for hackers etc.

Keep the plugins that you do use to a minimum but also:

Remove Inactive Plugins
Keep Your WordPress Version and plugins Up To Date
Compress Images/CSS/JavaScript files

 

[alditoharrods]

Thanks to [member=277]Chammy[/member] I am finally getting around to looking at custom sidebars! Excited to see how it works

 

[Chammy]

Thanks to [member=277]Chammy[/member] I am finally getting around to looking at custom sidebars! Excited to see how it works

Happy to help

 

[toastking]

Google Analytics by Yoast has been an unexpectedly easy addition to the fold. It was very easy and practically just included running a few 'wizards' to get through the process and bam. Easy analytics.