Wordpress Archives – Page 3 of 4

5 Reasons You Need A Mobile Website WordPress Plugin

By Joe Pawlikowski / WordPress, WordPress Plugins

The way people view the web is changing. Go ahead, take a look at your Google Analytics numbers. You’ll see that more and more people are browsing the web from their smartphones. The problem is that they might not be getting the most out of your site. They’re using a small screen to view something that was designed for a screen three to five times larger. That is, unless you’ve installed a mobile website plugin for WordPress. There are many options, but these plugins can give your site a look and feel that was made for mobile.

mobile-ready

Here are five reasons that you need to install a mobile website WordPress plugin today.

1. Sleek look and feel

While each mobile website plugin provides a distinct look, they all come down to one thing: simplicity. What you’ll get with a mobile plugin is a listing of the latest headlines, followed by tags and categories and perhaps a small blurb. That’s the perfect amount of information for a mobile viewer. It flows, and it looks nice. There might not be fancy images, but that’s not necessary when viewing on a smartphone. Plus, users will have the choice of when to view those images, which comes in handy for Reasons Nos. 2 and 3.

2. Perfect for small-screen viewing

When you load a regular website on a mobile phone, it looks unnatural. Everything is small and unreadable, because you’re loading a site designed for a much larger screen. You have to zoom into read the articles. You probably have to scroll left and right to see everything on the screen. Since mobile website plugins list posts in reverse chronological order, you’re getting just the information you need, at a size that’s designed for a small screen. It’s really the perfect smartphone viewing experience.

3. Uses less data when loading

In an age where unlimited data plans really have hidden limits, data usage comes at a premium. When you load a normal website, it eats up tons of data. It has to load all the content, plus images and ads. That can eat valuable kilobytes from your monthly data plan. A mobile website is stripped down to the basics, so it uses very little data when loading. That means you can view more sites while using less data. See also: Optimize WordPress Blog Loading Time

4. Universal look across smartphones

There are dozens of different smartphone browsers. Beyond Safari for iPhone, the Android browser, and the BlackBerry browser, there are tons of third-party alternatives on each platform. A Samsung Galaxy from T-Mobile using the default Android browser might see a site differently than the same phone using the Dolphin browser. Using a mobile website means that every smartphone user will see the same thing. That’s not only beneficial for the user, but also beneficial in troubleshooting bugs and errors.

5. More revenue opportunities

So many ads nowadays use Adobe Flash. That’s a problem for mobile browsers, because many of them don’t support Flash at all. If you serve ads in Flash form, that is, zero iPhone users will see your ads. While there is a Flash plugin for Android, it provides a poor experience; many Android users have uninstalled it completely. Mobile websites, however, can support different types of ads. That gives you an opportunity to make money on impressions.

Every blog should install a plugin that gives smartphone users a better experience. There are many, many options for the WordPress platform. Some free ones, such as WordPress Mobile Pack, can get the job done well. But established bloggers with an income stream should consider a premium option. They provide more choices, meaning you get a better experience for you and your readers. Whatever you do, don’t let this one slide. Creating a useful mobile website is an opportunity that no blogger should ignore.

1. Wp-Thumbie

related-2-post-thumbnails

A simple clean yet stylish WP Related posts plugin. It Display a list of related posts along with thumbnail images of those posts for the current post.You can select the number of posts to be display on articles or on feed.You can choose to exclude posts from certain categories as well as exclude pages.

2. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP) gives you a list of posts and/or pages related to the current entry, introducing the reader to other relevant content on your site. It is best related post plugin easy to configure and use. But it have no thumbnails with related posts..

3. nrelate Related Content

nrelated posts

The best way to display related content: Thumbnails or Text, on all your pages. One of my favorite Best Related Posts Plugins For WordPress. It is very easy to use. It contains 5 skins which you can change hover, different thumbnail size etc.

4. WordPress Related Posts

WordPress Related Posts Plugin will generate a related posts via WordPress tags, and add the related posts to feed. It also contain option of adding thumbnail. One of disadvantage is it contains a link at end of post as far as we know. But over all it is best easy to configure.

5. Related Posts Thumbnails

This plugin will add related posts thumbnails after the post. Plugin allows to customize thumbnail sizes, display settings and type of relation. This is at no.5 Related Post PLugin

That’s all. If i miss any best WP plugin then let me know in comment section.

3+1 Ways to Optimize and Speed Up WordPress Blog

By Rahul Kuntala / WordPress, WordPress Plugins

All right. Let’s gear up some questions about your blog performance now.. Have you ever thought about your blog’s loading time?

No.. than It’s time to think about it now..

Speed up WordPress

Why?

Because it’s not only essential to maintain a friendly SEO blog but also for your readers engagement. If you want to increase your readership or to decrease your bounce rate, you need to focus on decreasing your blog loading time. The faster it loads the better it is. Following are the few best ways to Speed Up WordPress.

1. Use WP Cache Plugin:

This is by far the best WP plugin many blogs are using to clear the cache to speed up the blog. You can clean up your cache memory all the time whenever you loading new plugins or deactivating them.

W3 Total Cache Plugin

Installation guide:

Download the plugin here
Unzip the file
Upload the plugin to your Plugins folder via FTP or Admin area
Inside the Plugins section of your WordPress control panel activate the plugin
Under the Dashboard click on W3 Total Cache and use it..

2. Optimize Image Size:

Decrease the image size by tools like image optimizer, shrink pictures, picresize etc.

Or you can simply use this WP plugin WP Smush.it (This reduces image file sizes and improves your blog’s performance)

And try to use the images in the following 3 formats.

.PNG
.JPG or
.GIF

These are the best extensions to save your images and decreasing your images size means you are decreasing your blog’s loading time.

3. Clean Up Your WP Database:

Use this plugin called WP Database Optimizer (This plugin allows you to make automated scheduled database optimization. You can specify how long in between automated optimization).

Installation guide:

Download the plugin here
Unzip the file
Upload the plugin to your Plugins folder via FTP or Admin area
Inside the Plugins section of your WordPress control panel activate the plugin
Under the Dashboard click on WP Database Optimizer and use it..

4. Avoid Too Many Plugins:

Last but not least, don’t use unwanted plugins which effects your blog loading time relatively high. Try to use the top plugins which suits your requirements and needs.

You can check your blog loading time using the following tools.

Pingdom
whichloadsfaster or
searchmetricsrapid

And there are several more ways you can speed up your blog loading time by:

Using free CDN (Content Delivery Network)
Using the better web hosting provider like HostGator
By reducing the widgets in your sidebar

Advantages of having a faster loading blog:

You can have the following benefits if you use the above methods to speed up your blog.

It essentially improves your blog’s credibility

Your visitors or readers will be happy with your blog performance

Low bounce rate (it effects certainly)

Good PR and Alexa Rank (yeah, of course)

and many more…

Your Turn:

If you know extra tools more than the above to check a blog’s loading time or any more ideas/tips on speeding up a blog in your mind – do share them below.

This is a guest post by Rahul Kuntala who blogs at LearnBlogTips

Image Credit:

How to Create a SCADA System For Your Blog

By Joe Pawlikowski / Blogger Tips

Content might be king, but there’s plenty more that goes into running a successful blog. The content is just the first step. Without that, success is not possible. But there are a host of other issues that every blogger wants to address in order to succeed.

The best way to think about this is like a SCADA system. For those unfamiliar, SCADA stands for supervisory control and data acquisition. Companies from far-ranging industries use SCADA systems to provide them with real-time information, so they know if problems arise and where. You can Create a SCADA System For Your Blog for your blog, so you can stay on top of everything related to your blog.

Checking for malfunctions

Many oil and gas companies use SCADA systems to pinpoint leaks in their pipes. When they get the information they can determine the source of the problem, the reason, and then act to solve it. Blog owners should employ a similar system for their blogs. This particularly involves ensuring that blog posts go up as scheduled, and that they broadcast to all the appropriate networks.

WordPress owners might know this all too well: sometimes blog posts don’t go live at their scheduled times. There’s an easy fix to this: subscribe to all of your blogs feeds. This means RSS, Facebook, Twitter, and any other place that automatically broadcasts your blog posts. That way you’ll know that the blog post went up as scheduled — and WordPress is notorious for missing schedules. It will also let you know that all of your feeds are working properly. If one of them doesn’t broadcast correctly, you’ll know you have to fix it.

Monitoring comments

Staying on top of the comments section can be a time suck. Comments are important, to be sure. They help foster discussion and encourage people to return to your blog. But a bad comments section can turn people away. As such, you’ll want to monitor what happens in your comments section. Thankfully, there’s an easy way to do this.

WordPress and other blog platforms will send you comments via email. I know many people who set up filters for these, so that they don’t see them. This is a mistake. Comment emails are highly useful. They first let you know that you got a comment. They then instantly let you know the nature of the comment. If it’s something that warrants a reply, you can click a link and reply. If it’s inappropriate, you can delete with a link from the email.

Keeping updated

Blog software often requires updates. Not only does WordPress release a new version every couple of months, but there are also updates for plugins. Keeping on top of these updates will keep your blog running efficiently. Thankfully, WordPress lets you know exactly when you need updates. There’s no need to check all of them; when you need an update, WordPress will let you know. You can even update right from your WordPress Dashboard.

Staying on top of keywords

Surely you want to stay on top of certain keywords, for SEO purposes. One way you can do this is to subscribe to a Google Alert. You can create Google Alerts for all keywords relevant to your niche, and stay on top of what shows up for each keyword. The idea is to eventually see your own content appear in these keywords.

What they’re saying about you

It might seem egotistical, but bloggers can certainly benefit from searching out their names and blog titles. It can provide insight into what people are saying about you and your site. It might not be necessary to engage everyone who says something, but just knowing they’re saying it can provide helpful tips.

You can also do this through Google Alerts, making sure to include blogs in the search. A Twitter search for your name and your blog’s name can help, too. That way you’ll know when people are talking, and what they’re talking about. The information can help you improve your blog.

There you have it: a complete SCADA system for your blog. Once you have it set up, it’s all automatic. You’ll see all of these alerts exactly when you need to see them. You can then take in the information and determine the appropriate course of action. Setting up a system like this turns something complex into something simple, allowing you to focus more on content, which is still king.

Top 20 Best WordPress Security Plugins

By Ammar Ali / WordPress, WordPress Plugins

After my recent 10 Best Stats Plugins for WordPress.

Now, it is to share free best wordpress security plugins.

It is important to look at the security aspects of your blog, keeping it safe from hackers. I now decided to share some top Best WordPress Security Plugins. There are many plugins but I listed Top 20 Best WordPress Security Plugins. So go ahead and choose Best WordPress Security Plugins for your self hosted blogs.

Top 20 Best WordPress Security Plugins

Check out these Top 20 Best WordPress Security Plugins to secure your blog from hackers. The list contains plugins for access control, limit logins, spam protection, content theft protection, backup tools, password encryption, email protection, firewall, antivirus and much more.

1. Login LockDown

Login LockDown records the IP address and timestamp of every failed login attempt. If more than a certain number of attempts are detected within a short period of time from the same IP range, then the login function is disabled for all requests from that range. This helps to prevent brute force password discovery.

2. Stealth login:

WordPress has default login url. This makes it somewhat easy for hacker. So, we can use Stealth login plugin to change our login url to something skeptic. So, even if the hacker knows our password, he will find it difficult to enter our admin panel as he don’t know our login url. This surely helps us in safeguarding our blogs from hackers.

3. Admin SSL

admin ssl

Admin SSL secures login page, admin area, posts, pages – whatever you want – using Private or Shared SSL. Once you have activated the plugin, you have to go to the Admin SSL config page to enable SSL.

4. User locker:

User Locker

It is used to lock a user after the specified number of login attempts. Very useful to protect your blog from bruteforce attacks.

5. Semisecure Login Reimagined

semisecure-login

Semisecure Login Reimagined increases the security of the login process by using a combination of public and secret-key encryption to encrypt the password on the client-side when a user logs in. JavaScript is required to enable encryption. It is most useful for situations where SSL is not available, but the administrator wishes to have some additional security measures in place without sacrificing convenience.

6. WP Security Scan

Wp-security-scanner

This plugin will scan your WordPress installation for security vulnerabilities and it will suggest some corrective actions.

7. Limit login attempts:

limit-login-attempts-wordpress-security-plugin

Limit the number of login attempts possible both through normal login as well as using auth cookies. I’m also using same best wordpress securiy plugin

8. WordPress File Monitor

file-monitor-wordpress-security-plugins

Monitors your WordPress installation for added/deleted/changed files. When a change is detected an email alert can be sent to a specified address.

9. WordPress firewall:

firewall-wordpress-security-tools-tips-plugins

This WordPress plugin investigates web requests with simple WordPress-specific heuristics to identify and stop most obvious attacks. It intelligently whitelists and blacklists pathological-looking phrases based on which field they appear within in a page request.

10. Content Security Policy

content-security-policy-wordpress-security-tools-tips-plugins

Content Security Policy prevents content injection attacks by allowing admins to specify which sites they trust to serve JavaScript and other types of content in their site. Any content which is not explicitly allowed by the policy will be blocked from loading.

11. Secure WordPress

Little help to secure your WordPress installation. This plugin removes error information on login page, adds index.html to plugin directory, removes the wp-version, except in admin area.

12.HTTP Authentication

The HTTP Authentication plugin allows you to use existing means of authenticating people to WordPress. This includes Apache’s basic HTTP authentication module and many others.

13.AntiVirus

Antiviurs WP plugin

Viruses, worms and malware exist for WordPress and could easily attack your WordPress installation. AntiVirus for WordPress monitors malicious injections and warns you of any possible attacks. It also has multilingual support.

14. WP members:

wp-Member is an advanced WordPress membership plugin that adds many membership features including registration customization, total content protection for posts, pages and categories, content teasers, automated membership management, automated payment processing and many more.

15. Ultimate security check:

One of the rare security plugins which are updated regularly. It is a wordpress security plugin which scans your wordpress installation and assigns security grade based on passed tests.

16. AskApache Password Protect

ask-apache-password-protect-wordpress-security-tools-tips-plugins

This plugin doesn’t control WordPress or mess with your database, instead it utilizes fast, tried-and-true built-in Security features to add multiple layers of security to your blog. This plugin is specifically designed and regularly updated specifically to stop automated and unskilled attackers attempts to exploit vulnerabilities on your blog resulting in a hacked site.

17. Exploit scanner:

It seaches in your WordPress database for any sort of infection which may indicate that your blog is accessed by any hacker. It includes all files, comments and database in its scan to detect any sort of suspicion.

18. Login encrypt:

Login Encrypt is a security plugin. It uses a complex combination of DES and RSA. This combination is used to encrypt your password protecting you from hackers.

19. Ultimate security check:

One of the rare security plugins which are updated regularly. It is a wordpress security plugin which scans your wordpress installation and assigns security grade based on passed tests.

20. WP Email Guard

WP Email Guard protects your email addresses included on any post or page from being crawled by spammers. It converts every email written within your post body into a JavaScript code, so the emails is readable and can be clicked by humans only. Spammers can’t crawl JavaScript.

Don’t forget to look at our recent plugin collection for WordPress Blog

Note: Since plugins can increase your page load time, make sure you use optimum number of security plugins for wordpress.

I listed Top 20 Best WordPress Security Plugins in above list. Let me know if I missed any one :D