Showing posts with label Tech Blog. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tech Blog. Show all posts

Thursday, 13 July 2017

Top 6 Essential WordPress Plugins for Solopreneurs


Top 6 Essential WordPress Plugins for Solopreneurs
Top 6 Essential WordPress Plugins for Solopreneurs



1. Tawk.to

Offering live chat as a solopreneur isn’t easy. Yet with the Tawk.to pluginyou can get it done. Tawk.to is a free messaging app that lets you chat with your website visitors.
Each page you designate on your website will get a handy chat window in the bottom right corner that you can fully customize to your needs. Once your visitor clicks on the chat window, they are prompted to enter their name and email to start chatting.

2. Sumo

Sumo is like the swiss army knife of marketing. It is the ideal choice for a one-person marketing operation with little to no technical skills.
Downloading Sumo for your WordPress site gives access to a huge suite of tools that give your website a professional touch, helping you get more conversions.

3. MailChimp for WordPress

For solopreneurs, automation is everything. Any task you can get off your plate lets you focus even more time on acquiring and supporting your customers. MailChimp gives you that added automation your business needs through interactive email chains. When a customer signs up to your newsletter or requests a quote, you can set MailChimp to automatically email them with a welcome message or prompt them with a message requesting more information for that quote. This process gives the illusion of a personal touch and can move your potential customer along the sales process without you ever lifting a finger.
The MailChimp for WordPress plugin connects your WordPress website with your MailChimp account giving you the flexibility to add mobile responsive signup and opt-in methods to your website manipulating any code.

4. Beaver Builder

Solopreneurs wear many hats, and too often one of those hats isn’t programmer or website designer. Luckily, for those of us who weren’t blessed with extensive development knowledge, Beaver Builder can be our champion.

5. Broken Link Checker

Arguably not the coolest or sexiest of the six plugins here, but no less important. As a solopreneur you likely don’t have the time or resources to apply a relentless attention to detail when it comes to your business and website. Unless you’re outsourcing website maintenance, you likely have a few grammar issues (for that we recommend Grammarly) and a handful of broken links with it. This is where Broken Link Checker becomes your savior.

6. IFTTT

IFTTT stands for “If This Then That” and allows you to create powerful triggers and actions that will automate certain workflows from your WordPress site. The IFTTT Bridge for WordPress plugin allows you to display any processed data from your IFTTT automation directly on your WordPress site. Or alternatively, you can connect your WordPress site with your IFTTT account and create automation with hundred of applets.
As a solopreneur, IFTTT takes typically routine and mundane tasks off your plate and assigns them triggers which prompt a workflow with an end result you desire. Here are just a handful of applets you could use to free up time and make your site more powerful:

7 Setup Tips You Must Know for WordPress Beginners

Welcome to WordPress! Starting your first WordPress powered blog or website is an exciting, and sometimes confusing, time. You are likely worried about making mistakes and also wanting to get up and running as soon as possible. The intention of this article is to do just that. We aim to cut straight to the core of what you’ll need to build a safe and secure site that is custom fit to your needs, and is easy to manage.

7 Setup Tips You Must Know for WordPress Beginners

7 Setup Tips You Must Know for WordPress Beginners


1. Picking and Learning Your Theme

Picking a theme can be daunting, especially considering there are hundreds of thousands of themes to choose from. The good news for any WordPress beginner is there are a handful of tried and true WordPress themes that are extremely popular and customizable. Divi and Genesis are great options for beginners. They are user-friendly meaning they don’t require in-depth developer skills, they are affordable, and they have a large community to draw support from.
Beyond choosing the right theme comes learning how it works, and how you can customize it to your individual needs. This is accomplished in two ways:

2. Protect Your Hard Work By Backing Up Your WordPress Site

Being new to WordPress means you’ve likely never seen the white screen of death or have fallen victim to a malicious hacker who has locked you out of your site. Regularly backing up your WordPress site will ensure you can get back up and running when the day comes that you lose access, or your site breaks from some faulty plugin.
There are three ways you can backup your WordPress site:
  1. Carefully choose a WordPress hosting provider that offers backup services. Our partner, SiteGround, for example, has an auto-backup system which makes a copy of your site daily. They provide you with the flexibility to restore your data with just a few clicks.
  2. Back it up yourself using an FTP server and manually transfer the files between your server and your computer on a regular basis.
  3. Download a backup plugin like UpdraftPlus or BackupBuddy.
  4. 3. Make Your Site Search Engine Friendly

    With any WordPress site, your goal is likely to get more traffic, more readers, or more customers. One of the best ways to do that is through optimizing your site to rank higher on Google or other search engines. This tactic is called Search Engine Optimization (SEO). While WordPress does a good job out of the box with SEO, these two tips will put you far ahead of your competition with a minimal time investment:
    Download an SEO plugin
    While there are hundreds of SEO plugins, by far the most popular plugin is Yoast. Many other web-based tools like SEMrush and Moz will become familiar to you as your site grows, but for any WordPress beginner, Yoast is a great start because it is an all-in-one solution that has a clear and easy-to-use interface. To download a WordPress SEO plugin from the admin interface:
    Plugins > Add New > Search for ‘SEO’ > Click Install Now
  5. Adjust your permalink settings
    According to Yoast, a straightforward permalink structure is ideal for SEO. To take it up a notch add your main keyword somewhere in your post’s name. Adjusting your permalink structure in WordPress is simple:
    Go to Settings > Permalinks > Select ‘Post Name’
  6. 4. Beef Up Your Security

    Strong security for your WordPress site doesn’t need to be expensive or take a long time to set up. These three steps will get you there in no time:
    Generate a strong password
    Your new WordPress site likely gave you a username and password and should be updated as soon as possible to thwart any hackers from using brute force attacks to gain control of your website. Generating a secure password involves using a differentpassword than any of your other logins and using a long string of multiple numbers, letters, and symbols. If you want a secure password quickly, you can always use a password generator to do the job for you.
    Update your site regularly
    Update WordPress, your plugins, and your themes regularly to close any backdoors and vulnerabilities left open to hackers. Looking at the graphic below you can see that WordPress notifies you when any updates are available and makes updating as simple as clicking ‘Update’.
  7. Install a security plugin
    Much like your computer likely has some sort of antivirus or anti malware software built in, your website will need some similar defense systems. By far the most popular is Wordfence and All In One WP Security and Firewall. Both are free and robust security solutions. They have paid versions as well for more premium protection. To learn more about WordPress security check out WPBeginner’s Step By Step Guide.
  8. 5. Be Mindful About Must-Have Plugins

    When you’re just getting started with WordPress, you are likely doing lots of research into best practices and troubleshooting some problems you may be having. Which is great, you should absolutely be doing that. Along the way, it is almost inevitable that you will come across some article about “Must Have WordPress Plugins”. While these articles may have great intentions, you should know that more plugins aren’t always better. In fact, the opposite is usually true. You should keep your plugins to a bare minimum to run your site and provide the user experience you desire. More plugins than necessary can slow down your site tremendously. Another issue with more plugins is they come with added vulnerabilities. Any plugin that isn’t up to date has the potential to be hacked or even become faulty. Only download high-quality plugins from trusted sources who update frequently.

    6. Gain Insights About Your WordPress Site With Analytics

    WordPress is strong in a lot of areas but built in analytics and dashboards is not one of them. Luckily there are many plugins available that make it easy to track important things like where your traffic is coming from, how often people are first-time 
  9. 7. Encourage Communication

    With any online presence, you will eventually have readers, followers, and customers reach out for a multitude of reasons. They have questions about your product, they want to praise you for an article that impacted them, they want to work for you, and much more. With that, you’ll need some easy ways for them to reach out.
  10. Give them multiple options
    While it is great to give your customers and readers ways to contact you, it can also be difficult to weed out the spammers. If you’re wary about signing up for costly services or giving out personal phone numbers and email in the beginning you can use services like Google Voice and Google Suite. Google Voice gives you a free phone number that routes to your cell phone and Google Suite provides you with a custom email address for only $5 per user a month.
    Finally, a great option for online chat is the free Tawk.To plugin which lets your users chat with you and your team live from the website. The messages can even be sent to your mobile phone for added convenience.

Picking the Perfect Domain Name | Best Online Tools For Domain Name Generators

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Registering the perfect domain name is an extremely important decision. A good domain can help you build a brand that will stick in your customers minds and help define your target market. However, coming up with a great business and domain name can be one of the most challenging aspects of starting a new online business. You can spend days, weeks or even months and the brainpower equivalent to a thousand NASA computers trying to come up with the perfect name that's also available to register

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Why Are Domain Names So Important

Domain names are one of the first pieces of marketing most of your visitors will see. The right domain can instill confidence and the wrong one can cause alarm. Most importantly, your domain and business name are an important part of your overall brand.

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It's simple to use: Just enter the words that describe the domain name you're looking for, and NameBoy will generate a list of potential domain names, showing which ones are available to purchase.

1. Domain Typer

Domain Typer is a fast, intuitive and easy-to-use domain tool. Simply enter your domain keywords and Domain Typer will show whether that domain name is available, while also generating random domain names.
If your first choice isn't available, you can view a list of suggested domain hacks.

2. Name Mesh


Name Mesh uses synonyms and antonyms paired with real-world intelligence to help you brainstorm unique domain names — using over 20 generators. You can see common short top-level domains, mix words, preserve SEO, and check related and similar words.
If you use spaces between your keywords, you'll receive improved results.

3. Domize

Domize offers speed and security to search domain names in an encrypted environment, as well as checking whether a domain name has been previously registered, is it due to expire or if it can be purchased. As you type the results are immediately shown below, providing instant results.

Wordoid

Wordoid creates made-up words, which are unique and sound and look great. Each word is no more than 10 letters long, and you can select from up to five languages, and even mix and match languages to create a unique blend.
Wordoid allows you to change the quality level from low to high — the higher the quality, the more the word resembles the natural words of the selected languages.

5. Dot-o-Mator

Dot-o-Mator lets you create domain name suggestions by selecting a list of words (e.g., colors and shapes) for the beginning and end of the domain. If you see a name you like, you can combine the two and see the result, which can then be moved to the scratchbox to check its availability.
Dot-o-Mator is also available as an iOS app for use on the go.

6. DomainsBot

DomainsBot has been operating since 2004, taking your ideas and turning them into names; showing available domain suggestions; alerting you of expired, expiring and for-sale domains; and providing a Whois search.
It also offers corresponding Twitter and Facebook identity suggestions. Use the accompanying iPhone app to find great domains from the palm of your hand.

7. NameTumbler

NameTumbler gives you domain names by combining a keyword you want with a word from the NameTumbler database. Once you combine words, you can choose your keyword placement (at the beginning or end of the domain). You can use hyphens to separate suggested terms, choose your extension and view the results.

8. NameStall

NameStall offers a suite of domain tools, including a domain name generator using your preferred keywords and prefixes or suffixes from more than 180 word groups. The domain name suggestion tool recommends a combination of two or three words, as well as brandable names in five different domain categories.

9. Panabee


Panabee provides a simple way to search for domain names, app names, and company or personal names. If your perfect name is taken, Panabee offers suggestions inspired by your original domain idea, derived from phonemes, syllables, abbreviations, suffixes, prefixes and popular trends.

10. Domain Puzzler

Domain Puzzler lets you search and discover domain names with "easy," "advanced" and "magic" options. The "magic" option takes your keywords and combines them with popular words, while the "easy" option just lets you check for availability. The advanced option allows you to combine words and choose from your selected extensions.

11. SuggestName

SuggestName is a domain name generator that allows you to enter a prefix and suffix of your choice, combine the two and then check to see if the domain name is available. You can also choose from a list of colors, tech terms, popular Web 2.0 words and more to create your domain.
You can move the resulting words to the scratchboard and then either clear your selection of check their availability.

12. Namestation

The domain name generator feature on Namestation allows you to combine keyword lists, add suffixes, generate phonetic names and alliterative names, and much more.
You can quickly check alternative name variations and receive keyword suggestions, look up definitions and semantically related words for more inspiration, and refine your search criteria to generate more targeted domain names.

13. Bulktopia

Bulktopia provides domain name suggestions based on your keywords, along with research into potential domains, such as age, expiration, page rank, backlinks and social media account availability.
Once you have chosen a suggested domain name, you can click purchase and buy through a variety of domain registrars.

14. Impossibility!

Impossibility! is a domain name generator that takes your keyword and combines it with a carefully selected list of nouns, verbs and adjectives, before searching for unregistered domain names and showing you the results. It uses multiple servers to make the experience as quick as possible.

15. BustAName


BustAName helps you find the perfect domain name by using its word combiner, finding similar words and checking for available domains. You can save domains for review, switch the word order to create new domains and combine up to three words. You can also create groups of words to craft domain names, use hyphens, plurals or even drop the last vowel.

16. NameBoy

NameBoy is a domain name generator and database allowing you to perform a keyword search with either one or two words, allowing for hyphens and rhyming words.

17. Lean Domain Search

Lean Domain Search's domain name generator specializes in showcasing unique and quirky domain names using prefixes and suffixes. It also checks the availability of the exact match domain for your search term.
You can easily sort and filter search results to quickly find a great domain name. You can also mark a search result as a favorite so you can keep track of it.

If You Are Cheap SSL Certificates 


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Registering Country Specific Domain Extensions

After you have registered your main domain, for examplewww.YourOnlineStore.com, should consider registering your brand with one or more country specific domain extensions, like www.YourOnlineStore.ca.
Registering other domain extensions can be great from a branding and marketing perspective. For example, if you do business and market in multiple countries, having country specific domains can make visitors more comfortable with your brand right from the beginning. 
Additionally, Brian Dean from Backlinko mentions that country specific domain extensions can help you rank better for within those countries in his comprehensive report on the 200 factors that go into Google's Ranking Algorithm
Registering Country Specific Domain Extensions
Registering new domains right from your Shopify Admin is quick and easy. Here is what country specific domains are available to register from within Shopify:

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Domain Extension     
Price
.be
$9
.ca
$14
.co
$24
.co.uk
$9
.eu
$9
.in
$14
.it
$14
.me
$19
.nl
$9
.tv
$34
.us
$9
.ws
$19

New Premium Domain Extensions

Beyond registering your .com and country specific domains, you may also want to consider some of the new premium domain extensions you can now register through Shopify.
Many of these are based based on popular niches (.coffee), categories (.boutique) and events (.christmas) and can be a perfect addition to your business. The best part is that because these domain extensions are all relatively new, there's plenty of inventory, so the chances of getting exactly what you want is much more likely. 
Here's a full list of all premium domain extensions you can now register directly through your Shopify admin:


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Domain Extension     
Price
.bargains
$33
.bid
$22
.bike
$33
.blackfriday
$44
.boutique
$33
.camera
$33
.cards
$33
.cheap
$33
.christmas
$44
.clothing
$33
.coffee
$33
.computer
$33
.diamonds
$50
.equipment
$22
.expert
$50
.fish
$33
.florist
$33
.gift
$22
.glass
$33
.guitars
$33
.house
$33
.kitchen
$33
.lighting
$22
.plumbing
$33
.repair
$33
.rocks
$17
.sexy
$22
.shoes
$33
.supplies
$22
.supply
$22
.tattoo
$33
.technology
$22
.tools
$33
.toys
$33
.trade
$22
.training
$33
.watch
$33

Because these domain extensions are still new, it's still a controversial topic whether domain extensions like .blackfriday will help you rank for "Black Friday" related keyword searches, however, from a branding standpoint there's no doubt these extensions can add tremendous value to your business.
The fact that there is plenty of inventory available for these extensions means it's much easier to choose something catchy and because these domain are pretty specific, they send a definite message to the people that see your URL as to what your business is about. 
Finally, purchasing domain like these can also serve to future-proof and protect your brand from others that may try to copy your business or even from domain squatters that purchase domains like this to attempt to sell it back to you in the future for a large amount of money.