Blogger vs WordPress Blog

If you are an SMB owner with a small website reading this, chances are you started out with a WordPress site to make the process quick, easy and ready-to-roll.

It's not without reason that a little over 4.5% of all sites on the internet are built on WordPress. The beauty of WordPress is not in being a free platform (though I love that aspect of it, for sure!) What makes WordPress stand out from other website platforms is the seemingly limitless number of apps and plugins that are built just for WordPress.

This mind boggling library does not only make life easier for webmasters who use WordPress, but also makes sure visitors have a superlative, smooth user experience. Here are a handpicked collection of just WordPress plugins that each enable you to complete a specific and essential online functionality.

Allow Social Login

Does your site ask users to create an account and log in to access all your services? Make life easy for your users by incorporating a social login option into your site; users can sign in with the credentials of any of their social media accounts and essentially pair their social media profiles to their user profile on your site. As the site owner, you get access to your users' social media data and get to know them even better.

I love the JanRain social login plugin for its comprehensiveness. It allows users to access your site via more than 30 different social media platforms. Users logged in with a social media platform can also comment freely on your site with their social profile as the identifier. Sharing is made easier by allowing users to share content from your site to at least 4 different social networks simultaneously, thus multiplying engagement rates on your site.

Sell Online

A WordPress blog that you've built and nurtured over the years is a perfect candidate for being taken to the next level: monetization. Capitalize on all the TLC you've put into your site by turning it transactional and making some moolah out of it. I'm not even talking about transforming your blog into an ecommerce site. You could do that of course, but if being an online merchant is not one of your life goals, you can always sell your expertise in the form of an ebook or a whitepaper via your blog.

The Shopify "Buy" button gets my vote for being quick to setup, super simple to integrate and inexpensive to boot. It comes with the entire ecommerce muscle of Shopify behind it, so you can change the scale of your selling ambitions anytime you feel like it. The plugin supports over 70 different payment gateways and a wide variety of currencies, so you can be an international seller in minutes.

Offer Personalized Content

Personalization has become de rigueur for websites of all shapes and sizes in the last couple of years. Thanks to pioneers in content personalization like Amazon and Google, users expect to see content that is suited to their tastes and past behavior on every site they visit, no matter what its size or scale.

What was once a tall order is now just a plugin away! InSite is a personalization plugin that allows WordPress site owners define hundreds of different situations where content that is most relevant to the user is displayed on the site. This could take many different variations. Greet a returning customer with a specific welcome back message. Or remind them of the last items / articles they browsed. Show up content related to the article a visitor is currently reading. And so on. The more relevant your website is to a visitor, the more likely is she to convert and return over and over again.

Optimize for Mobile

We know that there are more mobile internet users today than desktop users. Unfortunately, the number of sites with responsive WordPress themes, or even the total number of responsive sites on the web, *still* does not reflect this reality. A substantial number of WordPress sites still fall back on non-responsive themes as they often do not find all the features they need in the limited number of ready to use responsive themes available.

Enter WPtouch. This awesome plugin turns your regular, plain-Jane WordPress site into a sleek mobile optimized site in no time. WPtouch comes with a range of built-in mobile optimized themes to pick from, which are lighter and quicker to load than traditional responsive themes. Instead of loading all the pieces of content on your site regardless of the visitor using a mobile or desktop device, WPtouch prioritizes content display for mobile devices and displays only mobile-optimized content like responsive images, making site load times lightning fast. Not only does it offer its own themes, it also turns non-optimized themes mobile-friendly with one click.

Let Users be Heard

Most websites tend to be one-way channels in which business owners or bloggers convey their messages to visitors and expect them to respond by visiting them again or by buying something from them. However, this approach leaves a user out in the cold. They end up with no way to convey their opinions to the people that matter and soon lose interest in such sites.

An interesting way to keep your users engaged and allow them to voice their opinions is via regular polls and surveys on your WordPress site. TotalPoll offers WordPress site owners a simple yet extremely versatile poll plugin they cannot pass over. Not only can you put your own branding on polls created using the plugin, you can even add images, videos and HTML code to your polls to make them more enticing. TotalPoll's polls are SEO friendly, helping search engines comb through the poll itself to improve your search rankings. They are also cheat-proof by incorporating various layers of authentication to prevent any funny business.

Wrapping Up

Picking WordPress to build your site is a smart decision to begin with. Kudos on that. A smarter move would be to make full use of all the flexibility that comes with being a WordPress user and take your website to the next level.

Source: 5 WordPress Plugins to Make your Site More Fabulous

As a postscript to the saga involving Petroceltic and its attempt to shut down a critical website, a curious email from the anonymous blogger landed in the inboxes of journalists this week. "My job will end. Yours begin NOW," it read.

The company last week succeeded with a court attempt to force the US company behind Wordpress to remove the blog, which made a number of serious accusations against Petroceltic, which denied them and said they were defamatory.

The email from the anonymous blogger gave journalists the logon and password for the administration of the site. It exhorted the media to press Petroceltic on its response to the detail of the allegations in the blog. "You're the journalists, I'm merely the person pointing you where to look."

Wordpress has about 10 days to fulfil the second part of the court order obtained by Petroceltic – to identify the mystery owner of the paid-for blog.

Source: One More Thing: Petroceltic critic hands over blog keys

Hot Off the Press Get Up to Speed at learn.wordpress.com

Krista

Aug 26, 2015 @ 4:00 pm

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Source: Get Up to Speed at learn.wordpress.com

WordPress.com has a new action bar, which makes it easier for readers to follow blogs of interest and for bloggers to make changes to their own sites.

If you're a blog visitor, and you're on a WordPress.com blog that you're not yet following, you can click the "Follow" button that appears in the bottom-right hand corner so new posts from that blog will appear in your WordPress.com Reader. If you click on the three dots that appear on the button, you'll get more options such as the ability to add the blog's theme to your own blog, copy the shortlink, report the content, or manage the sites that you follow.

If you're on one of your own pages, you'll have "Customize" and "Edit" options. You can use these to go to the customizer where you can adjust your site's appearance, change themes, change settings, etc, or go to Edit to make changes to your actual content.

The action bar will appear on the desktop, tablets, and smartphones. You can minimize it if you don't like it.

Images via WordPress.com

Source: WordPress.com Gets A New Action Bar

If you're in charge of marketing at a small or a medium sized company, you have enough on your plate to work on, and troubleshooting your website shouldn't be one of them. That's why you need to build your website on a platform that allows you to easily design according to your organizations brand standards, manage your content, and make modifications without diving into code. WordPress is the world's leading content management and blogging platform and helps you accomplish all of that, plus its themes allow you to customize and build a site suited to your needs.

Picking the right WordPress theme is crucial to your websites success; there's a lot to think about and consider. After all, most people come to your website to learn about what you offer, get contact information, or to make a purchase. The right theme makes a great first impression, delivers a good experience, and helps your visitors do what they need to do. Most importantly, it helps you achieve your business goals.

Before deciding on the right theme for your website here are a few things you need to consider.

Website Goals

The right WordPress theme closely aligns with your websites goals.

What is the main purpose of your website? Is it to provide information about your product? Generate leads? Generate sales?

Clearly defined goals help you narrow down the type of theme most appropriate for your website. If your only goal is to build authority and provide information, your theme selection criteria differ from using your site as an online store.

Current and Future Needs

A good way to think about your next theme is to consider if it will serve your needs today, next month, and next year.

Review the theme's update history, and make note if it has been able to keep pace with web design, digital marketing trends and technological innovations.

When Google explicitly stated that they would promote mobile friendly sites in mobile search, was your theme already mobile friendly? Or did you have to wait for the developer to release a mobile friendly version?

Look for themes developed by those who submerse themselves in latest technologies, who keep innovating and are able to gauge and understand how users interact with the web.

Your Web Development Skills

Developers are constantly improving their themes, and not just to make your site look and work better but to make it easier to customize without knowing code.

If you have web development skills you already know how to push the limits of your website theme and make custom modifications. But if you lack these skills, fear not. Many of the most popular themes come with enough options to make your site look truly unique.

Seek out themes that will allow you to do what you need without digging into code, so you can be in control of customization.

Access to Developers

If your website needs go beyond the theme's customization options, make sure you have access to the skills of a web developer or at least a budget to outsource any work. Otherwise you need to make compromises with the theme limitations and revise your website needs.

SEO

SEO is a beast. With over 200 known ranking factors, you need to select a theme that is SEO friendly. With so many ranking factors, it's unrealistic to go through every one and test each theme against every item on the SEO list.

Instead, stick to the top themes that have been tried and tested by other users. Read the theme descriptions and look for details mentioning how exactly the theme is SEO friendly. Look for things like: fast page load speeds, mobile friendliness, quality code, security, and if it is built with up to date technology. These details reveal and gauge the theme developer's commitment to SEO.

Customizability

Most popular themes are loaded with all kinds of bells and whistles. It's nice to have options and settings at your disposal, but you also need to consider their ease of use.

When choosing a theme, ask a developer to grant you access to an admin panel to test drive the theme. Have your needs list ready in hand and go through the admin panel to see if you're able to customize the theme according to your website specs without having to dig into code.

Speed

Speed was mentioned earlier, but it deserves its own section. It's impossible to stress enough how important website speed is. It allows search engines to crawl and index your pages faster, and it provides a good user experience.

If the page loads too slow users bounce and move onto your competitor's site.

If you can't remember the last time you waited more than five seconds for a page to load, neither can your potential customers.

Mobile friendliness

Your website needs to be mobile friendly.

As the smartphone market continues to grow so does the amount of mobile web browsing. Many of us use our phones and other mobile devices to access the internet not just while waiting in line, but as a primary device to browse and communicate with others.

On top of that, Google recently made mobile friendliness a ranking signal. This means that during a web search done on a mobile device, Google favors mobile friendly results.

Design

Ever hear the old adage you don't get a second chance to make a first impression? When you attract new visitors to your website you need to make them stay there.

One way to accomplish this is with a good design and layout. I'm not saying you need to hire an award winning art director to dazzle visitors with glossy graphics and HD videos, but you need to create a pleasant user experience. Some themes are too basic and uber-modern, others are just too cluttered. Find a happy medium that meets your website wishlist, compliments your brand and can help you fulfill your website goals.

Integration with other software

A WordPress theme can't do everything alone. Most websites running a WordPress theme have third party plugins and integrations powering many of their functionalities. Everything from social share counters to lead capture forms are powered by third party plugins.

When testing and evaluating a theme investigate whether your current integrations work with it or what needs to be changed.

Support

Technical support is one of the most important considerations you need to make when purchasing a new theme. It may not be a critical factor if you have a dedicated developer on your team, but if you're a solo marketer in your organization technical support is a must have.

Look for developers that provide a dedicated support channel, be it forums or a direct email address. Depending on the complexity of your theme and your web development skills, it's worth upgrading to premium support if available.

Reviews

Reviews are critical deciding factor. Don't just look at the star ratings; actually read the reviews, both negative and positive. Learn what others like about the theme, dislike, challenges to its use, and where improvements can be made.

Pay attention to developers responses. How do they respond to the reviews? How quickly? Based on their responses would you want to do business with them? Do you feel confident they're able to provide you with the support you need?

You can even take it a step further and reach out to other users to get their feedback directly.

Theme updates

WordPress developers are constantly innovating and updating the platform to include the latest features, bug fixes, and security updates. Is the theme you consider to purchase just as consistent? Will the theme be updated in time for the next WordPress release? Sometimes small releases don't affect theme functionalities, but as technology gets more advanced you can assume that your theme may lose some functionality.

During your evaluation process review the update history of your shortlisted themes. Learn how often the theme was updated, what goes into the updates, if it was updated before or after a major WordPress update, and what impact the update has on your theme setup.

Next Steps Where to Buy

A good place is ThemeForest, where you can browse through 5400+ themes. You can search by keywords, browse theme categories, and filter by ratings and number of sales to help you narrow down options. But ThemeForest isn't the only place to find good themes. There are many other theme shops that are often run by the developers themselves such as StudioPress and Woothemes.

Try Before You Buy

WordPress themes are relatively inexpensive, but your time and resources could run high if you pick a theme without testing it first. All themes have demos of their capabilities and most of the time the demo is what the site would look like to a visitor; rarely you'll get access to the admin panel. Although many developers will go into great detail about administrator and customization options in their theme description and provide screenshots, its important to inquire about admin panel access. Sometimes developers already have a demo admin account for you to login to but they do not advertise it. If they do not have the option, inquire about previous versions of the theme for you to test drive on your own development server. Having a hands-on trial with the admin panel gives you a sense of how much effort you need to put into making the theme fit your website needs list.

Picking the right WordPress theme is crucial to your websites success. Consider all of the points discussed before committing to a theme. There isn't a theme that's strong in every area. Sometimes you have to give up on excessive customizability for lightning fast speed, or choose a prettier theme but give up some speed. It doesn't matter what you favour or give up as long as your site performs better tomorrow than it did yesterday.

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Image source: Pexels

Source: A Marketer's Guide To Choosing A WordPress Theme