Red Kite Creative

The “Minding Your Business” Blog

New WordPress Performance Project

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BedTimes Magazine Performance ResultsMy long-time WP Minder client BedTimes Magazine came to me with a quandary – their newly-redesigned website was very slowly. Could I help? Of course I could.

Looking for the low-hanging fruit, I made some performance tweaks designed to get the best load time reduction with the least input per my client’s request. While there were many third-party scripts in play on the site, which we couldn’t do anything about, there were definitely areas I could improve fairly easily.

We wound up with a load time reduction of about 58% – it’s not the fastest site, but the goal of performance optimization is to get the fastest site possible without requiring a rebuild. And, the project constraints required a quick fix, not an in-depth operation. Work with what you have and make it do the best it can.

Click the infographic to see the results.

Weekly Links Roundup – Banner Ads, Blogging Ideas, VPN, Favicons

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The top website and online marketing links of the week.

Don’t know if you noticed, but if you logged in to your WordPress site in the last day or two and are using Yoast SEO, you would have seen a great big irritating animated banner advertising Yoast’s black Friday sale. There were so many complaints and so much pushback, they actually apologized and released a new version of Yoast SEO minus the ad. (WP Minder users, you’ll get this update on Monday!). Please think about the impact banners and popups have on your users, this one is a good example of being pushy.

Next… Do you ever draw a blank when trying to come up with something to blog about? It can be hard sometimes… Here’s one of those posts that might help: 25 blog post ideas for when you’re stuck. This tool looks interesting, I’ll be trying it myself: Answer the Public.

Do you work on your website in public – at coffee shops or other locations with free wifi? If you do, you really should be protecting yourself by using a VPN (virtual private network). If your site uses SSL (it has an https address) that’s great, because it means your connection to the site is encrypted. But if not, a VPN is in order. It will act as a middleman to protect you from security problems on the free wifi network, where it’s frighteningly easy for hackers to watch your activity and gain access to your site. Learn about three VPN options for WordPress users.

Finally – all about favicons. What they are, why they matter so much. What’s the easiest way to get your favicon into your WordPress site? This plugin by RealFaviconGenerator.

Did you find this information useful? Please share with your friends and colleagues! And comment below with questions or observations.

Weekly Links Roundup – WordPress History, Domain Names, Tracking Clicks, Product Photos

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The top website and online marketing links of the week.

I know it’s been a long time (about 6 weeks!) since the last post. Today’s post I hope brings an end to that unplanned break.

It’s been a crazy summer that included a death in the family, a broken elbow and hand, a sad lack of paddle boarding, and a badly-needed vacation. But now that things have settled down, I plan to get back to weekly blogging (or thereabouts).

Just for fun – here is the history of WordPress in 4 minutes. If you’re a long-time WordPress user, you’ll get a kick out of this. Maybe. I did.

Looking for a domain name for your new business venture? It’s more important than you might think to make a solid decision. Learn about domain names and how to choose the best one for your organization.

Tracking link and button clicks in your site is an important part of understanding site traffic, yet Google Analytics doesn’t let you do this very easily. Setting it up to track in Analytics is a tedious process. This tutorial shows you how to use the MonsterInsights plugin to track those clicks. This will help you do things like track clicks on a phone number or on a link that goes outside your own site.

Finally… The importance of having high-quality product photos for your ecommerce site can’t be overstated. Learn how to take great product photos that really entice your visitors to buy.

Did you find this information useful? Please share with your friends and colleagues! And comment below with questions or observations.

Weekly Links Roundup – Email Marketing Images, Heatmaps, Map Plugins, PDF Plugins

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The top website and online marketing links of the week.

Ever really think about using images in your email newsletter? And what kind of an impact those images might have? If not, take a look at this post about images in email marketing, you might learn a thing or two about selecting and using them more effectively.

Here’s a nifty new addon tool from Google Analytics – read this guide to using the Page Analytics Chrome plugin to see heatmaps of any website. A heat map can show you where users linger on your website – where they tend to spend the most time. Learn what sections and elements your visitors are interacting with, and which they are not.

If you have a brick-and-mortar business (or a number of them) you can use a map on your website. Maps add a great visual component and can help users find your location easily. But there are so many map plugins for WordPress – which should you use? Here’s a review of 8 WordPress map plugins to help you decide which is a good fit for your site and needs.

Finally… if you have a lot of documents on your site, you may want to check out PDF Poster. This free plugin displays PDF files right within your WordPress pages and posts and supports file downloads. See the complete review.

Did you find this information useful? Please share with your friends and colleagues! And comment below with questions or observations.

Weekly Links Roundup – Website Maintenance, WordPress Admins, Email Marketing, Why WordPress?

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The top website and online marketing links of the week.

When you own a WordPress website, are you aware that updates and maintenance are all on you? If you don’t do it, you’re increasing the risk to your site from hacking, malware, and loss of functionality due to old plugins, themes, or server software. Websites under your control require attention – they’re not set-it-and-forget-it, no matter what you may have been told. Maintenance has to be done either by you/your staff or another provider. It’s just a part of having a business website – like doing routine maintenance is part of owning a car or a house. If you don’t want to do this work yourself, try our services at WP Minder.

If you ever need to change the superadmin of your WordPress site (that’s the email account listed on the Settings > General page where notifications go by default), it can sometimes be problematic. In my case my client was never receiving the requests to confirm the changes in Gmail. Not to worry – it’s also easy to change this email address in the database using phpMyAdmin. Learn two ways to change the admin email.

If you’re thinking about starting a newsletter for your business, you’ll soon discover there are quite a few strong options for email marketing solutions. Here’s a review of top email marketing services – my current favorite is Mailchimp for its intuitive user interface, nice template selection and good support; you can start with them for free. But there other good choices here – see what fits your needs best.

I ran across a post that reinforces my strong opinion that WordPress is a great fit for many small businesses. Check out 11 reasons to use WordPress for your first website.

Did you find this information useful? Please share with your friends and colleagues! And comment below with questions or observations.

Weekly Links Roundup – Content First, Free Plugins, FAQ Plugins, Gallery Comparison

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The top website and online marketing links of the week.

One thing that often surprises my design clients is the immediately request for their content when their website project starts. Often, especially for a first website, they have no clue what content they’re going to have. This makes my job as a designer much, much harder. Having all the different types of content that will be on the site up front (at least the types, if not the actual content) is absolutely necessary, as the content drives the design. A site that is all about news articles on the home page will be designed very differently than one with a lot of products to sell, for example. This is why we start the design work with a mockup showing the different types of content that are planned for a given page. To help illustrate, here’s a post about the Content-First Method.

If you’re hiring someone to design and build a new website, do yourself and them a favor and spend some time developing your content strategy before jumping right into the look-and-feel. It will save time and money during the project. Realizing you’re missing important content pages or sections after the design is done or the theme is built can be expensive to remedy.

Here’s a collection of purposeful, generalist free plugins for WordPress sites. I don’t agree with all the choices, but it’s good to get different opinions – there are many plugins to go around for most uses and what works well for one user may not fit the bill for another. The ones in this list I use regularly are Yoast SEO and CoBlocks.

If you get a lot of the same questions over and over from clients and prospects, consider adding an FAQ page. You can collect all those questions and answers in one place and create a very useful resource for customers, while saving yourself time. What’s not to like about that? Here’s a roundup of the 8 Best WordPress FAQ Plugins – I’ve used Accordion FAQ several times and like that one for ease of styling with CSS.

If you’re looking for a gallery plugin for WordPress, two of the most popular are FooGalley and Envira Gallery. I’m a big fan of FooGallery and use it often, but I’ve also heard good things about Envira Gallery. Here is a head-to-head comparison of these two top gallery plugins so you can compare them before deciding.

Did you find this information useful? Please share with your friends and colleagues! And comment below with questions or observations.