Web Development

Hosting has a huge impact on any online store. It can impact the online shopping experience of customers. It can also affect the amount of money that an online merchant is willing to spend on infrastructure as well as the room for growth of an online business.
There are many hosting service providers today. There are those who offer dedicated hosting while others offer shared hosting. But how should online merchants decide on which hosting service provider to partner with?
Anyone planning to go into e-commerce should thus look for the following in a hosting service:

Hosting service quality #1: Reliability

An online store would lose a lot of earning potential if it is offline or not available to customers. It is thus important to have a reliable hosting service. Reliability of a hosting service would depend on various factors like hardware and technical ability.

Hosting service quality #2: Performance

This is another important quality of a hosting service provider. Simply put, if an online store is slow to load, then online shoppers will likely leave and go to another online shop.

Hosting service quality #3: Support

Support is also equally critical. The last thing an online entrepreneur would want to happen is to not get help when the website is down or when loading is slow. Support is a major cost for hosting providers which is one reason why low-cost hosting is notorious for poor customer support. The bottom line is that it would be wise for online entrepreneurs to research first about the customer support of a hosting service provider before committing.

Hosting service quality #4: Scalability

Finally, the hosting service provider should grow with the business. This means that if an online entrepreneur needs to expand his online store, the hosting service provider should be able to accommodate it. This can be done by offering dedicated hosting, for instance.

Features of Piwik Analytics – A Tool That Makes Everyone Love It

Most webmasters rely on Google analytics tool for tracking the activities on their websites as well to set strategies for keeping their site in the top search engine result pages (SERPs). There is no doubt that Google analytics is one of the best tools we have for tracking the traffic activities on our website, but sometimes it becomes fuzzy for webmasters, especially when they do not find it easy to understand and export the required reports from the tool. When it comes to tracking the analytical data of your WordPress site, you are not left with Google Analytics as the only option. There are many plugins that can do this for your site. In this post, you will get to know about Piwik analytics, which is one of the best alternatives to Google analytics.

What is Piwik Analytics?

Piwik Analytics tool is a free and an open source analytics software which is hosted on your own server. It means you can keep full control of your website.  Just like Google Analytics, it helps you track your website visitors and other activities. One of the benefits of using Piwik analytics is that the whole data control will be in your own hands.

Features That Makes Piwik Analytics Unique

Piwik analytics is an open source platform which you can extend with plugins and make it your own. It is an award-winning platform utilized by millions of WordPress users and webmasters worldwide. The tool has some unique features such as Administration Options, Tracking API, Free community support forums, Professional consultation services and much more.
Apart from the above-mentioned features, Piwik analytics is loaded with the following website analytics features:

• All standard statistics reports with Real-time data updates
• All Websites Customizable Dashboard
• Row Evolution and Analytics for E-commerce websites
• Goal conversion, Content, Event Tracking
• Site Search Analytics
• Custom Dimensions or Variables
• Geolocation
• Pages Transition and Overlay
• Analytics campaign tracking
• Automatically detects Google Analytics campaign parameters in your URLs.
• Shows traffic from various search engines by measuring the accurate time spent by visitors on the website. It also provides the more precise bounce rate metric.
• Scheduled email reports (PDF and HTML reports): Embed reports in your app or website (40+ Widgets available) or embed PNG Graphs in any custom page, email, or app.
• Annotations: Create text notes in graphs, to summon up about particular events and generates visitor log

Final Thoughts about Piwik Analytics:

Although there are lots of features that may attract you for using Piwik analytics, I would say it is not compulsory that every WordPress website holder should install and use its plugin. Though it is simple and user-friendly, still a self-hosted application may cause unnecessary hassle for the WordPress users who are not very tech savvy. I would recommend Piwik analytics to the users who are concerned about privacy. Try this tool today. After installing it, if you like the interface, then try Piwik analytics as an alternative to Google analytics.

Automation Tools That Make WordPress Better Manageable With an Ease

A few years ago, people used to do everything themselves while developing their websites. Updating and handling all things on their website manually put the people under work pressure. But thanks to WordPress and the automation tools available to use with WordPress sites that make the WordPress site admins and webmasters manage their websites more effectively and updated on time.

Some worthy Automation Tools for WordPress Website Owners

Over the years, a lot of SaaS products, tools, and plugins, have come and gone but only a few good ones set their mark for so long. Some can be found on the WordPress dashboard for free of cost whereas others are paid third-party applications. Check out some of the worthy automation tools which are lessening the work stress of WordPress website owners and webmasters.

1. Simple URLs:

This plugin quickly links external websites and track usage of hyperlinks. I exploit it for linking to destinations that are documented in blogs, profile diaries, and support forums. It’s free and saves time. It’s conjointly useful for managing affiliate links.

2. MailChimp:

I have used this 3rd party software code that gives email campaigns and RSS based emails mostly. Sometimes this solution sends individual emails to teams of users. I actively use this service to send weekly newsletters to blog or forum subscribers. MailChimp uses blog’s RSS feed to populate the story mechanically and send it on a planned day and time.

3. Woo Commerce Google Analytics Integration:

This Woo Commerce addition connects Woo Commerce sales to Google Analytics reports. This permits GA to trace sales and report on vital information like sales by supply, sales by day, etc.

4. Yoast SEO:

I have used the Yoast SEO plugin with WordPress for many years. It helps in changing some SEO efforts by providing an SEO grade per post or page. Although it isn’t everything required for SEO, it will facilitate deliver feedback and solid turn out XML sitemaps for search engines.

5. Akismet:

If you are utilizing WordPress to blog forum and you have got comments turned on, then Akismet can be one of the most useful automation tools for your WordPress site. It expeditiously monitors incoming comments and addresses any spam with no interaction by the user.

Conclusion:

These are the 5 best automation tools for WordPress to my experience. There are many more other plugins and tools that can lessen your burden to manage your website and business. Which tool is best for you depends on your requirements, but the above described 5 automation tools are the common tools that almost every WordPress website user can take benefit from.

5 Best Testimonial Plugins for WordPress

Do you want to display your clients’ words of appreciation on your website? Tired off requesting techno guys to publish your customers’ reviews on your site?  If you are facing such problems then it is the time of big respite for all the WordPress users. Now, you can easily show your client’s testimonials and make changes in them yourself by installing and using testimonial plugins even without paying a single penny.
I have listed 5 best testimonial plugins for WordPress that are free to use:

1. Testimonial Widget:

Testimonials Widget is one of the pretty self-explanatory testimonial plugins. You can use this plugin to show reviews and portfolio projects. Each testimonial includes videos as well as text, images, and supports categories or tags.

2. Easy Testimonials – Testimonial Plugins:

Easy Testimonials is a basic easy-to-use plugin that packs a lot of display features. You can easily customize the look by selecting display styles from various display styles even without learning CSS.

3. Testimonial Rotator:

Testimonial Rotator is one of the easiest WordPress testimonial plugins that allows you create a testimonial ride by adding rotational testimonials.  You can easily create multiple rotators wherever you want to add on your website. It helps to fill the customer information manually such as job title, photo, and feedback.

4. Strong Testimonials:

It is one of the most customizable testimonial plugins that comes with several display options like testimonial slider, grid layout, single column layout, masonry layout, and much more. It involves a custom form that allows your customers to give their feedback and reviews.

5. Testimonial Slider – Testimonial Plugins:

Testimonial Slider provides a modern testimonial slider to give improved user experience to its users. You can fix testimonials and add front-end contact form through sidebar widget or shortcode. This slider is mobile-friendly and works amazingly on all screen sizes.

Conclusion:

We hope this post will help you in finding the best testimonial plugins for your website. Just evaluate which type of plugin will work best for you by knowing your plugin features requirements. Once it’s decided, download the selected testimonial plugin and enjoy its functions.

Improved Signup and Site Creation on WordPress’ Mobile Applications

Now you can more easily handle your website while sipping a hot brewed coffee at your favorite cafe or traveling on the bus by utilizing the updated signup and site creation feature on your iOS or Android mobile phone. Read below about the enhanced signup and site creation functions on the WordPress’ mobile applications.

How to Utilize the Updated Signup and Site Creation Feature?

To simplify the signup process, it has been separated from the site creation. Let’s discuss both signup and site creation feature separately.

1. Sign Up Process:

Sign up has its different way throughout the process that will allow its user to alter information as per their choice. It depends on the users’ choice that whether they want to sign up through email or via their Google account.
If a user wants to sign up through email, then WordPress provides a signup email or a sign-up link to your email’s inbox after he or she enters his/her email address. By clicking the confirmation link, the complete signup process appears.
Moreover, WordPress provides the final screen where users can modify their username or profile name. It also shows the list of username options for selecting a suitable name based on the current username. If the user has signed up for an email address, then he/she also have to set a password for his/his WordPress account.
With setting a password, the sign-up procedure is finally done. Now users can easily create their own website.

2. WordPress.com Site Creation:

The new WordPress site creation involves very few steps that ensure flexibility with more options.
Firstly, users need to select the type of website they want to develop — a blog site, portfolio or a business website. This choice helps them to select a suitable mobile-friendly theme for their website. After selecting a theme, they require generating a title and an impressive tagline. On the basis of your website title, WordPress will suggest a list of available domain names. Once you select a domain, it will create the website and show a preview of their website to you. Now you are free to either configure the website settings or directly start with writing blog posts as per your choice.

Try the signup and site creation Feature from Your Mobile Phone Today:

With the updated signup and site creation feature, the WordPress users will be able to easily signup on WordPress from their mobile devices and they can also create a website of their choice on the go. Try the signup and site creation feature from your mobile device today and experience the power of Wordpress.

Have You Checked the Improved version of iOS Sharing Extensions?

The sharing ability of content from one application to another app is a main part of the iOS sharing extensions. That is why mobile companies are keenly researching and progressing for new extensions in the mobile devices. These companies have launched a big update to the share extension for the users who are using the WordPress for iOS app.
They rethought about the entire workflow for mobiles, iPhones, and iPads. Thus, as result, a new and improved version 9.6 has come into the picture with a better experience!

Sharing Has Become Easier With iOS Sharing Extensions

The sharing extensions allow its users to format text, add headings, and make lists and perform more functions with an editor toolbar. After drafting a post, they can assign a category and fix tags which are relevant as per the assigned category. Once the users are satisfied with the editing and drafting of the post, they can present it online just by tapping publish button. The app will upload the drafted post along with images in the background. A notification will be sent to the users when it is finished.

A New Drafting Extension – iOS Sharing Extensions

Many of us often like to capture an idea for later. Maybe we want to upload an image from the Photos app or save a quote from the online content for the next post. Here the new drafting extension assists us in a simple way and permits us to work later on the next post.
Activating these IOS sharing extensions involves a few small steps for the first time. To get started, open the app that holds the post you like to share and click on the share button. You will see the standard iOS share screen on your device.

Guidelines to Add Extensions in Shared Screens

• Swipe the row to the right.
• Find the “More…” icon — to see the Activities menu.
• Move down and search for the “WordPress” share extension or locate “Save as Draft” for the drafting extension.
• Switch it on and click the ‘Done’ button.

With a big hope that users will enjoy these new IOS sharing extensions to add better content on site, their sites companies are appreciating costumers’ feedback. So, give a try to WordPress mobile apps for your Android device or iOS, and share your experience!