maddingcrowd August 20, 2018 No Comments

WordPress – Optimizing Images

Images can slow down your WordPress website !!

It is said that Images capture time. But the irony is that the users are too impatient to wait for the entire page to load which leads to increase in the bounce rate.

Worry not. Optimizing images helps you by keeping the file size to minimum whilst maintaining the quality.Lighter the file size faster is the page load.

Let me guide you to set up a basic plugin to improve your website pageload instantly.

Requirements :

Plugin : reSmush.it

After installing and activating this plugin, we are ready to optimize.

1. Where is the Plugin ?

On the WordPress dashboard go to ‘Media‘.
Under its sub menu you will find reSmush.it

2. Plugin dashboard

The dashboard informs the user about the status of the pictures present on the website.

3. Changing the Settings

Change the settings accordingly to your needs.

Note: The quality factor value that website owner wants will differ because it depends on how important the pictures .

Usually the default value set by the plugin is set to ‘92′ because it shows some reduction in size without any problem.
Keep the quality factor between ‘65 to 75′ range because human eyes cannot make out the difference.
Check the box for ‘Optimize on upload‘ because enabling this optimizes the pictures at upload automatically.
Also check the box for ‘Enable statistics‘ because this informs the administrator about his uploads.
Check the box for ‘Enable logs‘ because this is for all the developers who prefer getting detailed information about optimization.
Then click on ‘Save Changes‘ after the changes are made.

4. Optimizing Images

Click on the button ‘Optimise all pictures‘.
After submitting it will start analyzing because it scans all the media files.

After analyzing it will displays progress bar as shown below

It will display the following message once it is successfully completely.

5. Statistics

Before optimizing you will be getting this information :

After optimizing, the report will say something like the image below :

Note : The statistics will vary according to the amount of pictures present on the website.

Want to obtain your Google Tracking Id for your website ? Read our article on WordPress – Obtaining Google Analytics Tracking ID.

Having problems migrating on WordPress? read our article to know more WordPress Guide: Migrating website content.

maddingcrowd August 10, 2018 No Comments

WordPress – Obtaining Google Analytics Tracking ID

Why should I use Google Analytics ?

Google Analytics is a tool for the website owners to understand how their website is behaving out there in the actual world. This scans all the standard parameters of the website and reports back the status.

If you want to improve your website, stick around this tutorial as I help you setup this feature for your WordPress site.

Requirements :

An active Gmail account.(If you don’t have, then you can create at https://accounts.google.com/signup/v2/).
Install this plugin to your WordPress website Google Analytics Dashboard for WP by ExactMetrics (formerly GADWP)

So let us get started now.

Step 1 : Login

Go to Login.
Select your Gmail account and Sign in.

Step 2 : Creating an New Account

Select the ‘ADMIN‘ from the left hand side panel.

Now click on ‘Create Account‘ button.
You will get the following form to be filled.

Enter all the correct details and then click on ‘Get tracking ID‘ button.
It will display the Service agreement form as shown below.Please read the terms thoroughly.

After reading and checking both the boxes, click on ‘I Accept‘ button.
If the process is successful, you will get the following page.

There you have the Tracking code.
Copy this code.
Open the plugin and paste as shown below.

That’s it. Now you can use this in any SEO plugin that requires the Tracking ID.After that login here and start monitoring.

Want to publicize your WordPress Activities automatically to your social media? then read this Sharing your activities on Social Media.

Explore the 8 New Interactive Features Ebook can do.

maddingcrowd July 17, 2018 No Comments

WordPress Guide: Migrating website content

Migrating from an old WordPress website to a new one? And still want the old posts and comments?

Worry not. Here is a complete guide on how to migrate the old WordPress content to the newly installed setup.

Exporting

We will be exporting the old post comments,pages,etc. using the in-built WordPress feature.

Open the old WordPress website you will be migrating from using wp-admin.
In the Dashboard, go to Tools and select ‘Export‘.

Depending on your requirement, you can choose from the above options given.

For example: If you are only interested in migrating the posts, then select the Posts option.

Select any 1 option.
Then click on ‘Download Export File‘.

A file will be downloaded on the browser. It will be in XML(.xml) format.

Importing

After exporting the old WordPress content to a downloaded file, move on to the new website where you will be importing.

Open the old WordPress website you will be migrating from using wp-admin.
In the Dashboard, go to Tools and then select ‘Import‘.
There is WordPress option, click on ‘Install Now‘.
It will begin installing immediately.
After it is successfully installed, you will get the following message :

After getting the above message, select ‘Run Importer‘.
Press ‘Choose File‘ and then browse through your directory to the downloaded file(.xml format).
Click ‘Open‘.
Now click on the ‘Upload file and Import‘ and wait for the file to be uploaded.
After this step it will ask for ‘Assign Author‘.
You can assign the new Author to the posts by selecting it from dropdown.

Check the ‘Download and import file attachments‘ because selecting will also download the attachments automatically.
Then select on ‘Submit‘.
After import is successful, you will get the following message

That’s it !! The migrating process was successful because if it had some issues if it would never display a success message.

Note: WordPress will throw an error while importing if the file(.xml) exceeds 2Mb , increase the Max Upload Limit size.(Default is 2Mb)

Want to improve your site perfomance more? Here is WordPress Guide : 7 Best Practices .

maddingcrowd July 11, 2018 No Comments

WordPress Guide: 7 Best Practices

Want to get it right the first time? Sadly, for the beginners, the end result of wordpress website is not satisfactory.

Here are 7 quick tips/practices for WordPress beginners :

1.Backup : Why do I need it?

The common mistake that the beginners do is that they start building the website until some plugin breaks the page or something worse happens.

To avoid this from happening, install a backup WordPress plugin such as Backup Buddy(paid) or Updraft(free).

These plugin can can be scheduled to backup automatically to your google drive or dropbox.

2.Research : Are all plugins reliable?

WordPress has made it so easy to install plugins that we forget to verify the plugin even before we install.

Always make it a point to go through the plugin details such as how it works, reviews and screenshots.

Many plugins out there are from an unreliable source which can cause the plugin to bring down the website or perform malicious operations under the hood.

Always check for the ratings and number of downloads before installing the plugins.

More positive response from the reviews, the more robust and secure it is for using it.

3. Editor : Is it safe to make a direct change?

Unless your a web developer, avoiding the wordpress editor is a better option because it may break your theme.

If you know your HTML basics, you are good to go.

But remember NOT to update your theme because you will lose all the changes made in the editor.

Also make the CSS changes in the Additional CSS in customise option rather than editing it directly.

Altering the CSS directly is a bad practice that interferes with the flow of the design.

4. Plugins : Separate or bundled?

A good wordpress practice is to limit the number of plugins installed on the website as much as possible.

See if your requirement can be fulfilled by selecting a theme with more in-built functionalities.

Rather than having a separate plugin installed for the requirement, you can always choose the one which offers more for a single install.

For example: If you want to add a testimonial to your sidebar, you need not search only for testimonial plugin specifically. There are many bundled plugins out there that can be used such PowerPack or Siteorigin Widgets.

Also that the support forums available for the bundled plugins will be more compared to the solo plugins which are developed by a single person.

5. Caching : Is cache important?

In simple words caching is an area in computer memory that stores recently used information.

Excessive load time on the website increases the bounce rate which impacts on your SEO indirectly.

Images and the pages can be saved temporarily to improve the page speed by the caching plugins.

Free Plugins like WP Super Cache, WP Fastest Cache and Cache Enabler are highly recommended.

6. SEO : Am I visible to the world?

Still wondering why your website is not been shown on the online searches?Fret not, you have not yet made your website SEO friendly.

There are free plugins like Yoast SEO which do an excellent job of guiding the user for achieving this process.

Using these will help to increase the pagerank which in turn will increase the web traffic towards your website.

7. Unused Plugins : Will I use it later?

We all love to download the WordPress plugins quite often. But later we realise that the plugins are not being actively used anywhere for whatever reasons.

This causes a major problem for disk storage on hosting servers. You end up cluttering the whole space which becomes very tedious in the later stages of maintaining the website.

This all can be resolved by deleting the plugins that have not been used in the near past which helps to improve the page speed.

As a beginner if you are aware of all the above mentioned WordPress practices, you can save loads of time and focus more on the purpose of the website.

Confused about WooCommerce? Read this to help you decide faster WooCommerce remedies.

maddingcrowd February 2, 2018 No Comments

Tutorial-Deploying WordPress website from localhost to a subfolder on Existing WordPress Domain

This is a tutorial for all those who want their WordPress(WP) website present on localhost to be running on folder created on the server.

Status before deploying WordPress:

I have a working wordpress website on the localhost.
I want to run another WP in the subfolder(eg. https://www.cinnamonteal.in/thedogearsbookshop ) on the main existing WP website(eg. https://www.cinnamonteal.in)