B.A. Fegles's Blog, page 22

How To’s & TutorialsHow to do it properly: Uninstalling WordPress Plugins

We know well that WordPress’s functionality strongly depends on plugins, so we all rush to install them immediately after our website goes viral. Doing it can be a bad mistake at times: we can’t know how our website is going to grow and develop, and whether we have installed the right plugins or not. Once we confirm that there is something to remove, the next step is to deactivate/delete it, and we should do it in the most appropriate way possible so that they won’t cause any problems in future. The purpose of this article is to show you how to do it.

As a beginner, you probably installed tenths of unnecessary plugins without checking which one is suitable for your website. The sooner you remove them, the better because they can do more harm than benefits.

Why do you need to remove them?

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Plugins are a dangerous thing to play with because they are powerful. Their authors know all the things that can come to your mind when using their plugin, so they do the best to make it safe and functional. Still, if the control over your plugin falls in the hands of a hacker, you have no idea of the damage he could cause by using it. It won’t only make your WordPress site dysfunctional, but it will potentially endanger its security.

Having too much of them also means backing up more stuff, which is how downloads and restorations take days to be performed.

That’s why we advise you to install only those plugins that you actually need; all the others should be disabled and uninstalled.

The difference between inactive and uninstalled plugins

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Technically, inactive plugins are those you have installed, but you’re rarely using them (if at all). It means that you can still adjust its settings and activate it to work in case you need it.

You can always deactivate the plugin you’re not using, but it doesn’t mean that it won’t cause any harm to your website. Hackers can still use it to run malicious codes through it, which can end up being a complete disaster when you don’t have a firewall as Sucuri to protect you, and to disable PHP execution.

The good side is that you usually get notified about inactive/deactivated plugins that need a repository update, even if that’s not the case with the premium ones.

In order to take things in your hands, uninstall the plugin and delete all data that is related to it.

Deactivated plugins should only be preserved in case you believe you will activate them soon. Otherwise, it makes no sense.

Another benefit from uninstalling plugins the right way is that the database remains clean from plugin-caused junk data.

After all, it’s not such a loss. You can always reinstall the plugin in case you need it.

Uninstalling plugins: The main procedure

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There are few simple steps you need to follow in order to uninstall the plugin:

1. Check the ‘Plugins’ menu to see which plugins you have installed. Once the page opens, all of your plugins will be listed there;
2. Find the plugin that you want to remove;
3. Choose the ‘Deactivate’ link located under the plugin title. Once the pages refresh, the plugin will obtain an ‘uninstalled status’, or explained simply, it will become inactive;
4. Open the ‘Delete’ link under the plugin title, and once the page is opened, you will see a confirmation message requiring you to claim once again that you want to see the plugin deleted;
5. Click on: ‘Yes, Delete These Files’. After that, the ‘Plugins’ page will be refreshed, and the removed plugin will simply disappear from the list leaving nothing but a short message informing you of its successful, permanent deletion.

Voila, the plugin is gone! It’s such a simple process!

Here come few more steps that can make the plugin disappear completely, as they remove some critical parts you didn’t even know that they existed. Once again, the processes are optional, and we don’t advise beginners to deal with them without professional assistance.

Uninstalling plugins: Additional actions

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Deleting the folders/files of the plugin

You need to browse through your WP-content folder using FTP clients. The thing you need to do is to check what is there and to look for all files/folders related to the plugin. If you find such files/folders, remove them instantly, and check every plugin folder to see if something remained inside. Long story short: remove everything that is related to that plugin.

Be careful with your database, and make sure it’s completely backed up. In case you have doubts, download the files on your computer and save them there. Once that’s done, deleting stuff will be completely safe.

Getting rid of unused shortcodes

Another thing to consider is that some plugins use shortcodes to add stuff to your pages and posts. Even when a plugin is removed and uninstalled, certain shortcodes remain and become highly visible. They are not dangerous for your website, but without the plugin on sight, they look a bit ugly.

Shortcodes can be easily disabled. All you have to do is to add this code to the functions.php file of your themes on the site-specific plugin:

add_shortcode( 'pluginshortcode', '__return_false' );

What the code does, as you see, is adding the shortcode back, due to which the shortcode won’t display a thing. Still, bear in mind that the plugin shortcode has to be replaced with the shortcode tag of the plugin you’re trying to remove.

Remember, this code has to be removed; otherwise, you won’t be able to use that plugin again, not even if you reinstall it.

De-cluttering the database

Certain plugins use your database to create tables of their own, and those tables don’t always disappear when the plugin is uninstalled. Most of the time, the tables don’t harm performance, but they can be a serious problem when they’re too large.

Take this for granted when you’re uninstalling a plugin, and get rid of the tables too. Let’s see the manual process:

Go to phpMyadmin and remove them yourself. Take care, though, because doing it can affect the WordPress database. The best way to go is to back it up in advance;

Go to the cPanel and find phpMyAdmin (in the database part);
Open phpMyAdmin. Select the database that appears on your left-hand side, and pick the tables that need to be removed;
On the bottom of that list, you will see a small combo box saying ‘With Selected’. Choose it and click on ‘Drop’;
phpMyAdmin will require you to confirm it again since the tables are being permanently deleted. Make sure everything is fine (mostly that the database backup is performed), and get rid of the tables by clicking on ‘Yes’.

Final thoughts

Uninstalling WordPress plugins provide you with many new options to free space in the database and to make the website/blog run faster. Moreover, it protects you from the potential exploit of the plugin through malicious codes. Yes, it sounds like the time to remove all those database-eating tables has finally arrived, but make sure to perform it properly.

DiscoverWordPress Frameworks – The new secret ingredient of powerful themes

WordPress theme frameworks are code libraries that have the purpose of easing your process of developing themes. At the dawn of WordPress, developing themes exposed many critical development/maintenance issues, mostly the lack of an upgrading strategy without losing essential styling options.

A single functionality code was copy-pasted on all themes, and while average users had no problem dealing with it, advanced ones find it incredibly disastrous. Their main problem was that codes usually have security exploits attached to them, meaning that a public theme can be both downloaded and misused in many different ways.

In fact, applying the same code is a hazard waiting to happen! Therefore, the WordPress community and The core team worked hard to find a solution for this problem and came up with the concept of Parent and Child themes.

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Parent themes are the ones everybody thinks of when WordPress is mentioned. From the technical aspect, parent themes reveal the basics of design, functionality and templates necessary to run a WordPress website.

Child themes, on the other hand, are incomplete themes. They are the inheritors of the parent’s functionality which leave a lot of room for users to customize their themes without affecting the basic design offered by the parent.

Therefore, child themes are ‘light versions’ of parents’ design, still packed with full functionality. One can even do some custom styling layered directly on the parent theme.

Doing things this way sets a clean boundary between framework functionality and design, and establishes a single location for all the necessary functions. Thanks to it, one can push out updates to treat bugs, fix security patches, or solve functionality depreciations. This way, the framework will remain solid, and customization will not affect the basic design.

To estimate the real importance of child themes, you need to know how to update the parent ones.

Certainly, you should first install the theme on your WordPress website, and then start doing your personal modifications.

Meanwhile, the author may release an update to the theme, and in case you decide to click on it, it will replace the theme you already have by highlighting its security. The downside is that it will most probably affect customization too (it may write over all modifications you’ve performed).

That’s why you need child themes – to preserve your customizations.

Types of theme frameworks

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The basic division is paid and free ones, which may significantly differ in terms of looks and performance.

You can find the perfect drag-and-drop ones, which don’t require coding skills for visual maneuver. Or you can go for more advanced ones because the framework itself will offer filters and hooks to help you do it.

In the best of all cases, you can pick up a fully enabled theme like The Core that can be fully customized.

The main advantages of theme frameworks

They save time – Development becomes easy and fast, since there is a starter code, and as a developer you won’t even need to build a theme from scratch. Pick the framework you like, and apply your design ideas on it;
They give access to a community – Framework users are entitled to participate in large expert communities when they can find the answers to all of their questions;
They have built-in functionality – All widgets are already there; you don’t have to purchase additional functionality unless you want to;
They come with the best codes – The fact that they are peer reviewed gives access to many best practices you could use;
They are upgraded easily – You can upgrade them without the need to worry about affecting their functionality, that’s a very important moment.

The best thing of WordPress frameworks is that all standalone themes have the same framework functionality which makes their skin differences irrelevant when troubleshooting an issue. Fixing custom modifications is a whole new level of easy, especially when you know how to framework its functionality.

The potential challenges of theme frameworks

They may cost pretty penny – There are free ones (like Unyson), but 90% of WordPress theme frameworks come with a price which most of the times is not worthy. Free frameworks can do a similarly good job and deliver even better results;
Feeling uncomfortable with extra functionality – Those of you who prefer simple solutions may find the tons of built-in functionality of some WP frameworks to be annoying and unnecessary, and you may wonder why you are paying so much to obtain something that you’re not even using;
Their learning curve is a big deal – No WordPress theme functions the same, and that’s a result of coding difference. Due to such uniqueness, expect to invest some serious learning time to understand how to make the most of its functions, hooks, or filters.Yet, this is not a bad thing, because once the learning period is done, you’ll be fully enabled to work with the framework;
It’s not as unlimited as you think it is – Some frameworks are, but most of them are not. Therefore, they may not be suitable for your customization ideas, and you should think of surpassing the core files and finding patch updates to make them work.

Framework themes in reality

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At the end of the day, there isn’t that much philosophy about it! Themes are themes, and the only way to find out what they can do is to use them. Some of them are made to be more personal; revealing entire custom panels for you to choose colors, logos, and stuff, and how far you can go depends solely on the code that backs them up. The framework is not their core, and it can be easily updated to help you make more awesome than they are.

As for the frameworks (the good ones in particular), their capability is constantly enforced. It may be a new version of the capability or a modern one you didn’t use before. Since they are frameworks, updates blend inside seamlessly, and they don’t mess up what you’ve done with your custom design so far.

This concept entirely applies to our Unyson framework, too. It was particularly built to satisfy different needs of tinkerers or developers dealing with various sites easy and without any costs.

Final thoughts

The timely benefits of having a framework and its integration capacity can be a big plus for those constantly looking to customize and adapt their designs and functionality. Everybody else should keep their eyes open for new options, especially new WordPress themes that are development having in mind all the best practices of easy customization. Having a WordPress framework behind can be a huge plus for themes because it can ensure delivering the best results for its users.

Feedback RequiredNew Auto Trader Theme In The Works

Hey guys,

We’re currently in the process of designing a new theme that will replace our popular Auto Trader WordPress theme.

In order to optimize it and deliver you the best features, we’ve decided to build the theme on our Unyson framework, which will enable the Drag & Drop Page Builder, Woo Commerce, Page Load Animations, Contact Form Builder, Backup Module and more.

Since it will be a completely new theme, we wanted to know your take on it and if you need/want certain features added. We’ll start the list, feel free to add to it:

Unique cool design (we’ll use some ThemeFuse magic here, we are cover)
Easy to filter and search cars for users
Easy to add cars by admin, csv import for bulk upload
Easy to change characteristics so you can adapt the website to incorporate other items and not only cars but WP Themes, books, games just to name a few.
Easy transition of content from the current AutoTrader theme to the new one
A couple of built-in page templates like Services, Contact, About, etc – (let us know if you need something specific here)
Import cars based on VIN? – (this is a bit tricky since we don’t know a good VIN database, maybe you can help us here and suggest a popular one to use)
Plugins? – (any plugins in this niche that you want or need?)

We would love to hear from you a detailed description of what specific features or options this new theme should have. Please let us know about your preferences by leaving a comment below. Thanks a lot for taking the time and effort to give feedback, this will ensure that this new theme will be one of the best.

P.S. We are preparing a surprise for all of you when the theme is done

Did you knowMaking the most of Google Analytics on your WordPress website

WordPress is just a perfect CMS (content management system), but it’s not exactly the one where you can look over behind the curtain and understand how users locate the site, who they are, or what device they’re using. It means that you don’t have a useful insight into their behavior.

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This is the reason why websites benefit from Google Analytics integration, not only through receiving useful information but due to other multiple advantages.

Besides, Google Analytics is easy to use, and it has a variety of reports you could pull off with minimal manual effort. All you need to do is to access your account, and you’ll find them on the left side of the screen.

The things you need to know about your audience, and how you can discover them

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The number one method is to ask right away, making a survey or so. The second best option is to use GA’s ‘Audience Menu’, where all the standard reports are located.

The purpose of these reports is to summarize the visitors’ information in one place, displaying basic information such as gender, interests, location, language, behavior and technology (mobile or not).

To be clearer, through it, you can understand whether your website is or not mobile friendly. In case it’s not, it highlights what you should do to make it so. To find out, open the ‘Audience’ tab, and choose ‘Mobile’ and ‘Overview’ in order to understand where most of the traffic is coming from. The ‘Device’ tab is even more particular, showing you exactly what type of device the users are using when accessing your website.

Google Analytics can be priceless even for estimating time, and choosing the best moment to post something. Knowing the location of your visitors, you can estimate the time they are most active and share information with them.

These are only a few of the options ‘Audience’ can display; the possibilities are in fact endless.

Traffic sources

As a website owner, you’re not only supposed to know who is visiting your website but also to be aware of how visitors actually find it. That requires a certain familiarity with the traffic sources.

Google Analytics has a special section for studying traffic sources, where all visitors are examined and categorized by few critical metrics that can show you which are your strongest and weakest sides. Let’s mention a few of them:

Types of traffic – the search engines, referred or direct;
SEO – top keywords and phrases that attract users to check your website;
Trends – Visibility rates per page;
Influence of social media – which is the network where most users are coming from.

Tactics for attracting more traffic

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You might have spent hundredths of hours to make your Pinterest perfect, but that’s not a guarantee visitors are going to land on it very often. You need to know some few crucial tactics to make the most of the time you’re investing.

In this case, you will need the ‘Social Overview’ report where you can discover the social network that delivers your best traffic rates. To do it, click on ‘Networks Referral’, and you will also see which is the favorite page of specifically referred users.

The possibility to understand visitors’ behavior when they come from a particular social network is stored in the ‘Social Visitors Flow’ tool.

What makes the tool really special is that it identifies tiny and detailed preference patterns, which helps you tailor future posts carefully, or repost content visitors that are most liked. It will obviously have a positive influence on your future social reactions.

Creating spin-off content using the most popular posts

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To make your future content more attractive and engaging, click on ‘Site Content’, and ‘All Pages’. There will be a specific list of every page and post, and an evaluation of their performance. These are the metrics you could use there:

Page views;
Unique page views: Multiple visits from the same person are not counted in this section, only in Page views;
The Average time users spend on that page;
Entrance rates: How many times visitors use a particular page to access your website;
Bounce rates: The number/percentage of times visitors visit a specific page, but fail to visit the website (you should keep it as low as possible);
Exits: number/% of visitors who visit the page and leave;
Page Value: Revenue and Goal value / Unique page views: Most generally, the section shows the money value of each page you own.

What we consider as the most important metric is the ‘Average time’, because keeping a close eye on it helps you understand whether an article is effective or not. The more a user stays on that page, the better your article is.

To understand this, you need to know that average users read approximately 130 words in 1 minute, and this can be your benchmark to figure out whether visitors are actually reading the article, or scrolling down to get the general idea of it.

Using the data in combination with page views and bounce rates, or even social sharing, is pretty much enough for you to understand what you’re doing well and what bad.

Get rid of non-effective pages

By non-effective pages, we mean top exit pages, where users don’t read the content, or don’t use them to access the website. Thanks to Google Analytics, you can identify them easily, and distinguish them from effective ones where people like to spend their time.

This is a critical moment for bloggers, who use the site to locate a specific piece of information and leave, being, to hope at least, satisfied with what they find. This transfers the focus to the quality of your content, and you need to figure out what they like the most, and include a ‘call-to-action’ button to provide them with options other than leaving, as for example to buy a product or to subscribe for emails.

Fix your loading time issues

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As a blogger, the last thing you want is to keep readers waiting for ages before the site finally loads and opens. There are many tools that can help you test and improve speed, but you have to be realistic with yourself and put real data in the first place.

Once again, Google Analytics can help: Click on ‘Behavior’, then ‘Site Speed’ and ‘Page Timings’, and the tool will show you how long each page takes to open, together with a comprehensive conclusion about your entire website (all of it based on your visitors’ behavior!).

Right under the report, you will find ‘Speed Suggestions’ the tool is offering you to make the site run faster. Our experience shows that these are not default phrases, but fruitful tactics that are pretty much worth trying.

Familiarize with your users’ favorite clicks

No website owner would deny knowing this! On Google Analytics, there is a specific ‘Content’ menu that exposes your website to detailed information browsing to pull off the percentage of clicks that occurred on each page or post.

There will be links for extra details, and you could easily move from page to page to see their rating. It definitely offers a clear picture of the website and how it works, and it highlights content that is really popular and the one that makes your website unpopular. Therefore, if there is a piece of content you really want users to see, place it in the right area, around other similar sections they click more often.

Final thoughts

Google Analytics is a must-have for webmasters. If you want to know better your customer, and moreover, to check your website’s performance, Google Analytics is an indispensable tool that you should have. Check its insights, follow them and it will definitely reward you.

Did you knowTags or Categories? The best SEO practices for sorting your content

WordPress wouldn’t be what it is without taxonomies. The taxonomies are, in fact, the so-called tags and categories, even if it’s possible for a user to customize their own taxonomy with a different name.

Users apply tags and categories on their posts instead of pages so that they will keep content well-organized for a reader to find what he’s looking for without wondering around for hours.

Tags or categories: understanding the difference

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If you want to group a few posts in a bigger unit, you should use categories. Categories make a broad and general division of your content, and they serve to make clear what the website/blog is actually about. Readers find categories extremely helpful, since these taxonomies are hierarchical, and they have smaller units (sub-categories).

We will take a food blog that is publishing meal recipes to be our example. These are the categories that would appear:

Breakfast
Lunch
Dinner

Technically, any of these meals can be prepared and eaten during any time of the day, but that doesn’t make the distinction any less common. It was obviously the simplest way for the writer to divide and categorize meals in distinctive groups.

Tags, on the other hand, refer to particular details related to the post, something alike index words on a website. Those represent micro-data for additional categorization of content, and they aren’t hierarchical like categories.

Here are few tags you could meet on a food blog:

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Chicken
Lettuce
Vegetarian

Basically, these tags are dietary restrictions, specific ingredients or spices which make content specific even when categories are really broad and refer to all recipe types. If you, as a reader, prefer chicken, it will be very easy for you to find a recipe you like.

Before we dive deeper inside tags and categories, let’s take a look at their basic features and the difference between them, to determine the purpose of each of the two:

Categories are groups of specific topics;
Tags don’t point out the content, but they describe it. Their purpose is to explain details of the content and to underline important elements;
Categories have sub-categories, meaning that they are hierarchical;
Tags have no sub-tags, meaning that they are not hierarchical;
The content of all categories and tags is displayed on separate archive pages;
Each post has one (or maximum two) category, but it can have as many tags as you deem appropriate;
Posts must be divided into categories, but they don’t have to have tags.

They even seem different from each other: their permalinks (URLs) are recognizably different, and so is their prefix when one is using custom permalink structures. Let us give you an example:

http://yoursite.com/category/food/

vs.

http://yoursite.com/tag/food/

The specifications of category hierarchies

What are they? While categories are pretty clear, sub-categories can get a bit confusing. Are we supposed to use a sub-category or a tag? The truth is that it doesn’t make such a big difference; it’s just a random decision that we have to make. Experienced bloggers adjust these decisions to the browsing preferences of their readers, and they really know how to use different sections of content to attract attention.

Let’s say that the overarching category of this blogger is Main Dishes, which is awesome because it’s neither too broad nor too specific. Inside, there is a subcategory called Chicken. The fact that Main Dishes is the parent category doesn’t make the Chicken articles part of it, but if a specific post is tagged as Crockpot, it still remains a chicken article. Tags are most of the time used for a reader to locate fast the exact recipe he/she are looking for.

Does it make sense to put a single post in few categories?

Many surveys claim that assigning multiple categories to a post can be harmful to the SEO since it can be qualified as duplicate content, and you can be penalized because of it. There is some truth in it, but not entirely. To start with, it has nothing to do with SEO (remember that the main reason why you’re categorizing content is to help users find it). That would only mean you’re not supposed to add a post in few top-rated categories (a website that has only three of them-Advertising, Marketing, and SEO, for instance). What you’re supposed to do in this case is to add it to multiple sub-categories, or to create an umbrella category for all three of them (Business, for instance).

You may not lose your SEO advantages, but you certainly won’t benefit either. An article can fall within the scope of multiple categories here and there, but if it becomes a regular practice, you should try to restructure your categories. There might me categories that are better as tags or the other way around. In fact, you should do whatever it takes to make the user experience better.

Tag management

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While discussing tags, the first thing you should have in mind is that you don’t have to use many of them in a single post. You are supposed to use them based on your estimation of their value, and what they’re supposed to do for your visitors. Search engines and rankings should come second on your list of priorities.

When attaching tags to individual posts, remember the following recommendations:

Use no more than five tags per post: the more you add, the more confused users are going to be. Therefore, make sure your tags are really specific and users can benefit from them in some way;
Don’t use the same names for the tags as you did for the categories: Crossing streams don’t help users find what they want easily;
Don’t use long names for your tags: Three words are the maximum you should use;
Don’t forget capitalization: Tom Ewer and tom ewer are different tags, and you have to remember that. This is an issue many famous websites neglect, and it doesn’t make users too comfortable when browsing your website;
Don’t get too creative: A completely unfamiliar tag is not something that will come to a visitor’s mind when looking for content, so apply words you would look for.

Are tags, in fact, Meta keywords?

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Blog holders have the tendency of confusing tags with Meta keywords, which is why they exaggerate when adding them. Tags have nothing to do with Meta keywords unless you’re using a WordPress SEO plugin which allows you to use tags in your template. If these plugins are not configured to treat tags as meta keywords by default, it just won’t happen.

Tags and categories: How do they help your SEO?

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SEO is not a top priority when adding categories and tags, but an additional benefit from enabling users to navigate content easily.

There are few cases in which tags and categories lead to SEO benefits: search engine crawlers are lead by internal links to explore the content of the website, meaning that no page will remain un-indexed and isolated. The tag/category names will play the role of anchor texts that provide clues to the search engine about the topic of your website, enabling it to associate it with a particular type of browsing results.

Final thoughts

Your priority is always users, not search engine bots. That’s step number one when ensuring good rankings because search engines are trying hard to think as a user, and to evaluate content that way. Therefore, make decisions based on usability, and you won’t fall short of SEO benefits.

Did you knowA Few Severe Reasons to Change Your WordPress Host

Web hosting is the soul of every website, the pillar that builds it and keeps it strong. If something goes wrong with the foundation, you can’t expect the site to work, but rather to collapse like a building that wasn’t built properly. As you can see, many things depend on your hosting provider, and if you can’t rely on its support and service, the one that will suffer the most will be your website.

Still, the question of switching web providers is almost as sensate as changing your hairdressers: you’d never change them unless you were no longer satisfied with the looks or the price that they’re offering. If that’s the case, don’t hesitate and don’t lose your time anymore – the market is full of quality hosting providers, and you just need to find the most convenient among them.

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Still not sure whether to switch? In this article, we’ve mentioned a few obvious signs that switching time has actually arrived.

Longer loading time than 5 seconds

As you know, the search engine ranking and generation of leads will depend on speed, as the essential factor of a website’s success. If it’s fast enough, your website can beat even more content-relevant websites. In case your website is not fast enough, there are two potential reasons for it:

You can’t manage to handle all of your requests: you’ve done things right, but the number of visitors is too challenging that request content is slowing the site down.
There are too many clients on a single server: This is an obvious sign of low-quality hosting, who wants to save by stuffing as many clients per server as possible, causing downtimes and unreliable performance.

Downtimes that appear out of the blue and can’t be easily fixed

Downtimes are so devastating that even a single one can put an end to your good reputation. They can affect SEO rankings, customer feedback, traffic or leads because visitors will certainly abandon a website that fails to respond during 50% of the time.

What does ‘too often’ mean? To make things simple, if the website is experiencing two downtimes per week, you have to change your hosting provider.

No hosting provider can guarantee 100% uptime (not even cloud-hosting), but there is a good chance that some of them will do the impossible to keep you on the scene most of the time. When you’re sharing the hosting, downtimes will be likely in any case. The thing is, downtimes are sometimes even regular, but only when their overall number stays below 1%.

They don’t offer 24/7 support

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This should be an important criterion when choosing a hosting provider, and it’s usually the reason why prices differ so much. Certain providers will be there during working hours while others are on the other side of the line the entire day, and while you may think this isn’t a big problem, it affects the core of waiting hours.

Therefore, ask them, and test their accessibility when you don’t have a problem at all. You don’t want to face the cruel reality of working with an overwhelmed provider once you already have an emergency. Another thing you should definitely consider are their support channels and whether they use the one that is suitable for you (emails, phones, etc.).

Another thing we’d like to remind you of is: do not to rely on your provider’s old fame. The provider was probably awesome when you purchased it, but there is still a chance it didn’t outgrow modern technology challenges and business growth.

Let’s say you were an amateur that sold dog cookies on Etsy as a hobby, but your idea was so good that it developed into a million-dollar business. The server might be helpful and dedicated, but still not able to respond to the specific needs of your growing business.

Messing up the database connection

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In case you’re experiencing errors while establishing the website’s database connection, that’s a clear sign that you have a plug-in problem, or that the hosting service failed to deal with it appropriately.

Don’t forget that whatever happens, support is supposed to be there for you and if they can’t assist you, you should already be looking for someone who can.

Most of your support tickets are related to the server

You’re up to no good. Even if those tickets are about random downtimes, and even if you’re aware of the slowness of your website, server tickets are just not good. Certain companies accept this situation, and even have automatic replies to let users know what is going on:

Dear Mr. Jones,

We apologize deeply for your inconvenience.

We’re handling the issue, and we expect it to be solved as soon as possible.

Please contact us for other queries.

Kind Regards,

Jessica Smith

OK, regular maintenance is fully understandable for users or even an HDD failure, but dealing with this issues every week doesn’t make your website that successful.

Mailbox complications and emails falling through the crack

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The conclusion in such situations is that configuration is wrong, and you’re undergoing a maintenance crisis. Another similar case is when you’re unable to attach all the files you want in a particular email, which probably indicates that you should upgrade the server or switch to a more modern system (hardware and software!).

Internal errors you have no idea about

WordPress reports many internal errors, most of them frustrating and difficult to solve. The deal with it is that an error message appears in front of the user, but there is no direction on how to fix them.

As long as these internal errors appear once per year, they can still be categorized as ‘normal’. Once they break the boundary and start appearing more frequently, you will need to change the hosting provider and find one that can do better configuration.

Limited MySQL databases

The business is growing, and you, therefore, need many new themes and plugins to refresh your website and to make it more functional. For the purpose, you need a separate MySQL database for each WordPress copy and a hosting provider that can allow that. Therefore, if you are dealing with a provider who limits your databases, change it.

Impossibility to upgrade to the next tier hosting

One famous trick of unreliable hosting companies is to respond negatively to the growth of your business: you finally have the hits you dreamt of, but the provider calls you to notify you that they have to shut down the website due to increased number of resources and that your website is affecting the server’s balance.

Yes, we understand your frustration! Do they actually mean that your successful SEO and devoted marketing strategy is a problem? The truth is that they don’t have that much of a choice; they were not designed to handle that much traffic in such a short period. That should show you that your web hosting firm just failed to provide you with the virtual server you needed.

It’s not about the way they handle your problem, but about the time you spend explaining it to them.

Do we really need to say anything else here? You’re dealing with a poor, ‘wanna be’ knowledgeable customer support. Calling them to report a problem usually makes the problem worse because they don’t understand what you need them to do, and it usually takes you at least five replies per ticket to get to a solution. Sounds like a good moment to look for a new provider, doesn’t it?

Your site got suspended

Hosting providers happen to take their suspension rights too seriously, meaning that they can take your website down for whatever silly thing that comes to their mind, overage for instance. However, their right to do so is legitimate only when they suspect you to have performed an illegal activity.

They are supposed to do the complete opposite, and try to keep your digital real-estate on the web for as long as possible. Taking it down, they’re only showing you that they don’t care enough, and you should seriously reconsider your intentions to give them your money.

Your communication with them is a two-way road, and if you feel at any moment that they don’t perceive it as such, switch, and join a company that genuinely cares.

Security concerns

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It’s not like there is a hosting provider that can protect you from cyber threats 100%, that’s the sad truth we all have to accept.

What you can do, however, is to choose a hosting provider that offers excellent quality anti-malware software on its control panel.

The best choice is DDOS protection, even if it’s quite rare due to its price and inability to function accurately on shared hosting. If you can afford it, go for a provider that can deal with DDOS.

Your hosting service should be a reliable one because it’s the foundation of your online presence. So if you feel like it’s time to change it, then you should definitely do it. Choose your host wisely and you will ease your mind from worries related to website downtime and security concerns.

How To’s & TutorialsA Few Severe Reasons to Change Your WordPress Host

Web hosting is the soul of every website, the pillar that builds it and keeps it strong. If something goes wrong with the foundation, you can’t expect the site to work, but rather to collapse like a building that wasn’t built properly. As you can see, many things depend on your hosting provider, and if you can’t rely on its support and service, the one that will suffer the most will be your website.

Still, the question of switching web providers is almost as sensate as changing your hairdressers: you’d never change them unless you were no longer satisfied with the looks or the price that they’re offering. If that’s the case, don’t hesitate and don’t lose your time anymore – the market is full of quality hosting providers, and you just need to find the most convenient among them.

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Still not sure whether to switch? In this article, we’ve mentioned a few obvious signs that switching time has actually arrived.

Longer loading time than 5 seconds

As you know, the search engine ranking and generation of leads will depend on speed, as the essential factor of a website’s success. If it’s fast enough, your website can beat even more content-relevant websites. In case your website is not fast enough, there are two potential reasons for it:

You can’t manage to handle all of your requests: you’ve done things right, but the number of visitors is too challenging that request content is slowing the site down.
There are too many clients on a single server: This is an obvious sign of low-quality hosting, who wants to save by stuffing as many clients per server as possible, causing downtimes and unreliable performance.

Downtimes that appear out of the blue and can’t be easily fixed

Downtimes are so devastating that even a single one can put an end to your good reputation. They can affect SEO rankings, customer feedback, traffic or leads because visitors will certainly abandon a website that fails to respond during 50% of the time.

What does ‘too often’ mean? To make things simple, if the website is experiencing two downtimes per week, you have to change your hosting provider.

No hosting provider can guarantee 100% uptime (not even cloud-hosting), but there is a good chance that some of them will do the impossible to keep you on the scene most of the time. When you’re sharing the hosting, downtimes will be likely in any case. The thing is, downtimes are sometimes even regular, but only when their overall number stays below 1%.

They don’t offer 24/7 support

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This should be an important criterion when choosing a hosting provider, and it’s usually the reason why prices differ so much. Certain providers will be there during working hours while others are on the other side of the line the entire day, and while you may think this isn’t a big problem, it affects the core of waiting hours.

Therefore, ask them, and test their accessibility when you don’t have a problem at all. You don’t want to face the cruel reality of working with an overwhelmed provider once you already have an emergency. Another thing you should definitely consider are their support channels and whether they use the one that is suitable for you (emails, phones, etc.).

Another thing we’d like to remind you of is: do not to rely on your provider’s old fame. The provider was probably awesome when you purchased it, but there is still a chance it didn’t outgrow modern technology challenges and business growth.

Let’s say you were an amateur that sold dog cookies on Etsy as a hobby, but your idea was so good that it developed into a million-dollar business. The server might be helpful and dedicated, but still not able to respond to the specific needs of your growing business.

Messing up the database connection

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In case you’re experiencing errors while establishing the website’s database connection, that’s a clear sign that you have a plug-in problem, or that the hosting service failed to deal with it appropriately.

Don’t forget that whatever happens, support is supposed to be there for you and if they can’t assist you, you should already be looking for someone who can.

Most of your support tickets are related to the server

You’re up to no good. Even if those tickets are about random downtimes, and even if you’re aware of the slowness of your website, server tickets are just not good. Certain companies accept this situation, and even have automatic replies to let users know what is going on:

Dear Mr. Jones,

We apologize deeply for your inconvenience.

We’re handling the issue, and we expect it to be solved as soon as possible.

Please contact us for other queries.

Kind Regards,

Jessica Smith

OK, regular maintenance is fully understandable for users or even an HDD failure, but dealing with this issues every week doesn’t make your website that successful.

Mailbox complications and emails falling through the crack

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The conclusion in such situations is that configuration is wrong, and you’re undergoing a maintenance crisis. Another similar case is when you’re unable to attach all the files you want in a particular email, which probably indicates that you should upgrade the server or switch to a more modern system (hardware and software!).

Internal errors you have no idea about

WordPress reports many internal errors, most of them frustrating and difficult to solve. The deal with it is that an error message appears in front of the user, but there is no direction on how to fix them.

As long as these internal errors appear once per year, they can still be categorized as ‘normal’. Once they break the boundary and start appearing more frequently, you will need to change the hosting provider and find one that can do better configuration.

Limited MySQL databases

The business is growing, and you, therefore, need many new themes and plugins to refresh your website and to make it more functional. For the purpose, you need a separate MySQL database for each WordPress copy and a hosting provider that can allow that. Therefore, if you are dealing with a provider who limits your databases, change it.

Impossibility to upgrade to the next tier hosting

One famous trick of unreliable hosting companies is to respond negatively to the growth of your business: you finally have the hits you dreamt of, but the provider calls you to notify you that they have to shut down the website due to increased number of resources and that your website is affecting the server’s balance.

Yes, we understand your frustration! Do they actually mean that your successful SEO and devoted marketing strategy is a problem? The truth is that they don’t have that much of a choice; they were not designed to handle that much traffic in such a short period. That should show you that your web hosting firm just failed to provide you with the virtual server you needed.

It’s not about the way they handle your problem, but about the time you spend explaining it to them.

Do we really need to say anything else here? You’re dealing with a poor, ‘wanna be’ knowledgeable customer support. Calling them to report a problem usually makes the problem worse because they don’t understand what you need them to do, and it usually takes you at least five replies per ticket to get to a solution. Sounds like a good moment to look for a new provider, doesn’t it?

Your site got suspended

Hosting providers happen to take their suspension rights too seriously, meaning that they can take your website down for whatever silly thing that comes to their mind, overage for instance. However, their right to do so is legitimate only when they suspect you to have performed an illegal activity.

They are supposed to do the complete opposite, and try to keep your digital real-estate on the web for as long as possible. Taking it down, they’re only showing you that they don’t care enough, and you should seriously reconsider your intentions to give them your money.

Your communication with them is a two-way road, and if you feel at any moment that they don’t perceive it as such, switch, and join a company that genuinely cares.

Security concerns

[image error]

It’s not like there is a hosting provider that can protect you from cyber threats 100%, that’s the sad truth we all have to accept.

What you can do, however, is to choose a hosting provider that offers excellent quality anti-malware software on its control panel.

The best choice is DDOS protection, even if it’s quite rare due to its price and inability to function accurately on shared hosting. If you can afford it, go for a provider that can deal with DDOS.

Your hosting service should be a reliable one because it’s the foundation of your online presence. So if you feel like it’s time to change it, then you should definitely do it. Choose your host wisely and you will ease your mind from worries related to website downtime and security concerns.

How To’s & TutorialsCase Study: How to choose the right color palette for your website

“Ok now, I’ve decided! I will finally launch my website. Domain? www.mysupergorgeoussite.com. Yeah, that sounds like me! Check. Get the best hosting services? Check.

One more step, choosing the best color palette and theme for my awesome website aaaaaaaaand…I’m stuck!

From all these stunning sample themes, what is the best color scheme for my site?”

If these words describe you, this case study is for you! You will find valuable insights about the impact of colors on your site and customers, along with great tips for choosing the best color schemes. Also, we will show you how you can easily apply it to your website by using the Color Palette option of our latest theme The Core.

After reading this study you will learn:



What is color theory and what are the basic principles of color palette creation;
What emotions are triggered by each color and how they will affect your customers;
How to apply the color scheme theory to your website: best practices and Elizaveta’s experience.

Meet Elizaveta:

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A beautiful 23 years old passionate interior designer. She graduated Florence Design Academy from Italy in 2013 and designed several impressive interiors for the agency she used to work at.

In 2016, she decided to start her own local business: a baby furniture brand called “My Angel”. She made her first sample baby couches and launched a Facebook business page.

As the number of orders started to increase, she realized that she may need a website. Until this point, things were pretty clear and simple. Until it came up to finding the theme with the best color scheme option.

Why having a color scheme option is so important to you?

“Everything starts with a perfectly matching color palette. When designing interiors, you are not allowed to make mistakes based on color choices.

My clients trust me because my designs are based on sketches crafted from a certain color palette, according to their preferences. This sketch defines all my clients’ future purchases.

Choosing an inappropriate color combination may lead to unnecessary expenses for my clients, making them frustrated. This behavior is unacceptable for a professional interior designer.”

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But before we pass to Elizaveta’s experience, first things first:

What is color theory and why you should care about it when designing your website?

Imagine yourself living in a world without colors: roses are gray and violets are… gray, too. No bright red sunsets and clear blue skies. What a “charming” scenario. It seems extremely boring, right?

The same applies to websites that have no colors. You know how a black-and-white website is called? Exactly, an old newspaper. Do you still read newspapers? I bet you don’t and your customers either don’t.

For this reason, colors are more important than you may ever think. Choosing the right color for your website will make it more visual appealing for your clients. A well-crafted brand business image creates a strong product identity.

Yet, a well-chosen color scheme will definitely increase your sales and conversions. Still not convinced? Look at these highlights from the KISSmetrics’ awesome study about “How do colors affect purchases?”:

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Their more recent infographic on “How colors affect conversions?” also showcases the fact that product assessments are made in only 90 seconds from the visual contact and 90% of them are based on color alone. So, are you willing to miss a significant part of your conversions by choosing wrong colors for your brand, product or site? I bet you are not willing at all.

This is why you should be very considerate while choosing the color palette of your website. Right colors get the desired effect on your clients, creating more conversions.

So, what is the Color theory?

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Image Source: Faiella Design

All the definitions of color theory sum up to the following idea:

It’s a theory based on creating designs using color interactions:

This definition is too vague to understand the color theory from the first time.

As we are talking about colors, why not use them to understand their own theory? Let’s cover all the particularities in a more visual way:

The color wheel and color harmony

The color wheel is the key tool of color theory. It’s based on the idea that all colors are obtained from 3 primary color combinations: yellow, blue and red. All further combinations create a new color.

All the colors divide into two main groups: warm colors and cool colors. Each color coordinates in a particular way with the other ones.

Let’s leave the words aside, just look at this part of KISSmetrics’s great infographic about color coordination:

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Image Source: Kissmetrics: The art of color coordination

By this point, you will probably say: “Ok, but if the color wheel has only 12 colors, then how the other colors are made?”

Other colors are created using their characteristics:

Hue – basic color: blue, green, red, etc.;
Chroma – color’s purity: a color with high Chroma has no added black, gray or white). Colors with low Chroma are called washed out, and those with high Chroma vivid or vibrating;
Saturation – how strong or weak the color is – determines the color contrasting;
Value – how light or dark a color is. By changing the value of a color, you can get these types of color groups:

Low value: Shades – darker color by adding black;
High value: Tints – lighter color by adding white;
Tones – duller color by adding gray.

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Shades, tones, and tints are usually used to create distinctions on your website without affecting its color balance.

So, now that we’ve covered the color theory let’s take a look at how these principles apply to design. Check the following infographic about the 10 commandments of color theory made by Designmantic:

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Image Source: Designmantic: The 10 commandments of color theory

Impressive, right? With a simple change of one color, you can obtain a completely different look of your design.

Yet, you may question yourself: how to get the perfect color scheme through this color combination? Designers have a special recipe for achieving the best color palette:

The 60-30-10 Rule

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The 60% – the main color of your site. It sets the tone of your design. Usually, it’s recommended to choose a neutral color, like black or white if you want to get a cleaner look;
The 30% – a contrasting color with your main color. It creates a visually striking effect;
The 10% – the so-called “accent color”. It should complement either your main or contrasting color.

The idea of this rule is that less is more. Keep it simple if you want to have an eye-catching design that attracts customers.

You may be wondering, how this attraction really occurs?

The answer is that colors have a tight relationship with emotions. This is the reason why fast food companies tend to choose orange or red logos, but insurance companies prefer blue.

Colors and emotions

Colors are one of the non-verbal ways of communication. When people are interacting with colors they have physical and emotional reactions to them.

Choosing the right colors makes you deliver the right tone or message to your customers. For example, while warm colors usually excite and boost energy, while cool colors calm down and relax.

Each particular color arouses certain feelings and stimulates certain actions, decisions or choices. Colors can be extremely powerful.

To understand their true impact, take a look at the following emotions associated with each color:

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Red: Color of youth, joy, and love. Associated with: energy, passion, excitement, boldness, confidence, power, but also with aggression or danger;
Blue: Color of trust, strength, and reliability. Reflects coolness, spirituality, freedom, patience, loyalty, peace, trustworthiness, but can also imply sadness, depression;
Yellow: Color of optimism, warmth, friendliness. Associated with motion, light, optimism, happiness, brightness, joy, but also with criticism, impulsiveness and egoism;
Green: Color of life and nature. Creates a soothing calming effect and evokes a peaceful, progressive, and calm emotional response. Associated with naturalness, restfulness, health, wealth, prosperity, but can also imply decay, toxicity;
Orange: Color of fun and appetite. It creates a friendly, confident, and cheerful effect. Reflects: friendliness, warmth, approachability, energy, playfulness, courage, but also superficial, unsocial or overly proud;
Violet: Color of royalty. It reflects wisdom, sophistication, celebration, but also arrogance or immaturity;
White: Color of peace and innocence. Associated with clarity, simplicity, purity, cleanliness, youth, freshness, peace. Also reflects coldness and unfriendliness;
Black: Color of luxury and sophistication. Creates a solid, secure emotional response. It reflects power, elegance, secrecy, mystery, but also fear, coldness, menace and oppression;
Gray: Color of neutrality and stability. Associated with security, maturity, reliability, but also with sadness, loneliness, uncertainty, and indifference;
Pink: Color of sensuality, femininity, and romance. Associated with warmth, hope, sweetness, but also with weakness, credulity and lack of will or power;
Brown: Color of earth and protection. It reflects comfort, strength, credibility, reliability, but also heaviness or boredom.

Besides general emotional associations, colors have a great impact on marketing decisions and purchases. Take a look at this extract from Homestead’s infographic about how colors influence people psychology:

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Image Source: Homestead: The Psychology of Colors in Marketing

Ok then. By this point, you must be convinced that color theory is important and has a huge impact on people’s psychology. Your next question may be: “How am I supposed to choose the perfect color scheme?”

Let’s see the guidelines followed by Elizaveta when she chose the color combinations for her website.

How should you choose the perfect color palette?

The main rule for choosing the best color palette: Don’t be afraid to make mistakes! It’s not a piece of furniture for living room- you can easily change it with no extra expenses.

Yet, before you move to color theory analysis and choosing the best color scheme, you should first answer the following questions:

1. What is the purpose of my website?

2. What are my product associations?

3. What kind of photos do I want to incorporate on my site?

4. What colors would sync with my brand image?

Every question from above is very important. Without answering them first, you may risk choosing an inadequate color palette. This error may lead to invalid associations with your product and client loss.

This is why Elizaveta started with answering them:

1. I will sell baby furniture and other baby related items on my website. So, most likely, moms will be the ones who will buy from my website;

2. My products are associated with comfort, joy, safety, happiness and also with innocence, love and new life;

3. The photos that I would like to choose for my site should arouse emotions of happiness, playfulness, and innocence;

4. My brand logo is white on light pink background. The colors that should sync with my brand image should be white, light pink and light blue.

Once Elizaveta has set up the above checkpoints, she could easily proceed to choose the perfect color palette from The Core.

How Elizaveta made her color palette choice with The Core

Elizaveta chose to use Coolors.co for picking her color palette: it started as generated automatically, but then each color was locked, obtaining the following scheme:

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After that she inserted the corresponding hex codes for each color in The Core’s ‘Appearance’/’Theme Settings’/’Colors’/’Color Palette’:

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And voila, her website was ready:

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Of course, I’m kidding. Obviously, it’s not that simple. Let’s see what she did after choosing the color palette and the CRIBS demo from our latest premium WordPress theme The Core.

The first thing she noticed was that in this demo the accent color (10%) is yellow, so she inserted the purple hex code(#904C77) instead of the previous yellow in the Color 1 field. Why did she specifically inserted in Color 1 option and did not choose another one? Because changing colors has both front-end and admin impact on the theme, and if you used an existing demo instead of building from scratch, you should pay attention to its color settings to easily set up your scheme.

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In result, all the items that featured the accent color changed to purple:

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The second step was to apply the main background color, Color 4 option – the light peach #ECCFC3, which she decided to use as an overlay color for her background images:

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After analyzing the theme, Elizaveta noticed that the Color 2, demo’s default red, was used to highlight some subtitles and headings. She changed it to her analog color, violet #957D95 and the third color option to Color 4’s analog – peach ECB8A5. The fifth color, usually used for texts, stayed the same. This is what she obtained:

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After setting up the palette, the colors became instantly available in any color customization form. Using these colors, she changed the header, footer, and the elements’ color settings:

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Wait, but what if you need the 6-th color?

It’s easy: The Color Palette option from The Core gives you the possibility to choose the 6th color for certain elements. As you may have noticed, in some elements, like buttons, Elizaveta used the 6th color, white, as the hover color:

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What if you change the photo?

You may opt for keeping the same primary colors but play with the shades and tints. Or you can completely change your photo and adjust the palette according to their elements. Or you can always choose and overlay color to soften the colors of your image and match it with the scheme.

With The Core’s Color Palette is quick and simple. Just remember: Always keep in mind the 60-30-10 rule. Choose a balanced background and you have plenty variations to play with.

Besides all the above checkpoints, when choosing the best color scheme, you should follow these best practices:

1. Your text content to be easy to read – choose contrasting colors. The contrast between text and background is very important for a great UX;

2. Use fewer colors. Your website is not a scribble. The best option is to use one color for headlines and another (complementary) color for the text;

3. Use enough colors. Fewer colors, but enough, too. Using not enough colors may make your site seem boring. If you need to highlight some elements, use shades, tones or tints;

4. Use intense colors for eye-catching designs. But don’t overdo: too many vivid colors may confuse or irritate;

5. Remember: Web colors look different than printed. And you can play with them without any limits;

6. Seek inspiration from nature. If you have an inspirational block, just look at these stunning color palettes created by Design Seeds:

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Images’ Source: Design Seeds

Breathtaking views and colors, right? Just keep in mind one thought: Keep on trying! Great designs often have behind many attempts and sketches.

Yet, if you feel like you’re a trend follower, you may want to consider the color palette trends for 2016:

Monochromatic: monochromatic schemes, often blues, reds or black/gray – with a small touch of an accent color. While monochromes create a calming, relaxing effect, the accent color grabs the customer’s attention;
Pastels: Associated with “flat” design. These palettes have 4-5 primary colors, but with different tints. The pastels make primary color combinations more smooth and delicate;
Bright: In opposition to the pastels trend, bright colors are used for vivid designs. Usually, there a few primary colors with a lot of white or gray space between them, to neutralize their brightness

Need more inspiration? Check the following resources of the best website color palette collections:

Awwwards
50 Beautiful Color Palettes for Your Next Web Project
40 Stunning Website Designs with Great Color Schemes
Website Color Schemes: The Palettes of 50 Visually Impactful Websites to Inspire You
10 Gorgeous Color Palettes to Inspire Your Website Design
Rude Color

Seek inspiration, mix and match as many times as you desire, because it’s free and simple. The latest technology gives you the opportunity to quickly learn from your mistakes and test multiple times until you get the perfect look for your website. The Core’s Color Palette comes handy once you’ve chosen your favorite scheme and you want to adjust your website’s elements more easily.

Just like Elizaveta, don’t be afraid to play with colors: it’s quick, easy and rewarding!

Special Offer This Easter Holiday everything goes 30% off! [Expired]

Let us celebrate this Easter with a 30% discount voucher to all our WordPress themes including the Club Membership. There is no better time to stock up some premium WordPress themes. Check out our portfolio: http://themefuse.com/wp-themes-shop/.

In order to benefit from the discount, just enter this code at checkout:
EASTER30

Special Offer This Easter Holiday everything goes 30% off!

Let us celebrate this Easter with a 30% discount voucher to all our WordPress themes including the Club Membership. There is no better time to stock up some premium WordPress themes. Check out our portfolio: http://themefuse.com/wp-themes-shop/.

In order to benefit from the discount, just enter this code at checkout:
EASTER30