B.A. Fegles's Blog, page 6
July 25, 2017
DiscoverHow did Haven replace Welcome Inn?
Welcome Inn was a popular hotel theme that we loved but since it approached that magical retirement age and we had to let it go. One of the major updates this year was replacing Welcome Inn with Haven. Just to make it clear, you can’t upgrade Welcome Inn to Haven since they were built on different frameworks. The great news is Haven came with smart solutions for every issue our old theme had.
Haven is built on Unyson Framework
Unlike Welcome Inn, Haven was built on an open source framework with almost 470.000 downloads and daily contributors. Since the framework is evolving, bettering itself constantly working with our theme is also becoming easier day by day. It is now very simple to add room images and animations without using the attachments like you did with Welcome Inn. Intuitive, visual and fast editing will make you love Haven even more.
Handy external booking system
Welcome Inn had a reservation request form on the website, and no way to export your aggregated data. Haven has a proper system that works with external shortcodes that offer integration with the most popular booking websites.
3 Demos with different approaches
You know there’s an entire science behind making a perfect, user-friendly, conversion oriented websites with a great design and easy on the eye. We managed to incorporate everything a Hotel Website needs and we made it clean, good looking and perfectly functional. For Haven, we made not one but three options for you to use or customize as you wish!
2 Premium Sliders
Welcome Inn had only one animated slider. It was customizable but it limited your options. With Haven, you can still personalize your basic slider like you were used to but you also have two premium sliders – Layer Slider and Revolution Slider.
WooCommerce Ready
Start selling your additional offers or products today, using the popular WooCommerce plugin! We have customized everything, making the plugin perfectly integrated.
Conclusion:
Basically, we came up with a whole new way to use, manage, customize and get inspired for your hotel website. Owning an accommodation business and managing your website with an online booking system is now made more fun, clean, easy and very stylish. And don’t forget if you encounter any difficulties we can always answer your questions and give support on our helpdesk.
Of course, you can test Haven in our Test Labs (2 days free) because we already know you’re going to love it! Leave a comment and tell us what you think.
Cheers.
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The post DiscoverHow did Haven replace Welcome Inn? appeared first on ThemeFuse.
July 24, 2017
DiscoverInfluencer outreach guide you should follow
Influencers can be very effective, especially with a good marketing outreach plan. An influencer is a person with a big number of active followers, who you use as a person to drive your brand’s message. Influencers outreach ideas may include anything from YouTubers to Instagram celebrities sharing your brand, etc. Regardless of the platform, they have the ability to reach people.
According to an infographic, influencers have multiple roles, and a good influencer outreach strategy is essential if you want any effect whatsoever. Influencer outreach marketing usually involves having connections with influencers and getting to a relationship that is mutually beneficial.
What are the benefits you can get from an influencer, as a company?
Your credibility increases
You have access to a much larger audience
You get social influence you couldn’t get elsewhere
Your content is user-generated
You get new customers and leads
An influencer will act like a friend that will get you in the inner circle of your customers, instead of you having to sell it. Influencers also have much to gain from these relationships as well.
Free products, and free services, both for them, and their audiences
Sponsorships
Monetary compensation for their influence
They get exposed to the audience your brand already has.
This is actually why influencer marketing is so important. It is a win-win situation for both the influencer and the brand.
The term is slowly picking up steam, and it is pretty difficult to catch one actually. Nobody knows how a typical influencer looks like, and that is the biggest challenge. An influencer will have to have multiple images, one for every brand he represents, and usually one for every campaign of that brand.
We live in a year where recommendations, as well as criticisms, spread through channels such as social media at an incredible speed. Influencers are active on such channels, and they are promoters of the brands and niches they have an agreement with.
True, any person with hundreds of thousands of people that are following him on Facebook can expose your brand. However, if they don’t fit within your brand’s idea, and what you’re trying to achieve, and if their audience isn’t particularly interested in your brand, you won’t get much from that.
Make sure you research the influencers first
Finding the right people here is crucial. There are influencer marketing tools that can let you know which influencers are relevant to your brand, and the niche you’re trying to target.
Involvement in your field is crucial, it almost guarantees that their followers and audience are also interested in whatever content you have to share with them.
If you develop your relationship with an influencer who is a car collector, where your brand is actually selling drilling machines, it doesn’t have much of an effect, does it? You’ll waste their time, and more importantly, you’ll waste your time. Do your research.
Connect with the people
Once you have an idea of who the right people for your brand are, start following them. Follow them on Twitter, try to establish some sort of connection, by liking their posts or commenting on their Instagram pictures.
They are pretty active on their social media channels, take advantage of that. However, be nice and positive, you are trying to connect to a human being after all.
After a while, your name will start sounding familiar to them, and you will slowly see what triggers them – you will need this in the next step when you want to contact them.
Contact the target influencer
Once you think that you’re ready to start working on your relationship in a more active way, try to think of a personal message, tailored to the situation. Don’t send them a generic message, you are trying to make them respond to you, aren’t you?
Your goal should be to make them feel good about themselves, and tell them that you chose them for a specific reason.
If you did your research, you know what triggers them, and it will be a good idea to let them know you do know a thing or two about them. The method of contacting them is also important – give it a little thought.
Don’t hide your intentions
If you aren’t honest and try to hide what your goals are, you won’t get what you’re after. Influencers know that you don’t want “just to be friends” with them, they know you need something, and hiding that fact isn’t a good choice.
They should feel like the relationship is good for them as well, so you might want to focus on telling them how you can be of assistance to them, instead of asking for things. Find the influencer of choice’s influencers. The marketing strategy works because people trust them – use that to your advantage.
If you already have influencers that you’re in a good relationship with, ask them to introduce you to any influencer friends they might have. Due to where your introduction comes from, they have no reason not to trust you, and they will very likely want to work with you.
Make sure your content is good
This is more or less stating the obvious, but if you want someone to share your content, that content better is good. It should be good regardless, but if your content isn’t up to the standard of the influencer of choice, they might not want to share it.
You will create a poor image of yourself, and you will also hurt their reputation.
Use an individual approach
All influencers aren’t the same, and you can’t use a generic approach for all of them. Think about what motivates each influencer, and if you can use that to your advantage to get them to work for you.
Some of the best ways to segment the influencers might be activity-level, reach, industry expertise and interests. You can also combine all of these metrics with some demographic data, such as location, age or gender, and use that.
However, reach is in no way the same thing as influence. When looking for influencers, look past simple metrics such as a number of followers. When an influencer has a massive social audience, they can be used well for spreading awareness.
They are basically the VIPs of social media, they’re always in high demand, and getting them to work with you might be much harder than you think. If you want awareness, you will have to work hard to get their attention.
The best way to get to them, in a cost-effective way, is to look for influencers that focus on a specific niche, and have a decent grasp of knowledge of your industry. They might have a smaller reach than some, but their audience is highly targeted and you will get a larger percentage of their followers.
And you don’t have to neglect your existing customers. If you have regular ones, give them a VIP treatment – they will become brand advocates in no time.
Impress your social influencers
If you’re asking for their time, make sure they think it’s worth it. Depending on what product you’re pushing, you might offer them to try it for free. The best way to build and deepen your relationship is to have face-to-face contact, so you should do your best to meet them in person. Inviting them to an exclusive launch of a new product is a good method to do so.
If you want to give them a gift, make sure you put some effort into it. Don’t send a company-logo pen. Be creative, and send something that will truly grab their attention. If you want a big impact, they better be impressed. Whatever you do, try to stand out from the generic crowd, and find a way to engage with them.
Don’t forget about them once you get what you want
If you get what you needed, don’t dump them. Maintain the relationship, you never know where that kind of person will get you and your brand. Make sure to thank them and don’t let them feel used. At the end of the day, it’s all about mutual benefit.
If you get what you needed, don’t dump them. Maintain the relationship, you never know where that kind of person will get you and your brand. Make sure to thank them and don’t let them feel used. At the end of the day, it’s all about mutual benefit.
Summary
All of the above steps should give you an idea of what you should be doing and what you should be paying attention to when you want influencers. These people can get you organic reach, and huge audiences, and you will want to know if that worked.
If you’re a content marketer, you’re most likely focused on quality content, doing technical tasks for promotion, etc. Going from task to task very quickly is how you usually get results.
However, influencer outreach marketing is the exact opposite. You need to go slowly, focus on your people, and do your best to help them reach their goals. Even though it might seem like a waste of time, it is a huge, huge long-term investment.
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The post DiscoverInfluencer outreach guide you should follow appeared first on ThemeFuse.
July 20, 2017
How To’s & TutorialsGetting the most from your hosting
Whenever you get a web hosting plan, you’re actually paying (or maybe getting it for free) for a part of one of their computers, or sometimes, a whole one. What this gives you is the flexibility of having your files and software required to run your website put in a centralized location, where anyone who wants to see it, can access it. To make everything even easier, you get tools to manage your part of the computer, as well as build and run your website.
When you use such a plan, your website isn’t somewhere in a cloud. It is actually a collection of files, located on a real computer, in a real building. Where the building is located, how it looks like, how powerful the computer is, all of that depends on which hosting company you opt for, and most of those things you shouldn’t even worry about. But, at the end of the day, it is not that different than the computer you are actually using right now.
But, how do you decide whether a certain web host is good for our needs? Are storage options and bandwidth still important? What kind of service will work best for you? Try to read on through this web hosting guide for beginners, it will hopefully help you decide in the end.
Know your needs and requirements
Before you even start looking at options, you need to know exactly what you need. You need to know what you’d consider paying for, and how much. Put everything aside, and think about it, thoroughly.
What kind of website are you making?
How much (or how little) traffic can you expect?
Do you, or your website, need special software?
Do you need something common (such as a WordPress blog)?
Do you need some kind of Windows applications?
As far as web hosting for dummies goes, the above-mentioned questions are the first you ought to answer, and they will tell you what kind of hosting service you need. There are a few rules of thumb but think about the things above. Also, think about what will happen in the future, try to keep an image of the next year or so in your head.
The no-brainer rule for a beginner is to start small, get a good shared account, and move on when necessary. A shared hosting service is cheap and sufficient for most new sites. And, it has the added benefit of being able to upgrade to a dedicated hosting service or a VPS at any point in time. Continue reading this web hosting beginner guide, to see what are the things you need to keep an eye out for.
What are the major things to check?
Uptime percentage and reliability
The uptime percentage tells you how much of the time the server is up and running. You need one that runs constantly, and that has a stable connection and a powerful server. The recommended uptime score to look for is 99.5% and above. Anything below 99% is completely unacceptable and might lead to problems. To check this for a specific hosting service, you can read reviews on it, and see what users are reporting. The other option is to use a server monitor tool, most of them are easy to use and free, even as a trial period.
Upgrading options for the server
Nowadays, a shared web host can be pretty powerful. A well-optimized WordPress blog which has around 30,000-40,000 monthly visitors can run completely fine on a shared hosting account. And, if you limit your concurrent database connections, you shouldn’t be having any problems.
But, if you intend on growing your website big in the next year or two (and most of you who are reading this do), you might want to look up for a host that gives you room to grow your website, in terms of processing power, storage, security features, etc. You should be able to go from a shared hosting account to a VPS or a dedicated server.
Pricing
There is a trick which is well known for hosting deals, and it is especially true for shared hosting. Once you sign up, the prices are dirt cheap, but when you renew your membership, the prices skyrocket. It is well known, and there is no way to avoid the renewal costs unless you want to move around to a new host once your initial subscription is done.
A general rule would be to get a shared hosting with prices of below $10 per month, but your tolerances might be higher or lower than that. However, to avoid any surprises, make sure to read the Terms of Service, and read the fine print carefully. You need to be okay with the renewal prices before you sign up.
How not to get ripped off by a web hosting service provider
Use reputable services
Using a service that is well known is of utmost importance. These sites also come with potential downsides, and they do tend to have some tricks up their sleeve, but their ultimate goal isn’t to rip you off. They will undoubtedly try to get some more money out of you, such as renewal fees for example, but ultimately, they actually do want to give you good service.
On the opposite end, small, local businesses usually want a quick way to make some money. They’ll act well before you commit, and once they get your money, they completely forget about you. This might not be true for all sites, but you should be aware of it.
In any case, you should read reviews and find clients to ask about a specific service. This should give you a picture of what to expect. You can also check what are some of the best and reputable WordPress hosting providers.
Pay attention to prices and renewal fees
The prices might often seem too low to be true – and they usually are. What companies do, is they give you a low price and make you believe that that is the only price you’re paying. However, the fine print usually says that the price is only valid until you have to renew your subscription, and a higher price applies then. Those reduced prices are only valid for a month if you paid for a month when subscribing, or a year or three years. Afterward, you get the full price.
Unlimited is a myth
A company telling you that you have unlimited anything is a misleading fact. For example, having unlimited storage or bandwidth should theoretically mean that you can store a hundred trillion teraflops, and then transmit everything to Mars. And even that isn’t unlimited.
The term they should be using is unmetered, which means that they won’t even measure how much data you’re using, or limit it in any way. The limit is your hardware and how much it can handle. For example, if your dedicated server has a 100MBps port, that gives you 100 Megabytes per second. That might look like a lot, but it goes up to around 240 Terabytes per month, and if you share high-quality video, 4K for example, constantly, even that might not be enough. And, if you run into a traffic surge that needs more than those 100MBps, that might be a bottleneck.
This is the truth, and you can’t really avoid it. If you have a dedicated server, expansion is unavoidable, and that does indeed cost. If you have a cloud plan, you pay as much as you use, which theoretically does give you an unlimited bandwidth, but you’ll pay for it in the end.
Summary
As far as choosing hosting goes, there are three things to keep an eye out for. Go with a reputable brand, use your common sense, and most importantly, do your research. Combining them all makes sure that you get a stable site, you don’t get bullied into choosing a host with terms such as “unlimited”, and you will identify what you need and how much you can afford to pay for that.
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July 17, 2017
DiscoverTop WordPress Photography Themes
Your pictures have everything. They are magnificent and eye gawking, but yet, they can’t have an utmost impact online until they are complemented with a befitting website design.
However, finding the right theme is a daunting task itself, with millions of WordPress photography themes around, choosing the best one is not simple in any way.
As a photographer, choosing the best theme that fits your requirements is the perfect answer. With plenty and countless slider and customization options available, you shouldn’t be looking for design and typography that overwhelm your images, but ones that compliment them.
We have gone a great length to assist you. We have made a list of great WordPress themes for photographers with incredible functionality, which includes numerous gallery layouts, tools for the full-screen slideshow, eCommerce, and tons of customization options.
So if you are in search of a new theme that would bring out your skills, or looking for a design inspiration to further enhance your existing site, here are some of the best photography WordPress themes that could give you that much-needed inspiration.
Shutter
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Shutter is a responsive photography theme designed for photographers, designers, photo studios or photobloggers.
Shutter is a premium WP template full of features (sliders, menus, buttons). It comes with 5 clean design demo concepts, different approaches to photography and photo portfolio websites, which you can use to craft your stunning website.
Shutter is the best choice for any photo studio, professional and amateur photographer who want to get an outstanding online presence.
Exposure
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Exposure is a responsive photography WordPress template that has all it takes for professional photographers or hobbyists alike.
This template can be easily customized as it comes with lots of features: you can change colors, backgrounds and much more directly from the WordPress admin, in a matter of clicks.
Its uniqueness lays in the minimalistic approach (fully responsive & retina ready) and attention to detail that makes the difference.
Zolak Portfolio
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Zolak is a marvelous photography WordPress theme. It is incredibly elegant and powerful. It was made for clarity. It will no doubt get your website visitors impressed at first sight. The theme is outstanding as great attention was paid to details in the design of the theme.
NOAH
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NOAH is an audacious entrance in the demanding digital scene. A photography WordPress theme that creates thrust through clever animations, and makes a great introduction to your journey.
PILE
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PILE is a brave, sophisticated and flexible Portfolio WordPress theme making it the ideal tool to display any sort of creativity. Be it agencies or directors, from illustrators to photographers and brave professionals, PILE is the ideal companion in the digital journey.
Dreamscape Photography
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Dreamscape is a receptive sparkling, and one of the best WordPress Photography themes made for Photography innovative Blog web site. Dreamscape gives reactive layout so it appears great on every device. It features 8 predefined skins in order to ease your start.
MAXCODE
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MAXCODE is a collection WordPress theme, which is focused on simplicity, stylishness. It’s formed with masonry portfolio grid. This theme is filled with several useful features, choices, and shortcodes.
AVA
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AVA is the new WordPress portfolio theme that has simply become a necessity for freelance artists and creative agencies. It will completely fulfill the requirements of any graphic designer, photographer, and illustrator and will no doubt create a stylish presence online. It is ideal for any sort of creative work, and thankfully, it is not difficult to use.
Ashi
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Ashi is a WordPress theme for Photographers, Painters, Designers and other Creative workers. It is very easy to use and it lays an emphasis on a sparkling layout. This is the ideal theme for you if you want an effortless setup, a fast loading site and a clean blog and a gorgeous portfolio.
Sunday
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Sunday WordPress Theme is a contemporary portfolio theme made particularly for professional photographers and amateurs alike. This team is exceptional and it ticks all boxes, and that is why it has recently gained a lot of popularity in the marketplace.
This theme gives you everything you want in a theme. It comes with full-screen galleries with zoom-in feature and social share, client galleries, shop, services page, carousel sliders, welcome slider/landing page, a number of portfolio styles and a lot more.
Timber
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Timber is a unique photography WordPress theme that goes to the limit to give users a magnificent experience. It gives you a carefully chosen cutting edge set of tools to push your photography to lofty heights. Do you want a theme that befits your aspirations as an artist? Then this theme is perfect for you.
LENS
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LENS is a surprising first class WordPress theme specially made for photographers that require a solution that focuses on the most important thing to them, which is, of course, their work. Each feature was chosen very painstakingly and made ease the way to that ideal photography portfolio website.
BORDER
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BORDER is a distinctive Photography WordPress theme that is very simple to use. It was made putting in mind the needs and requirements of a professional photographer and their needs. It comes with an intricate and sensitive designed interface, and each feature was chosen very painstakingly and made ease the way to that ideal photography portfolio website.
MIES
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MIES is one of the leading parallax Architecture WordPress Theme valued for its ability to make you present your work within a charming and pleasant experience. It’s ideal for photographers and designers for their presentations and portfolio projects.
SOHO
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This is our latest professional and creative photo/video WordPress theme. The fullscreen layout is the most excellent way to get your photo and video artworks presented. The latest technologies were implemented in this one, superior version of the built-in GT3 page builder, an optimized system to increase the website performance speed, simple content, color editing and more.
GetPhoto
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This theme is an extension of a sequence of themes for photographers. Artists, designers, and sellers find this team very exceptional and excellent. This WordPress theme has a lot of options for the main pages of the most popular options for portfolio and galleries!
ROUA
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ROUA is the new contemporary WordPress portfolio theme which is virtually a must have for freelance artists and creative agencies. Making use of this theme, the needs of any graphic designer, illustrator, and photographer will be completely satisfied and will surely create a stylish presence online. This theme is sophisticated but very simple and easy to use.
Mira
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Mira is a stylish WordPress theme for writers, bloggers, designers, photographers and travelers for creating photo stories. It is very fresh, simple and also easy to use.
Notumn
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Notumn is a simple WordPress theme particularly made for creative bloggers. It is fresh and simple, and it offers sparkling, gorgeous simple layouts that are free of clutter, making your content appear stunning regardless of the device. It is perfect for personal, fashion, photography, travel, lifestyle, food and magazine blogs etc.
Side
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This is a magnificent theme which is very simple and uncomplicated. It is ideal for agencies, individuals, freelancers or bloggers and it has a lot of powerful features. It comes filled with Revolution slider for free coupled with tons of other goodies.
Joker
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Joker is a stunning photo and video WordPress theme which has tons of beautiful layouts which will make your work to be easily presented to your clients and visitors. All required design rudiments and attractive animations for building a unique website are all included in the template.
Photography CropIt
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With this awesome photography WordPress Theme, your own unique and beautiful site of the photographer, photo school, photography agency or photo studio can be created. Different galleries will demonstrate the distinctiveness of your work, and a trouble-free and suitable store to get your valuable photos sold.
Bild
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Bild is a magnificent photography portfolio WordPress theme with a simple design that is free of clutter. Because of its refined clean aesthetics, this theme is ideal for a portfolio of fine art photography, landscape photography, fashion & lifestyle photography, nature & wildlife photography, architecture photography and a lot more.
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July 13, 2017
DiscoverManaged Hosting vs Unmanaged Hosting
When you’re on the hunt for a new hosting plan, you will more than likely have to choose between managed hosting vs. unmanaged hosting. Knowing the difference between managed and unmanaged servers can mean a lot.
When we start, most of the using host our websites on shared servers. This means that the word “management” is nowhere to be found since the difference between managed and unmanaged hosting doesn’t really apply here. Where it does apply, however, is when you start looking into dedicated servers or VPS hosting services.
There is a pretty obvious price difference between managed hosting vs. unmanaged hosting, but you shouldn’t, by any means, base your decision on cost alone. This can be a fatal mistake, and if you don’t make the right choice, you could be throwing a lot of money in the future for things you don’t need.
What is actually managed to host?
When you get a hosting plan, there are actually plenty of components to it. The key one is the server and the hardware. The server usually comes with an operating system, as well as all kinds of software and tools to help you run your website.
The hosting service provider may also give you additional features, such as status monitoring, security check-ups, automated backups, etc. These are all management services that tend to make things easier, and that is where the name “managed” hosting comes from. If you want to keep things simple, it is a hosting plan which comes with plenty of add-ons, services, and benefits.
But, what about unmanaged hosting?
Unmanaged hosting, on the other hand, is a plan where you either don’t get any extras or get very few of them. You get a barebones server with nothing more than an operating system. This leaves you to install everything, and by “everything” I mean even basic software such as PHP or Apache. These systems don’t have anything.
The term “unmanaged” simply states that the hosting service provider doesn’t do anything to your server. If you need or want something done, it is up to you to do it yourself. You will need to understand what it all lacks, but first, let’s see what each comes with in terms of pros and cons.
Which one to go for?
In the battle of managed hosting vs. unmanaged hosting, anyone who isn’t already an experienced user will want to get managed hosting, as it does seem like a more attractive option. If you don’t want to spend extra money on server management, managed hosting might also be the better option. However, you need to bear in mind that a managed hosting service, such as a managed WordPress hosting service, usually carries restrictions. For example, if the server is mainly made for WordPress, this might render you incapable of running other types of websites. This means that users lose a lot of flexibility, and you might need it at some point.
While we’re discussing the topic of limitations of managed hosting services, you also might be restricted as far as WordPress plugins go. A good example would be the service stopping you from running caching plugins if there is already a server-level system in place. For someone who wants to run their own set of plugins, which they know work best for their specific use case, having an unmanaged hosting might be a better fit, as they get all the flexibility they need. And, another important point is price, since managed hosting services do carry a price premium.
When you’re looking into a dedicated server or VPS, you should also know that those managed services often support only a small set of operating systems. What this means is that if you, or someone on your team, use a Ubuntu based OS, you might find out that your distribution isn’t supported on the managed hosting service. This should be checked before you commit, as it may lead to you spending money and getting nothing.
There are people who know enough about server management to be comfortable to take things into their own hands and get an unmanaged hosting service which they would manage themselves. However, if you don’t have enough experience, you’re better off with a paid, managed hosting service. This gives you the peace of mind when you know that the host will take care of all management, and you don’t have to hire outside help.
At the end of the day, there are two main things to consider. The first one is whether you need any specific services and software. If you do, you must make sure that the hosting company can support them before committing to their plan. If for example, the hosting company doesn’t support that custom video encoding solution you need, you can’t really use it.
And, the second important factor, is whether you are skilled enough to be able to take on server management by yourself. If you’re not, and you’re tight on budget, you might as well go for an unmanaged hosting service, and then pay someone to set everything up for you, it is undoubtedly cheaper than a managed service. All you need to do afterward is get a cPanel or DirectAdmin license, which lets you manage everything easily. You should also know that if you need direct payment processing, setting up an unmanaged server for PCI-DSS compliance is usually more time, and money consuming in the long run, then getting a managed one in the first place.
It is actually a tough choice
The decision is one that you should think about thoroughly before pulling the trigger. If you opt for an unmanaged server, you must be absolutely sure that you can afford the maintenance, both in terms of experience and money, as it is by no means an easy job. If you can’t devote enough time to it, don’t bother at all.
As far as managed servers go, if you need complete control and root access, they might not be the best way to go. Even though there are hosting companies that give you root access to the servers, managed servers usually cost more and give you much less control. It is a matter of freedom or convenience, whichever you prefer more.
Ending thoughts
All things considered, this is truly a tough call. There are some providers, such as HostGator, that might give you a hybrid solution, and give you complete root access to the server, and even give you some support as well. If you find that an unmanaged server is too much for you to handle, but a fully managed hosting plan doesn’t give you all the control you want and need, you might opt for a semi-managed solution, which is the best of both worlds.
The bottom line takes a good, thorough thinking to get to, and you will need to be absolutely certain of your decision. The main differentiators are control, cost, and flexibility, and once you’ve got all that figured out, you may go ahead and pull the trigger.
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July 10, 2017
DiscoverBudget Web Hosting Analysed
If you’re an Internet user, you’ve undoubtedly heard of the term “budget web hosting”. Over the years, a lot of web service providers have appeared, and their services, capabilities and storage space greatly vary from one another. Even though web hosting was pretty pricey in the Internet’s early days, nowadays you will find a lot of storage space for a fairly small fee.
If we’d want to define true budget web hosting, we’d go with a web hosting service that you can get for less than $10 per month. Therefore, there are web hosting companies that provide usable space on their servers that are well within your budget. Most of these companies will give you yearly plans, which you can then break up into smaller monthly payments, as you find them convenient.
You will find many web hosting companies, and choosing one that fits your bill can be pretty difficult. Where you might want to begin is by going through their brochures, and see which ones look like they’re professional, which one have clear contact details, a clear physical address, and even those who have a toll free line. A toll-free line means that they can clarify any doubts regarding their service and help their customers.
After you figure out whether the company you’ve picked is honest and reliable, you need to check the uptime and downtime guarantees. Uptime guarantee tells you the percentage of time for which the server is completely up and running, while downtime guarantee tells you the percentage of time for which the server might be down, for maintenance reasons. There is a huge difference between 99% uptime, and 99.9% uptime and this difference can be crucial, depending on what you will be using the website for.
Last but not least, you should see whether you get any extras along with the storage space. Some companies might give you marketing tools and even free scripts that will help you when you’re trying to develop and build up your business. What should become clear to you, is that even though these cheap hosting companies sound and look cheap, they usually offer quality and features that are completely on par with the expensive web hosting services, just as long as you choose the right hosting company.
What can you get with cheap website hosting?
Even though dedicated and VPS hosting options are very powerful, they are also pretty expensive, and with a cheap web hosting service you’ll have to pick a shared or managed WordPress hosting option. But, let’s clear as to what they are and what that means for you.
Where you have a shared hosting, you are basically sharing the server with other websites at the same time. However, the “shared” part doesn’t mean that you can look at the other websites’ files, just like nobody can look at yours. The benefit is that sharing the same server lowers the prices for everyone. But the downside, and potentially a big one, is that if one, or more, of the other sites, start to consume much of the resources, your website will run with reduced performance due to limited capabilities of the server, and it might even crash.
A managed WordPress hosting service will let you set up, and run, a WordPress blog with the least amount of fuss possible. If the website’s primary function is nothing more than a blog, do yourself, and your wallet, a favor, and don’t bother with other types of hosting such as shared hosting plans.
One important thing that you’ll need to keep an eye out in your search for the best cheap web hosting service is to read the fine print. This is especially important if you want to keep the prices to a minimum. Multiple services will give you several tiers, where the cheaper packages have introductory features, and the higher-priced plans come with advanced options. The big font that tells you the monthly fee shouldn’t fool you, and you should be very careful that you’ll actually get what you need.
Some of the hosts will even charge you extra for any tools that you might want to use for design. Others will ask for a three-year minimum contract in order for you to get the low price. Or, some offer introductory prices, which go higher after a month or two. It is a smart move not to invest in an annual plan until you’re sure what you need and how quickly your business will grow.
You don’t have to do everything yourself
If you have modest needs, and your primary goal is a cheap website hosting service, there is an alternative option, and that is a website builder. Such services can give you a good looking website, such as a brochure-ware site, without additional fuss regarding functionality. Weebly and DudaOne are good options, for example.
This kind of website builder can help you a lot, especially if having your own domain isn’t a very big concern, and you’re not into behind-the-scenes tweaking. You will get very attractive, yet functional websites, but they’re hosted under their domain. They are, however, dirt cheap, and some even offer free plans, even though that might mean that you get the service’s branding on your own website. However, if you want your own domain and no branding, generally what you need to do is pay a bit more. However, if you want complete control, you need web hosting.
Good, cheap web hosting options
As you will come to realize, not all web hosts are made equal. Some have storage and data transfer caps, and some offer hidden catches in that fine print mentioned earlier, that will eventually catch up to you and bite you. Other services might even limit what applications you can use and often ask for more money just to get a particular functionality or feature. Then, you have the bare-bones services, which give you nothing more than space, which is actually great if you’re an experienced coder. Choosing the host that works for you, depends completely on your budget and how you will use the site.
Some options:
Cheapest hosts (if paid ONE year upfront)
1. HostGator Cloud
2. iPage
3. FastComet
Cheapest hosts (if paid THREE years upfront)
1. iPage
2. WebHostingPad
3. EHost
Fastest hosts
1. HostGator Cloud
2. EHost
3. FastComet
Best uptime hosts
1. HostGator Cloud
2. EHost
3. iPage
As you see above, if the price is a priority, and speed and uptime aren’t so important, get iPage. WebHostingPad is also close, but performance is in favor of iPage. However, if you’re willing to pay a bit extra, to get high performance, by all means, go for HostGator Cloud.
Summary:
At the end of the day, even though the costs are kept low with such cheap website hosting solutions, the quality is often on par with what you would get if you paid extra for a more expensive service. All you need to do is make your pick.
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The post DiscoverBudget Web Hosting Analysed appeared first on ThemeFuse.
July 6, 2017
DiscoverBest free tools for your WordPress website
If you have a WordPress website, there’s no better way of extending the functionality and adding new options and features than WordPress plugins. Although the scope of the plugins you need and use is best determined by what kind of website you have, there are some must have free WordPress plugins for everyone. They usually concern speed, SEO, security, and other universal aspects that every website should take a look at.
There are plenty of plugins, and if you look at the official repository for WordPress plugins, you will find well over tens of thousands of them. What this means is that you can basically get a plugin for anything that you may want or need. There are some big names who are ever-present in websites, as well as some lesser known ones that still do an amazing job. What you shouldn’t do is limit yourself to the popular ones, as you might very well be missing out on functionality and amazing options.
The best question you need to ask yourself is not how many times the plugin has been installed, but instead can it help you with your line of business, and can it improve your website? Take a look at some of the coolest WordPress plugins below, and see if they can be of any assistance.
As you’ll quickly come to learn, there is a mind-blowing amount of spam on the Internet. Without a decent filter to remove it, those quality comments that might bring a good discussion to the table will be overwhelmed by the spammers overpopulating your site. AntiSpam Bee is a free plugin that tries to prevent this by catching spam comments. Over 200,000 people use it, and it certainly keeps up with paid solutions, even though it’s free.
Jetpack is actually a package of some of the best WordPress plugins for business. The add-ons have various functionality, and even though many people might be inclined to say it feels a little bloated when you consider the useful features present here you’ll see that you can and should overlook that.
Some of the top features include a content delivery network for photos, lightweight mobile theme, real-time analytics for your dashboard etc. All in all, it is a very useful tool.
Has it ever happened to you that you lose an entire website, just because you were too lazy to create a backup? You know you should create one, and when the worst case scenario happens, you regret not doing it earlier.
Duplicator is here to help you, and it not only makes a backup of the site, but you can also move it from one place to another with incredible ease. It’s as simple as running the plugin. It zips up your site, then copies it to the new server you give it, and it runs the installer file. Everything else is automated, and even mentions of the old site address in the database will be replaced with the updated one.
Theme Check is a great tool for keeping up to date. It basically examines your theme and tells you whether it conforms to the latest practices and standards of WordPress. What it actually does is it imitates the process that WordPress has when they want to test a theme for submitting it in the directory. This is why if you want to make sure your theme gets there, you should use the plugin.
Keeping WordPress up to date can be a tedious task, especially if you have more than one site running at once. This plugin gives you more control over the process and can be quite helpful in simplifying the whole thing. You get a very customizable plugin which lets you determine if you want minor core releases or major ones to be updated automatically, and you can even control theme and plugin updates for multiple sites as well.
More experienced WordPress users already know that every image you upload is actually duplicated in multiple different sizes. This makes sure that where you need to display a 50 x 50-pixel thumbnail, you won’t have to input a huge 10mb image.
Even though you can find the sizes under Settings, and then Media, changing the sizes for each image one by one is a time-consuming process, and this plugin can be a life saver, especially for images already on the site. It gives you the flexibility to generate new versions of your images, with the updated size, thus saving you a lot of time.
Remember when, if you wanted different sidebar content on different pages, you had to code multiple sidebars, all of which had a lot of conditional statements and you even had to duplicate the same widget multiple times? Well, with the Display Widgets plugin, it’s a matter of seconds. All you need to do to show or hide a certain widget on a certain page is to tick or untick a checkbox. How easier can it get?
Do you hate it when people comment on your site? Well, now you can stop them from it. And, if you want to disable comments-per-post or per-page, the basic WordPress functionality allows you that, but if you want commenting function control site wide, such as disabling for attachment pages, for pages, by post type, Disable Comments is the way to go.
This is one of the first free plugins for WordPress and still, holds the title as one of the best anti-spam plugins. It is one of the default plugins, and you shouldn’t neglect it. Also, make sure you keep it updated.
Do you have a website that requires more flexibility? You can do that with ease using Advanced Custom Fields to add custom fields and get additional site features. Many people consider it a must for their WordPress blog.
This is one of the oldest plugins available, and many would agree when I say that it is one of the best as well. You get optimized title tags, built-in API, canonical URLs, custom meta tags, Google Analytics integration etc.
Since you never know when disaster might strike, keeping your database backed up, as well as it being optimized, with file backups scheduled, databases being repaired and everything is very useful. You can even store the backups on your FTP server, or Microsoft Azure, or even Dropbox.
If you want a site, it having a contact page is a very good idea, and it usually helps with ranking as well. This free plugin makes it incredibly easy to integrate a contact form in your blog.
Nothing can steer away visitors from your website faster than broken links. When people run into them, they usually don’t return to the website. Along with that, broken links can also lead to lower traffic, create a subpar user experience, stop search engine crawlers etc., and all of this can take a fairly big chunk out of your revenue. Use this plugin to stop broken links and fix them before they cause problems.
How easy can users navigate through your site? Not very easy if you’re still using WordPress’ default search bar, since people use it to find content that’s within their field of interest, and if they don’t get anything useful, they’ll leave, disappointed, probably never to return. Relevanssi fixes the problem that is organizing results by date, instead of relevancy, and you can’t index custom post types, all resulting in a sub-par search experience. Get the plugin and solve this.
Summary:
Choosing too many plugins, or choosing the wrong ones, can have a negative impact on your site instead of a positive one. If you get the right ones, though, you will get a lot of added functionality and options. To make sure everything is great and you don’t make a mistake, make sure you choose the plugins from the list above, as each one is made to give you more options for your website, thus positively impacting your business.
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The post DiscoverBest free tools for your WordPress website appeared first on ThemeFuse.
July 3, 2017
Limited Time Offer This 4th of July Everything goes 70% OFF
What better way to celebrate the 4th of July than with a huge discount for everything we have in store. If you are in search of an original, out of the box WordPress theme, now is the perfect time to pull the trigger.
Today only, you can purchase any of our WordPress themes (including our most special WP Theme – The Core MultiPurpose Template), or consider the membership that contains all of them with 70% discount.
This is a time sensitive promotion so grab it while it lasts.
In order to benefit from the discount, just enter this code in the checkout process:
FIREWORKS2017
Happy Independence Day!
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The post Limited Time Offer This 4th of July
Everything goes 70% OFF appeared first on ThemeFuse.
How To’s & TutorialsTips to optimize your Facebook fan page
Regardless of whether you’d care to admit it or not, Facebook is becoming a very important player in the online marketing industry. What this means is that Facebook page optimization is increasingly important, and any well-thought SEO strategy should include optimizing the fan page as well. There are quite a few additional reasons for this, let’s take a look at some of them below:
Facebook applied for a search patent in the middle of 2011;
The Facebook fan pages are used as a “second home page” by many organizations;
The access to user information Google has is nowhere near the access Facebook has, making Facebook an interesting alternative;
Facebook is constantly working on getting more traffic to their fan pages from the search engines.
Besides what has mentioned above, web users can now make Facebook their homepage. This, in addition to the fact that Facebook wants to offer socially-driven search options, Facebook trying to replace Google as a method for users to find information isn’t that impossible after all. To help with that, we will look at a couple of Facebook SEO tips to help you drive more traffic to your page.
Choose a good name, as a basis for the SEO for Facebook business page
The first thing, obviously, is to choose a good name. It’s the most basic step, and it is also the most important one. There are a few things to keep an eye out for here.
First of all, you might be tempted to stuff a few keywords in the name, such as “ElecShop – Laptop Repairs, Phone repairs, PC repairs”, but this will actually hurt your growth rate. Names like these look like spam, and your fans will stay away from the page instead of engaging with it. They will most likely not even share anything and may resort to hiding your updates from their feed.
On the other hand, if you go with a name that is too generic, you might be shut down from posting updates. What Facebook expects from fan pages is for them to represent real things, real personalities and businesses, and too generic names ruin that.
Create a custom URL for your fan page
After you get 25 likes, Facebook lets you create your own URL so you can easily access the page later on. What is important here is that search engines love URLs, and you should pay attention to this. It is of utmost importance that your URL reflects what your business is about.
If it happens that the URL is already claimed, try including what the business is about in the URL, it might help and you still get a unique URL.
Find strategic locations for the keywords
The basic form of on-page SEO is, and always has been keyword optimization. You have the Mission, Company Description and About pages as areas which are used as SEO elements, so pay attention to them the most. The SEO title is your fan page name, the meta description is the fan page name and the About section, and H1 is the fan page name again.
If you want to be optimized for local searches as well, you should include the Address, City, and other location fields. For product searches, you’ll need the Products fields, as well as Company Overview and Mission.
Create a content strategy, and stick to it
Another extremely important aspect of SEO, is obviously, content. As Facebook rises in popularity, content becomes more and more important, and Facebook page managers let you add extra text to your page, along with hyperlinks and images.
As Facebook becomes a more important player in the SEO industry, there will undoubtedly be more options for content, and maybe even some for blog creation, similar to Joomla or WordPress. What this all means is that you should be adapting your strategy now.
Stick to good SEO principles with the content
The guidelines you’d follow when you want to create a good SEO strategy for the web, apply here as well. Fresh content, outbound links, content relevancy and keyword density are all important factors here, and the guidelines are more or less the same. Content duplication should be avoided, and the keyword rich content should be in the most conspicuous places on the page. That way, the search engines, as well as your visitors, know exactly what your site is about.
For example, the Info tab and About box is immediately visible and keyword rich content that tells people what the page is about is best included here. Now, every visitor knows that your page is exactly the one they’ve been looking for, and can stick around.
Don’t forget your contact details
Even though your main goal might be online sales, many people don’t realize that including contact information such as address and phone number is very important. This way, local search results can bring you, even more, traffic, and it is surprising how many people neglect this. Also, Google’s algorithms put a higher importance on pages which have this kind of specific information, and this very much increases the SEO value.
Put backlinks to your fan page
Google pays attention to how authoritative the page looks, and this is best judged by a number of inbound links that point to your page. This is exactly why bloggers find it so important to have their content linked to from other, higher authority websites, which bring them traffic. The same things apply to a Facebook page too, so putting the link on other channels such as a website, or a Twitter or YouTube profile can help a lot.
Put photos that reinforce the branding
We’re not talking about uploading photos, but the cover photo and profile picture here. The cover photo should be a high-resolution picture which has a clear intent and goes hand in hand with your brand’s style. If you want to attract people to a current campaign, the cover photo is the place to do it. You can also rotate the cover photo to match the campaign you’re pushing at the moment.
Keep in mind that there are varying resolutions at which the cover photo is displayed, and the resolution is smaller on a smartphone. To get more impact, you can add a link to the campaign in your caption, or even a link to your whole website as well.
Optimize your status updates
The first 18 characters of every Facebook post are used as the meta description, and this mustn’t be forgotten. Use them as a good title which will boost your SEO efforts, and include direct links to your website in your updates – that’s another good practice you can follow.
Summary
Even if you think that you did all that you can to get your Facebook fan page as optimized as possible, there’s still the chance of missing something. A second, thorough run can see if you’ve missed out on anything. These tips might not do a lot one by one, but if you incorporate them as a whole, you will notice your business’ Facebook presence skyrocketing.
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The post How To’s & TutorialsTips to optimize your Facebook fan page appeared first on ThemeFuse.
June 29, 2017
How To’s & TutorialsHow to increase blog traffic in minutes
It happens to everyone, even the best of them. Bloggers, who produce well-written, well-researched content that is easy to read, amusing. They even publish plenty of blog posts, to try to prove their audience that they’re taking their jobs seriously. And, they do, and they care. However, even besides that, their traffic is much lower than they’d like it to be.
And that’s when they start questioning everything, themselves, blogging, are they wasting their time, etc. But, they might not be ready at the moment. They might be ready in the future. And, blogging does work, and it is a way to create stable income. However, the problem that these people have is not with blogging, it’s the fact that they don’t get enough traffic, nor trust, on their blog.
A few years back, even simply publishing content was enough. Just having five articles, 300-400 words each, was completely sufficient, because nobody was doing it. However, the world caught up with this and everyone started doing it. People were forced to put out better content, longer posts, posts that go further in depth and give you much more useful content. Those posts were known as “epic posts”. Nowadays, though, that is no longer a differential point, as everyone and their grandma does “epic posts”.
There is one secret to instant website traffic, though. You need to do what the others are not doing, or what they’re not willing to do yet. These things can increase website traffic fast, and increase your revenue as well.
Think harder about your content
Nowadays, everywhere you look for hints and tips and tricks on how to generate traffic to your website, you will find “write better content”. However, better content isn’t just about quality. It is also about having a strategy that helps you with your marketing.
There are two general categories nowadays, as far as content goes, it is either useful or cool and funny. Take a look at the audience you’re serving the content to, and choose one of those two categories. The content that meets a specific need is usually the best content, and you’re already off to a good start.
As far as topic ideas go, there are plenty. You can take a look at questions regarding your industry that are being asked on Quora, or even use a blog topic generator, there are plenty and they can give you a good idea about writing. When we’re discussing style, statistics and infographics are your friends, and you can even revert to storytelling via video. Your goal is to create something that people will want to share with everybody.
Create timeless content
If you want your content to last, make sure it is timeless. If you write content for this year’s flagship smartphones, in a few months new ones will come out and that article is useless already. However, if you write a post about the most innovative smartphones of all times, you can include older phones as well and that article will still be relevant a few years later, making it timeless. This kind of content lives on for years to come, and new articles won’t make it obsolete.
Think of attractive headlines
In this game, appearance is everything. So what if you wrote a staggering content piece, which is amusing, gives a lot of important information, and then you put it behind a dull headline? That article is as good as dead. Those headlines are what attract people to your site, and what captures their interest, make sure they love them. You can’t rely on boring headlines if you want to promote your blog posts.
A good way to check this is to experiment, for example, share a post a few times, but put a different headline, and see which one works best.
Link building is important
A linked cluster is basically a group of links, which all point towards a page or a post. This greatly improves that page or post’s search engine ranking, and it is stupidly easy to do. All you need to do is make sure that a couple of your other posts are linking to the original post, and that post will move up in the Google SERPs.
Pay attention to the HTML title tags
If you keep tracking your stats, you will, at some point, see which posts get traffic from a certain keyword, even though that keyword isn’t actually listed in the HTML title. If you want to strengthen that post’s rankings, and increase the traffic, add those keywords to the HTML titles. This is another thing that takes little to no time, yet yields results.
Don’t publish your best posts at 3AM
3AM is simply used as a placeholder here, but the general idea is that you need to know when your blog has the most traffic. Simply analyze the stats and see on what days and at what time your blog has the most visitors, and take advantage of that. Having a very good post saved up for a later time is a smart idea, and will only take up a minute or two at that later time, but it can bring back plenty of social votes and shares.
Re-edit your posts
Your post can be improved at all times. Be it the first paragraph, or the title, you can almost always improve. The beginning is especially important since it is what tells a reader whether to continue or back off and what gets you that traffic and link. Spend an extra 30-40 minutes on that post, and make sure it’s as good as possible.
Don’t focus on yourself, focus on your audience
Unless your blog is a personal blog and one that your friends read, it is highly unlikely that anyone else wants to read about you, your cats or your kids. Stop with the off-topic posts, this will help you obtain more traffic, and it is very easy to do. People will start reading your blog when you offer them something that they want, be it an answer to a certain problem, or entertainment, or anything else.
Choose topics that are currently popular
If you spend time writing on topics that are trending, and currently popular, you will get new readers. You need to be prepared to write about something that is either controversial or popular on social media. You can’t really afford to worry about people’s opinions. An extra reason for this is the fact that people will undoubtedly hate what you just said or wrote, but they will also undoubtedly be back at some point in the future, to see if you have some new information.
They will also tell everyone how bad your blog is, which generates interest and makes their friends want to visit your blog. There, you just got new readers using people who don’t even like what you’re writing. Some of those people who were referred by people who don’t like you might end up loving your blog. Any publicity is good publicity, make use of it.
Don’t neglect social media
If you want readers that are yet to visit your blog, get them on social media platforms. You can create pages and accounts that display every new blog post once you write it. Investing time in social media accounts can generate you a pretty large following.
Share your readers by partnering
When you partner with a blog, they can let you share your own posts on their blog which has a lot more readers than you. What this means is that everyone, or almost everyone, who reads that guest post will be inclined to visit your site and see what your other posts are like as well. The sheer size of their following can improve your traffic.
When you let another blogger post on your blog, this is also great. Their readers will come to your blog to check out the guest’s post, and will undoubtedly take a look around and see what your other posts are about. Their readers will become your readers, and everyone wins.
Summary
There is one more important thing to be careful about, and that is consistency. Nobody can promise overnight results, but these strategies are proven to work as long as you stick to them. You will, eventually, get new visitors, boost your conversion rate, and build a sustainable business that will be worth your time.
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The post How To’s & TutorialsHow to increase blog traffic in minutes appeared first on ThemeFuse.
