Technology and Computing

Is Your WordPress Site Vulnerable?

Posted on by sitemanager
Powering an estimated 75 million plus websites and blogs, WordPress is the world's largest and most popular content management system (CMS). It allows people with little-to-no coding experience to create beautiful, fully functioning websites in just minutes. However, the simplicity of WordPress has also spurred a lack of training among its users. According to a recent survey conducted by the cloud-based data backup service provider CodeGuard, 54% of survey respondents said they installed the latest version of WordPress between once a week and once every four weeks. This is a troubling stati...
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Choosing a WordPress Theme

Posted on by sitemanager
One of the perks of using WordPress as your blogging platform is the wide variety of free and paid templates (known as themes) it offers. Rather than attempting to hard-code a new design from scratch, you can simply download and activate your preferred theme. This allows bloggers to instantly change the look and function of their blog without messing with code. But with tens of thousands of different themes available, how  do you know which one to choose? Free or Premium? The allure of a free theme may sound enticing, but it's usually best to spend the extra money and invest in a premium the...
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Easy Ways To Promote Your Blog

Posted on by sitemanager
Traffic is a direct indication of a blog's success. Without traffic, no one will see what you are publishing, and thus your blog will fall into the abyss where countless others lie. If you're struggling to generate traffic to your blog, check out some of the following methods of promotion listed below. Submit Your Blog To Directories Before you start submitting your blog to thousands upon thousands of directories, it's important to note that there's a difference between between high-quality and low-quality directories. Submitting your blog to the wrong directories could actually hurt your ef...
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Who Owns Your Domain Name? Hopefully You Do

Posted on by sitemanager
The domain name is arguably the single most important element of a website, which is why it's important to have complete ownership over it. Unfortunately, however, it's not uncommon for inexperienced bloggers and webmasters to allow their web designer to register the domain name for them. This may not cause any immediate problems, but it can lead to some severe heartache later down the road. Third-Party Domains The biggest problem associated with third-party domain registrations is the potential for losing control of the domain. Even if you are the rightful owner of the domain, the Internet ...
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Why Self-Hosted Blogs Are Better

Posted on by sitemanager
One of the decisions you'll have to make when starting a blog is whether to use a hosted or self-hosted platform. Two of the most popular blogging content management systems (CMS) -- WordPress and Blogger -- offer both of these options. While many beginners automatically assume hosted is the best option, spending the extra time and resources to set up a self-hosted blog will prove far more beneficial in the long run. Custom Domain You can always tell if a blog is hosted or self-hosted by looking at its domain name. Hosted blogs are restricted to subdomains, such as yoursite.wordpress.com...
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Google Publishes SEO Advice For April 21 Deadline

Posted on by sitemanager
Google is expected to roll out a major change to its search ranking algorithm on April 21, 2015. The update, dubbed "Mobilegeddon" by some, will focus on improving the quality of Google's index by raising the rankings for mobile-friendly websites (hence the name). Google has taken a keen interest in mobile compatibility lately, encouraging websites to update their websites and blogs so they are compatible for smartphone users. To better prepare webmasters for the upcoming Mobilegeddon, Google has published a guide on common mobile mistakes. The Mountain View company first tweeted the guide ...
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Creating a Mobile-Friendly Blog

Posted on by sitemanager
In case you didn't get the memo, mobile Internet traffic surpassed desktop traffic for the first time ever last year. This means more people use their smartphones, tablets and wearable devices to access the Internet than traditional desktops and laptops. Bloggers who fail to cater to the ever-growing demographic of mobile Internet users are placing themselves at a serious disadvantage. So, how do you create a mobile-friendly blog? There are three different configurations for creating mobile-friendly blogs. The first uses a separate mobile domain. Ever visit a website on your smartphone and ...
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5 Simple SEO Tips For Blogs

Posted on by sitemanager
#1) Beware of Duplicate Content While small amounts of duplicate content shouldn't have a negative impact on your blog's search ranking, large amounts can knock it several pages back. Blogs are particularly susceptible to duplicate content since they often publish the same content in multiple areas. In WordPress, for instance, content is published in categories, archives, tags, author, and the actual post URL. The bottom line is that you need to implement some type of measure (e.g. canonical URLs, plugins, noindex, etc.) to prevent duplicate content issues. #2) Publish New Content Regula...
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Security Vulnerability Spotted In Yoast SEO Plugin

Posted on by sitemanager
A critical security vulnerability has been identified on one of the most popular and widely used SEO plugins for the WordPress content management system (CMS). Yoast SEO suffers from an exploit which allows hackers to modify the server's database using a method called blind SQL injection. And failure to fix this vulnerability could have disastrous consequences. Yoast SEO features a wide range of tools designed to help webmasters and bloggers optimize their sites, including an XML sitemap generator, RSS enhancements, on-page content analysis, custom titles and meta tags, breadcrumbs, canonic...
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Free and Paid Ways To Promote Your Blog

Posted on by sitemanager
The amount of traffic a blog receives is a direct indication of its success. Blogs that receive hundreds or even thousands of unique visitors per day will rank in the search engines and generate more sales/leads than blogs with only a trickle of traffic -- it's just that simple. You can boost your blog's traffic by using free or paid promotional methods, which we're going to discuss further in this post. Free Blog Promotion Methods Blog commenting. Let me rephrase that, commenting on other blogs can be used to promote your own blog. Assuming the other blog allows commenters to include a...
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