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Category: Tools

Building an online business like most challenges has a lot to do with your SEO tools. Getting your motivation, frames of reference and expectations right will have more of an impact on your success than simply following perfect SEO “rules”.
TutorialsWordpress

How to avoid unnecessary CSS in WP and its impact on the performance

When you try to optimize your WP site speed, you need to remove unnecessary CSS. It delivers a faster page loading experience to the users and improves your site ranking in the Google page speed test.

We focus on using reliable and fast web hosts, enabling caching, optimizing images, and removing unused plugins to reduce server load, compressing javascript & CSS, using a content delivery network, etc.

But sometimes we can improve our page performance even more by avoiding those components which load as bloats. So, next in the list you can remove these CSS and JS files from WordPress to make your page feel smooth and fast. In this article, we will particularly focus on avoiding CSS that is not required.

Of course, there are great plugins to unload specific CSS from a page, such as WP Asset Clean Up, PurifyCSS, or Perfmatters to name a few. In this article, we will see how to do it with and without installing plugins on your WordPress site.

Before that, let’s go through…

What is unused CSS?

Unused CSS is the CSS code that loads regardless of its importance on a particular page. Some of these codes do their work to design page elements, however, the rest(most) of them are not required because a single page does not demand all the CSS codes written for the entire website.  

what is ununsed css

Most of the time almost 80% of the CSS files probably do not do anything on a single page. You can test it on your personal site’s homepage and observe how many CSS files are being used on the page against what is the total number of CSS files being served.  

Why does the plugin load all CSS?

During development, the theme developers need to write the theme in such a way that it will support all kinds of websites whether it’s a blog, forum, woocommerce site, and so on. It has a decent level of complexity because individual sites require various HTML elements along with their own adjustments.

These include our daily used elements:

  1. Search bar
  2. Navigation bar
  3. Widgets
  4. Icons
  5. Typography
  6. Comment box
  7. Social media section
  8. Author bio section
  9. Buttons
  10. Tables 

and the list goes on… 

For example, when a plugin is including the style.css file, it would be something like this

<style>
    @import url("style.css");
    p {
           color: blue;
           font-size: 16px;
        }
</style>

99% of the time developers put all the CSS codes in this style.css file. What it does is load all the codes from the style.css file regardless of the certain elements you are using on a certain page, and all the CSS will be served to your visitor’s browser. And for this, you have no right to blame the developers either.

What if we don’t serve these elements?

In your blog, you don’t need Woocommerce if you are not running an additional store, you don’t need a comment box either if you are using a third-party commenting system (Disqus for example). So these elements can certainly be avoided while loading the page. 

Again some elements are needed in certain pages although are not necessary for all pages on your site. A good example is the author box, it is a part of your blog posts however on pages such as the homepage, privacy-policy an author box is worthless. 

Avoiding this CSS will only improve your page performance because they are unused CSS and simply are not doing anything good. 

Note: It’s not just the elements of your theme, plugins do inject additional CSS into your pages. This another good reason for keeping the installed plugin count low on your site.

So, does it say you can remove all the unnecessary CSS from a WordPress page!

Why is removing CSS not an easy task?

Filtering out the unnecessary CSS is not an easy job to deal with, mainly because of dynamic classes. It’s a technology to load the function of a class at runtime. It allows loading CSS functions that are uncertain or not known before a web page starts loading.

The Javascript function of your site can load CSS classes as needed and it does not have to keep track of the name of classes before any one of these classes is loaded and run. This behavior makes it difficult to identify which part of the CSS will you unload and whether it is safe given missing CSS can break your page.

Also, extraction of used CSS is not easy like critical CSS because there might be js files that call a certain CSS class following a particular event of a button click. These CSS classes might be required for animation such as the “go-to top” button on your page. Being dynamically inside javascript these CSS classes are extremely difficult to find for removal.

Note: Critical path CSS which is an important style/CSS required to render above the fold contents. The rest of the required CSS is loaded in the footer section of the page to avoid render blocking. 

critical path css

How to find unused CSS and JS files on your pages

To remove or avoid using unnecessary CSS files we need to analyze those files first. The most comfortable way to do this is the coverage tab in the Chrome dev tool. To initiate it;

  • First, open the page you want to debug.
  • Press Ctrl + Shift + I to open the chrome dev tool.
  • Click on settings icon > select more tools > select coverage.
coverage tool
  • Then click on the reload button that appears below.
analyze-unused-css-using-developer-panel
  • Chrome will analyze your webpage and it will prepare a report where you can see the element’s URL, their types, total bytes, unused bytes, and Usage virtualization.

You need to focus on the Usage virtualization tab, mainly the correlation between used and unused bytes of page elements. Red color represents the number of unused bytes whereas blue color means the number of used bytes. 

Then you can select the URL to dig a little more to find out what exactly is being used and what are unused codes. You can see the unused and used code section in the same red-blue color representation. 

See this example below;

find unused css

(As we aim to look for unused CSS make sure you have selected the URL of a CSS file. In this example, I did select a JS file only for tutorial purposes)

How do we remove unnecessary CSS

There are multiple approaches to avoiding or reducing unnecessary CSS on your webpage. I will try to keep the hierarchy in reverse order of difficulty. 

1. You can avoid inline CSS styling in the WP editor

While creating a post we usually type in the default Gutenberg editor which is good because it allows you to create a beautiful looking well-organized page. But the block adds additional inline CSS to your page. 

Typically, if you keep your posts simple and do not use advanced Gutenberg styles then you can avoid the inline CSS by using the code editor. You can use HTML elements such as <p> for paragraphs, <H1>, <H2>, etc for headings, <li> for list, and so on.

For example;

inline css styling

You will be able to use the classic editor too once you paste the final copy of HTML into your WordPress code editor.

2. Generate critical CSS

Critical CSS can be beneficial to improve FCP (First Contentful Paint) where it only renders above the fold contents in the header and delays the loading of other styles to last. Ultimately this improves your page speed and resolves the render-blocking warning in the page performance testing tool.

More than removing the CSS from a page, delaying is the key mechanism here that avoids the loading of CSS during page load.

Various WordPress plugins can generate critical CSS for example Autoptimize, WProcket, etc. Alternatively, you can use Criticalcss.com to generate critical CSS in a couple of simple steps.

3. Use a CDN to deliver CSS files

CDN can drastically improve the content delivery speed because of its widely distributed network which reduces the distance between users and servers. Thus it can reduce server latency and download of CSS (not only just CSS though). Even if you have a lot of unused CSS files on your page CDN can deliver them in less than 50 ms.

So the use of CDN won’t necessarily remove unnecessary CSS from your page instead it will quickly deliver the complete CSS along with other contents in so much less time. You can use good CDNs such as MaxCDN, Sucuri, Cloudflare, etc.

4. Use the Asset Cleanup plugin to remove CSS files (plugin)

The asset Cleanup plugin marks it very easy for the users to unload CSS from your site. It has a free version available in the WordPress repository. All you need to install and activate it to find and unload CSS files in CSS/JS manager. 

Use the Asset Cleanup plugin to remove CSS files

I would recommend this plugin because you will find tips for each CSS file to choose whether you would want to unload or keep it. Also debugging your site becomes easy because it provides a simple enable/disable option and you will know which action is breaking the site and which one is improving the performance.

You can also open any published page and you will see a list of loaded CSS and JS files. These files are classified so it’s easy to go through them. Then you can see which are stylesheets not getting used on your page and then unload them sitewide or for individual pages.

Remember, sometimes CSS that seems unused on a particular page may still have work to do so removing them can break the page. The good news is you can immediately revert the change if unloading any CSS breaks a page.

unload assets

5. Use the Perfmatters plugin to remove CSS (plugin) 

Perfmatter is a premium plugin which is another great option when it comes to unloading js and CSS files from a page. It comes with a script manager that is super simple to use. You will have the ability to unload an entire plugin or individual js/CSS files from a page.

There is nothing to configure on your part. All you need to install the plugin, activate it and you can see the script manager on the WordPress toolbar for each page of your site. 

parfmatters-plugin

6. Create a plugin manually to remove CSS (and JS) files

This is a manual approach to removing unused CSS files and you will create a plugin that will keep the record of removed CSS. In WordPress, when you want to remove unnecessary CSS/JS there are four main functions you will require. 

  • wp_deregister_script($handle): Remove the registered scripts.
  • wp_dequeue_script($handle): Remove the scripts enqueued before.
  • wp_deregister_style($handle): Remove the registered stylesheet. 
  • wp_dequeue_style($handle): Remove the stylesheet that you enqueued before.

And other required functions to create the plugin are,

  • __return_false()
  • __return_empty_array()

You may also need conditional WordPress tags to remove unused CSS/JS files on a certain page. Now to create the plugin go to wp-content > plugins, create a new folder named “remove-resources” followed by the .php extension.

remove-assets

Add the following content to the file:

Now for example if you want to remove styles and scripts of the Jetpack plugin you need to add the following code into the remove-resources.php file.

Finally, go to the WordPress plugin manager and activate the remove resources plugin. It will remove the CSS you have mentioned in your newly created plugin.

Final words:

It’s not easy to remove every single bit of unused CSS from your site, and it’s almost impossible for us as a user of WordPress! But with the mentioned steps you will be able to reduce unnecessary CSS from a page and improve page speed + user experience. 

After reading the article share your thoughts with us in the comment section and don’t forget to share it. 

Cheers…

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Jon April 19, 2022 0 Comments
ToolsWordpress

How To Track Links And Buttons In Google Analytics

There is a general trend on the internet to track what the website users are doing on the page. In order to track activity such as clicks or how the users are moving one page to another on the website, the webmaster normally uses two types of methods called UTM and GTM tracking. 

Another scenario is button click tracking which is very popular and recommended to use if you have a WooCommerce website. However, button click tracking can be used in general websites to track conversions such as buttons containing affiliate links or any specific landing page. 

Now, if you are using a WordPress site you can set up the link and button tracking using plugins. Since configuring Google tag manager or UTM code in Google analytics event is a manual process, so to avoid any mistakes you can take advantage of two great plugins for WordPress.  

Generally, there are multiple plugins available to track links and you are free to choose any of them. Though, the two most recommended plugins with the best features are MonsterInsights and OptinMonster. That being said let’s dive in and see how to track links and buttons with these two plugins.

Track Links And Button With MosnterInsight

MonstarInsight is a powerful analytics tool that offers an in-depth report of user activity on your website. It will let you discover exactly how people came to the website, what are keywords bring them in, which site actually referred the visitors, and most importantly what the visitors are clicking on the website. These reports help the plugin to guide you to improve website performance as well.

MonsterInsights makes it so simple to connect your WordPress site with Google Analytics properly. Simply get your tracking ID from Google analytics and place it inside the settings of MonstarInsight to get the stats inside your WordPress admin. This procedure is much easier than manually adding analytics codes and configuring event tracking etc.

Let’s find out how it works:

#1. Install The Plugin From WordPress Repository

Install MonsterInsights (Google Analytics for WordPress) either via the WordPress.org plugin repository or by uploading the files to your server. Activate the plugin and it will take you to the setup wizard. 

#2. Configure Plugin With Setup Wizard

Proceed by describing your website category and click on continue. Remember these steps are highly recommended if you are using this tool for the first time and help you properly configure the plugin. Additionally, it allows you to avoid any misconfiguration. 

In the next step, MonsterInsights will ask you to connect your Google Analytics account so that all the links and button clicking events can be tracked by analytics.

After successfully connecting to your Analytics account it’s time to configure your plugins settings so that links & button tracking work well. If you have affiliate links on your website you can set the path for those links to get tracked. Also, you can mention the users who can see tracking reports.

After saving the settings MonsterInsights will be ready to use and it will deploy tracking and start collecting data which you can either view in Analytics events or the WordPress dashboard. Depending on your website size it will take 30 minutes to 24 hours to display data in Google Analytics.

#3. Advance Settings Of MonsterInsight

After finishing with the setup wizard you can take some advanced steps to make your report more appropriate like enabling the demographic and interest report of the links. 

Go to the insights on your WordPress dashboard menu and click on settings. Swap to the “engagement” tab to configure link attribution.

To track eCommerce links and buttons activity you need to look for the eCommerce tab inside the settings window. Enabling this feature requires a premium plan so that you can see click and conversion rate, and purchase button action with revenues.

With MonstarInsights you can bring your website tracking to a whole new level. After setting up this plugin you can go to Google Analytics and check the link & button clicking events under the real-time tab or behavior tab. 

… or you can use the MonsterInsight report inside the WordPress dashboard too. You can detect audience type, device, link categories, and clicks from the countries. 

Moreover, most clicked outbound links, incoming referral links can be found inside the plugin report.

Moving to the next plugin OptinMonster, let’s find out how we can track links and buttons with this plugin.

Track Buttons And Links With OptinMonster

This is another great option for tracking links, increasing leads, increase subscriptions from an all-in-one plugin. More than tracking and it provides you dynamic ability to make personalized engagement campaigns with the help of popup messages, floating bars, lightboxes, and other interactive elements.

In terms of link and button tracking, all you need to do is add the desired links and buttons into the optinmonster elements and let it track everything automatically. Most of the engaging part of this plugin is not only the interactive elements it has, instead the ability to track and predict visitor behavior makes this plugin a perfect choice for many professionals.

So let’s dive in and see how you can configure this plugin for link tracking.

#1. Install The Plugin From WordPress.org Repository

First of all search for the plugin OptinMonster – Best WordPress Pop-up Plugin and install/upload it to the website server. Activate the plugin.

#2. Configure The Plugin With OptinMonster Account

Now a new window will appear which will ask you to either create a new account or connect to your OptinMonster account using an API key.

Remember that OptinMonster is a premium plugin and you should have a plan before connecting your WordPress website. There are four plans which offer different types of features are called basic, plus, pro and growth. 

The UTM link tracking features are available only in Pro and Growth plans which costs around $29 and $49 per month accordingly. 

After creating your account go to the Optinmonster account and create a new API key inside the API dashboard.

In the next step copy your API key and paste it inside the API credentials settings of the WordPress plugin and click on connect.

When your website is successfully connected with the OptinMonster account you will see a new tab called Optin above the “API credentials”. Go there and click on refresh to appear all your Optins in the WordPress plugin.

#3. Creating Optin And Track It With Analytics

With conversion elements like lightbox subscription, floating bar, and closing popups OptinMonster does a great job to get more returning traffic and convert them to leads & customers. At the same time, it allows you to track all the activity on these elements with Google analytics or optinmonster report. 

Setting up the conversion analytics with optinmonster is pretty easy. Craft your elements, publish them, connect to Google analytics then track all your growth. 

Create any pop-up or buttons in the OptinMonster account and then go to the analytics. To configure your Google Analytics account click on add new account and generate the authorization code. This process is simple and should not give you any headache while setting it up. 

You can also set an account label to quickly identify it inside your Analytics account. 

In the Optin monster site report you can track the highest conversion pages with their URL, Leads, and click conversion percentage. The graphical presentation makes it easier to determine where you need to improve and where everything is going very well. 

Moreover, you can track email subscription buttons click by integrating your account with popular email marketing tools like Aweber, MailChimp, Getresponse, and much more. So optinmonster is a great tool if you really want to scale your business depending on live and practical stats.

Final Words:

Though there are a number of great WordPress plugins for creating and tracking your website activities OptinMonster and MonsterInsight have done the best job which really improves your site performance. While this post just scratches the exterior of these two plugins, it’s got the decision point you need to take for advancing towards a perfect tracking campaigning and taking your initial strategy to the next level.

With the link and button tracking, you see your site internally and visualize your next decision perfectly which would not be possible without tracking and getting the reports. And in my sight, Optinmonster and MonsterInsigt have done everything right for a WordPress site owner to save lots of time understanding the things of Google analytics so that they can focus more on the outcome.

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Jon April 5, 2022 0 Comments
MindsetToolsWordpress

What to do When a WordPress Website is Hacked!

A hacked WordPress site causes panic. It’s one of the most frustrating experiences a site owner can face. In this post, I will help you with how to detect whether a WordPress site is hacked or not along with steps to clean your site.

There will be a few tips, in the end, to prevent your WordPress site from being hacked in the future.

How to identify if your WordPress site is hacked?

When your site is hacked it will start behaving as it should not. Generally, a WordPress site can behave strangely without getting hacked. These issues are mainly related to internal settings and plugins causing errors. 

For example, your caching plugin can break your site’s layout, misconfiguration of the SEO plugin can result in 403 errors, a white screen because of code conflicts, and many more. But these are not necessarily the signs that a site got hacked. 

Let’s take a look at some signs you should be careful with that could be indicating your site is hacked.

  • First and foremost, you can’t log in to your site.
  • You haven’t done anything to your site recently but you can identify some changes. (It can be your homepage is replaced by a new page or  added new content)
  • The browser gives you a warning when you try to visit your site.
  • Google gives a warning that this site might be hacked.
  • Your site is redirecting visitors to other sites.
  • Your hosting provider has informed you about unusual activity.
  • If you are using a security plugin then you might receive a warning from it as well.

Now let’s look at these events in brief:

1. You can’t log in

wordpress-login

Sometimes you can’t log in to your WordPress admin dashboard because of a wrong password or because you have changed your login URL previously. While this is a potential warning of your site is hacked you should not be too quick to consider it. Rather try to reset the password and see if that will resolve your login problem.

If you can’t reset your password that can be a warning sign. Although, being able to reset the admin password doesn’t prove that your site is safe or not hacked. You will have to examine more to identify such potential threats.  

The reason why you may not be able to log in once your site is hacked is the hacker either changed your password or removed the user from WordPress. Sometimes they can replace the default login address i.e /wp-admin with something else. If so the site will give a 404 error when you try to visit this address.

2. Your site is changed 

If you notice that your site looks different whether it’s the homepage or your website theme without your acknowledgment then it can be a huge sign that someone has accessed your site without permission.

These kinds of changes don’t have to be something that can be spotted easily. Little changes like adding suspicious content, links to spammy or bad sites, and hidden links mean your site could have been hacked.

However, changes like theme or frontpage layout can be caused accidentally when you are updating your theme, activating a pre-built design for your site. I would rather recommend using themes from trustworthy & reputable sources. 

3. Browser warns the visitors the site may not be secure

site connection is insecure

Check your site on visitor’s mode and if you get a warning that the site is not safe it could be a likely warning that your site has been hacked. This can also happen due to a plugin or themes issue with SSL. 

In this case, try removing/deactivating the plugins to check whether that resolves the issue as well as check your domain SSL status. If that doesn’t help you should be careful and follow the advice given with the browser warning to diagnose the issue.

4. Search engine’s site hacked warning 

Another way to know your site is hacked is through the warning on Google’s search result. Google will display a warning message “the site may be hacked” on SERP under your site or page URL. If you are getting this kind of result lately, then there is a possibility that your sitemap is hacked.

this site might be hacked

A hacked sitemap or 403 error can prevent Google from crawling the website or at least it will affect the way Google crawled a site. It can be more than just a sitemap hack. You will need to diagnose and find out the origin of this problem.

5. The site is redirecting to external pages

can redirect to malicious page

If your site is redirecting to pages or sites that are not related to your contents, contain spammy or adult ads that could be a sign your site has been hacked. 

Hackers will probably add scripts or redirect rules which will take the visitors to other sites as soon as they visit yours. This can raise a serious caution in visitors’ minds while they are being taken to the pages they are not keen to visit. 

Such behavior not only harms your site reputation but also you will notice a significant downfall in every positive thing on your site, whether that be your daily visits, user engagement, revenue, etc.

6. Warning from your security plugin

Security plugins like Wordfence constantly track the activity on your site. You should have a robust security plugin that protects your site and keeps you informed of all kinds of suspicious activities so that you know what is going on in the backend.

If you have a security plugin then it should notify you about recent unusual activities or if someone is trying to access your site. Once you get informed about such threats regardless if the site is hacked or someone is trying to do so, you can take necessary precautions to protect your site.

Nevertheless, a warning email from your security plugin means bad activities are going on behind and might be a crucial sign of your site being hacked.

7.  Warning on your hosting panel

A reputed hosting service has inbuilt tools to monitor your website activities and report if illegal actions are recorded. You will also find a virus scanner to scan your website files for infected files providing backdoor access to the hackers.

Make sure you use a reputed hosting service and keep a close eye on the hosting’s site activity log. If you find any warning in there it could be a sign that someone is hiddenly working on your site. 

Now you know the behaviors that warn about a site that has been potentially hacked, let’s find out what you need to do to fix your hacked site and get it back to the ideal state.

WordPress site hacked: What should I do next?

Once you confirm your site is hacked, you will need to take the following steps to clean your site and get it back to its ideal state. You might not have to follow all the steps mentioned below as you might be able to fix your site at any stage of the following. 

Step 1: Don’t panic

don't panic

As I mentioned above a hacked site is the worst thing a webmaster can face, but the first key to progressing towards a solution is to stay calm. You do not need to be frightened in such a situation, instead maintain a clear mind to help yourself to proceed into the diagnosis part.

Since the site is still visible to the audience, to reduce the damage and bad impact consider putting the site into maintenance mode and relax a little bit. You can simply use a WordPress maintenance mode plugin to do that, or if you use Cloudflare then activate the under attack/development mode.

Steps to active maintenance mode in WordPress: 

  1. Log in to your WordPress dashboard (if the site is accessible)
  2. Go to plugins > add a new plugin.
  3. Install a maintenance mode plugin.
  4. Activate the plugin and set the maintenance mode to at least 24 hours.

Once the visitors can’t see what’s going on behind your site, you can take your steps one by one carefully. If you can’t access your site then browse it as a visitor mode to see whether the contents such as posts and images are appearing properly or not. If yes, you need to do a backup job from your cPanel or hosting dashboard. We will go to this step later in this article.

Step 2: Reset the password

have a strong password

Again this step requires the ability to access your site after being hacked. If you can access then it’s important to change the password of all user accounts since you don’t know which account is being used to access your site. If you have multiple users working on your site ask all of them to reset their passwords.

Once the user passwords are modified, next change your hosting password, database password as well as SFTP password. 

Step 3: Remove users

remove users from your wordpress site

If you find any user account on your WordPress site that you do not acknowledge it’s important to remove such accounts. Such accounts could be used by hackers to access your site and perform illegal activities. 

You can either remove them right away or confirm with your co-administrators whether they have recently changed their account details or not before finally deleting suspicious accounts. 

To remove a user from your WordPress site:

  1. On the WordPress dashboard expand users.
  2. Then click on all users.
  3. Check if you can find any user account under admin access that is out of your acknowledgment. 
  4. To remove a user hover on the user row and click on the delete option.

Step 4: Update plugins and themes

After removing suspicious users next you need to make sure that all the themes and plugins are up to date. Themes and plugins updates are frequently released by the developers to fix security issues and improve protection.

If you are using any plugin that is outdated or not compatible with your WordPress version try to get rid of such plugins if alternative and updated plugins are available. 

This step is really important because in case your site is misbehaving because of an outdated plugin or theme then you will be able to resolve your issue by installing the latest updates or an alternative. 

Updating a plugin in WordPress is pretty simple. All you have to open the installed plugins page and update the plugins in bulk or one by one. As for themes, go to Appearance > themes and update your currently installed themes.

Another recommendation, do not to keep hold of unnecessary themes unless you are planning to use them in the future. Although, the necessity of doing so is low in priority and entirely depends on your consideration. 

Step 5: Reinstall plugins and themes

reinstall plugins

Apart from updating the plugins & themes, you can check your site status by uninstalling the active plugins and themes. Updating a theme or plugin still can hold bad codes into it that didn’t catch the developer’s attention. 

If you are unsure about whether a plugin & theme is causing this problem or being the backdoor access provider then you should debug them at this point. Make sure to uninstall the plugins first and then see the site’s status. If deactivating/uninstalling the plugins bring your site back to an idle state then activate or reinstall the plugins one by one. Check your site’s status after every plugin activation. This way you can find out which plugin might act as a threat to your site. The same procedure applies to the theme diagnosis too.

Step 6: Remove unwanted files

To find out if there’s any file in your WordPress installation that shouldn’t be present install a security plugin like WordFence or use your hosting site scanner. This kind of tool will scan all the files in your hosting directory and inform you about any potentially infected files.

Run a scan and if you notice any such files in the scan result remove that file from your directory. It makes more sense to have a backup of your site before removing the file as well as analyze the file which you are about to remove to replace it with a fresher copy later.

Step 7: Clean out the database 

database cleanup

Doesn’t necessarily a way for the hacker to access the site but consider cleaning the database to remove unwanted or bloat entries. This will not only make your database take lesser space but also remove unnecessary rows and related data making your site load faster.

Step 8: Reinstall WordPress

reinstall wordpress

This step is necessary when you can’t access your site to make the changes we have discussed earlier. Make sure your site has the contents and no prior damage has been made to the structure of the site before processing these steps.

First, you need to take a backup of your database and wp-content folder using your cPanel or FTP client. Once you do that, go ahead and reinstall WordPress using the inbuilt installer. 

When WordPress installation is complete, now upload the backup contents into your new WordPress installation and configure or import the database backup into the new WP installation.

After that load your site and try accessing your site. In case the issue occurred because of a damaged WordPress installation then it should be solved now. Instead, use the database editor tool to find and fix your user account access. Once you do that you should be able to access your site in the usual way. 

Wrapping it up:

Having your website hacked means your site is losing user attraction as well as control over it. This could bring a severe impact on your business. So getting it fixed as soon as possible is important. 

I believe the above steps will help you to head in the right direction during such a bad situation. Let us know if you find this article helpful and do not forget to mention any steps you think should be mentioned so that it becomes more resourceful for the readers.

Looking forward to the next… cheers.

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Jon April 5, 2022 0 Comments
ContentTools

Compose.ly Review

Composely Review

In this article, we’re reviewing another content writing service for you to consider – Compose.ly. Compose.ly boasts high-quality written content for your business, written by experienced writers, along with comprehensive SEO optimization. But can they back up these claims? Let’s check it out.

What is Compose.ly?

compose

First thing’s first, what does Compose.ly offer? Compose.ly doesn’t have a service offering that is all that different from most freelance writing services. Their product description is what you’d expect from a custom writing service. Essentially, they work with a vast network of experienced writers to provide all sorts of writing services depending on your business’s needs. Everything from copywriting, to ghostwriting, to blogging, to eBooks, Content.ly can handle it. They offer competitive subscription rates, with the option to be as hands-on or hands-off as you want. They also offer dedicated SEO services, although these services cost extra.

Compose.ly Review

Now that we’ve run through the basics of Compose.ly’s platform, let’s get to the real deal. What do we think of Compose.ly?

Pros

The Writing Team: As you can imagine, the quality of the writing you’ll receive from a content writing service is dependent on the quality of the writers, or content specialists. Compose.ly offers fair rates to its writers when stacked against its competition, which helps them attract quality writers. In fact, Compose.ly boasts that they accept less than 1% of the writers who apply for their service.

They also employ writers with a wide range of specializations. They have writers who have experience in just about any topic, from sports to tech to finance and more.

SEO Focus: Unlike many competing content specialists, Compose.ly has a designated focus on delivering SEO friendly content. This was refreshing to see, as many competing content services have a noticeable lack of emphasis on the essential marketing tool. Compose.ly is vague about their SEO techniques, but they claim all their content is SEO edited, with an emphasis on keyword research and optimization. It’s not what you’d expect from a dedicated SEO agency, but it’s pretty good for the price point.

Competitive Pricing: Compared to competing content writing services, Compose.ly’s pricing is competitive. It’s not the cheapest service out there, but it’s not the most expensive either. Regardless, it’s a fair price for what you get from the service. In-House Team of Managers: Unlike many other content services which are fully remote or fully automated, Compose.ly actually has an in-house team of project managers to handle the day-to-day operations of the business. Their in-house team of “content marketing pros” are responsible for working with businesses to establish a content plan, to match projects to writers, customer service, and more. This team ensures that the workflow is smooth and consistent, so you can expect your projects to be completed on-time and up-to-standard.

Cons

SEO is Lacking Compared to An Agency: On its home page, Compose.ly brags they are 5 times cheaper than an SEO agency. We think this is an unfair comparison, because an SEO agency offers SEO services which are much more in-depth than what you can expect from Compose.ly. While Compose.ly does produce reliable, high-quality content, their SEO practices pale in comparison to an in-depth agency service.

We think Compose.ly would be better to have not made this comparison in the first place, because they are setting unrealistic expectations for what they actually offer. They do offer basic SEO optimization and keyword research for their content, but it’s not what you’d find at an agency. Writer Quality Varies:  As with any content writing service, some writers are better than others. It’s a simple fact of the industry. While Compose.ly does vet their writers extensively, you can still expect quality to vary from project to project. Luckily, Compose.ly offers free edits and re-writes for all of their content.

What Did We Think of Compose.ly?

Overall, we liked Compose.ly. It’s a pretty standard service offering in this competitive industry, but it’s definitely one of the “higher tier” content writing services. Their SEO focus, combined with their intensive vetting process for their writers, means you can expect consistent, high-quality content from each order. On top of this, their in-house team keeps everything running smoothly, and works with you to make a clear, actionable content marketing plan. Turnaround is quick and prices are competitive.

We do think that Compose.ly overplays their SEO techniques a bit, and the choice to compare themselves with SEO agencies seems extreme. Regardless, they do perform simple SEO optimizations on any piece of content they put out, which is more than you can say about a lot of competing content services. Overall, we liked Compose.ly. They’re a standardized content writing service. They didn’t necessarily blow us away in any area, but what they do, they do well, and the emphasis on quality is real.

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Jon September 8, 2021 0 Comments
ContentTools

5 Websites Like Textbroker

In this article, we’re running down the top alternatives to one of the most popular content writing services – Textbroker. Textbroker advertises itself as an affordable writing website that offers quality content, but it’s developed a reputation for a somewhat shaky level of quality. For this reason, we’ve created a list of alternatives for you to consider.

What is Textbroker?

textbroker

If you aren’t familiar with Textbroker, we’ll quickly explain the service.

Textbroker is one of the oldest “content mills” around. Textbroker is a content writing service that offers custom content for business and website owners. Through a freelance platform, the Textbroker team assigns writers to create website content, like blogging, newsletters, products reviews, etc. However, the fact of the matter is that Textbroker works with thousands of writers, which means there is constant content without much supervision or quality assurance. As a result, some have found it increasingly difficult to depend on the quality of written content they receive from Textbroker.

It also doesn’t help that Textbroker consistently positions themselves as one of the “most affordable” content creation services. In other words, a freelance job on Textbroker won’t pay an experienced writer as much as their competing services, which makes it difficult for Textbroker to attract quality writers. And as a business owner looking for quality writers to create website content, you get what you pay for, as the saying goes. For these reasons, many are starting to look elsewhere for content creation. Here are some of our top picks:

Websites Like Textbroker

Writer Access

writeraccess

Writer Access is very similar to Textbroker in many ways. They have a large pool of writers with complex expertise, and they are able to match these writers with your business’s content requirements. Articles are written with your business’s goals in mind, and optimized for SEO. So far, it sounds a lot like your typical content service. The difference with Writer Access is the quality of their writers. Simply put, Writer Access pays better than many competing content services. Writers are paid based on experience level, but it typically is much more than competing content services. Additionally, Writer Access takes a smaller portion of the profits themselves. The result is higher quality writing for competitive prices. Definitely one of our top recommendations.

Content Refined

contentrefined

If you’re looking for a more personalized content creation experience, there’s Content Refined. Content Refined offers personalized content services tailored to your business, and each piece is optimized for SEO – including keyword optimization and relevance. Content Refined provides more individualized service than Textbroker. Content Refined pairs you with a project manager who will work with you to define your business’s goals, and help you create a custom content plan for meeting these goals. From there, they’ll assign the work to a writer well-versed in the subject matter. Content Refined has an extensive editing process, which ensures that the work is relevant, readable, and optimized for SEO.

Upwork

upwork

Upwork is more of a “general freelance marketplace” than a standard content service. You can find all sorts of talent on Upwork, but you’ll have to be specific about it. There are many content writers of various disciplines, and each writer can set their own hourly rate.

If you’re looking to get a writing project completed on Upwork, you’ll submit a proposal, with a detailed explanation of what you want done. Then, freelance professionals can submit an application.

Our recommendation is to be prepared to pay if you want quality. There are many fantastic writers on Upwork, but they won’t come cheap. If you want a serious professional, you need to pay professional rates. Freelance professionals on Upwork are given “ratings” by past clients, so it’s not difficult to tell who the most reliable writers are. Upwork is also ideal for other sorts of freelance projects, including design, artwork, marketing materials, ad copy, and much more.

Scripted

scripted

Scripted is another site that seems to be (no surprise here) quite similar to most of the other sites on this list. Once again, the difference comes down to the quality of writers. Scripted carefully vets its writers, and pays them very competitive rates. The result is a group of writers who are capable of writing quality stuff. As a client, all you need to do is join Scripted, tell them what you’re looking for (goals, CTAs, etc.), and they’ll use their SmartMatch system to pair you up with a writer to handle your work. It’s all pretty streamlined and intuitive, and we’ve been happy with the results. They’re trusted by some pretty major brands, including Adidas, LinkedIn, and IBM.

Verblio

verblio

Verblio has a rather unique setup in that, once a writer is “vetted” by the service, they are free to take on just about any proposal submitted by a client. However, other writers can also choose to handle the same proposals, and the client only needs to accept one. In essence, writers “compete” for your business on Verblio. You review the submissions, and choose the ones you like best. If you particularly like the work of a certain writer, you can get in touch and work on more projects going forward. There’s a lot of quality writing to be found on Verblio if you’re willing to dig for it. So long as you don’t mind reviewing multiple submissions at a time, you’ll be happy with the quality of the work you get.

Making Your Choice

As you can see, there are many options at your disposal. Our top recommendation is to fully outline your content needs and business goals before you begin. You can’t buy proper content for your business if you’re unsure the type of content you are looking for. You need to know your business’s target market, what you’re trying to achieve with your content, and how you want these messages communicated. You won’t be satisfied with any content service if you are unable to communicate what you are looking for.

And remember, quality doesn’t come cheap. If a service looks too good to be true, it likely is. If the content service isn’t offering fair compensation, then the content you receive will be lacking in quality.   That being said, we hope we’ve made this process easier for you going forward! There are many great choices out there for quality content, you just need to know where to look.

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Jon September 8, 2021 0 Comments
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