May 9, 201010

When Themes Go Wild – Importance of Using a Properly Coded WordPress Theme

Categories: WordPress Theme, Wordpress
When Themes Go Wild – Importance of Using a Properly Coded WordPress Theme
It is surprising to see how many of my customers/users do not use a properly coded WordPress theme. Using a properly coded theme on a WordPress powered site is very important without any doubt. So I wanted to quickly make a blog post to highlight a few points to make sure you don’t go down the path of using a wrong WordPress theme only to regret it later. Remember, just because a theme looks good to the naked eye does not mean it has been properly coded. Why is It Important to Have a Proper Theme? Before I talk about some of the main points, here is the summary – The amount of time you will be spending to fix issues that all stem from the bad theme is just not worth it! Issues with WordPress Plugins It is common to have issues with WordPress plugins that uses JavaScript for example to do various things when your theme is poorly coded. So you will think that the problem is with the plugin but actually the theme is the true culprit here. Example1: I have had many clients who complained about the WordPress Simple Shopping Cart’s variation not working properly on their site. After I finished my ...
Apr 27, 201022

Are You Using an Autoresponder and Email Marketing Software?

Categories: Online Marketing, Web development
Are You Using an Autoresponder and Email Marketing Software?
We get a lot of autoresponder and email marketing software related questions here at Tips and Tricks HQ since the WP eStore plugin has some autoresponder integration options. In this article I have covered the answers to the following basic questions around autoresponders and email marketing software: What is an autoresponder? Should I be using an autoresponder service? How to get the most out of an autoresponder and email marketing software? Which autoresponder service should I use? What is an Autoresponder? An autoresponder is a software that can be used to send emails to people automatically. It can also respond to an email that is sent to it. This allows individuals and businesses to react to emails and questions without human intervention. A simple example of an autoresponder is when you go on vacation from work and you set up an automatic response letting people know you will be out of the office. Autoresponders are often used as a marketing tool for online businesses. With autoresponders you compose some pre-written emails that you want sent out to your customers (e.g. instructions after they have purchased a product, news about upcoming product releases and so on). You can specify when you want these ...
Apr 13, 201012

Site Speed is Now a Search Ranking Factor for Google Search

Categories: Site Optimization Tips, Web development
Site Speed is Now a Search Ranking Factor for Google Search
Google has officially made site speed one of the factors for search rank (there are over 200 ranking factors). So now is a good time to read the WordPress site optimization tips post and put some plan of action in place. Now, you have no reason to go into a panic mode just yet. Optimizing your site for better performance is always a good thing from a usability point of view but Google has indicated that only about 1% of search queries and even fewer search results will be affected from this change at this stage. There are several research statistics that show that decreasing your site load time on pages leads to an increase in sales which we all want. There are three things to take away from what Google is doing. Speeding up your website is a good general practice. Think about how many times you have waited for a site to load. When the site takes too long you usually end up closing the browser and moving on. This change will have a small impact on most sites, so don't panic. Small constructive changes can have a direct impact on improving your site and user experience. Instead of wasting time where it ...
Apr 6, 20106

Web Analytics 101 – Learn Which Analytics Data You Should be Using

Categories: Site Optimization Tips, Web development
Web Analytics 101 – Learn Which Analytics Data You Should be Using
If you are running a small website, chances are you've already heard of Web Analytics. If you haven't, it is a tool for measuring traffic of your website. It provides data on the number of visitors, page views etc to gauge the popularity of the site. For many people, using analytics is limited to watching how many more visitors have come to the site, and repeating the figures to potential advertisers. If used smartly, analytics is also a marketing tool, an e-commerce tracker, an ad tool, and the list goes on. In this article, we'll have a look at basic ways to use the analytics. Choosing an Analytics Software First of all, you need to have an analytics software set up for your website, which mostly means signing up for an account of an analytics provider, and adding a few lines of javascript code to your pages. Google Analytics is the most widely used analytics tool. It's also free and integrating it in a WordPress site is just a matter of adding a plugin to your site! If you like to have choices, you can search the Internet looking for some other alternative solutions. This article lists a number of analytics software ...
Mar 24, 201044

WP CSV to Database Plugin – Import Excel file content into WordPress database (MySQL)

Categories: Wordpress Plugin
WP CSV to Database Plugin – Import Excel file content into WordPress database (MySQL)
WP CSV to Database plugin allows you to insert CSV file content into WordPress database. Useful when you want to bulk upload data from your CSV file (e.g. product details) to the WordPress database (MySQL) in one go. If you didn't know what a  CSV file is then you can learn more from Wikipedia. You can use Microsoft Excel to enter all your data and then save the file as a CSV file. Many of my WordPress Shopping Cart users have requested me to add an option so that they can bulk upload their product details into the database from a CSV file (really useful when you have hundreds of products). Hopefully this plugin will satisfy that need and in addition you will be able to use it to bulk upload any data into your WordPress database to save you time and effort. Installation of the Plugin Unzip and Upload the folder 'wp-csv-to-db' to the '/wp-content/plugins/' directory Activate the plugin through the 'Plugins' menu in WordPress Usage of the Plugin Access the plugin's User Interface in the WordPress dashboard under the "Settings" menu after installation and do the following: Specify the general options. Specify the input file (Upload the CSV file or specify the location of a pre-uploaded CSV ...
Mar 23, 201010

WordPress Affiliate Mailer Plugin

Categories: Wordpress Plugin
WordPress Affiliate Mailer Plugin
This is a quick post to let the users of the WordPress Affiliate Software know that the developer over at www.rapidsuccesspartners.com have developed a useful little plugin that extends the functionality of the WP Affiliate Platform plugin. Basically, if you want to send emails to all your affiliates then the only option the affiliate platform offers at the moment is to get an email list (comma separated) of all your affiliates from the "Affiliate Emails" tab and use your email management software to do the actual sending of the email. So, if you want to send emails to your affiliates from the WordPress dashboard then you can download this WP Affiliate Mailer plugin and use it. I hope this will be of some use to some of the users who have requested me to include a similar feature in the product.
Mar 15, 201011

How to Create and use Custom Page Template in WordPress to Create a Sales Page

Categories: Make Money, Shop Admin Tips, Wordpress
How to Create and use Custom Page Template in WordPress to Create a Sales Page
I received the following question today in the forum: "For certain sales pages on my site I do not want to have the distraction of the sidebar items. Is there a way to have a second page template without a sidebar for this purpose?" Having an optimized sales/landing page does help with sales conversion and it is really easy to create a custom sales/landing page in WordPress. Any readers of this site using the WordPress Simple Shopping cart or WordPress eStore or the WordPress Membership Plugin are most likely selling something online. In this article I have explained how you can create a custom sales page easily in WordPress and use it to optimize your sales conversion. How do You Create a Custom Sales Page in WordPress? The answer is custom WordPress page template. Your WordPress theme has a file called "page.php". When you create a WordPress page, by default it uses this "page.php" template file which makes the page look a certain way. You can easily create another template file which has a different look/structure and use that template file for a particular page. Say for example, the default "page.php" file displays the page with "header", "body", "sidebar" and "footer". You can create a ...
Mar 6, 20105

Basic Guide to CSS

Categories: CSS
Basic Guide to CSS
Many people want to make simple CSS changes but do not know where to start or are afraid that they will change the wrong thing. As a result of this I get asked a lot of CSS related questions from new WordPress users. The fact is that learning CSS is not really that hard. Once you get a hang of the basics, you can quickly become an advanced CSS user if you keep playing around with it. In this article I have explained how to do simple CSS modifications, hopefully it will be of some help to some of you. Let's get started. First, you should make a back up copy of CSS files you are going to modify. You should do this with any file you plan on modifying incase something goes wrong, you can always revert back to the version you know works properly. What is CSS "Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used to describe the presentation semantics (that is, the look and formatting) of a document written in a markup language. It's most common application is to style web pages written in HTML and XHTML, but the language can be applied to any kind of XML ...
Feb 18, 20106

Shop Admin Tips – Simple Upsell and Cross sell Techniques that I Use

Categories: Shop Admin Tips
Shop Admin Tips – Simple Upsell and Cross sell Techniques that I Use
In this article I will share a few simple upselling tips that I personally use without irritating the customer and have had success with. Please note that my goal with upselling is not to trick a customer into buying something or sell them some junk. My aim is to show the customer additional products or services that might better meet their needs or will add value to the product that they are already buying. It's a way of demonstrating that I am aware of my customer's needs and care about their satisfaction. What is Upselling? "Upselling is a sales technique whereby a salesperson induces the customer to purchase more expensive items, upgrades, or other add-ons in an attempt to make a more profitable sale. Upselling usually involves marketing more profitable services or products, but upselling can also be simply exposing the customer to other options he or she may not have considered previously." - Wikipedia 1. Place Offers on the Checkout Page There are many places on your website where you can upsell. The most common would be the view cart/checkout page. Visitors who come to your checkout page are potential buyers and most likely have the credit card ready. So it is a lot ...
Jan 25, 20109

10 Common HTML Mistakes to Avoid

Categories: Web development
10 Common HTML Mistakes to Avoid
The following is a list of common HTML mark up mistakes made by front end developers. Whether you are a newbie web designer, or a programmer who wants to try his hands in UI designing, try to avoid these mistakes. 1. Don't place Block elements within Inline elements An HTML element is displayed as Block or as Inline by default. Block elements, such as divs and paragraphs, make up the structure of the document. Inline elements reside in these blocks, such as anchor and span tags. So you should never put blocks inside inline elements. Wrong: <a href="#"><h2>Block inside Inline</h2></a> Right: <h2><a href="#">Inline inside Block</a></h2> 2. Always have the alt attribute for image tags The ALT attribute is a required one for IMG tags, it describes the context of the image. It helps your user on a screen reader or with a slow connection to decide whether or not the image is important. It also makes the web crawler index your contents better. If the images is just for show, use an empty ALT attribute like alt="" Wrong: <img src="profilepic.jpeg"/> Right: <img src="profilepic.jpeg" alt="Profile pic of the user"/> 3. Don't use line breaks to show a list If you wan't to show a list of things in bulleted or numbered ...
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