Do you know what the most popular downloaded plugin on WP is?
….And the Winner is:
So why on Earth is Google XML Sitemaps so dang popular anyway? With over 15,000,000 downloads, it is obvious this plugin is more than mainstream. That is alot of downloads.
The Reason It Is So Popular
It is super popular because it runs a background scan of your webpage and all of its contents, like how you would do a quick inventory of what is in your desk drawer or pantry. The main idea is that this plugin will help Search Engines like Yahoo, Bing, Google, and other crawlers on the ‘net find your site easier. Think of a Bingo machine with all those balls flying around, except this machine is a Search Engine, and when it comes to finding a website, the better your Index is, the less chaos there is in the Bingo Ball machine, giving your site a much better chance of getting noticed.
Another reason why this is so popular is because of the complexity to map out an .xml file without this plugin. If you were to do it manually, you would have to spend a lot of time and effort making all the ins and outs of the files with todays operating systems, unless you were able to export the directory lists into Notepad or TextEditor and then save as an .xml file. The key to doing this is to ensure that the file names in the export file are the same as those listed in the Web directory.
It is safe to say that this plugin will remain popular, as it has established itself as the leader, and is more than twice as popular as the next best. So when you get one of our amazing premium themes, or our package deal, make sure to get this plugin going for your site right away so you can start to establish some presence on the web search engines.
Do you know that you can add a poll directly into your posts on WordPress? This is an extra-cool functionality of WordPress because it allows for single-sign-on to external polling sites, which calculate the responses for you, so you can have all the information you need for your poll.
Engage Your Audience
Polls are a neat way to get feedback from your audience with a quick question. The question is usually a Multiple Choice Answer, and can be designed through pre-coding, so that you can make a report based on the outcomes of the Poll. When you want to run a story, get market information, or just engage your audience, a Poll can be a fun and neat way to do it.
WP-Polls
Poll-Daddy
Adding a Poll to any of our themes can be as easy as following the simple Plugin instructions found when you download or activiate a Poll. It can be interesting to have a Poll every week, or just put a random question to your viewers and see if you get any bites.
Polls are plugins, and if you search in the Plugins area of the Dashboard on the left of your screen, then the Plugin Directory will retrieve anything that is Tagged with a Poll. So that should be enough to get you started engaging your audience in a new way, and remember, if you want or need some of the best premium themes, buy one of our affordable packages now.
Sometimes you can forget how to install a new theme if you haven’t done it in awhile, or if it is your first time, then you may not know what to do. Installing a new theme can be exciting, and add a lot of new life to your webpage. Whether you are running a business website or personal page, a new theme will add a touch of personality to your new development.
With our packages, we have plenty of business and premium themes, that are good for beginners and advanced because of the diverse portfolio that it encompasses. There are multiple ways to install new themes, often, if you are in your dashboard, you can just automatically install and activate any new theme in the Themes section. Since the Themes provided for free are often great-looking at face value, many users know that it is better to go with premium packages such as ours because of our dedicated support team, and Theme coding analysts who have expert knowledge of every theme in the package. Other reasons are partially due to the problem of the free themes not being able to do what they offer. This can be because of poor maintenance, or outdated bugs that may not have been fixed.
As many programmers and coders know, the best themes are not those that look the best, but those that perform and operate with little to no maintenance. When you are building your theme, are you always having to fix the little things? Nothing can be more difficult than working on a site only to have it bug out and do all sorts of funky stuff. This can happen most easily when amateurs go and try to edit the index.php file.
It is best to leave the raw editing for the professionals, but if you are keen, and can follow instructions, many times shortcode and other options for theme adjustments can be implemented. In fact, many widgets and plugins only operate in Shortcode format, rather than many of the others, which plugin directly to the WP CMS.
It is going to be interesting to see how the next generation of interplatform-connectivity grows in 2015! Are you excited to see even more great things WordPress can do?
Are you into streamlining your internet publishing? Do you manage multiple sites? When you want to get your sites updated, there are various ways to go about doing it, but Infinite can be a beam in the dark shedding plenty of light on how you can be more effective as a site manager.
InfiniteWP- Designed as an app for one of the best CMS Publishing Systems Ever! (WP) — Use it as a Plugin to manage multiple sites.
Here’s how it works:
*One Master Login
*One-Click Updates
*Instant Backup and Restore
*Bulk Manage Plugins and Themes
With over 800,000 downloads, and counting, the InfiniteWP Multiple Site Manager is becoming more and more popular.
What Is The DNS?
The DNS is the Domain Name Server, and is the backbone that provides the data for your websites. When you want to have more than one website showcase your data, then you can get it to point to another website. This is also known as domain forwarding. You may have read a post from last week’s blog about domain forwarding, but this post has a few extra details on editing the DNS rather than on domain parking, which was one of the primary discussion topics.
The best thing about editing the DNS is that you can have the ability to have it point to any location on the internet! This can be beneficial for people who use mirror sites and other domain re-routing. The Codex writes:
START BLOCKQUOTE:
Adding Custom DNS Records
At the top of the Edit DNS page, you’ll see three records that are set in place by default. These records will be followed by a “handled by WordPress.com” message. In order for your domain to work correctly, you’ll need to leave those in place. If you need to add separate DNS records, you’ll want to add them in addition to the preset records.
Custom DNS records are comprised of several pieces of information that have to be entered in the correct order. The actual information required depends on the type of record you are trying to add.
For example, a domain’s MX Record directs your emails to the right place. Using a custom MX record, you can point any email on your domain to a third-party email provider. This will allow you to create email addresses using your custom domain and use them with your preferred email service provider.
An MX record is comprised of the following pieces of information:
Your domain (or subdomain)
Your provider’s domain
Priority
You can get this information from your email service provider.
Since WordPress is becoming the dominant provider of web page services for both blogging and small to medium size business, they have had to grow their content services to educate all the various people and businesses on how to use WordPress. Thus, the result is WordPress Learn.
They write:
To go from gumshoe to guru, make your way through the tutorial section by section. If you need help with a specific task, menus at the top of each page let you know what you’ll learn. Here are a few recommended resources to get you up to speed even faster:
Get Going Fast A quick-start guide to all the basics you need to get up and running now.
Get Guidance in Your Inbox: Bite-sized learning, delivered daily by email.
Get a Home Page: The how-to on usingWordPress to build a website — home pages, custom navigation, and more.
Get Lingo: A handy glossary to demystify WordPress lingo.
If you want more detail on any topic, head to our Support site for documentation on every WordPress.com question you can think of (and some you can’t).
Ready?
Do you have more than one web domain? Do you want to get visitors from a range of domains redirected back to a specific source? If so, those who have multiple domains will want to know how to prioritize them so that people are redirected appropriately. This is also good to know if you are setting up a WordPress account and want to have multiple accounts to manage multiple domains, multiple sites, and multiple businesses.
The first thing you need to know about having more than one domain in your WordPress Account, is that various WordPress domains that you have purchased, if hosted by WordPress will all point to one site. This is called domain forwarding, redirecting, or what some people call setting the Primary Domain.
Setting the primary domain is as simple as clicking a button within the “shopping” area under My Domains, Setting Primary Domain and selecting which domain you want to be the primary. It doesn’t take very long at all, and the effect is almost immediate, so you can have your previous domain name pointed to your new one. You have a wide range of domains within your account, all being pointed to the Primary.
If you want your domain hosted elsewhere, then you will have to adjust it accordingly, otherwise it will be set to point to the Primary. If you want to host it with WordPress, then you may have to create a new WordPress account so that it can be posted as a separate primary. Having a second primary through the use of an alternative login can offer solutions to brand management, and provide business solutions for small business.
Make sure to go to wordpress.com and setup a new domain, and if you want some of the best professional business themes, then make sure to get one of our packs!
In WordPress, there is a thing called The Loop. The Loop can be quite complex, but in reality, it is just a fancy way of describing how the content on your page is cycled. You may have noticed that posts and content on WordPress are organized by Tags, Categories, and other variables such as Date and Time.
In some themes, there is an option to put these items into a Loop Code so the content is continuously cycled for viewers. This is a great way to keep your content fresh and non-redundant. So how do you get this Loop installed?
The Loop code uses PHP and should be plugged into you page source code in the index.php file. Non-technical users will want to make sure they have the prior code saved somewhere before editing it so if there is a crash, you can have a backup. Here is a quick code visual from:
http://codex.wordpress.org/The_Loop
There are more examples of The Loop in the codex http://codex.wordpress.org/The_Loop for you to view, so make sure you go there and take a look at how this function can be implemented on your page. It can also offer the opportunity for multiple loops and various arrays to be setup, as well as a reset counter function by querying an object:
http://codex.wordpress.org/The_Loop
THE LOOP CAN BE QUITE FUN TO TACKLE
Anyone who enjoys puzzles and coding fun, the Loop can be an interesting challenge to implement to various themes because it helps newer coders iron out details on how the code is put together. When one looks at the various functions and queries it is easier to see how the logic is connected in the loop, as well as how special codes can really send new coders for a loop.
So take a minute and read the full explanation here, and begin your new site with one of our themes to practice out this simple, yet complex code.
Going on its 8th year, WordCamp is the annual gathering for WordPress Conference attendees. This year, it is held in San Francisco, and is also available online via LiveStream.
The program is composed of various speakers and developers who work for WordPress. The topics will range far and wide to provide listeners and viewers with all the inside happenings of WordPress.
WordPress.org writes:
There is still time to get in on the action with a new schedule update:
So head on over to http://2014.sf.wordcamp.org/schedule/ and get involved, and if you need some professional themes to put your new tricks to use, then you know we have you covered with all the premium business themes you will need for making the best sites.
Things just got a little more app-friendly for people who use WordPress. Google Apps recently announced that their Google Apps For Work is now compatible with integration across WordPress suites.
The Google Apps For Work includes a comprehensive suite of work solution apps that some of you may be familiar with. These are apps such as Google Docs, Sheets, Drive, etc. They are designed to make your business run more smoothly by offering a full line of powerful tools, including business email with up to 30 GB of storage.
While the suite of Apps from Google is free for the first month, after that some service fees kick in. As far as I know, this is one of the first subscription style apps that are offered by Google as a payment option. The costs are minimal, with a monthly cost of $5 or $10, depending on what you want for your small business.
Setup is pretty much automatic if you have a Chrome browser, so go ahead and take a look at this suite and see if it is something that would fit with your business model.
To get started, you can signup here:
https://www.google.com/work/apps/business/