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    Category: WordPress

    • CleanTalk Traffic Control — analyze web traffic in real-time

      CleanTalk Traffic Control — analyze web traffic in real-time

      We are happy to inform you about launching our new feature for the WordPress CleanTalk Security plugin.

      One of the most important component of Traffic Analysis is ability to monitor traffic in real time.

      Tracking of your website activity in real time. You can see how many visitors of your website or blog are online and what pages they are on, plus how much time they spent being there.

      Many tools only track traffic of visitors who enabled JavaScript in their browsers, thus they are not capable to show you the whole picture. CleanTalk Traffic Control will track every single visitor no matter if they are using JavaScript or not and provides many valuable traffic parameters such as:

       • Date and time of the visit to your website;
       • Spent time on your website;
       • IP-addresses;
       • Source country;
       • Browser;
       • Operational System;
       • Type of the visitor — Visitor, Search Bot, different bot, suspicious bot and so on;
       • A number of visited pages.

      Abilities:

       • Block specific IP-address, network or country directly from the interface.
       • Block IP-address automatically if the threshold of average quantity of visited pages was exceeded.

      This is great monitoring tool to see attacks in real time and to block them if necessary.

    • AI will play an increasing role in online security

      AI will play an increasing role in online security

      Neural Networks were introduced as far back as the 40’s of the 20th century and first works about them started in the 50’s. Nowadays this technology is being used in different fields. We believe that the CleanTalk machine teaching technologies of spam detection could be upgraded with the help of Artificial Intelligence and the CleanTalk features could be expanded to define an emotional aspect of a comment.

      Theoretical researches of spam filtering with Neural Networks say that these algorithms could achieve 100% efficiency.

      The CleanTalk Company has started to develop Neural Networks Algorithms for spam presence analysis of comments and messages which could provoke negative effects, rudeness, abuse or fraud in discussions.

      There is a big data safety problem in online security. There are too much data to process anomalies that could be the signs of spambots presence.

      There are about 1.5 millions of requests the CleanTalk Cloud processes every day and each request contains set of about 40 parameters. The Cloud uses them to decide whether a request should be approved or blocked so AI could improve our possibilities in spambot patterns detection.

      We intend to supplement technology of spam protection and moderation with more reliable feature and take into account such things as slang, typos, context and other traits of a visitor behavior.

      About CleanTalk

      CleanTalk is a SaaS spam protection service for Web sites. CleanTalk uses protection methods which are invisible for site visitors. Connecting to the service eliminates needs for CAPTCHA, questions and answers and other methods of protection, complicating the exchange of information on the site. Their solutions are reliable, easy and efficient. The module is completely invisible to the visitors and allows you to permanently abandon the ways of protection that impede the communication of visitors to the site (CAPTCHA, question-answer, etc.). CleanTalk allows you to automate protection against distributed from spam and registration spam bots.

      The CleanTalk team has been developing a cloud spam protection system for 5 years and has created a truly reliable anti-spam service designed for you to ensure your safety.

    • CleanTalk Security for WordPress: More informative log

      We added new parameters in the Security FireWall Log.

      CleanTalk WordPress Security Log shows a list of all the network requests blocked in the course of loading the page. Each request is displayed in its own row.

      All of these requests will have next string:

      -Page URL to which the request was sent.

      Security FireWall blocks all requests from the most active IP addresses where massive spam and brute force attacks come from.
      Security FireWall may significantly reduce the risk of hacking and reduces the load on your web server. All security logs are stored in the cloud for 45 days.

      Your security log is here https://cleantalk.org/my/logs?cp_mode=security

      Notice: Page URL is available starting with plugin version 1.17
      Download the latest version here:
      https://wordpress.org/plugins/security-malware-firewall/

      Don’t hesitate to let us know if you have any questions or comments.

    • WP Event Manager Plugin – Create Event Listing Website

      WP Event Manager Plugin – Create Event Listing Website

      WP Event manager plugin is “must have” if you want to turn your WordPress website into an event management portal. Event management plugins allow you to display all relevant information for events into one place.

      In this post, we will discuss WP Event Manager plugin which works perfectly with any theme. So, you can choose the theme that you like and use this event plugin to create your event website quickly.

      They also come with various features like the ability to sell tickets, create alerts, allow registration on website, front end event submissions, etc.

      From creating registrations, advance bookings, free-for-all events, to webinars, conferences, workshops and fundraisers, these plugins work to give you a complete system for creating, organizing and managing events.

      These plugins range from basic, feature-specific plugins, to high-end event management systems. Some are feature-rich, some are easy to use, some affordable and only a few combine all of that.

      Choosing an appropriate event plugin, depending on what you need and what you want, can be an exhausting task.

      Do you host a lot of events on your WordPress site? Maybe you want to create event listing WordPress website. Whatever the case is, you will need a reliable event calendar WordPress plugin.

      Why WP Event Manager Plugin?

      WP Event Manager is a lightweight plugin for event registration which makes possible adding event listing functionality to your WordPress site.

      Basically, with this plugin, you can showcase events and sell tickets for them. You can even let others submit their own events and charge for them. It is like a marketplace for events.

      It can work with any theme, it is easy to setup, and most importantly it is free. The free version has all necessary options needed to create event management system.

      The core plugin is free and always will be. It covers all functionality required to run a simple event listing site.

      Advanced functionality is available through add-ons. For features like selling tickets, create alerts, event search by location, you can purchase appropriate addon.

      You purchase only addons which you need. Addons extend the usefulness of the core plugin.

      Using WP Event Manager, you can create event portals where different event organizers and users can post their event listings to promote their events.

      Organizers can list their events on your website from the frontend. They have the option to include event description and location along with some details of organizing company.

      Before going live with the event, organizers can preview their event listing. If satisfied how it looks, the event organizers can submit the listing or can edit it if they want.

      The plugin can work with any WordPress theme, and the settings pages let you select how you want the events displayed.

      WP event manager plugin, which you can easily access on the WordPress, is one of the best event managing websites on the internet these days.  It works wonders with every kind of theme and hence, it can be used easily with any theme and you can check and then choose the theme that goes best with your required event. It is the most popular Events Management plugin for WordPress. It allows us to create events quickly and that to with very ease. It allows us to book as well as to manage attendees with just one plugin. The Members as well as the guests can create and manage their events and bookings without entering the admin area. This plugin can be accessed easily, on the WordPress and it can be used to design and form the desired event website. It provides a number of jaw dropping features and makes it easy for the users to work with it. Listed below are a few of the features:

      WP Event Manager Core Features:

      ▪     Fully Responsive

      ▪     Cross Browsers support ( Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera )

      ▪     SEO Friendly & Compatible with SEO plugins.

         ▪     Multilingual Translation – Internationalized Supported

      ▪     Completely ajaxified for super smooth browsing

      ▪     Add, manage, and categorise event listings using the familiar WordPress UI.

      ▪     Searchable & filterable ajax powered event listings added to your pages via shortcodes.

      ▪     Frontend forms for guests and registered users to submit & manage event listings.

      ▪     Allow event listers to preview their listing before it goes live. The preview matches the appearance of a live event listing.

      ▪     Each listing can be tied to an email or website address so that attendees can register to the events.

      ▪     Searches also display RSS links to allow attendees to be alerted to new events matching their search.

      ▪     Allow logged in organizers to view, edit, mark cancelled, or delete their active event listings.

         ▪     RSS Feeds

      ▪     Event categories

      ▪     Easily create custom event field (e.g. dress code)

      ▪     Assign event locations and view events by location

      ▪     Widgets for Recents, Upcomming, Featured Events

      ▪     Plenty of template tags and shortcodes for use in your posts and pages

      ▪     Caching Support

      ▪     Developer friendly code, Custom Post Types, endpoints & template files.

      ▪     Singleton Javascript, Ajax & Save memory at client side.

      ▪     Debug Mode for Developers

      ▪     Actively maintained and supported

      ▪     Lots of documentation and tutorials

      WP Event Manager Addons

      The price of addons ranges from $19 – 39 for personal license and $49 – 99 for a developer. Licenses grant one year support and updates.

      Personal licenses are valid for a single site, while developer licenses are valid for multiple sites.

      You can see all addons and more information about each addon on WP Event Manager plugins list.

      1. Google Maps – To enable event search by location, you can use the WP Event Manager Google Maps addon. This will integrate the feature of the search through maps and locations. It also enables proximity search on your website.
      1. Registrations – This addon allows the visitors to register for an event on your site as an attendee. When they register, you can view it through the dashboard and also manage the registered participants.
      1. Sell Tickets – This addon enables you to sell events tickets for displayed events. The registered users on your website are also able to sell their tickets. Using Sell Tickets, you can sell simple and variable ticket types.
      1. Calendar – Using this addon you can display an event calendar that lists the upcoming events on your website.
      1. Attendee Information – This addon provides the ability to collect attendees information. The event organizers can specify the attendee information that they want to be collected from the visitors who register to attend the event.

      Only on providing this information, attendees will be granted registration to book the ticket of the event.

      It is up to the organizer on what information they want to collect from the attendee. This addon lets the organizers specify what information they want to collect

      1. Event Alerts – If you want to allow registered users to get event alerts, you will need this addon. It lets users create email alerts based on the keywords, location, category, tags, etc.

      They can also choose the frequency at which they want to receive the email event alerts.

      1. Bookmarks – The bookmarks add-on allows the visitors, attendees or anyone to bookmark the events on your website.

      It is like wishlist in online stores. They can come back to site and find the event without having to spend time on searching it again. The bookmark can be saved with a note and only logged in users can bookmark.

       

      1. Embeddable Event Widget – If you want to display the event listings of your website to other sites quickly, you can use this addon.

      It will generate a code according to the requirement clauses you submitted (particular keyword, the specific location of events).

      You can paste this code wherever you want or into any website (it doesn’t have to be a WordPress site) to display the events.

      1. Sliders – For displaying events in a slider, this addon will come in handy. Sliders are responsive which means they will look great on mobile devices as well as on the desktop.
      1. Event Tags – If you want to improve event search and target more keywords, you can use this addon. It ads tags for the event post type.

      Tags are keywords related to your event. You can add tags that describe your event, event type, subject, or anything that is relevant to your event. User will then be able to filter events by tags.

      1. Eventbrite Integration – When you start your event listing website, it will probably be empty. You can avoid this by filing event listings using the Eventbrite Integration addon.

      All you need to get started is a publisher ID from Eventbrite. Eventbrite events include affiliate links and click tracking and are listed in a similar format to your local events.

      You can just pull the events by using the search parameters you define in the settings.

      1. Organizers – This addon lets you organize your organizer’s list and the events according to their organizer. You can display grouped and alphabetized list of all the organizers.

      It can also show total active events of each organizer and complete list of organizers.

      1. Contact Organizer – Allow your visitors to contact the event organizer.
      1. Export – You can export all the events on your website in CSV format. If you want you can export the events with all the fields or export the events with required fields only.

      In this way you can export only what you need.

      1. Print – This addon will enable print button on event detail page. By clicking the button, you can save the digital copy of the event page, or you can just print is by connecting a printer.
      1. iCal – This addon enables you to generate and download an iCal file of all the upcoming events on your website. Then you can import iCal file to Google calendar or any other calendar.
      1. Google Recaptcha – You can use Google Recaptcha at submit an event page to prevent spam. If the visitor fails to solve the captcha puzzle, the access to submit will be denied.

      Visitors will have a chance to make another attempt to solve the captcha.

      1. Google Analytics – This addon lets you track your site using the Google Analytics tracking code.
      1. Emails – Using this addon you can send an email notification when new user register.You can create your own email templates or edit and change the existing ones.

      They will override default WordPress registration email notifications.

      1. Event Logs – This addon allows you to view the debug information in your browser console tab. Thanks to this you can find and resolve any errors on your website.

      WP Event Manager Plugin Review

      As already mentioned, with WP Event Manager you can create WordPress events listing site. This event management plugin allows frontend and backend submission of events for free.

      Organizers of events can list their events on your website from the frontend. They need to fill event description, location along with some other details. You can also entirely disable frontend submissions.

      Before organizers make their event listing live, they can see how their event listing will look once published. The preview will be the exact copy of the submitting event. If they are not happy with how it looks, they can edit and correct.

      For managing events, you have an Event management dashboard where all the events available are listed. The dashboard is easy to manage and simple.

      You just need to login to your account and go to event dashboard to have a look at all events. From there, you can control the status of all your events or edit, add new, or

      delete existing.

      Users can filter event listings by keyword, location, event category, event type and event ticket price.

       

      Single event listing page contains information like metadata, event overview, organizer description, organizer details, event venue, event date, time and location.

      WP Event Manager can be translated into any language.

      If your desired language is not currently translated, partially translated or needs correcting, you can edit or create a translation file.

      That file will automatically be used when you are viewing the site in that language.

      WP Event Manager Settings

      Before starting to create events, you can take a look at setting options where you can configure the plugin.

      You will see a tabbed interface indicating accessible settings.

      Setting tabs are divided in Event Listings, Event Submission and Pages settings.

       

      1.Event Listings Settings

      The event listings tab includes has the following settings:

      • Listings Per Page – How many listings will be shown per when using the events shortcode
      • Cancelled Events – If enabled, cancelled events are hidden from archives
      • Expired Listings – If you want to hide expired listings
      • Categories – Enable or disable categories
      • Event Types – Choose whether to enable event types
      • Ticket prices – Option to set ticket price for events which are not free
      • Multi-select Categories
      • Multi-select Event Types
      • Category Filter Type
      • Event Type Filter

      2.Event Submission Settings

      The event submission tab includes the following options:

      • Account Required – If you disable this option, users who are not registered (guest) will also be able to submit listings.
      • Account Creation – Users without an account on your site will be able to create an account by entering their email address on the submission form.
      • Account Username – If enabled username will be generated for the user based on email address.
      • Account Role – Which role will have users who registrate.
      • Moderate New Listings – If enabled, you can moderate new event submis They will not be active until you approve them.
      • Allow Pending Edits – If enabled, submissions awaiting admin approval can be edited by the user.
      • Delete Expired Listings – Expired listings will automatically be removed after 30 days if this option is enabled.
      • Listing Expire – You can set event submission expiry time.

      3.Pages Settings

      The pages tab includes the following settings:

      • Submit Event Form Page – Select the page where the form will be located.
      • Event Dashboard Page – Select the page where the dashboard will be located.
      • Event Listings Page – Select the page where the event listings page will be lo

      How to add an event in WP Event Manager plugin?

      To add the new event, select “Add New” link under Event Listing menu item in the admin. You have to give the event name in the post title. To write event description, you have to use visual editor just below the event title.

      In the sidebar, there will be two options named event categories and event types if you enabled those in Event Listings settings tab. You can select single or multiple event types and event categories.

      After completing, just click on Publish to make your listing live.

      The above image is an example of the submitting event from the backend.

      The submitted events are listed in table format under Admin->Event Listings.

      To modify an event listing click the event listing title or edit button icon. By doing this, you can alter the event and event information.

      WP Event Manager Plugin Final Words

      Handling events can be messy if you’re using the wrong plugin. Though there are some WordPress event themes that you can use to create your event site, a plugin brings you flexibility because once you use a theme and set your site properly, you get stuck to the theme; you can’t do much regarding design.WP Event Manager plugin can really make a difference with all its functionality.

      It’s a great solution to event organization and saves you and your customers time. Although Event Manager works great as a free plugin, it also has more features in the form of addons.

      A free version can make user users aware of the upcoming events, and a premium addons can do much more than just informing about the event.

      They can be used to provide more in-depth detail of the event as well as they can be utilized for selling tickets for the events.

      This plugin can be used with any WordPress theme, so you will have the choice to change your theme and bring in a different feel to your site whenever you wish to, and it will help you to move ahead with time, and the design of websites keeps on changing with time.

      If you are interested in WP Event Manager plugin, you can get it free on WordPress plugin repository or check official site for more info and documentation.

    • Email Notifications when administrators are logged in

      Email Notifications when administrators are logged in

      Do you want to receive a notice each time a user with administrator rights is logged into the WP Dashboard?

      We added this option to our security plugin. Now you can receive notifications if you want to know about an unauthorized entrance to your WP Dashboard.

      Notification will be sent only when a user was able to authorize entering login and password. If you are logged into the admin panel from the saved session, then the alert won’t be sent.

      You can enable the option “Receive notifications for admin authorizations in your CleanTalk Dashboard. Choose “Site Security” in the “Services” menu, then click “Settings”.

      Download Security & Firewall by CleanTalk.

    • A new online tool to automatically boost the best Facebook posts

      Over the past years, the demand for boosting Facebook posts has increased dramatically. With Facebook decreasing the organic reach continually, Facebook marketers need to pay for getting the desired reach and support engagement. In Facebook, you can no longer boost all new posts automatically. Neither you can set up rules that would select the posts that will be boosted.

      How Boosterberg Idea Originated

      Digital marketing agencies, Facebook marketers and marketing managers in organisations had to go to Ads Manager and boost each post manually by clicking the Boost Post button. This approach has taken a lot of time, and what is worse, they did not typically have enough information to decide what budget should they allocate and which posts should they boost. If they dug into the analytics and selected the best posts, it took them hours that could be spent more efficiently. To solve these problems, Boosterberg tool has been developed to take the burden away from Facebook marketers. It is an online tool, or SaaS software, that enables automatic boosting of Facebook posts. Once a user creates a new account, he will select a Facebook page and create a set of rules for it. Once they are saved, all new posts will be evaluated, and based on the criteria and their performance, they will or won’t be boosted. Everything is fully automated, and there is no need to check anything in Facebook Ads Manager anymore manually. There are basic or advanced settings to be used and several presets, and individual triggers are available to fine-tune the campaign. With Boosterberg, everyone can become a Facebook Advertising Pro. Moreover, Boosterberg has launched a Facebook Ads Academy for its fans and users, publishing the new expert advice on Facebook advertising practices written by Boosterberg staff members and other experts on social media marketing.

      Developing Boosterberg

      The development started approximately two years ago. At the beginning, two digital marketing agencies – PS:Digital and Kremsa Digital team up for this project to develop a platform that would help them to manage their Facebook clients more efficiently. PS: Digital was spending dozens of hours weekly just assessing the posts of their clients, selecting the best ones and boosting them. This is how the idea and specifications of Boosterberg came to live: We need to have a tool that automates this process of boosting Facebook posts. After searching on the market and finding nothing useful, a decision was made to develop an own tool. From the beginning, the primary aim was to save own time and make the process more efficient, however, Boosterberg was developed with the vision of its commercialisation from the beginning. Since the main development was ready and the project was tested by users outside PS:Digital and Kremsa, a long time went by. Moving the product from an alpha version to beta version, which was offered for testing to several other digital agencies, took about 12 months. In this time, mainly usability was tweaked. The product was already used by the two founding agencies in their real projects, however, the user interface was not optimised for using it by a third party. Several rounds of testing the user interface were followed by implementation of the findings and testing it again. In October 2016, the redesigned website was launched and the content was fine-tuned to reflect the current state of the product. In November 2016, a promotion was started to drive traffic to Boosterberg website and get people from all over the world to sign up for the trial. By this time, the major development was finished and the product development was switched to a maintenance mode which also includes further improving usability and some details and implementing new features based on the long-term product roadmap. In the roadmap, requests from Boosterberg users are considered along with the possibilities of the development team and rentability of the implementation.

      Teaming up with Clean Talk

      With the launch of Boosterberg, its support team needed to cover high numbers of requests, both from website users and new Boosterberg clients. Except for the standard contact form, there is an option to chat with Boosterberg representative directly using live chat. Registered users have different kinds of support available in their Boosterberg account as well. Also, the possibility of posting comments by unregistered users on the website requires a lot of support staffs’ attention. To make the time spent with the support as efficient as possible, Boosterberg has decided to implement CleanTalk as an ultimate solution that minimises the amount of spam, both in emails and comments. CleanTalk was recommended by Andrej Miklosik, who is in charge of SEO for Boosterberg and has a positive experience with the CleanTalk WordPress plugin from numerous installations. As he states, “We believe that implementing CleanTalk is the best way to move forward and optimise our time-to-support and experience for our website users.”

    • Strengthening brute force protection

      We added the new logic to prevent brute force attacks. Service will check your log in status once per hour and if some IP’s have 10 and more attempts to log in, then these IP’s will be banned for next 24 hours.

      It makes the brute force protection tougher and doesn’t waste the server’s resources on these IP’s.

      Download Security & Firewall by CleanTalk.

    • Feature update for spam comment management in WordPress

      Feature update for spam comment management in WordPress

      We launched the update for possibilities to manage spam comments.

      The new option “Smart spam comments filter” divides all spam comments into Automated Spam or Manual Spam.

      For each comment, the service calculates probability — was this spam comment sent automatically or was it sent by a human.

      All automatic spam comments will be deleted permanently without going to the WordPress backend except for comments with Stop-Words. Stop-Word comments will be always stored in the “Pending” folder. Both blocked and banned comments can be seen in the Anti-Spam Log.

      To manage the actions with spam comments, go to the Control Panel, select the website you want to change the actions for and go to “Settings” under the name of the website. On the website settings page, select the desirable item from the “SPAM comment action” menu and click “Save” button at the bottom of the page.

    • New anti-spam checks for WordPress, XenForo, phpBB 3.1, SMF, Bitrix

      We are pleased to announce that we have released new versions of plugins for WordPress, XenForo, phpBB 3.1, SMF, Bitrix.

      In the new version, we have added some new checks for spam to improve anti-spam service.

      Mouse tracking and Time zone monitoring give good results against spam bots which simulate the behavior of real visitors.

      These checks for other CMS will be added soon.

      Please, update your anti-spam plugins for latest version:

      WordPress
      XenForo
      phpBB 3.1
      Simple Machines Forum
      Bitrix

    • Breeding Business: from ordinary blog to extraordinary magazine

      Geek at heart, I always have been coding littles projects on localhost and a few failing websites. I guess I never really took Internet seriously.

      Then, I realized these jobs I was doing in luxury hospitality were not making me happy. I just loved coming back home and writing, developing and designing. It’s just what I love. So I started looking at opportunities to generate a very small income that could make a website sustainable. And I had zero money to invest.

      Over the last years, WordPress and blogging have been a huge hit and a lot of people go for it. They think about the monetization before having thought of their content, I took it the other way around.

      Why Blogging About Dog Breeding?

      When I set my mind to start an online blog, I looked at the usual ways of finding the perfect “keyword”, “topic”, “niche”. These include Google Keyword Planner, Google Trends and some paying softwares. I managed to have three topics that seemingly were searched for and that I was happy to write posts on.

      Then, I picked the best topics and started writing. And this is when I realized I couldn’t write on anything else than what I truly loved — responsible and ethical dog breeding. I was writing one article after another. It just felt right.

      Breeding dogs is something that has been running through several generations in my family and although I haven’t done it extensively myself, I am passionate by the canine genetics and mechanisms that make you have the best bloodline of all.

      Dog breeding is a passion of mine and it would be hard for me not to write about it.

      What Is Breeding Business?

      Breeding Business was born after I wrote a few articles. I was going on Facebook Groups at the time to promote my articles (and eventually got suspended!) because Google wasn’t sending me enough traffic at first.

      The website consists of a lot of articles written and published in different categories: how-to’s, interviews of breeders, reviews of dog breeding supplies, and obviously in-depth articles on how to breed dogs.

      After just a few weeks, some visitors started asking what books were we recommending. Unfortunately most books are either too narrow in their topics or too breed-specific. A dog is a dog and the principles remain the same for a Chihuahua or a Rottweiler.

      Therefore, we created our very own ebook, The Dog Breeder’s Handbook. It was created on iBooks Author since it’s a free application built by Apple and at the time, I didn’t know if the ebook was going to be a hit, or a miss. I like to be in motion, try things and if they fail, move on to the next one.

      The Dog Breeder’s Handbook offers all the theoretical knowledge dog breeders need and a lot of actionable tips for them to put into practice. Yet, the launch was slow because the traffic was low. It was definitely generating a few hundred dollars every month. This is what kept me going and made me believe in it even more.

      From then on, I thought I was going to add another product many visitors were hinting at: a WordPress plugin for dog breeders. I built it in few weeks and it is today a very good seller. I release updates using the feedback loop and have a similar project to be released soon.

      Challenges When Growing a Simple Blog Into an Online Magazine

      Being alone and seeing the traffic (and revenue) growing, questions start to pop in your mind.

      It’s time for some business decisions

      A blogger and solo-entrepreneur always strives for steady growth. I do not identify myself with mega-growth startups we read about everywhere. To each their own!

      With Breeding Business, the growth has been great especially since Google sent traffic our way. No specific strategy that we followed, we just put out great content. Often.

      Yet, we’re still asking ourselves a million of questions…

      • Should I add another product or should I focus and grow these?
      • Communities around blogs are hype, should I make one?
      • Is the traffic growth normal or too slow?
      • Subscriptions are so popular these days, but what to offer?

      These are business decisions to make. I added another product: a course. It never took off mainly because it was kind of duplication what was in the ebook. We’re thinking a new use for courses for the future because I could see people were interested.

      Communities are great but there is nothing worse than a dead forum so we never took that risk and are waiting to have a bigger email list to perhaps one day launch a community. Subscriptions are great but just not for us right now. A lot of blogs start charging a monthly or yearly fee for members to be part of a special club but most of them see a huge churn and give that model up after a few months.

      Growth requires a technical overhaul, too

      Our traffic has been growing very well thanks to search engines. This is why we needed a quality anti-spam and CleanTalk has been doing a sublime job at keeping these fake user accounts and comments away.

      With traffic growth comes a whole new set of interrogations:

      • Why am I not converting more visitors into optins or customers?
      • GTmetrix and page speed tests are giving me low scores, how can I optimize my website?
      • Why so many people read one article and leave?

      These are technical issues that truly take time to be fixed. There are mainly two ways we could tackle these:

      1. Patch each little issue one by one
      2. Build a brand new website from scratch with these issues factored in

      After a few months, we were patching issues one by one but today, I am almost finished with a brand new version of the website to be released in two or three months after extensive testing. We’re also pairing that new website with a move from cloud hosting to a VPS (ten folding the monthly hosting cost…)

      Restructure the tree of information

      Our current website was up and running when we had around 20-30 articles. We have over 300 articles today. People aren’t visiting other pages because the information is badly structured and they can’t find their way around.

      Categories are being completely revamped. Stuff we thought was going to attract a lot of people, ended up being a graveyard and vice versa. So we’re cleaning the way the posts are categorized and tagged while updating old pages as well.

      Speed and page load

      Google is apparently using your website’s loading speed as a signal to decide on your ranking. My website is currently performing very poorly in terms of page load speed.

      And these results are after several fixes here and there. So it’s the second main focus for the update. We’re also making sure the website loads much much faster on mobile devices thanks to wp_is_mobile(), the WordPress function to detect mobile devices. We load lower-quality images, less widgets.

      Another WordPress optimisation is the use of the Transients API for our most repeated and complicated queries such as our top menu, footer, home queries, related posts, etc. The way it works is simple and allows you to store cached data in the database temporarily. Instead of retrieving the full menu at each page load, using a transient only requires a single database call for the menu to be fetched.

      Add new UX features

      The new version of Breeding Business brings its own set of new UX features. More AJAX calls, less page refreshes. More white spaces and an easier scroll through our entire page. We’ve also decluttered the article’s footer so our calls to action can jump to my visitors’ eyes.

      Conclusion is… One man can only do so much!

      Everything is wrote here is what I do daily. Article writing, support emails, plugin updates, website updates, email outreach, designing illustrations, social media promotions, bookkeeping and accounting, strategizing and long-term planning, etc. And I’m not helping myself by adding a new recurring item to our new upcoming version: biweekly giveaways!

      Over the last weeks, I realized how stupid it is to rely on your own self only. It’s self-destructive and counterproductive. I genuinely believe that delegating any of these tasks will result in a loss of quality and will cost me money.

      Yet, I have to leave my ego at the door and put some faith in other people. Sure, I may work with some disappointing people at first but it is also my duty to teach them how I want them to work.

      This is my focus for 2017 — learn how to surround myself with the right people (or person) to free some time for me to focus on what I do best.

       

      About the author

      Lazhar is the founder of Breeding Business, a free online magazine educating responsible dog breeders all around the world through in-depth dog breeding articles, interviews, ebooks and comprehensive guides.