CleanTalk's blog

    Sign up

    Category: WordPress

    • 20 Tips for Effective SEO and Content Management for WordPress

      Undoubtedly, WordPress has immensely outgrown its inception image. WordPress has moved from supporting the blogs to be the best platform for high-end websites. Even today no other platform can beat the Content Management functions of WordPress. As a website platform, you can extend and expand a WordPress website functionally to a tremendous extent. Built-in search functions and SEO enables each page to be optimized right from inception.  

      The search engines get cruel with websites. The best WordPress theme and most creative content would fall flat if it is not optimized. WordPress powers you to build excellent websites do not let them get lost in the sea of websites without SEO and Content Management.

      SEO and Content Management tip for a WordPress Website:

      1.  Create Clean Permalinks:

      WordPress is notorious for creating irrelevant permalinks (URL structure). By default, WordPress inserts the day and name into the URL making it unreadable. Google and other search engines rank the URLs that are optimized. The title and keywords in the post URL are liked more by the search engines.  

      Check out the permalink setting and check the “Post name” option. It is clean and gives you the liberty to add the keyword in the URL. When you change the permalink after the posts have gone live and the links have been shared, you must redirect the preceding link to the new permalink. Now that the permalink has been modified you will not be able to direct traffic using the older links

      2. Always have a Focus Keyword

      Keywords are the indispensable part of any web content. Google and other search engines are merely algorithms (agree they are quite strong), and they rank your content based on the keywords. Insert the focus keyword naturally and never overstuff your content with the keywords.

      Publishing long content, well-researched content or regular post will not drive sustainable traffic unless they are keyword optimized. Extensive research is required to find out the keywords that are relevant to your content and will rank it higher. Avoid the occurrence of any negative focus keyword in the blog comments section. It is not in your control, but you can use CleanTalk anti-spam plugin to keep your website from ranking high in negative keywords.

      3. Optimize the Meta descriptions

      SEO ranking is not directly linked with Meta description but a keyword rich Meta description increases the CTR. Indirectly a good CTR brings you into the focus of search engines, and they alter your rankings. You can set the Meta description manually using the Yoast SEO plugin.

      Google allows a limit of 156 characters on the Meta description ensure you create and put pretty content with the focus keyword. The focus keyword is set to bold on the search engines producing even more engagement. You must include the power words or the words you see in competitor AdWords Meta description.

      4. Never miss the Header Tags

      Header tags are crawled by the search engines before they craw the entire content. A heading with proper tags is an excellent practice. The header tags H1, H2, H3, create a hierarchy as H1 is the most important. Ensure the H1 has your focus keyword and you can add multiple H2 and H3 in your content.

      WordPress automatically assigns the title to your post but make sure the header tags make the content more readable rather than confusing. Many WordPress themes do have the header tag insertion integrated, and you may not have to depend on any plugin.

      5. Focus keyword in title and first paragraph

      As discussed in point 2, Focus keyword is very important for your content. What makes the more significant impact is the position of the keyword. A focus keyword in the title and first paragraph increases the stay time and ranks your post higher in the search engine.

      The web crawlers check the content from top to bottom. When they find the focus keyword on top, they rank you higher. If you use Yoast SEO plugin, it intimates you whenever you do not follow this practice in the post.

      6. Content word count:

      Genuinely speaking, producing a high-quality content is best you can do for your website. More extended content work better than the short contents. The effectiveness of content length plays an important role in rankings. Long form content provides you the advantage of long-tail keywords. Experts have noticed that the traffic from all the long-tail variations will surpass focus keyword traffic.

      The average content length that helps rank well is more than 2500 words, and lots of stats prove long-form content works.

      7. Create short URLs

      Clean and structured websites are loved by the search engines. Short URLs are the best form of a clean website. A well-defined URL helps you improve the CTR.  A short URL gives you lead ahead of your competitors. A WordPress website automatically creates shorter URL’s, but you can also go ahead and shorten them.

      Always remember you cannot keep two URL names same, they have to be unique.

      8. Use optimized Image File Names

      Must admit this is not significant, but you must never do it wrong. A little boost this Smart image file names practice provides becomes substantial when the competition is close.

      Three points must be considered while naming the files:

      • Name them with actual words rather than the names they get from the device they were clicked from.
      • Use hyphens in the title.
      • Add the keyword in the file name.

      9. Add Interlinks

      Linking is important between your posts. Link to your landing page or another post by adding Interlinks in the content. It increases the stay time on your website when you provide useful and relevant links. Recommended is to keep at least 3-5 interlinks on your site.

      WordPress offers you a hyperlink option to insert interlinks and maximize your websites stay time.

      10. Add High Domain Authority External Links

      While interlinks increase the website stay time, you must consider adding some external links to authority sites. This strategy helps your WordPress SEO and puts your website across as one that connects to high-quality content with authority sites.

      Make sure you add two high domain authority website links in your content. You can start connecting to the other brand and try to get free traffic from their social media sharing

      11. Sitemaps

      Sitemaps do not directly assist you in SEO but using them assists web crawlers to utilize the hierarchy and structure of your WordPress site. Having a sitemap ensures your website gets crawled better. They are not a must for the site but did you know they help you with more detailed reporting data. You may utilize the data plugin the weak areas. The Yoast SEO plugin can automatically generate your website sitemap.

      Create your XML sitemap file and submit it to Google Search Console so that you can access additional data on the status of your WordPress site.

      12. Build backlinks

      Backlinks are an essential part of white hat SEO. Search engines use backlinks for passing link information from one website to another ensuring the authenticity. When a high domain authority website links to you, it earns you a lot of online credibilities. Backlinks are a significant factor for ranking.

      Search engines rank your WordPress website high if the number of referring domains is more. Developing more backlinks threatens your website for security issues. Phishing website tries and gets backlinks from your site to improve their site’s PageRank such websites tend to send spam and viruses and may damage your reputation online. CleanTalk security plugin protects your website from such attacks.

      13. Content that is always liked:

      Work hard to develop content that needs to be referred now and then. A strategy like this gets you sustainable organic traffic. Best practice of maintaining the content is updating it quite often so that it ranks high and is always offering more to its readers.

      Developing evergreen content works long term, and you can keep sharing it again and again over social media and get backlinks. Make your content long lasting by writing on topics that meet a need, high-quality unique content, readable, engage the audience for a long time and does not outdate quickly.

      14. Negative SEO

      It can be lethal to your years of hard work. You competitors or other websites might try to tarnish your reputation but create backlinks from your website or spam commenting on your blog bringing you the bad name.

      You must be vigilant and monitor any such attacks on your website. There have been instances when the site was attacked overnight and developed terrible backlinks that took years to clean. You may use additional plugins to stop negative SEO.

      15. Local SEO

      Never ever skip local SEO. Register your website in existing local portals like yellow pages and Google business to develop your own customer database from their rankings.

      As both such websites are free and provide you organic results, you may top their list and rank high while someone is searching for local services.

      16. Website Speed

      Did you know Google has openly declared the time it takes to load your website affects your ranking? Build a beautiful but heavy website may not work in your favor. Google bought this element into your ranking because they know visitors will not stay on a site longer if it is heavy. High speed is the better for SEO and helps you rank in search engines. You can help your website speed with CleanTalk plugin that has the function of Spam Fire Wall.

      The tendency of people, who use Google is to abandon a website that takes more than 4 seconds to load. Optimize your sites, use plugins but never make it too heavy for the mobile or the desktop.

      17. Track Keyword rankings

      Never stick to one focus keyword. Keep checking the trend of relevant keyword that can bring you stable traffic.

      You must update your content or create new content if the focus keyword ranking has shifted down. Keywords are ranked on the basis of how many searches are made by web searches using these set of words.

      If you spend time enough time on creating optimized content, then you must try to use it for long terms. Updating the content on new keywords is an excellent strategy for long-term content.

      18. Comment management

      It may make or mar your website reputation. With the cutthroat competition, sledding other website reputation is very common. Competitor website may spam your site with comments, emails, and subscriptions. All this may work against you as nothing is hidden online. You cannot do anything about it once the damage is done. To control the spam of comments and content, you can use the CleanTalk anti-spam plugin that has the function of stop words.

      19. WordPress SEO Plugin

      What if we tell you that specific WordPress SEO plugins are inherently capable of creating SEO along with the website creation? Have a complete control on your website with Plugins like Yoast SEO or All-In-One-SEO pack that have end-to-end optimization potential.

      20. Title tags

      You must have your “focus keyword” in the title tag. Placing the Focus keyword at the beginning of the title is most recommended. It may not always be possible, but you must still put it somewhere in the title. The Google search engine can display only 65 characters of Title so make sure the focus keyword appears within that limit.

      Make most of the above tips to rank your website and content higher in the search engines and improve engagement. Some say SEO is dead but it is not dead has just changed. If you are starting with WordPress, you may be overwhelmed with the tips. SEO and content is a grey area, and you need to keep trying till your website hits the jackpot rank. The above tips have helped various websites go a long way, now it is your chance!!

    • ‘WordPress Security by CleanTalk’ Review– Is it Potent Enough to Safeguard you?

      ‘WordPress Security by CleanTalk’ Review– Is it Potent Enough to Safeguard you?

      WordPress is a very popular open source website creation tool. But this is not only a blogging platform, WordPress is an open source content management system used by millions of people worldwide. It is popular mainly because WordPress is very easy to use and easy to start with. Also, very good support from WordPress itself and different forums are available. According to a research, more than 22.5% of the websites are powered by WordPress in 2017.

      Due to its huge popularity and continuous growth as the world’s most used CMS, WordPress is naturally vulnerable to security threats and attacks. WordPress security attacks from the very beginning are handles by WordPress security releases. But there is new type of attacks is coming in the picture every day and everything does not come under WordPress Security Release. Here comes the WordPress Security Plugins.

      WordPress Security by CleanTalk is one of the most important security plugins which helps your WordPress site protected and secured from the Brute Force attacks by creating a firewall. Check out what kind of attacks your website may face and how can you secure yourself from these attacks:

      Why does a WordPress site is attacked anyway?Why does a WordPress site is attacked anyway?

      There is a cut-throat competition in the market in any venture and everyone wants to get the success at the end of the day. Due to the huge pressure, hackers want to access your website to get all the sensitive information, block your access from the site, redirect your users to any other malicious websites, remove or delete your user and all the content from the website or simply use the backlinks from your website. Stealing your backlink information and using it in their website will just improve their page ranks in any search engine.

      Most of the popular websites get thousands of attacks every week or even every day.

      How does a good security plugin work to prevent a different type of attacks on a WordPress site?

      There are several types of security attacks a WordPress website gets every day. A good security plugin applies optimized algorithms to prevent those vulnerabilities and keep the website secure. Following are some form of security threats a WordPress website gets:

      1. Malicious Software: After hitting your website, hackers leave some malicious software or script, also known as malware into your website. Your security plugin should scan all the files, contents, data files, database, changes in the DNS, comments or any kind of post to find out the malicious code that could possibly be hidden in the website’s source code, or URL. These malwares are scanned and removed by the WordPress security plugin.

      2. Brute Force Attacks: This type of attack is performed using permutation and combination of possible login information. Hackers attempt to log in to the website using thousands of possible username and password combination through automated scripts. Security plugins block the users with the attempt of too many login attempts or clicking on forgot password option. It also prevents WordPress from giving sensitive information like username or password hints etc. or multiple entry point options to the hackers.

      3. Zero Day Exploits: There are some obvious vulnerability issues in WordPress websites or any kind of website. Hackers attack those using bots. The security plugins use known algorithms and security firewall for these already published vulnerabilities and stop them.

      4. Spear Phishing and Social Engineering: Spear phishing & social engineering are among some techniques through which hackers can crack the most difficult password too. Security plugins provide a two-factor authentication which can neutralize the risk of password cracking. This facility is used by banks, financial institutions or websites with very sensitive data.

      5. Rate Based Throttling: This type of attack is the most critical type till date. Hackers overwhelm your website, database, servers and network, all resources using bots or automated scripts. This will prevent your genuine customers from accessing your website and search engine crawlers. Also, script crawlers aggressively crawl the website to overwhelm the website contents and resources. Security plugins provide security through IP blocking. If access request exceeds the accepted threshold of a maximum number of requests from any IP address, security plugin blocks that specific IP address. It also prevents the bot crawlers from aggressive crawling.

      6. Country attacks: Hackers using IPs of different countries and networks attack the WordPress websites to find vulnerabilities and overwhelm its resources with aggressive crawling. Security plugins use the same mechanism as rate based throttling, blocks the specific countries from accessing the website.

      7. Password Cracking: Security plugins use password auditing to find out the password of your admin account is weak or strong; suggest changing the password or making a rule to change the password monthly etc. This will prevent attackers to use password cracking or brute force attacking using the similar script.

      8. Spam Ads: Hackers often use the website they have compromised to post spam ads. These ads include a link to some other malicious website or simply a virus to download. Security Plugins scan your site regularly to check if there is any kind of spam ad that has been posted, identify and remove it.

      9. Hacker Reckon: Hackers find vulnerabilities using the information like software version, operating system version, and software installed etc. and security plugin prevents your WordPress website from giving this information anyhow to these hackers.

      What is WordPress Security Plugin by CleanTalk? 

      WordPress Security Plugin by CleanTalk is a premium security plugin for WordPress Site. This is an end to end protection system for a WordPress site which helps to prevent and securing a site from brute force attacks, brute force account counting, blocking IPs and users using a firewall, providing security for WordPress forms and backend filter malicious IPs, networks or countries.

      It also sends daily security logs, audit logs and reports through emails to the users so that user can analyze and monitor vulnerabilities to their WordPress Websites.

      How to Install Security Plugin by CleanTalk?

      Installation of Security Plugin by CleanTalk is very easy both through the automated and manual way. Following are the steps to follow to install WordPress Security by CleanTalk into your WP.

      Automated Installation

      1. Go to ‘Plugin’ option at the left panel of your WordPress and click on it.
      2. Search ‘WordPress Security by CleanTalk’.
      3. It will show the plugin on the page.
      4. Click on ‘Install Now’ button.
      5. Now click on the ‘Activate’ button
      6. Click on ‘Get access key Automatically’
      7. This will take you to the ‘Security Log’ page of the plugin.
      8. Click on ‘Save Changes’ option.

      Manual Installation

      Installation can be done manually too.

      1. You need to go to ‘https://wordpress.org/plugins/security-malware-firewall/#description’ and click on Download button.
      2. Zip file with an Installer will be downloaded. Save the installer and login to your site’s WP Admin.
      3. Click on ‘Add New’ button and then click on ‘Upload Plugin’
      4. Select the Zip file from the Dialog Box and click OK.
      5. The plugin will be installed. Then click on Activate
      6. The rest of the steps are similar.

      Features of WordPress Security Plugin

      Brute force attacks

      Brute force attacks are very different from cracks or in layman words ‘hacks’. Brute force attackers try to login into the WP admin using the easiest method of login, i.e., the username and password. They use permutations and combinations of common and most possible username and password to try logging in until they are successful. The easiest attack is the weakest link and username like ‘admin’ and password like’12456′.

      1. Brute force attacks come from different countries and IPs. If you have single access and IP, it is easy to block all the IPs other than your IP using the .htaccess file. But, if you have multiple users, log in from multiple locations, it is very difficult to identify the IP of the attacker and prevent it.
      2. WordPress Security plugin, blacklists all the IPs and users with too many attempts of login, scripts, failed attempts of forgot passwords. It also prevents WordPress from providing users multiple login points and giving away login information to the hackers. WordPress security plugin blocks or locks out any user who is using an invalid username and password.
      3. It sends email to the user as soon as a brute attack attempt is done. It also shows the attacker’s IP, location, and country through the email.

      Cleantalk Security Log

      Along with the plugin, Cleantalk security log is the additional feature which helps the user keep track on the logs for different events performed on their website.

      The security log consists of Date, Status, IP, Country and other details for the Admin Login for the user’s website for events like Login, Logout, Invalid Username, Invalid Email, Authentication Failed and Invalid Email. Logs can be filtered for different services like Anti- Spam, Hosting Anti-Spam, Database API, Site Security or SSL Certificates.

      Email Notifications

      Email notifications are very important and must have feature for any security firewall to have. Emails are sent to registered admin user’s email whenever an activity is logged in a WordPress site. WordPress Security by Cleantalk sends email for the following activities:

      Admin Login:
      It sends email to the registered admin user’s email so that the user is aware that an admin login has taken place on his website.

      New installation and Signup:

      Cleartalk WordPress Security plugin sends a notification to the user’s email when he installs and signs up for the plugin.

      Access Key:

      Email notification is sent when a user opts to get access key manually.

      Daily Security Report:

      Daily security Report email notification is sent to admin user which includes information about the SITE Time, Username, IP and Country and a number of brute attacks, failed login and authentication failures have taken place.

      CleanTalk Security Firewall

      The WordPress Security plugin security firewall works like a fence against the security attacks to a WordPress website. It uses CleanTalk database of bad IP’s and blocks the vulnerabilities from compromised IP’s. Firewall runs even before other codes run including the WordPress site and this prevents the security threats to attack the WordPress site. The firewall shields the site and blocks the threats even before they appear.

      And provides the WordPress sites security features like

      • Personal Blacklist Management
      • Country and IP blocking
      • Protection from aggressive users and web crawlers

      Traffic Control Analysis

      Traffic analysis is one of the important features for any WordPress website, in terms of security and CPU overloading. From which IP, country and location traffic is coming, the users that are online, who is on your page and how much time they have spent, etc. information is easily provided by the WordPress Security Plugin to the admin user.

      Unlike other plugins, it enables traffic control analysis to all the visitors even if they have not enabled javascript in their browsers. It gives information about visitors on traffic parameters like:

      • Date and Time of the visit to the website
      • Visitor’s spent time on the website
      • Source Country
      • Visitor’s IP Address
      • Browser
      • Operating System and version
      • Type of the visitor – Person, Bot, Search Bot or suspicious bot, script etc.
      • Number of page hits

      Cleartalk Traffic control can block the IP addresses from any country or any network from the interface itself. IP addresses will be automatically blocked by the Traffic Control if they exceed the threshold of the average page visit quantity. This helps the monitoring and blocking of the traffic real time.

      BlackIP Database

      This is the new feature launched by CleanTalk. BlackIP database is the collection of blocked or blacklisted IP addresses. This database helps to analyze which type of IPs, locations or countries from which the most frequent brute attacks come from. You can also manage the blacklisted IPs from your CleanTalk Dashboard-> “Use CleanTalk Database of Dangerous IP Addresses”. If you want to add an exception to your blacklisted IP addresses, you may add any IP to the whitelist IPs and it will not be blocked.

      Generic Tips and Tricks to keep your WordPress website safe:

      Other than using CleanTalk’s WordPress Security plugin and its advanced features, you can use these simple tricks to keep your WordPress website safe and secure all time:

      • Use email for login other than username. Usernames are easy to predict but hackers can’t easily guess any unique email ID. WordPress use unique email Id as login identifier for each user.
      • The default login URL for all the websites are similar. For example: wp-login.PHP, /wp-admin/ etc. You should change them to something your unique and own. This will prevent the hackers to get the admin logged in page’s URL or the dashboard URL.
      • Password of a WordPress site should consist capital letters, small letters, numeric and all type of symbols. Generally, an eight character password is considered as a strong password. Make it 16, it will be stronger and permutation and combination will be difficult.
      • Secure the WP-Admin directory from getting accessed by hackers.
      • SSL should be used to encrypt your sensitive data.
      • If your site has multiple admins, add them carefully after thorough scanning.
      • Admin username should not be kept as “Admin”.
      • Keep backup of your site regularly. You may buy professional services for backup and recovery routine.
      • Protect your wp-config.php file from hackers by keeping it one step higher than the root directory.
      • If you have multiple admin access, just do not allow the dashboard to be edited, by changing it in the wp-config.php file.
      • You should disable the directory listing using .htaccess.
      • Update your plugins and themes regularly.
      • Do not download or install any theme from an unknown site or provider. You do not know what is written in their code.
      • Plugins and WordPress itself should be updated regularly to get all the new security features.
      • Last but not the least, take precaution before installing any plugin. You should check the documentation, ratings, and reviews before installing them and that should be from a trusted source.

      Conclusion

      WordPress Security Plugin by CleanTalk is one of the best world-class security plugins for WordPress which facilitates your WordPress Website an end to end security solution and helps to grow your business without getting the headache of being attacked. CleanTalk’s Security Feature plugin is regularly updated with new features to cope with the new type of attacks and threats and to provide you smooth and flawless security services. Follow the tips and tricks and install a good security plugin will provide all round your WordPress website.

    • 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.