Kevin Muldoon How to Manage Internal & External Links Effectively in WordPress

A big part of search engine optimisation involves managing internal and external hyperlinks on your website. Nine attributes are available for the HTML anchor element (<A>). The most important attribute is href as it defines the URL a user should go to, but you will also see the target attribute used frequently on websites. The target attribute can be used to specify where the linked URL or linked document should open.

The most popular value to use for the target attribute is _blank. All you have to do is add target=”_blank” to a link on your website to ensure that it opens in a new browser window or tab.

WordPress makes it easy to specify whether a link opens in the same window or in a new window, but there is no way to define the default linking method for links across your whole website. Therefore, if you want to change the target destination of links on your website, you have to change them one by one.

Thankfully, there is a WordPress plugin called WP External Links that resolves this issue by allowing you to define the default target attributes of links throughout your website. It's a fantastic solution and one which many WordPress users will find useful.

Before I show you how the plugin works, let's take a step back and learn more about the target and rel attributes and how they are used in websites. Feel free to skip ahead if you're an HTML ninja :)

The Anchor Target Attribute

The HTML anchor element (<A>) is sometimes referred to as the anchor tag. It is, in my opinion, the most important HTML tag available in the HTML language as it is used to link every page, document and website on the internet.

The anchor element supports nine attributes, though the most relevant attributes are href, rel and target. Once you have defined the link URL using href, you can use the rel attribute to specify how the current page or document is related to the one being linked. For example, you could use rel=”nofollow” to advise search engines not to search a document and rel=”author” to reference the author of the page or document.

There are five possible values for the target attribute: _blank, _self, _parent, _top and framename.

If you're as old as me and built awful looking iframe-based websites in the 1990s, you will be familiar with these values already. Here's a quick summary of each one.

• _blank – Sets links to open in new windows and tabs.
• _self – Sets link to open in the same frame as it is clicked. This is the default value of the target attribute. Due to this, it generally does not need to be defined within the anchor element, though it can be used to override the default settings defined by the base HTML tag.
• _parent – Sets links to open in the parent frame.
• _top – Sets links to open in the top window frame. This is useful if you want to ensure the page breaks out of frames.
• framename – Sets links to open in a defined frame. For example, target=”right-column”.

In a world where most websites are built using content management systems or online website builders, content creators are more likely to modify links using a page builder or visual editor.

Despite this, I believe it's beneficial to have an understanding of the anchor element and its attributes together with a basic grasp of HTML. It will give you more options with how you incorporate links into your website and help you troubleshoot glitches in the matrix.

How to Change the Target Attribute of Links in WordPress

I started using the WordPress block editor regularly in 2020 and now write all my articles with it. When you hover over any text in the block editor, a small toolbar will pop up showing text formatting options.

To create a link, all you have to do is select some text and then click on the link icon. In the pop-up box that appears, you can enter the link URL and say whether you want the link to open in a new tab. You can add nofollow and sponsored to the link.

The process is similar if you are using the Classic Editor. You simply select the text you want to link and click the link icon. You can then enter your link URL.

Clicking on the settings cog at the side of the URL field brings up the Link Options box. There's an option to open links in new tabs and link to existing content on your website, but there's no support for inserting nofollow or sponsored into links.

So what is actually happening behind the scenes when you add a link in WordPress?

Well, when you convert text into a link in WordPress, the anchor element looks something like this:

<a href="https://www.kevinmuldoon.com/">Visit My Website</a>

In the block editor, specifying a link to open in a new tab inserts target=”_blank” and rel=”noreferrer noopener” into the link.

The noreferrer value ensures referer information is removed from the HTTP header when a user clicks on the link, whilst the noopener value helps ensure the destination link cannot change the originating document using the window.opener property.

Google advises website owners to add both of these values when opening links in new tabs to avoid performance and security issues.

<a href="https://www.kevinmuldoon.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Visit My Website</a>

If you're still using the WordPress classic editor, the noreferrer value will not be inserted into your links when you click to open links in new tabs.

<a href="https://www.kevinmuldoon.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Visit My Website</a>

The WordPress block editor will insert sponsored and nofollow tags into links if you check to do so.

<a href="https://www.kevinmuldoon.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener sponsored nofollow">Visit My Website</a>

Both the WordPress block editor and classic editor allow you to disable visual elements and view the code directly. This is useful if you want to add link attributes and values that are not natively supported by WordPress.

When Should You Use Nofollow?

Most website owners agree that it's good practice to mark certain links as nofollow, such as sponsored links, untrustworthy links and blog post comments. Well, they should know this, as the nofollow attribute was originally suggested in order to tackle blog post comment spam :)

Beyond these guidelines, link policy can vary greatly from website to website.

In the quest for SEO greatness, some website owners become super stingy and apply nofollow to all outgoing links. I'm strongly against this as:

• It's not what the nofollow was created for
• Not passing link juice to useful websites you're referencing is a dick move (Sharing is caring!!!)
• It's kind of pointless as Google uses nofollow as a hint, not a hard rule it must follow

Whilst I don't believe in applying nofollow to all external links, I do still use it in certain situations such as referencing malicious/unethical websites or referencing an advertiser. That is, afterall, what it was created for.

More recently, I've started adding nofollow to image credits from websites such as Pixabay as I was referencing the same URLs dozens of times in each article. I do not add nofollow when linking to a image marketplace organically within the article (such as the Pixabay link within this very paragraph!). This is a policy I may review in the future as I'm still not convinced it matters :)

I encourage you to do your own research into the pros and cons of applying anchor rel attributes such as nofollow to links before you do so across your whole website. There's a million search engine optimisation articles out there advising when you should and shouldn't apply attributes to links, but be cautious about who you trust as much of this advice comes from self-professed SEO experts with no experience and no evidence to back up their claims. A good starting point to learn more about SEO is The Moz Blog, Backlinko and Search Engine Land.

Feel free to dive headfirst into the SEO rabbit hole when you're ready, but don't forget that search engines have adopted their own rules on which links to follow so may disregard your linking suggestions.

Is it Better to Open All Links in Other Windows?

Google states that there are no performance or security issues to using target=”_blank” in links as long as rel=”noreferrer” or rel=”noopener” are used as well. Therefore, from an SEO perspective, whether you open links in new browser windows or not is irrelevant. It's all about the user experience.

My own preference is to not apply target=”_blank” to external links as I believe it's better to allow the user to control the target frame. So if you're reading an article on KevinMuldoon.com, you can click a link to open it in the same window or right-click the link to open in a new tab, new window or new incognito window. The decision is yours.

My opinion on opening links in new tabs is not supported by everyone. I have written for many popular websites over the years and the vast majority of websites ask authors to set all external links to open in new browser windows and tabs.

The benefit of doing this is that it ensures the reader doesn't leave the original website, allowing them to continue reading the original article. They can then view external pages when it suits them.

Of course, for many website owners, the main reason to do this is to increase the time visitors remain on their website, not to offer an improved user experience. I can understand that viewpoint, however, I still prefer to let the reader make this decision.

Changing a Website's Linking Policy

One of the WordPress blogs I have written for regularly over the years is WinningWP. It's a blog that publishes high-quality WordPress tutorials, reviews and news.

WinningWP is run by WordPress veteran Brin Wilson. I have yet to meet Brin in person at a WordPress conference, though over the years we have had many long discussions about WordPress, website development and more. He's one of the most professional guys I've worked with and he knows a lot about making money on the internet.

Last week, Brin advised all authors that he was changing his linking policy so that external links open in new browser windows. In order to update all existing URLs on WinningWP, Brin used a Search and Replace WordPress plugin to update his WordPress database (Better Search Replace is a great Search and Replace solution if you need to do this yourself).

My recommendation to Brin was to use the WordPress plugin WP External Links instead. The plugin can be used to set the default linking rules for your whole website at the highest level. This saves you from having to change links individually on a page by page basis.

A Practical Way to Manage Links in WordPress

WP External Links is developed by the Croatian WordPress company WebFactory Ltd. It's the same team behind the WordPress plugin WP Reset I use regularly to reset my test WordPress website. They're also behind around 20 other popular WordPress plugins, including maintenance plugins such as Under Construction and Maintenance and 301 plugins such as 301 Redirects & 404 Error Log and 301 Redirects.

WP External Links can be downloaded free of charge from WordPress.org or from the plugins area of your WordPress admin area. Despite being called WP External Links within the plugin, at the time of writing it's referenced as “External Links – nofollow, noopener & new window” on WordPress.org.

Be aware that WebFactory Ltd also have a simple link WordPress plugin that only allows you to force all links to open in a new tab or window. It's called “External Links in New Window / New Tab” on WordPress.org, though the plugin is referenced as “Open External Links in a New Window” within the plugin itself. As these plugin names are almost identical, it's easy to mix them up.

All WP External Links features can be controlled from a single settings page which is divided into six sections. The first tab you encounter displays a Link Checker.

This is a new feature for the plugin that helps you analyse your website links. The Link Checker didn't work for me on a fresh WordPress installation. This wasn't a concern for me personally as it's not the main reason to use WP External Links, but hopefully they fix this issue in the future.

The main section, called External Links, shows the default behaviour for all external links on your website. When you first activate the plugin, external links have rel=”noopener noreferrer external” attached to them. The other values you can add to links are rel=”sponsored” and rel=”ugc”.

UGC is short for User-Generated Content. This lets you advise search engines like Google that the content is not endorsed by yourself as it was created by users. It's useful for linking to content such as blog post comments and forum posts.

WP External Links also lets you change the value of the title attribute and you can style links however you please using CSS.

Links can be set to open in the same window frame, in a new window or tab or in the topmost frame. You can also set all links to open in the same new window. This means that a new tab or window will be launched for the first external link that is clicked, with any additional external links being clicked reloading the same page with the new content.

Links can also be set to be follow or nofollow.

Styling is one of the coolest aspects of WP External Links. In addition to applying a particular style to specific types of links, you can also display an icon at the left or right-hand side of links.

As you can see, nearly all of the image icons that are available are arrows.

Dashicons and Font Awesome icons can also be displayed next to links.

So far, I've been talking about how WP External Links can change the behaviour of your website's outgoing links. Those same settings can be applied to internal links and the excluded links you define in the Exceptions settings page.

As you would expect, link rel values such as noopener, referrer and sponsored, cannot be applied to internal links or excluded links.

The exceptions page gives you the option of overriding default link settings. You can skip blog posts and pages by adding their post ID to this page. Alternatively, you can use a CSS class to prevent WP External Links from operating. For example, you could define a class called link-exception and then add it to the WordPress paragraph block to ensure links within the block are excluded.

WP External Links also lets you class sub-domain links as internal links. This is useful if you use something like forums.website.com for your discussion forum or docs.website.com for your documentation area.

Outgoing links can also be included and excluded by entering their URL on the exceptions settings page.

WP External Links also has a support page that shows technical information and explains how you can get support with problems.

This page also has information about a new data-wpel-link attribute that is available to WP External Links users. Once the attribute is added to a link manually, the plugin knows to treat that link as a different type. For example, you could set specific internal links to be treated the same way as external links.

It's an interesting feature and one which could be useful in certain situations.

I've tested WP External Links thoroughly on my test WordPress website and it works perfectly. I never faced any bugs or errors when using WP External Links and the plugin does exactly what it promises to do.

As noted earlier, I do not set the external links on this website to open in a new browser window. I only do that on rare occasions, such as linking to the full-sized version of an image. That is why I am not using the plugin on KevinMuldoon.com, though it's a solution that I would definitely consider using on niche affiliate websites.

If you use WP External Links, you no longer need to manually set change link behaviour within the WordPress editor. The only downside to this is that if you stop using the plugin, you may have to go back and manually change links in articles later.

Should this be a concern for you, you and your authors could continue to manually change links within the WordPress editor and use WP External Links as a failsafe. Consider it an insurance policy that ensures links behave the way you want them to.

Final Thoughts

The WordPress editor has simplified the job of making links open in new browser windows and inserting nofollow and sponsored tags. WP External Links takes this to the next level by allowing you to change the default behaviour of all links on your website.

It's a fantastic solution and one which I can easily recommend if you're currently setting all outgoing links to open in new browser windows. It's also useful for applying nofollow to links and adding styling to external links, internal links and excluded links.

I highly recommend trying WP External Links out for yourself.

Thanks for reading.

Kevin

The post How to Manage Internal & External Links Effectively in WordPress was written by Kevin Muldoon and appeared first on Kevin Muldoon.

Kevin Muldoon How to Organise, Manage & Schedule Content Effectively in WordPress

WordPress remains the most popular platform for building websites. There are great alternatives available online, but I truly believe that when it comes to creating content, nothing beats WordPress and its revolutionary post type system.

The introduction of the block editor has also improved the experience of creating content with WordPress. I was initially hesitant to switch to the new block editor, however, the WordPress team have improved the block editor considerably over the last few years. It's now easier to create stylish content without distraction.

Of course, the core version of WordPress was designed with a limited feature-set so that users can expand it themselves using WordPress plugins. Most of us are aware that we need to set up website backups ourselves and take steps to improve security, though one area that WordPress has always been lacking is content organisation.

By default, the main WordPress content pages display posts, pages and custom post types, in a list. There is a search bar and filters to help you find content, but this list format is severely lacking when it comes to planning future articles for publication or managing content written by authors. It just isn't effective when managing hundreds or thousands of articles.

If you're publishing content regularly, I highly recommend installing a workflow WordPress plugin to help you manage draft articles, schedule blog posts, organise your publishing schedule and work more effectively with staff.

In this article, I would like to share with you a collection of useful WordPress plugins that will help you manage content and writers more effectively. Enjoy!

1. Editorial Calendar

The solution I have used to organise my blog post schedule for many years is Editorial Calendar. The plugin adds a calendar to the WordPress post area that shows all drafts and all published posts, allowing you to most posts to different dates easily using drag and drop.

This is useful when managing your blog post schedule and bringing the publication date of articles forward or pushing them back. You can also move blog posts into an Unscheduled column to be assigned a publication date at a later time. I've always found this column useful for storing blog post ideas and completed blog posts that have not yet been assigned a publication date.

Using quick edit, you can make changes to a blog post's content and change its post author, status and date. You can also click on any day on the calendar and create a new post. This works well, though the plugin has yet to add compatibility for the WordPress block editor, which means that any text you add to a blog post using this method will have to be converted to a paragraph block later.

Editorial Calendar does not support any other WordPress post types either. It only works with blog posts.

No dedicated settings page is available for Editorial Calendar, but you'll find a Screen Options dropdown menu at the top of the page. From here, you can define what is shown in each calendar cell and how many weeks the calendar displays (up to eight weeks can be selected).

Scrolling through the calendar using your mouse wheel seems like a good feature. In practice, however, I've always found it to be erratic, skipping past the weeks I wanted to view. Thankfully, you can navigate the calendar manually using the arrow buttons to avoid this issue.

Editorial Calendar is a simple WordPress plugin that is free to download. It doesn't let you add custom post statuses and does not provide any tools for adding notes or managing staff. What it does do is offer a practical way of managing your blog post schedule using a drag and drop calendar.

I recommend using it if you want a simple solution to help you manage your blog post schedule.

2. Extended Post Status

Extended Post Status is a free WordPress plugin that lets you add additional post statuses in the back-end of WordPress for all custom post types. This can be particularly useful if you publish a large number of blog posts on a weekly basis or if you publish long articles that can through many stages of review.

To help with workflow, the core version of WordPress offers eight post statuses for post types.

These are:

• Publish – Viewable by everyone
• Future – Scheduled content
• Draft – Incomplete content
• Pending – Submitted content that is pending review by an editor or administrator
• Private – Only viewable by admin
• Trash – Marked for deletion
• Auto-Draft – Post revisions that have been automatically saved
• Inherit – Used by certain post types to inherit a post status from its parent

A pending article is a completed draft that needs to be approved by an editor and a future article is a completed article that is waiting to be published. So from a workflow point of view, the core version of WordPress can be quite restrictive as there isn't much flexibility with how you classify what stage an article is at.

This is why Extended Post Status can be so useful. The plugin lets you add as many additional post statuses as you wish. For example, you could add new post statuses for post ideas, proofreading or for denoting articles that need to be expanded.

The great thing about Extended Post Status is that you can use it to create a unique workflow that works best for you.

If you're feeling restricted by the post statuses available in the core version of WordPress, I recommend giving Extended Post Status a try. It's a simple solution that gives you more creative control over each stage of your content.

3. PublishPress

PublishPress is a WordPress development company that creates WordPress plugins to help you publish content more effectively. Whilst a pro version of each PublishPress plugin is available to those who want it, all PublishPress plugins are free to download and use.

In total, seven plugins are available. The principle plugin is called PublishPress and offers many tools to help you organise content and manage staff.

PublishPress offers a colourful editorial calendar to help you manage content. It's a more refined solution than Editorial Calendar that supports posts and pages. When you click to add a new post or page, you can define the post title, status, time, author, tags, categories, tags and content.

Another standout feature is notifications. You can notify staff whenever content has changed its status or when an editorial comment has been added. It gives you full control over who is notified and when.

Additional user roles can be created in PublishPress to help manage staff more effectively. You'll also see a useful status manager in the plugin settings area. This works in the same way as Extended Post Status, but it is more colourful and gives you the option of defining which post types each post status supports.

If you search for PublishPress on WordPress.org or from the plugin manager in the WordPress admin area, you will see all seven PublishPress plugins that are available.

All of these plugins complement the main PublishPress plugin, but they work independently and don't require you to install PublishPress to function (i.e. they are not plugin extensions, they are standalone WordPress plugins). As noted previously, premium versions that unlock additional features and functionality are available for all of these plugins.

As you can see, PublishPress is so much more than just an editorial calendar and staff notification system. If I had to explain every feature available through these plugins, this article would be significantly longer, so here's a quick summary of what each of these plugins does.

• PublishPress Capabilities – An advanced user role editor that gives you complete control over what every user on your website can and cannot do
• PublishPress Blocks – Adds over 20 blocks to WordPress and lets you control which blocks are visible to users
• PublishPress Authors – Allows you to assign multiple authors to an article and includes a professional author box for displaying author bios
• PublishPress Revisions – Uses the WordPress revision system to assign article updates as revisions instead of making them go live
• PublishPress Checklists – Lets you create a pre-publishing checklist for staff so that they follow your formatting, SEO and social media guidelines
• PublishPress Permissions – Control what content users can and cannot access

If you're publishing a high volume of content on your website, these plugins will be useful for developing articles, scheduling content and managing staff. I do still recommend testing each plugin in a test area to see if it will improve your workflow.

Pro versions of all seven PublishPress plugins are available at $69 per year for a single license, $125 per year for a five website license and $199 per year for an unlimited license.

If you use more than one PublishPress plugin, it pays to upgrade to a PublishPress plan so that you gain access to the premium version of all seven plugins. The full plan retails at $99 per year for a single license, $199 per year for a three website license and $299 per year for an unlimited license.

For many people, the core version of each plugin will be sufficient as they include most essential features. For example, PublishPress Pro adds custom fields for author profiles, custom layouts for author profiles, access control for the admin area, brand removal and priority support. These are all good features, but I don't think they're necessary for everyone.

As such, I recommend using the free PublishPress plugins initially to see what is and isn't relevant to you.

4. SchedulePress

Formerly known as WP Scheduled Posts, SchedulePress is a useful content management WordPress plugin that offers post scheduling, social media sharing and an editorial calendar.

The core version of the plugin is free to download and use, but as you can see from the general settings page below, SchedulePress Pro is heavily advertised within the plugin.

The free version includes a post widget for the WordPress dashboard and an option to see scheduled posts in the WordPress admin bar. You can also configure email notifications to notify authors when a post is under review or when it has been scheduled or published.

SchedulePress lets you share content through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest (Instagram is being added soon). A template is available for each social media platform which lets you specify what meta information is displayed and whether featured images and excerpts are used.

SchedulePress also boasts an editorial calendar that looks like a colourful version of Editorial Calendar. It's a little less flexible than the editorial calendar in PublishPress, but it looks great and is easy to use.

SchedulePress Pro gives you the option of automatically publishing scheduled posts that were missed by WordPress.

It also features a manual post scheduler and an automatic post scheduler. The manual post scheduler lets you select the days and times you want content to be published. With the automatic post schedule, you set how many articles you want to publish for each day of the week and set a start time and end time. SchedulePress will then publish articles randomly based on these presets.

As you can imagine, these advanced scheduling features will not be of much use to small websites, however, blogs that publish multiple articles per day will find them useful.

The free version of SchedulePress is easy to recommend as its editorial calendar and social media sharing tools will help you plan content and share it online.

SchedulePress Pro is worth checking out if your website publishes dozens of articles every week.

5. CoSchedule

CoSchedule is a premium marketing solution that helps you manage all of your marketing tasks effectively. Its standout tool is a real-time marketing calendar that highlights what stage blog posts are at and lists the marketing tasks that need to be completed.

In addition to managing your workload, CoSchedule lets you automatically share published articles on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter. Customisable templates are also available to help make social media posts unique and there is support for popular email marketing services too.

The service retails at $39 per user per month, though this reduces to an effective rate of $29 per user per month if you pay annually. Most websites will be able to work within the maximum limit of 10 users and 10 social media profiles, though support for five additional social media profiles can be purchased for $15 per month.

CoSchedule is behind the browser extension Headline Studio. This tool will analyse and rate your article headlines and then give suggestions on words that may convert better. A pro version is available that extends functionality further by offering data-driven suggestions and SEO recommendations.

CoSchedule also offers a more comprehensive marketing solution called Marketing Suite. In addition to the marketing manager, it offers a content organiser, work organiser and asset organiser. No public pricing is available for this service, therefore you need to speak to the sales team directly.

The content organiser is designed to streamline the editorial process and allow staff to craft new articles together, whilst the work organiser can be used to define tasks and manage them effectively. Staff can use the asset organiser to share images, documents and other files, with each other.

Websites that publish a large amount of content online can benefit from the marketing and organisation tools available through CoSchedule. Retailing at $348 per year, it is difficult to recommend the service to smaller websites and blogs, though Headline Studio can be incredibly useful when brainstorming article titles.

6. Nelio Content

Nelio Content is a useful WordPress plugin that will help you create, organise and promote your blog posts.

It features a colourful drag and drop editorial calendar that lets you view posts by one week, two weeks or one month. Unscheduled draft posts can be displayed on the right-hand side of the calendar and you can filter posts by author or by post type.

Articles that are scheduled to be shared on social media will also be displayed on the editorial calendar.

Nelio Content adds a tools column to the WordPress editor. At the top of the column is the Quality Analysis box that gives you a list of tasks to complete, such as connecting your social media profiles, setting a featured image and writing an excerpt. There's also a references box that lists useful links for the author and external links that have been linked in the article.

If you upgrade to the premium version of Nelio Content, you can add additional editorial tasks and leave comments for other team members. These tasks can be viewed from the editorial calendar too.

Another cool feature of Nelio Content is its support of RSS feeds. You can add RSS feeds of your favourite websites and then create social media posts from their content. Draft posts can also be used to create new draft posts, with the article automatically being added as a reference.

Seven social media services are supported by Nelio Content: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google My Business, Reddit, Instagram and Tumblr. To improve the performance of your shares, you can create a unique sharing template for each social media platform. New and old content can be shared on social media automatically using this setup.

In the advanced settings page, you can specify which WordPress post types are supported by Nelio Content. Be sure to modify this setting if you want to use the plugin with pages and other post types. From the advanced settings page, you can also connect Nelio Content to Google Analytics, export calendar posts to other calendar solutions and enable external featured images.

Nelio Content has a fantastic collection of tools that bloggers will love, but be aware that the free version is limited in some ways. It only allows you to connect to one social media platform and doesn't include features such as tasks or comments.

The premium version retails at £9 per month for one website, £19 per month for up to three websites and £29 per month for up to 10 websites (VAT is added on top of these prices). Nelio Content Pro des have some cool features, but if you don't need to connect to multiple social media platforms, the core version of Nelio Content is more than sufficient.

7. Oasis Workflow

Oasis Workflow is a workflow WordPress plugin that was created for content websites with multiple authors. It can be used to ensure authors follow recommended guidelines and allow website owners to track all changes made by authors (i.e. an audit trail).

The plugin supports all WordPress post types and allows single and multi-level stages to be created for staff members to follow.

New steps can be easily added via the workflow page. You can define which user groups are assigned to the step and who can approve it afterwards. Assignment emails and reminder emails can also be configured here to help notify users when a status has been updated.

Out of the box, Oasis Workflow adds three custom statuses: Pitch, Ready to Publish and With Author. These statuses can be modified or deleted if you wish and you can easily add new statuses that are more suitable for your own workflow.

When authors are working with content, they will see an Oasis Workflow column at the side of the page. This helps everyone see what stage an article is at.

All users also have access to an inbox in the WordPress admin area that highlights their current assignments and tasks.

A premium version of Oasis Workflow is available at $119 per year for a two website license. It adds support for Elementor, automatic submissions to workflows and published content revisions.

Seven premium plugin extensions are also available for Oasis Workflow, but they are bizarrely not included in the Oasis Workflow Premium plans.

• Editorial Comments – Improves communication between users by adding comments to the review process
• Editorial Calendar – A Workflow calendar that helps you manage and schedule content more effectively
• Groups – Lets you create unique user groups outside of the standard WordPress user role system
• Teams – Simplifies workflow by assigning tasks to teams rather than individual users
• Editorial Checklist – Create pre-publish checklists for authors
• ACF Compare – A useful field comparison tool for those that use Advanced Custom Fields
• Front End Actions – Lets users access their inbox from the front-end of your website

All plugin extensions can be purchased together in an Add-Ons package that retails at $399 per year for a two website license. If you prefer, you can purchase a Starter Add-Ons package for $149 that includes Editorial Comments, Editorial Calendar and Groups.

If you're managing multiple authors on your website, Oasis Workflow will be a great help to you. It allows authors to see what needs to be done and the dedicated workflow history and reports pages help administrators and editors see the bigger picture of where things are.

High-volume content websites may also want to consider the premium options available for the plugin that unlock additional tools for managing users and viewing content.

8. Kanban Boards

Kanban Boards is a project management WordPress plugin that can be used for content management, customer management, sales tracking and more.

Kanban Boards doesn't work alongside the WordPress post system. As such, boards will not display your posts, pages and custom post types. Instead, boards act more like project management solutions such as Trello, allowing administrators and editors to organise important tasks and responsibilities.

To help you get started, the plugin offers preset boards for project management, editorial calendar, job applicant tracking, sales pipeline and basic. These boards are a great starting point for your own board as they create the columns for you and help you explore how everything works.

The board is easy to use. It only takes a second to add an item to the board and its status can be changed at any time, immediately transferring it to another column. A number of different views are available and you can assign each task to your designated projects.

In the main settings area, you can enable and disable features and define which users can modify the board and assign tasks to others.

Board columns can be changed here too. You can rename columns, change their colour, delete columns and add additional columns. Tasks can also be set to be automatically removed after 30 days and there's a setting page for adjusting time estimates

By upgrading to Kanban Pro, you can create more than one board on your website. Kanban Pro also adds the following features and functionality:

• Task Comments – Allows comments on tasks to improve team communication
• Advanced User Management – More control over what users can and cannot access
• Task Details & Attachments – Improves boards by unlocking attachments, custom fields, to-do lists, sub-tasks, notes and more
• Notifications – Notify users whenever changes are made on your boards
• Task Colours – Allows tasks to be colour coded

Kanban Pro retails at $149 per year or $499 for lifetime access. It comes with a generous 90-day money-back guarantee.

If you have a small website, Kanban Boards could help your business manage your website more effectively. The plugin could also be installed on a separate WordPress installation for security and performance reasons. For example, on a local intranet.

There are still benefits from using established team collaboration solutions such as Trello and Slack, but those services are hosted on third-party servers. So for many businesses, it would be better to use Kanban Boards as it allows you to store data on your own private servers.

9. Edit Flow

Edit Flow was the first WordPress plugin I thought of when I first started planning this article as it has been around since 2009. It adds eight cool features to help you manage your content schedule effectively.

From the settings home page, you can access settings for each unique feature. You can also disable specific features if you do not plan on using them. It kind of works like a module system where you only enable the modules you want to use.

The editorial calendar in Edit Flow isn't colourful, but it does have many useful filtering options. You can filter by post status, user and category. The calendar can also be adjusted to display between one and 12 weeks.

New posts can be added directly through the calendar, though all you can define when you do this is the post title.

Edit Flow has dedicated settings pages for creating custom statuses and custom user groups. You can define which post types are applied to statuses and user groups.

The plugin also adds a notepad widget to the WordPress dashboard and widgets that display unpublished content and posts you're following.

In the WordPress editor, you'll notice that Edit Flow adds many cool features. Authors can leave notes and comments for other team members using the Editorial Comments box. You can also specify which users and user groups should be notified when a comment is posted or when the post status is updated.

Editorial Metadata is displayed on the right-hand side of the page, which acts as a checklist for authors. Four checklist items are available after installing Edit Flow: First Draft Date, Assignment, Needs Photo and Word Count. You can, of course, add as many additional items as you wish.

Edit Flow remains one of my favourite workflow solutions for WordPress. It's 100% free to use and adds many useful tools that multi-author website owners will love.

Please note that at the time of writing, Edit Flow has not been updated for over a year. For the purpose of this article, I tested the plugin thoroughly on my test WordPress website and it worked perfectly, but that is no guarantee that you will not experience any compatibility issues. As such, if Edit Flow still hasn't been updated for the latest version of WordPress, I strongly recommend installing it on test website or staging area first to ensure there are no compatibility issues with your live website.

10. Strive Calendar

Strive Calendar is a premium WordPress plugin that boasts many useful features for content creators. The five main features of Strive Calendar are Content Calendar, Post Statuses, Post Checklists, Revisions and Pipeline. All tools are supported by the WordPress block editor and the WordPress classic editor.

In my humble opinion, Strive Content Calendar is one of the nicest editorial calendars available for WordPress. When you click to add a new post to a particular day, you can start from scratch or insert one of your draft posts. The quick edit box can be used to adjust the title, editorial status, author, date, time and category.

Content Calendar only shows published blog posts and scheduled blog posts. In other editorial calendars, draft posts are also shown in the calendar, though the developers have opted to manage drafts through their Pipeline feature instead.

Strive Calendar expands the concept of drafts by adding four new statuses: Not started, Writing, Editing and Complete. These new statuses help paint a better picture of what stage articles are at and can easily be changed in the WordPress editor or in the Content Calendar.

Post Checklists are also useful. You can create as many checklist items as you wish and move them around using drag and drop. Authors can tick off items once they have completed each task.

Strive Post Revisions can be used to create a revision for any blog post and then schedule it as if it's a new article. Revisions can be created at the click of a button and the Strive Content Calendar will highlight to you which blog posts are revisions.

Another great feature is Pipeline, which can be used to manage all draft blog posts.

As I noted previously, the Content Calendar only shows published blog posts and scheduled blog posts. I initially assumed this was a major limitation of the calendar, but it was designed this way on purpose. In other editorial calendar solutions, draft posts are displayed in the calendar alongside published and scheduled posts. Whilst this can be useful in many situations, it is also common for draft posts to slip into the archives without notice if they have a publication date and time assigned to them.

Pipeline addresses this by showing all draft posts on a dedicated page. Each post is categorised by one of the four available post statuses. As you may recall, these are Not Started, Writing, Editing and Complete.

Whilst initially unsure about the concept, I now believe Pipeline's handling of draft posts is a significant improvement over drafts being added to editorial calendars.

If you manage a multi-author WordPress website, Strive Calendar is easy to recommend. It adds five useful features to WordPress that improve the workflow process of taking articles from ideas to being published on the front-end.

Strive Calendar can be used for 30 days free of charge without entering any credit card details. After that, it costs $7 per month to continue using it, which is $84 per year.

11. Post Type Switcher

Post Type Switcher is a WordPress plugin that allows you to change post types easily. It can be used to change a post to a page or a page to a post. Custom post types are supported too, which means that posts and pages can be converted to custom post types and vice-versa.

From the main WordPress post edit screens, you can use quick edit or bulk edit to change the post type of one or many articles.

The post type can also be modified within the WordPress editor.

I start most new post ideas as blog posts, which is a habit I fell into as Editorial Calendar does not support WordPress pages. Therefore, by starting articles as blog posts, I can organise all articles using the editorial calendar and then switch completed posts to pages once they are ready for publication. Many other WordPress plugins designed for high-volume content websites and multi-author blogs are restricted to blog posts too, so it helps to be able to start content as blog posts and switch to another post type later.

There are many other situations where it is useful to switch the post type of an article:

• Quality blog posts that are lost in the archives can be updated and re-published as pages
• Short articles originally published as pages can be published in the blog instead
• Long blog posts can be published as pages so they use a hierarchical structure

Post Type Switcher may appear to be a strange selection in an article about organising content, yet it's a solution I find myself using frequently for planning future articles and renewing older content. I am positive you will find it useful too.

12. User Role Editor

User Role Editor is a hugely popular user management WordPress plugin that allows you to define what users and user groups can and cannot do. Similar functionality can be found in plugins such as PublishPress Capabilities and Members, but I've always found User Role Editor to be the best solution.

User Role Editor lets you set hundreds of capabilities for the WordPress admin area, themes, plugins, posts, pages and more. Capabilities can be defined for each user group on your website, but you can also override user group settings and change permissions at a user level.

New user groups can be created in seconds. All you have to do is set the ID and name of your role and then say which existing user group you want to copy permissions from. If you want, you can start from scratch and set all capabilities yourself, though I would always recommend using an existing WordPress user group as a starting point.

User Role Editor Pro is available for those that need even more control. Retailing from only $29 per year, it extends functionality considerably, letting you define permissions for blocks, widgets, viewing and more.

Many workflow WordPress plugins allow you to change the permissions of users and user groups. This may be sufficient for many of you, but if you're looking for more control over website permissions, User Role Editor is the WordPress plugin I recommend.

13. Pre-Publish Checklist

Checklists are a great way of reminding authors of your writing rules and guidelines. They can be useful for reminding yourself of important tasks too!

You will find checklists in workflow WordPress plugins such as Oasis Workflow and Strive Calendar, though if you are not using those solutions, it may be preferable to use a dedicated checklist WordPress plugin instead.

The two checklist WordPress plugins I recommend are Pre-Publish Checklist and PublishPress Checklists. PublishPress Checklists can be installed without the principle PublishPress plugin being activated, but as I have already discussed that plugin, let's move forward and talk about Pre-Publish Checklist.

One of the coolest features of Pre-Publish Checklist is the ability to prevent an article from being published if an author has not checked all items. If you prefer, you can just display a warning to authors or let them ignore the checklist altogether.

The plugin supports posts, pages and custom post types.

Unique checklists can be created for each WordPress post type. Several items are displayed in the checklist initially to get you started, however, these can easily be re-ordered, edited or deleted.

The pre-publish checklist is displayed in the WordPress editor. As authors check off checklist items, the progress bar is updated to reflect how many more items remain.

Pre-Publish Checklist is one of the best ways of adding a pre-publish checklist to the WordPress editor. It's easy to use and supports an unlimited number of items. Be sure to check out PublishPress Checklists too, which is a great alternative.

14. WP Auto Republish

WP Auto Republish is a fantastic content WordPress plugin that can automatically republish older content with the current date. This could be particularly useful to WordPress users who have published a large number of articles over the years.

The republishing process can be set to run in a wide number of time intervals between five minutes and seven days. The time and days of republishing can be defined and you can choose to show the original publish date above or below content if you wish.

On the Post Options settings page, you can specify whether posts and pages should be republished and which content is eligible for republication. In the core version of WP Auto Republish, content has to be between 30 days and three years old to be eligible, but the premium version allows you to select any time period.

The premium version of WP Auto Republish is available from $29.99 per year. It supports custom post types, taxonomies, post intervals and post titles (i.e. change the name of republished articles). It also unlocks automatic social media sharing, email notifications, support for dates in permalinks, and much more.

It's easy to recommend the full version of WP Auto Republish as it adds so many useful features for only 30 bucks, though I recommend starting off with the core version of the plugin first before upgrading.

Whichever version you use, WP Auto Republish will help you bring old articles to the forefront of your WordPress blog and increase website traffic with ease.

15. Post Expirator

The benefits of reviving existing articles is obvious, but it can also be beneficial in many situations to move or delete content that has become outdated or irrelevant.

Post Expirator is a WordPress plugin that lets you do just that. It can be used to add expiration dates to posts, pages and custom post types.

Once activated, you will see a box in the WordPress editor for setting the date and time content should expire. Expired content can be switched back to a draft, be made private, sent to the trash, deleted, be made sticky or be unstuck. You can also add or remove expired content from a specific category.

To keep you updated with what content has been expired, Post Expirator can be configured to send notification emails. In the plugin settings area, you can also define the default post expiration values you see in the WordPress editor and there's an option to automatically expire all new posts too.

Post Expirator is a useful solution for expiring content that that is now less relevant, such as competition announcements and promotional offers that have expired.

There's a similar solution available on WordPress.org called Advanced Schedule Posts, though Post Expirator is by far the better option.

16. Scheduled Post Trigger

In an ideal world, every blog post and page you schedule in WordPress will be published at the correct date and time. Unfortunately, scheduled content sometimes gets missed by the WordPress cron.

I use the WordPress plugin Scheduled Post Trigger to ensure that all scheduled articles get published (I previously used WP Missed Schedule Posts). The plugin uses a lightweight script to check for missing content anytime a visitor loads your home page or an article.

There's not a lot to say about Scheduled Post Trigger as it does not have any configuration settings. All you have to do is set it and forget it to ensure no scheduled content is missed.

Final Thoughts

All of the WordPress plugins referenced in this article have been trialled or tested on this website or my test WordPress website. That has not only helped me see what each WordPress plugin can do, but also which solutions benefit my own publishing routine.

There's no solution referenced in this article that is perfect for every single WordPress user. Those of you who have a small WordPress blog may find an editorial calendar to be sufficient for organising content, whilst multi-author content websites that publish a large volume of content may gravitate more towards workflow plugins that have more features and functionality.

Here's a brief summary of all the WordPress plugins I have referenced in this article.

I hope you have enjoyed this look at the best WordPress plugins for organising, managing and scheduling content.

As always, I strongly recommend testing all of these solutions on a test environment or staging area first. This will help you understand what they offer and ensure they work well with your live website.

Good luck.

Kevin

The post How to Organise, Manage & Schedule Content Effectively in WordPress was written by Kevin Muldoon and appeared first on Kevin Muldoon.

Kevin Muldoon Restarting the Blogging Engine

Maintaining a successful blog is a lot like driving a steam train. It takes a lot of energy to get it going, but even when you're on the right track, you need to keep adding fuel to the fire or it will eventually grind to a halt.

Failure to follow the principle of publishing good content consistently could send your blog into the great blogging graveyard in the sky. Whilst this blogging train hasn't crashed yet, it's clear that I need to start publishing articles on this blog more frequently. So that is exactly what I am going to do.

I will be putting my fancy blogging hat back on and making a conscious effort to put more time and energy into publishing articles here. Yey!

That's One Small Step for Man…

If you have ever launched a blog, you will appreciate that it can be difficult to maintain a consistent blog publishing schedule when you have other commitments that also require attention. It can quickly feel like you're spinning plates, devoting a little time to one project before rushing back to ensure the other project is still getting attention.

Over the last few years, I have juggled the management of my websites alongside writing for others and creating content for my YouTube channels regularly. When my time was precious, as it frequently is when creating YouTube videos, my other commitments were given a higher priority. In the short term, that was never a major problem. In the long term, it was.

In the last month, I have taken a small hiatus from YouTube to help me catch up. In addition to publishing an article entitled “11 Free WordPress Syntax Highlighter Plugins to Make Your Code Stand Out“, I have been working on four or five other long-form articles. A week or so of my time was also spent tweaking this website design (which I'll speak more about in a future article).

Once I get the momentum of this blog going again, I'll take the time to create more content for YouTube and balance my work more effectively. To do this, I may set aside some days for this blog, some for clients and some for creating videos for YouTube.

Fueling the Blogging Engine

The ball is now rolling. I've made a start on some articles and taken notes for a dozen more. Many of these will be published through the blog, but some will be published outwith the blog as guides and tutorials.

Whether articles as published as blog posts or pages is irrelevant to those that arrive on the content. The primary goal when kickstarting a blog back to life is to publish high-quality content regularly and that's all I'm focused on.

I do, however, also need to take the time to get more eyes on each article.

Getting My Name Out There (Again!)

I've been around long enough that some people in WordPress and website development may still be familiar with my previous websites or from my books about blogging. I also have a small following in the tech world due to my technology YouTube channel.

I'm not saying my past activities in blogging are worthless, but I'd be delusional to think that this blog can coast the next few years based upon what I did in the past. Therefore, I need to start raising my profile, and the profile of this blog, and tackle the problem as if I'm starting from scratch.

There's a number of ways you can help promote a blog.

Social media plays a big part in promoting articles today so I need to make more of an effort to use my social media platforms more effectively. As much as I'd like, Twitter can't just be a place for me to complain about companies who don't answer their emails. I need to get more involved in discussions and build relationships with people in WordPress, website development and technology.

A common blog promotion technique is to send emails out to thousands of blogs and ask the owners to link or share your “Amazing Article“. I acknowledge that this cold-calling technique may be effective for some people, but it's not my style. I don't like people that spam my email inbox, so I'm not going to do that to others. I'd much rather build professional relationships on Twitter and through personal emails and messages.

I'm also keen to write for other blogs again so that I reach new audiences.

I've not been writing regularly for others this year beyond irregular writing gigs for the WordPress websites WinningWP, WPMarmalade and WC Vendors; however, to help promote my efforts here, I'm going to take on more writing gigs over the next few months. This will expose my writing to thousands of new readers.

It is important to note that these writing gigs will be paid. They're not guest posts.

No…I Do Not Write for Others Free of Charge (And Neither Should You!)

When I first contributed a guest post to a website in 2008, the landscape was very different to what it is today. In the 2000s, bloggers submitted high-quality articles to blogs free of charge and in exchange, they were able to reach a whole new audience.

At first, guest posting was an effective way of kickstarting a new blog and attracting new subscribers. Unfortunately, it wasn't long until this promotion technique was abused by blog owners as they realised that they could get content free of charge. For some blogs, such as ProBlogger, guest posts represented the majority of their content at one point (thankfully, this is no longer the case).

I have long been opposed to bloggers writing guest posts free of charge.

1. Since blog owners take advantage of guest posters, abusing the free labour that is offered and giving little exposure in return
2. Because the prevalence of guest posting cheapened the art of writing.

To this day, many blog owners expect writers to work in exchange for a text link as there are so many companies offering this “Free Content“.

To make matters worse, a few changes in Google's ranking algorithms brought SEO companies and digital agencies into the blogging world, sending guest posting into overdrive. Today, nearly all guest posts are actually sponsored posts, with a ton of crappy unrelated links stuffed into them by the blogger so they get paid by an SEO company or advertiser.

So this idea that websites are getting free content is incorrect. What websites are actually doing is giving free advertising to companies.

It's a shame, but the days of high-quality guest post articles are truly gone. They've been replaced by awful content that was written in minutes, not hours or days. That is why they are no longer accepted on this website.

Starting From Scratch

Before my adventures on YouTube, I was a prolific writer, so I was lucky to have never had to actively seek out writing opportunities. In fact, I regularly turned down writing gigs as I just couldn't fit the additional work into my schedule.

As I published fewer articles, the number of invitations to write for others dwindled as well. So I find myself in a unique position where I have to go out and introduce myself to companies and ask if they're looking for writers. It's a little strange as previously, companies were already familiar with my work when they reached out to me. Whereas now, I now need to explain who I am and what I do.

I know from experience that as I publish more articles on this blog, and on other websites, those writing opportunities will return as website owners will come across articles I have written. For the time being, however, I need to be the one that makes the first contact.

A Different Approach to Contacting Companies

In addition to being terrible written, guest post requests account for most of the spam that fills my email inbox every day. I receive hundreds of guest post requests every month and they are nearly all sent through auto-email software. The emails are impersonal and it takes time every day to send those emails to the spam folder.

This blog receives hundreds of spammy guest post emails every month, so I suspect large companies and high-traffic blogs receive thousands of these junk emails. This perhaps explains why my recent emails to companies have had such a poor response.

I sent out an email to a few companies earlier this week about contributing a few articles to their blog. Despite the fact I was emailing about a paid writing position, three of the companies sent a standard copy-and-paste reply that they are not looking for guest posts at this time.

It's clear that those companies did not actually read my email, but I cannot blame them for misinterpreting my reason for emailing. It was inevitable that this would happen as companies are tackling so many spam emails on a daily basis. What this does highlight, however, is that it's now harder to make that initial contact through email.

Moving forward, I am going to build relationships through social media platforms such as Twitter and LinkedIn instead. This will help reduce the odds of my emails being classified as spam.

Final Thoughts

I'm excited about getting this blog back on track. The market has changed, but I've been here before and I know what I need to do to increase blog traffic and bring readers back.

Much of this article has been devoted to my plans for raising the profile of myself and this blog, though I need to reiterate that my main focus is creating great content. Quality content remains the most effective way to not only attract readers, but also keep them coming back.

Thanks for reading.

Kevin

The post Restarting the Blogging Engine was written by Kevin Muldoon and appeared first on Kevin Muldoon.

Kevin Muldoon 11 Free WordPress Syntax Highlighter Plugins to Make Your Code Stand Out

Syntax highlighting is a common feature of Text Editors which uses multiple colours and fonts to help you read and analyse code more easily. They can help you view the structure of code, make comments stand out and quickly point out any errors you have made.

It's a feature that many of us take for granted today, but when syntax highlighting is not being used, it can be incredibly difficult to digest code.

In this article, I would like to share with you a collection of WordPress plugins that add syntax highlighting to WordPress. These can be used to help you work with code in the back-end of WordPress or to share code with others on the front-end in blog posts and tutorials.

I have tested all WordPress plugins referenced in this article. They're all free to download so I encourage you to do the same and test them out for yourselves :)

1. Enlighter

Enlighter is a flexible syntax highlighter that features hundreds of options. Powered by the EnlighterJS Javascript library, it can be used with the WordPress block editor, the older classic editor and with the WordPress theme editor.

In the plugin settings area, you will find dozens of settings pages to let you control code appearance, styling, editing, compatibility and theme customisation. It gives you full control over how code is styled and marked up.

To say the Enlighter Theme Customiser has many options would be a major understatement. There are hundreds of different settings and features to explore across 15 categories. The font and style of every possible string and text can be modified.

When you add an Enlighter block in the block editor, you can choose to use generic highlighting or select from around 50 popular programming languages. 13 unique CSS-based colour schemes can be selected from the main plugin settings area, but you can override default colours within each block. You can also choose to show or hide line numbers and offset code at a specific line number.

The code box looks great. Users can choose to view raw code, copy the code and view the raw code using an external pop up window.

Enlighter works perfectly out of the box, so for many people, all you need to do is select your preferred syntax highlighting style. For those that want more control, Enlighter offers hundreds of settings that can be enabled, disabled and customised.

It is undoubtedly one of the best syntax highlighters available for WordPress.

2. My Syntax Highlighter

My Syntax Highlighter is a syntax highlighter that uses the CodeMirror Javascript library. It utilises shortcodes to display code and features 36 colour schemes and support for 13 programming languages.

On the main settings page, you can select a default language for the CODE HTML tag. This could be useful to those of you who only share code for one language, but for those that share code from many different languages, there is potential for displaying the wrong formatting in some instances.

Line numbering can be enabled from this area too and you can define the first line number, display a dollar sign before code and define tab character length.

The height of the code box can be defined too and there's an option to convert special characters to HTML entities. A preview box can be found at the bottom of the page too, which helps you view the changes you have made in the settings area.

Most other syntax highlighter WordPress plugins offer a dedicated block for entering code and modifying what is displayed. Unfortunately, no such block is available in My Syntax Highlighter. Instead, what you need to do is enter your code inside one of the 16 available shortcodes.

This is simple to do using the shortcode block, but the downside to this setup is that you cannot override the default settings defined in the main plugin settings page. You can use the Code block if you wish, but customisation is still limited.

The final output of My Syntax Highlighter looks great. I like the fact line numbers can be added, though it's worth noting that the plugin does not have a button for users to copy all code.

A pro version of My Syntax Highlighter is available from $29. It increases the number of supported languages to 154, the number of shortcodes to 125 and the number of available colour schemes to 64. This advanced version of the plugin also adds line wrapping and an option to select the programming language.

The shortcode system that My Syntax Highlighter uses may not appeal to everyone, however, there is no denying that the plugin does exactly what it promises.

I believe the core version of My Syntax Highlighter will be sufficient for many users, but it may be worthwhile upgrading to unlock the additional programming languages that are available.

3. Syntax Highlighter for Theme/Plugin Editor

Syntax Highlighter for Theme/Plugin Editor is a plugin that does exactly what it says on the tin. It replaces the default WordPress theme and plugin editor with a new CodeMirror-powered editor which has syntax highlighting.

Developed by the same team behind My Syntax Highlighter, the plugin supports the following languages: XML, HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript and Markdown (.txt).

On the solitary plugin settings page, you can choose from 36 different colour schemes. You can also enable line numbering, define the first line number and set the number of characters used in tabs.

This page also gives you a preview of your chosen colour scheme and settings. Alternatively, you can take the plugin for a spin by editing a theme or plugin directly on your WordPress website.

Syntax Highlighter for Theme/Plugin Editor is a simple solution that works well. If you regularly edit themes and plugins directly on your website, you will find the plugin useful. A plugin that compliments Syntax Highlighter well is String locator, which allows you to search for files and text in themes, plugins and the WordPress core.

It is easy to recommend Syntax Highlighter for Theme/Plugin Editor, but please bear in mind that editing themes and plugins directly on your website is not good practice. You run the risk of crashing your website and it makes your website less secure. Therefore, it is best to only use the WordPress theme and plugin editors in test environments, not live websites.

4. Prismatic

Prismatic is a useful WordPress plugin for showing code snippets on your website. It was developed by veteran WordPress developer Jeff Starr of Perishable.

The plugin lets you code escape and use syntax highlights using either the Prism.js or Highlight.js Javascript libraries. If you only need code escaping, you can use the “Plain Flavor” option.

In the plugin settings area, there is a general tab for selecting your preferred way of displaying code snippets.

For Prism.js, you can select from eight colour schemes and enable plugins to show line highlights, line numbers, languages, copy command and command line. You can restrict the plugin to posts and pages too.

With Highlight.js, you can choose from a whopping 98 colour schemes. You can also add support for no-prefix class names and restrict usage to posts and pages.

Code is automatically escaped on the front-end of your website, but you can also enable this for back-end content. You can opt to escape code for post content, post excerpts and post comments.

Prismatic supports the block editor and the classic editor, with over 50 programming languages to choose from.

You can display code on your website using one of three methods:

• Preformatted Block / PRE Tag
• Code Block / CODE Tag
• Prismatic Block

The Prismatic block will automatically apply the Prism.js or Highlight.js Javascript libraries to the code, therefore the colour scheme will change automatically. With Pre and Code, you will need to apply the corresponding CSS class.

You will also have to apply CSS classes for features such as line numbers and copy to clipboard. This is an aspect of the plugin I was initially unsure of as I wrongly assumed they would be automatically applied if they were selected in the settings area (Kudos to Jeff for providing such great support about this issue!).

Thankfully, once you learn what CSS classes to use, it's incredibly simple to use. You just need to follow the instructions on the Prismatic plugins page and the official instructions page. For example, you can use the class line-numbers for…you guessed it, line numbers. With PHP, I had to use the language-php class.

Overall, the process is straightforward and the final output looks great.

Prismatic is a useful syntax highlighter that gives you access to many colour schemes and features. Its support for pre blocks, code blocks and HTML tags, will be attractive to those that are looking to quickly adapt existing content.

Be sure to read through the Prismatic plugins page and the official instructions page to understand how to apply CSS classes.

5. SyntaxHighlighter Evolved

SyntaxHighlighter Evolved is a great solution that utilises Alex Gorbatchev's SyntaxHighlighter JavaScript package to highlight code on the front-end of your website. It works with the block editor and the classic editor.

Seven colour schemes are available for selection in the plugin settings area and there's an option to disable the colour scheme and display code plainly. The plugin also has support for line numbers, clickable URLs, line wrapping and more.

At the bottom of the plugin settings page is a preview area that lets you see how your code will look. Over a dozen shortcode parameters are available that change what is displayed and there are example shortcodes to demonstrate how Syntax Highlighter Evolved works.

Whilst you can use shortcodes if you wish, the SyntaxHighlighter Evolved block is more user-friendly. There are over 30 programming languages to choose from and you can enable line numbers, define the first line number and highlight specific lines from your code. You can also make URLs clickable and enable edit mode.

The light and dark colour schemes that are available in the plugin look good and I love how easy it is to highlight lines of code.

Unfortunately, there is currently no button available for copying code with a single click. I hope this is something that is added to a future version.

SyntaxHighlighter Evolved is easy to recommend. It is easy to use, has many colour schemes to choose from and has some cool features such as line highlighting.

6. Highlighting Code Block

Highlighting Code Block adds a block to the WordPress editor to help you display highlighted code on the front-end of your website. Whilst it was primarily designed for the block editor, the WordPress classic editor is also supported.

In the plugin settings area, you will find options to display the language name, line numbers and a copy button. Light and dark colour schemes are available and you can apply this to content in the front-end and to the code block itself in the back-end.

One of the plugin's standout features is the ability to change the font family and the size of the font that is used when displaying code.

Highlighting Code Block is also one of the few solutions that lets you define the format for language classes. You can also load your own code-colouring file and Prism.js library.

The Highlighting Code Block supports 17 programming languages. A file name can be added to the code and you can set the data-line value too. There are also options to display the row count and language.

Whilst there aren't many colour schemes to choose from, the light and dark colour schemes do look good and the copy button ensures that users can quickly copy the code you've shared.

Despite its limited colour options, Highlighting Code Block is one of the best syntax highlighting WordPress plugins available online. I love the fact it lets you add a file name for code and gives you the ability to change fonts.

7. CodeMirror Blocks

CodeMirror Blocks is a user-friendly syntax highlighter that uses the CodeMirror Javascript library. It supports over 100 programming languages and includes 56 different colour schemes. It has support for the classic editor too, though some options are not available if you are using the old editor.

The style and features of each code block can be configured on a block by block basis, however, default settings can be configured on the main plugin settings page. You can select the default language and theme and activate features such as line numbers, line highlighting, line wrapping and code editing.

Interestingly, the control panel that is displayed above code can also be modified. The code language or file name can be displayed as a label and you can enable Full Screen and Copy buttons. There's an execution button for HTML, CSS and JavaScript code too.

All the options you see on the plugin settings page are also available in the block settings panel. I like this approach as it gives you the ability to make each code box unique.

The high number of colour schemes that are available may be what grabs the headlines, though it was the addition of a Full Screen button that I really loved. It's particularly useful for long pieces of code as it allows you to remove all distractions and see the code better.

CodeMirror Blocks ticks a lot of boxes. Easy to use, highly customisable and support for a wide number of programming languages and colour schemes.

8. WP Githuber MD – WordPress Markdown Editor

WP Githuber MD is a feature-packed markdown editor that also includes a useful syntax highlighter. The plugin supports posts, pages and custom post types, and will automatically detect markdown content so that unnecessary scripts are not loaded.

In the markdown settings page, you will find settings for writing, meta boxes and the markdown editor. There are also options here to disable revisions and auto-saves, enable spell checking, display an HTML to Markdown helper widget, display line numbers and more.

One of the most interesting features to pay attention to is Live Preview (it's enabled by default). This will split the markdown editor into two panes so you can preview what will be displayed at the front-end of your website.

On the modules settings page, you can enable and configure 11 unique modules. An example is provided for each module, but be aware that if a specific module is not enabled on this page, it will not be available in the markdown editor.

There are two syntax highlighting modules. One is for the Prism.js Javascript library and the other is for the Highlight.js Javascript library (and yes…these are the same two Javascript libraries found in the Prismatic WordPress plugin). When one of these syntax highlight modules is enabled, the other will be automatically disabled.

Prism.js offers eight colour schemes and an option to display line numbers. You can also choose to self-host files or deliver them through Cloudflare or jsDelivr. If you choose Highlight.js instead, you gain access to over 80 colour schemes and the ability to self-host files or deliver them from Cloudflare.

The remaining modules are Copy to Clipboard, Image Paste, Table of Content, KaTex, Mermaid, Flow Chart, Sequence Diagrams, MathJax and Emojify. Although it's not something I see myself using, those who are publishing science articles will appreciate the ability to display mathematics, formulas, flow diagrams and charts.

Once WP Githuber MD has been activated on your website, you will see an option in the block editor to “Enable Markdown”. Selecting this will load up a variation of the classic editor which shows a toolbar with all markdown options.

As you can see below, I used my simple PHP code example to test it out, though the plugin supports advanced tools for font formatting, headlines, lists, images, links, code languages and more. The live preview pane is vital here as it helps you see what will be displayed to your visitors.

WP Githuber MD is obviously so much more than a syntax highlighter, though its syntax highlighting modules work well. There are many colour schemes to choose from, support for line numbers and an option for users to copy all content to their clipboard.

If you're only looking to highlight code at the front-end of your website, WP Githuber MD may be overkill for some of you as it has many features and settings you will not use. For others, the additional formatting and markdown features will be incredibly useful as it gives you greater control over how code, text and media, are displayed on your website.

9. Urvanov Syntax Highlighter

Still referenced as Crayon Syntax Highlighter within the plugin, Urvanov Syntax Highlighter is a customisable syntax highlighter with many useful options. It boasts its own feature-rich block and has support for the WordPress classic editor.

Customisation is where Urvanov Syntax Highlighter excels. There are around 60 colour schemes available for selection and you can adjust the font family, the font size and the line-height of your output. The maximum width and height can also be defined for the box together with its margins.

The code box also has a useful toolbar and there is support for line numbers, line wrapping, striped cells and more.

One of the coolest features in Urvanov Syntax Highlighter is the Theme Editor, which lets you duplicate any theme, edit it and then save it as your own custom design.

There are 19 different types of strings and text that can be highlighted and there are options for adjusting the frame, lines, line numbers and the code box toolbar. The editor also allows you to name your new theme and add a description.

The settings page has dozens of additional options. There are settings for changing code, tags, languages, files and more. Errors can also be logged.

When you insert the Urvanov Syntax Highlighter block into your content area, you may be mistaken that there are no options as nothing is displayed on the right-hand side of the page. This is because you need to click on the block to load the settings box.

When the settings box has been loaded, you can add your code, name the code and select your language. You can also override the key settings from the main settings page. This is particularly useful if you want to change the colour scheme or change what features are enabled in the code box.

The purpose of every syntax highlighter is to present code to others in a pleasant way and Urvanov Syntax Highlighter does a fine job of this. The large selection of themes on offer and the ability to create your own theme means that you will always be able to find a colour scheme that matches your WordPress theme.

Visitors will love the toolbar too. It allows users to toggle line numbers on and off, view the code without any colours, toggle the line wrap, copy code to the clipboard and view the code in a new window.

Urvanov Syntax Highlighter is one of the best syntax highlights available for WordPress. It's packed full of useful features and the final output looks great. Don't be put off by its large number of settings as the plugin works perfectly with default settings.

10. Code Syntax Block

Code Syntax Block is a simple syntax highlighter that transforms the standard WordPress Code block. It uses the Prism.js Javascript library to apply markups.

To use Code Syntax Block, all you have to do is add a Code block, enter your code and then adjust settings at the right-hand side of the page. You can then adjust the code language, line numbers, code title and colour scheme.

44 programming languages are supported by Code Syntax Block and there are four colour schemes that can be applied. Three of the colour schemes are dark and one is light.

Be aware that when you select a colour scheme, it is applied to all code blocks on your website, not just the page you are working on. This makes it easy to change the look of code blocks across your whole website, but it does mean that it's not possible to make any specific code block unique.

All of the available colour schemes look great. Line numbers are a nice touch, however, you will not find any additional features such as copy to clipboard.

It can't match other solutions for features, but Code Syntax Block is a fantastic highlighting solution as it works in harmony with the standard code block. This means that existing posts and pages that use the code block will be instantly transformed once the plugin is activated. Likewise, if Code Syntax Block is deactivated, your content will not be affected.

11. Syntax-highlighting Code Block

A fantastic alternative to Code Syntax Block is Syntax-highlighting Code Block. It's actually a fork of Code Syntax Block and works in the same way, automatically adding syntax highlighting to all standard WordPress code blocks on your website.

The plugin uses the Highlight.js Javascript library and supports the official AMP plugin. One of its biggest selling points is that all rendering is done server-side, which improves website performance.

To use the plugin, all you have to do is insert a standard WordPress code block into your content and then add your code. At the right-hand side of the page, you will see options for language, highlighted lines, line numbers and wrapping lines.

When you specify lines to be highlighted in the settings panel, those lines will be automatically highlighted in the code block in the editor. This will help you see exactly which lines are being highlighted.

Instead of controlling colours from the WordPress block editor, Syntax-highlighting Code Block uses the WordPress theme customiser to change colour schemes.

Syntax-highlighting Code Block supports all languages that highlight.php supports, which means that a whopping 185 languages are supported.

The plugin can automatically detect the language that is contained within the code block too. I believe this Auto-Detect feature is one of the greatest strengths of the plugin, making it highly attractive to those that are already using the code block to share the code of many different languages.

The default colour scheme of Syntax-highlighting Code Block is quite plain, using a grey background and light blue for highlighting lines.

Using the WordPress theme customiser, you can scroll through all 89 colour schemes to find the one that fits your website design best.

The colour of highlighted lines can also be changed from the WordPress theme customiser.

Code Syntax Block and Syntax-highlighting Code Block are two of my favourite syntax highlighting solutions as they work with the existing code blocks and tags you have in your website content.

Syntax-highlighting Code Block is technically the best solution, adding many changes and improvements to Code Syntax Block. This includes server-side rendering, line wrapping, line highlighting and a larger number of colour schemes.

My Introduction to Syntax Highlighting

I was first introduced to programming in the early 1990s, learning languages such as BASIC and COMAL at high school. When I later went to University in 1996, I started working with languages such as C+, Fortran, MATLAB  and more.

Whilst these languages gave me a good foundation for the future, the first language I worked with on a daily basis was HTML. I began learning HTML in the late 1990s by reading online resources and learning the code through trial and error.

For the first two years, I used NotePad to build HTML websites. No…not the popular text editor Notepad++. I'm referring to the simple note application from Microsoft that was released in 1983. This may surprise many of you as website building applications such as Adobe Dreamweaver were popular at the time and there were a host of useful Text Editors available online. I had, however, become accustomed to the simplicity of Notepad and had a strong dislike for the way Dreamweaver worked.

When I returned to University in 2001 and started working with Java, I was introduced to the text editor TextPad (an application I still use 20 years later) and quickly appreciated the usefulness of syntax highlighting.

All of a sudden, the code for my HTML websites started to pop out from the screen, showing me the building blocks of the page and highlighting the mistakes I made in an array of colours. My new preferred text editor also helped me move from static HTML websites to dynamic websites that used PHP, HTML and MySQL. It simply wouldn't have been possible for me to work with more complex code if syntax was not being highlighted.

Today, I use WordPress to build all of my content websites. If you enable the WordPress plugin editor and theme editor, WordPress does show code using colours, yet it doesn't give you the same rich experience that you get from a dedicated Syntax Highlighter WordPress plugin.

On the front-end of your website, there is no native support for highlighting code and displaying it properly. So if you're sharing code frequently with others, I strongly recommend using one of the solutions recommended in this article.

Don't make the mistake I made and disregard the benefit of syntax highlighting. Syntax highlighters will make your content look more professional and help readers view and analyse the code.

Final Thoughts

I hope you have enjoyed this look at the best syntax highlighters available to WordPress users.

Over the course of a week, I tested many different WordPress plugins, so I can see the pros and cons of using each one. If you're looking for the most features and customisation options, I recommend Enlighter and Urvanov Syntax Highlighter. WP Githuber MD is also worth considering for its markdown features. They all offer a level of control that isn't found in other WordPress plugins.

For many of us, these additional features are unnecessary, which is why alternative solutions such as Prismatic, Highlighting Code Block and CodeMirror Blocks, may be more appealing.

For simplicity, it's hard to see past Code Syntax Block and Syntax-highlighting Code Block. They lack features such as copy to clipboard, but they're easy to use and will convert all of your existing code blocks and tags.

Here's a quick summary of all syntax highlighting WordPress plugins featured in this article.

Whilst I do hope you've found this article useful, please don't take everything I say for granted. Your needs may differ greatly from mine and over time, some plugins may be significantly improved, whilst others will not. That is why it is imperative for you to test each of these solutions yourself.

All plugins referenced in this article are free to download and use, so I encourage you to test them out and see what works best for you.

Thanks for reading.

Kevin

The post 11 Free WordPress Syntax Highlighter Plugins to Make Your Code Stand Out was written by Kevin Muldoon and appeared first on Kevin Muldoon.

Kevin Muldoon Great Dating WordPress Themes for 2021

Online dating is one of the most profitable niches avaiiable to internet marketers. You can make a lot of money as an affiliate, but you could potentially make more money by launching your own dating website for a specific market.

When I launched my first dating affiliate website in the 2000s, there was money to be made; however things have changed so much from then. When I first launched websites to make money from referring people to dating websites, there was still a lot of stigma against people who used them.

Today, dating apps and services are so commonplace that people will wonder why who is someone single is not using one.

I have did several reviews of dating applications in the past and they continue to be popular; so it is clear that many people are still trying to tap into the lucrative dating market.

There are dedicated dating applications available, but with thousands of amazing plugins and themes at your disposale, WordPress continues to be the content management system I turn to when building new websites.

I would therefore like to share with you what I consider to be the best dating designs available for WordPress.

Sweet Date – $69

First released in 2013, Sweet Date is one of the best selling dating WordPress themes in the market. It's a responsive design that includes membership functionality via Paid Memberships Pro. You can use this to restrict content and create unique dating packages for members.

The design works well with BuddyPress, bbPress, and WooCommerce. Recurring payments or single payments can be accepted via Stripe, Authorize.net, or PayPal. The Slider Revolution plugin is also included to help you publish beautiful slides.

Without doubt, Sweet Date is one of the best dating designs on the market.

LoveStory – $59

Launched around the same time as Sweet Date, LoveStory offers extended profiles, a built-in membership system, WooCommerce integration, and a chat system that uses live notifcations.

The theme has many cool dating features. For example, users can login via Facebook and message each other and send each other virtual gifts.

Dating Theme – $79

Premium Press clearly did not spend a lot of time discussing their dating theme's name when they launched “Dating Theme“; however do not let that put you off.

The theme has useful features such as advanced member searches, private messaging, virtual gifting, and online statuses. A chat room is available too.

You can restrict content and create unique membership packages at different prices. Multiple languages are supported too.

DateBook – $55

If you are looking to launch a dating service for a particular country or city, DateBook is a good option. It has a range of profile options for displaying related profiles by city, country, and more. This can help you create a regional dating website such as Go Date Now.

Paid subscriptions can be set up for members. Once they have signed up members can enhance their profile and make it a featured or top profile to gain more exposure. It is a nice way to get members to spend more money through your website.

A private chat system is built into the theme too and members can display their online status.

Gwangi – $59

Gwangi is a BuddyPress powered dating WordPress theme that lets you make design changes via the WordPress theme customiser.

The theme lets you restrict access to certain areas of your website and set up subscriptions and charge a weekly, monthly, or yearly fee.

It uses a Tinder inspired like system that matches members based off of their profiles. Members can manage groups, see mutual friends from Facebook, and upload as many images as they wish.

DatingLite – FREE / $32.99

A child theme of HospitalLight, DatingLite is a free dating design that has a built in homepage slider, social media integration, and WooCommerce support.

A premium version is available for $32.99 that adds landing pages, bbPress support, testimonials, and more.

Whilst the DatingLite design does have a dating theme, it does not the membership functionality and other features you would expect from a dating WordPress theme. It could, however, be used for a dating blog.

The Template Monster Themes

Template Monster have several dating WordPress themes. Out of the box, they are not the best option for launching a membership based dating website. You could however use one of these designs and integrate them with a WordPress membership plugin to add functionality for restricting content.

Annoyingly, TemplateMonster have a ridiculous naming system for their themes that takes laziness to a new level. One is called Dating, another one is called Dating, and another is called, you guessed it, Dating. There is also a theme called Dating Agency.

Other dating themes available from TemplateMonster include Online Romance, Love Romance, and Love Hearts.

Final Thoughts

WordPress may not seem like the right application for a dating website, but there are a few good dating WordPress themes out there that take advantage of WordPress's custom post type system and its ability to be extended by membership plugins.

Any WordPress theme can be modified and branded as a dating website, though I believe the true dating themes mentioned above are more suitable as they add private messaging, online statuses, match making, and more.

As always, do your research about each design before you click the buy button :)

Good luck.

Kevin

The post Great Dating WordPress Themes for 2021 was written by Kevin Muldoon and appeared first on Kevin Muldoon.

Kevin Muldoon 3 Simple Ways to Generate Affiliate Commissions Through Trust

I signed up to my first affiliate program in 1999 (Commission Junction). I still recall my awe at the sheer volume of companies that would pay you to send them traffic.

Although I don't know the exact number, my guess is that I have signed up to thousands of affiliate programs and networks over the years. Some good, many not so good.

At the moment, the most profitable affiliate networks for me are ShareASale and Awin. I make money by referring many different companies through those networks, however I also make money from individual affiliate programs such as the Amazon Associates Program and WP Engine.

Signing up to an affiliate program is the first step to making money online. If you don't actually work hard to generate conversions, it is also an insigificant step. You need to put many hours into increasing commissions.

In this article, I would like to share with you three simple ways of generating affiliate commissions using trust.

1. Detailed Reviews

In my experience, high-quality reviews are the best method for most people to generate affiliate commissions. Yes, it is incredibly time-consuming to write good reviews due to the research that is required, however a good review can generate regular commission payments for many years.

Reviews attract targeted visitors who are already interested in the product. By giving them more information about what the product offers, you may convince them to buy.

Reviews don't just generate affiliate commissions though. High-quality reviews are the cornerstone of any content-based website. They will increase traffic, attract subscribers, improve SEO and push more people to your social media channels. So even if a user doesn't actually buy something through your affiliate link, you may have gained a long-term follower.

A great example of a profitable review website is DC Rainmaker. His reviews are so good that regular readers go out of their way to buy through his affiliate links to support his work.

2. Comparison Tables

Another popular affiliate marketing technique is the comparison table. Whereas reviews are long and detailed, comparison tables are easier to digest as they display essential information for many different products in one easy-to-read table. From a time perspective, you will find comparison tables to be quick to produce.

Whilst comparison tables can be profitable on their own, they convert better when they compliment your existing reviews. For example, your main comparison table may list all products, display their review ratings and link to full reviews.

Comparison tables are common on hosting review websites. The hosting review website Easy Hosting Guide, for example, displays the most popular hosting services on their home page, which helps push visitors to key reviews.

I have used comparison tables sparingly over the years, however it is something I am keen on incoporating into my hosting resource area as it will help visitors read a summary of my reviews.

3. Vouching

Successful blogs regularly make money by “Vouching” for the products and services they use themselves.

In a review, you spend time looking at a product or service and share what you like and don't like. When you vouch for a company, you're going one step further and saying you trust the company enough to use them yourself. For example a blogger may say that they use Company A to register domains, Company B to host their website and Company C to manage their podcast.

If you have built up a loyal following, vouching for a product or service carries a lot of weight. As such, readers feel more confident using them too.

FINAL THOUGHTS

The affiliate marketing world continues to have a dark side where marketers will do and say anything in order to generate a commission, however I truly believe that in the long-term, building a trusting relationship with your readers is more profitable and will open more doors for you.

Search engines are validating this approach too, giving respectable websites higher rankings than than those who publish poor-quality content.

I have only scratched the surface on how you can increase your affiliate conversions, however I hope you have found this article useful.

Good luck.

Kevin

The post 3 Simple Ways to Generate Affiliate Commissions Through Trust was written by Kevin Muldoon and appeared first on Kevin Muldoon.

Kevin Muldoon Dropship to the USA With Ease With MerchMixer

Even if you didn't realise it, if you have bought anything online, you've bought something that was “Dropshipped” to you. This means that the seller never held the goods. They simply received your order and then shipped the product to you via a third-party dropshipping company.

Dropshipping has always been a desirable way of selling products online as costs are minimal. As you do not have to worry about the logistics of storing goods, you can focus your energy on marketing and giving customers good customer support.

In this article, I would like to show you how you can dropship products to the USA using a service called MerchMixer. The service is free to use and greatly simplifies the task of building an online store.

What Does MerchMixer Work?

When I first looked into Dropshipping in the 2000s, you had to spend a ton of time trailing through dropshipping directories and blasting out emails to distributors to find long-term partners. Today, the process is much simpler.

Services such as MerchMixer can be used to set up a dropshipping business at the click of a button. MerchMixer is a free Shopify app and once you have connected it to your Shopify account, you can start dropshipping thousands of brand name products to customers in the USA.

MerchMixer stores all products within the USA and is able to deliver orders to customers within three to seven business days. This is much better than dropshipping from China, where two to six weeks is normal for dropshipped products.

All orders come with free shipping. too This is obviously great for customers, but it also makes it easier for you to work out your own profit levels.

One feature that makes MerchMixer stand out for me is returns. When you dropship using a company in China, it's nearly always a one way street as there is no easy way to handle returns. So if a customer isn't happy and wants to return a product, you need to either accept a return directly yourself or give them a full refund.

With MerchMixer handling returns for you, you can not only offer customers a better service, but reduce the costs you incur with returns too.

Dropshipping with MerchMixer

In order to use MerchMixer, you need to have a Shopify account. Shopify is a fantastic hosted eCommerce platform that retails from only $29 per month.

Before you sign up to a premium Shopify plan, I recommend taking advantage of their free trial. It's zero-risk as it allows you to use Shopify for 14 days without even entering a credit card.

Once you have set up your Shopify store, you just need to install the MerchMixer app on Shopify. Simply click on “Add App”, enter your Shopify store URL and then approve the connection on Shopify.

Once you're connected to MerchMixer, it will be listed in the app section of your Shopify account.

You can then start selecting the products you want to sell on your store. Shopify's use of frames makes it difficult to show you a larger screenshot of the products on offer, but as you can see below, at the time of writing there are 6,882 products to choose from.

Thankfully, you don't have to review every single product. All 6,000+ products can be filtered by category and by cost. You can also sort products by price, cost, release date and order count.

Alternatively, you can simply use the search bar to find the products you want to sell.

MerchMixer lists products from large international companies such as Logitech and Apple, however you will also find cheaper items from smaller companies.

For each item, you can see product images, a product description, the number of items and the cost. The cost of an item is how much it costs you to sell it. Whaever you charge above the product cost is the profit you make per product sold.

You can select multiple items at once and them import them into your store. All imported products can be viewed from the My Products page. Orders can be manually approved too and you can see your latest sales in the reporting area. You can also upgrade to a premium plan via the settings area.

Once you have imported products into your store, you can manage them in Shopify just like any other product. This helps you easily see stock levels, the product category and more.

Clicking on a product allows you to customise things further. You can create your own description, upload your own images, change the price, add it to a collection and much more.

That's all there is to selling products with MerchMixer. The whole process is simple and fast. In just a few minutes, you can add hundreds or even thousands of products to your store.

Whilst the process of importing products through MerchMixer into your shop is simple, I do recommend spending some time researching the products you sell and modifying the sales information for each product.

The Cost of Using MerchMixer

MerchMixer is free to use. Under the free plan, you can import up to 100 products into your store. This is the best plan to start with as it gives you time to develop your store and market it. Once you start selling products regularly and your store is profitable, it pays to upgrade.

There are two premium plans available. The Pro plan costs $49 per month and allows up to 1,000 products to be imported, whilst the Premium plan costs $99 per month and has no import restrictions.

The cost of each product is reduced when you upgrade to the Pro plan and reduced further when you upgrade to the more expensive Premium plan.

Becoming a premium member of MerchMixer also gives you access to support and to exclusive products that you cannot add under the free plan.

I believe MerchMixer's pricing policy to be highly competitive. There is no push for anyone to upgrade when they use the service, but once your store is successful, paying a little extra each money to unlock more products is worth it.

Final Thoughts

I have been impressed with what I've seen with MerchMixer. It only takes seconds to connect the service to your Shopify account and in just a few minutes, you can import a huge number of products into your store.

Even though I am not based in the USA, I could still use MerchMixer to build an online store that sells directly to American customers. The nature of dropshipping makes MerchMixer a great way to build up passive income with a relatively low amount of maintenance.

Of course, as someone who lives in the UK, I've not been able to place any test orders to see if my expectations of MerchMixer's packaging and shipping times are met, though I'm encouraged by the positive reviews of MerchMixer on Shopify.

To find out more, please visit the official MerchMixer website.

Thanks for reading.

Kevin

The post Dropship to the USA With Ease With MerchMixer was written by Kevin Muldoon and appeared first on Kevin Muldoon.

Kevin Muldoon Kata – The Advanced WordPress Theme That is Free to Download

The 2000s are remembered as the time when the vast majority of WordPress themes were free and the 2010s can be remembered as the “Decade of the Premium WordPress Theme”.

If the Kata WordPress theme succeeds, perhaps the 2020s will become the “Decade of the Freemium WordPress Theme” :)

Developed by Climax Themes, Kata is an advanced WordPress theme that comes packaged with many free website designs. It allows you to create beautiful websites via the Elementor Page Builder and features many pre-made templates for your header, footer, blog page and more.

Kata is free to download from WordPress.org and is 100% free to use, however a pro version is available for $29 that unlocks many useful options.

Regardless of which version you use, you will have access to many professional website designs which can be installed in a matter of minutes.

Even if you select the free version of Kata, the number of features within the theme is impressive. This is in part due to Kata's support of the Elementor page builder and the additional Elementor blocks it adds.

No WordPress theme is perfect, but does Kata live up to its own name of the “Most Advanced WordPress Theme”?

Let's take a closer look at Kata and see.

Setting the Theme Up

The Kata theme zip file can be downloaded from WordPress.org and uploaded to your WordPress themes directory using an FTP client such as FileZilla.

Alternatively, you can install Kata from within the WordPress admin area via the appearance section.

Once Kata has been activated, you will be asked to install two required plugins: Elementor and Kata Plus.

Kata Plus is an all-in-one plugin that has a header, footer, and blog builder inside Styler (the new advanced tool for styling widgets) and comes with 18 practical widgets for creating different websites.

From WordPress.org

In other words, Kata Plus has to be activated in order for Kata to function correctly.

Once the plugins have been activated, you will see new admin menu items for Kata in the main WordPress admin menu and in the Appearance menu. Menu items for Elementor and Elementor Templates are added too.

Annoyingly, the main Kata menu is listed directly underneath Dashboard. This means it's listed above important menu items such as posts, pages and media. You can, however, move the Kata menu position elsewhere using the free WordPress plugin Admin Menu Editor.

When you select Kata, you are presented with their unique user interface which overrides the default WordPress user interface.

It first loads the theme activation page, though no activation options are displayed if you are only using the free version (I suspect this will be changed later).

This page also links to the Kata knowledge base and to the Kata Facebook page.

The interface links to the main WordPress admin menu, key Elementor pages, Kata options pages and the WordPress theme customiser.

Clicking on the settings cog displays links to the Elementor header, footer and blog templates. There is a link to create a course too, but you need to install LearnPress to use that.

You can also visit the Kata theme activation page, demos page and WordPress theme customiser from here.

The Elementor links could prove to be a little confusing for new users who haven't imported a theme demo yet. If you haven't imported yet, you will see a never-ending Elementor loading page when you try and access the theme builder for the blog, header and footer.

Kata also adds a theme page within the WordPress appearance section. It effectively acts like a reference page as it links to key pages of the WordPress theme customiser, theme demos, support and documentation.

Pro features are also promoted on this page.

Overall, Kata is an easy WordPress theme to install and get familar with, though I do think they could improve the configuration setup. It's not terrible, however they have everything a little more complicated than it needs be.

I realise that developers introduce many features to enhance the experience for users, but I do not like Kata's dedicated theme interface area for a few reasons:

1. It is unnecessary and does not provide a better user-experience
2. I do not like WordPress themes and plugins who change key aspects of using WordPress
3. There is already a Kata theme options page within the Appearance section and all shortcuts to key pages could be placed there
4. There is no way to disable this interface

Hopefully, the developers will take this criticism on board and implement things differently in a future version of the theme.

Creating a Professional Website in an Instant

Theme demos allow you to transform your website design at the click of a button.

At the time of writing, there are currently 66 theme demos available in Kata. Ten of these designs are available free of charge, whilst 56 designs are reserved for those that upgrade to the pro version of Kata.

The designs can be filtered via nine categories: Blog, Business, Design, Food, Health, Online Store, Personal, Portfolio and Software. You can filter designs between FREE and Pro too.

Previews of all designs are available on the official Kata website.

Design can be subjective, however I was impressed by the quality of all pre-made Kata designs.

When you click to import a design, you will be asked to install and activate required plugins. For most Kata designs, the only plugin that you are required to activate is Contact Form 7, though you could easily substitute this with another contact form WordPress plugin.

You will then be warned that “Previous data will be erased and a fresh WordPress without previous posts and pages will be imported”.

You are also advised that two demos cannot be imported at the same time. Therefore, if you import another design, the previous design will be erased.

Next, you will be asked what you want to import. If you wish, you can only import specific elements of the design such as headers, footers and menus, though if you want your website to match the theme demo, you need to choose all.

The design and content will then be imported.

As you can see from the above screenshot, many of the theme items were marked as red. This is because the source files could not be downloaded from Climax Themes. I was unable to import any Kata design, despite resetting my WordPress installation many times using WP Reset.

I do not believe this is an issue that every WordPress user will face with Kata. When I contacted the developers about the issue, they noted that they had not faced the same problem. They kindly set up a new test WordPress installation area for me that had Kata installed and everything worked fine.

At the time of writing, Kata does not provide a system information page that shows whether you have met server requirements so it is difficult for me to troubleshoot this issue. The main issue that arises with importing theme demos is a lack of memory, however my test website's PHP.ini file has a memory limit of 256MB so I doubt this would be the cause of the problem for me.

I was able to successfully import designs in the test WordPress website that Climax Themes set up for me. In the demo importer documentation page, it states that a The Demo is Imported Successfully” message should be displayed, yet I never saw this message after installing any design in the free version of Kata.

Bizarrely, when I activated Kata Pro and imported a theme design, the import success message was displayed.

Kata's professional website designs are a big selling point, but their theme demo import system requires work. I have yet to get it working on my own WordPress website, which is something I would still like to work out, however even the working version of the theme on the Climax Themes test area needs refinement.

After importing designs in the free version of Kata, no success message was displayed, therefore I was unsure as to whether the design was successfully imported or not. I imported many designs and on a few occasions, I received green ticks during the import process as if everything was imported correctly, yet my website design did not change.

Kata does not advise you which design is activated either. It does highlight which designs have already been imported, but there is no way to quickly switch between imported themes, so this message is meaningless. Additionally, if Contact Form 7 is already activated, the importer requires you to deactivate it and then activate it again in order to proceed.

The biggest problem is that Kata completely erases all WordPress content whenever a design is imported. That is unneccessary, impractical and, quite frankly, unacceptable.

This system means that if you want to use Kata on an established website, you will need to backup all of your WordPress data beforehand and then import all content back afterwards.

Why do they do this?

Customising Your Website Design in Kata

Kata's theme demo import system needs to be refined, however I found the experience of editing website designs in Kata to be fantastic.

You will find a selection of customisation options for Kata in the WordPress theme customiser. If you select key areas such as the Header or Footer, you are taken to the corresponding builder in Elementor.

I messed around with the theme customiser for some time, changing the size of my layout, changing menus and more. I never experienced any issues, but be aware that when you use a pre-made design in Kata, the header, footer, body and more, are all handled by Elementor, so you are a little limited with what you can do here.

In essence, Elementor has taken control over areas such as the header and footer that are normally controlled via the theme customiser.

When you are logged in and viewing the front-end of your website, you will see an option to “Edit with Elementor” at the top of the page. You can also open up the Elementor Theme Builder here for key areas such as the header, sticky header and footer.

Elementor allows you to easily modify your website using a block system and a modern front-end editor. It is rightfully regarded as one of the best WordPress page builders on the market.

Climax Themes have made the integration between Kata and Elementor so smooth that beginners may be unaware where one solution ends and the other begins. They have also given Kata users more options for creating website designs by adding dozens of additional Elementor blocks.

Kata offers 17 essential blocks, 15 blocks for posts and pages and eight header blocks. A whopping 32 additional blocks are available if you upgrade to Kata Pro.

All of these blocks are added to the existing blocks available in Elementor in Elementor Pro. They give you more options for integrating lists, videos, images, posts, counters, meus, headers and more.

In the free version of Kata, you can modify your blog page, header and footer, through the Elementor theme builder. Additional builders are available in the pro version.

The builders give you complete control over how a specific area of your website looks. The developer's have made the right decision by letting using customise their theme in Elementor instead of the WordPress theme customiser.

Design is an area where Kata excels. The available designs are all of a high standard and its close integration with Elementor means that you can customise every part of your website at the click of a button.

The inclusion of dozens of additional Elementor blocks to help you create unique content is the icing on the cake.

Upgrading to Kata Pro

The developers of Kata refer to the free version of the theme as Kata Lite. This version gives you access to ten free website demos, the standard styler, essential Elementor Widgets and basic builder functionality for your blog, header and footer.

Kata Pro is available from only $29 for a one website license. It unlocks 56 additional theme demos, significantly more theme options and building options and managers for plugins, icons and fonts. Additional features include preset styles, portfolio templates and a sections template library.

Premium plugins are included in the package too, such as Advanced Custom Fields PRO and Slider Revolution.

A ten website license is available for $99. If you're looking to install Kata Pro on multiple websites, this is the license to get.

A 14 day money back guarantee is provided with both Kata Pro plans.

Another reason to upgrade is to gain access to support from the developers, though it is worth noting that all users can access an extensive documentation area that shows you how to use Kata.

With most WordPress themes, my advice as to whether you should upgrade to the pro version heavily depends on whether you need those additional features. This is obviously the case for Kata too, however with Kata Pro retailing at only $29 for a single license, I believe most website owners should upgrade for premium support and the additional features it unlocks.

Some features, such as the additional bundled plugins, can perhaps be classified as a bonus more than anything else. Other features, such as Fast Mode, are handy extras (at best).

Fast Mode simply asks which type of website you want to build, what logo you want to use, what your website name is etc. It's clearly aimed at beginners, however for this to truly benefit beginners, it should be displayed after the theme is activated.

Features such as the plugin manager and font manager are more useful. The font manager, for example, can be used to import fonts from Google and Adobe. You can also import fonts directly via upload or by listing the URL of the font.

For me, there are two good reasons to upgrade to Kata Pro:

• To gain access to all website designs
• To enhance Elementor

Kata Pro gives you access to all 66 website designs so you have a larger variety of designs to choose from. It also gives you access to 32 additional Elementor blocks including reservation, content slider, employee information, pricing table, recipes and tabs.

Kata Pro enhances the theme builders for your blog, header and footer. It also adds builders for single posts, archives, search results, menus and 404 pages.

This gives you complete control over every aspect of your website design. For example, you could use the builder to create a unique search results page or a stylish 404 page that redirects users to your archives.

Check out the Kata Pro pricing page for more information about what the pro version offers.

Final Thoughts

At the start of this article, I asked whether Kata lives up to its own name of the “Most Advanced WordPress Theme”?

At the time of writing, the answer to that question is yes and no. It's a stretch to say that Kata is the most advanced WordPress theme on the market, but it does have many great features and there is a lot to like. It's just a shame that the initial setup process is so frustrating.

It is important to note, however, that Kata is a new WordPress theme and developers frequently rush the release of their themes before properly testing and debugging their new product. As a reviewer, it does frustrate me that developers rush releases without ironing out bugs, however my hope is that they will refine the theme in the coming months.

The good news is that Kata has great potential and in 12 months time, it could be one of the best free WordPress themes on the market and could possibly give some popular premium themes a run for their money. It boasts many fantastic pre-made website designs and customising your website using Elementor is a joy.

I was also pleased to see the developers make the pro version of the theme available for only $29. If you do use Kata on your website, it is easy to recommend upgrading as you gain so many more features and functionality for so little money.

Of course, Climax Themes are going to have to tackle some issues with their theme before it can gain popularity.

Firstly, they need to review the benefit of overriding WordPress's default menu system. It overcomplicates things, makes everything less user-friendly and makes it harder to access important WordPress pages such as posts, pages, themes, plugins and settings.

Secondly, they need to fix the bugs with their demo import system.

Thirdly, and most importantly, Kata needs to stop erasing all WordPress content when a design is imported. It is unnecessary and is going to cause many website owners major headaches when installing Kata on an established website.

You can learn more about Kata on the official Kata sales page, however the best way to learn what Kata can do is to install the free version of Kata on a test WordPress website to familiarise yourself with what it can do.

Thanks for reading.

Kevin

The post Kata – The Advanced WordPress Theme That is Free to Download was written by Kevin Muldoon and appeared first on Kevin Muldoon.

Kevin Muldoon Switching to the Amazing DaVinci Resolve Video Editor

Adobe Premiere Pro is an advanced video editor that comes with many great features. Those features do come at a price, with the software costing £19.97 per month here in the UK. Premiere Pro is included in Adobe's Creative Cloud suite of apps, which costs £49.94 per month.

I have paid for Adobe's Creative Cloud for several years because I used Premiere Pro for videos and Photoshop for images, however around 10 days ago I deleted my Adobe account and decided to start using DaVinci Resolve to edit videos instead.

Surprisingly, the core version of DaVinci Resolve is 100% free to download and use. Yes…100% free! There are no restrictions to using it whatsoever, which is even more surprising when you consider that after spending thousands of pounds on Adobe software, I was only ever able to install their software applications on two computers (which is a pain as I switch between one PC and two laptops regularly).

I'm still new to DaVinci Resolve, but every day I am discovering something new I love about it and with the power of hindsight, I am wondering why I didn't switch to it sooner. Especially as Premiere Pro had an awful track record of crashing.

Blackmagicdesign, the company behind DaVinci Resolve, can offer their video editor free of charge as they primarily make their money from selling hardware. They produce many premium audio and video editing consoles that are aimed towards Hollywood studios and broadcasting companies.

They do also offer a pro version of DaVinci Resolve called DaVinci Resolve Studio. This version unlocks advanced GPU acceleration, 8K video resolutions and frame rates above 60FPS. It also adds many useful audio and video effects and colour grading options.

I honestly believe 99% of YouTubers could get by without these additional features, however the studio version only costs a one-off fee of only £235. That is unbelieably cheap. Over a period of five years, the advanced version of DaVinci Resolve would cost £235, whilst Adobe Premiere Pro would cost £1,198.20.

Before I talk more about DaVinci Resolve, allow me to explain exactly why I deleted my Adobe account.

Why I Stopped Using Adobe

Premiere Pro could be a frustrating program to work with. It requires more CPU power than most other video editors, which meant playback could stutter badly unless you rendered every clip into cache.

Stability was an issue too. In all my years of using Premiere Pro, I don't think I went one full week without it crashing. Due to this, I got into the habit of saving projects constantly, yet there were still times I lost a lot of work. I was never a big fan of their keyframe system either as it made advanced audio and video editing unnecessarily difficult.

Despite these issues, I liked Adobe Premiere Pro. I still do. It's generally a user-friendly video editing solution and it's powerful too. I haven't stopped using Adobe apps because their software is bad.

The reason I deleted my Adobe account is because their customer support is awful. Truly awful. I have had dealings with them in the past and I always left their chat box frustrated and disappointed, however you have no option but to speak to them as Adobe if you want to remove your bank card, delete your account or upgrade your account. You simply can't make any major account changes online so you have to speak to their chat team.

When I spoke to them the other week, their customer support team managed to convert me from a loyal subscriber to an ex-customer in just 90 minutes. I explain what happened in detail in the video below.

I will summarise what happened in 90 minutes:

• They refused to change the location that is assigned to my account
• They repeatedly left me hanging there for 5 to 10 minutes at a time
• They rejected my request to take advantage of a Black Friday offer
• They eventually sent me a “Deal” that actually cost more than what I am paying just now
• They deleted my account and immediately removed access from all Adobe applications, despite the fact my latest monthly payment had just been paid from my credit card
• Despite deleting everything, the support representative refused to answer my questions about it
• They just ignored every reply until I quit
• The next support rep did nothing either
• Adobe responded on social media and publicly appeared apologetic, but privately did not message me back

Eventually, after a lot of hassle, Adobe did refund my last monthly payment.

Unfortunately, the problems did not stop there. I soon discovered that without an active Adobe account, I could not delete any of their applications from my computers (three computers in total). I am still shocked that Adobe are doing this. They are completely overriding core Windows functionality and preventing you from removing their apps. Even uninstall software such as Revo could not remove Adobe.

After complaining about all of this on Twitter, Adobe eventually recommended a cleaner tool they have developed which removes their software.

To say I was frustrating by this whole experience would be an understatement. Their support team is simply terrible. It baffles me how a company worth billions can treat loyal customers with such distain.

An Alternative to Photoshop

After deleting my Adobe account, I thought “What Now?”.

I have tested thousands of applications over the years, but I had relied on Adobe software for so long that I never really took the time to truly learn alternative solutions.

So I started looking at Photoshop alternatives. The one that I was most familar with was the free application GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP), however I downloaded and tested several photo editing applications in total.

I am still reviewing my options, however the solution I like the best at the moment is Photopea. Like GIMP, Photopea is free to use, but it's not an application that you download to your computer. It's a browser based photo editing solution.

I had not considered a browser-based solution previously, however Photopea works quickly and its interface is closer to Photoshop than any other solution I tried.

I recommend trying it out Photopea as it's seriously impressive what it can do.

What Can DaVinci Resolve Do?

Thankfully, I did not have to spend time thinking about an alternative solution to Adobe Premiere Pro. I had already tried DaVinci Resolve and liked it, but just hadn't switched to it as I was so accustomed to using Premiere Pro.

So I downloaded DaVinci Resolve, installed it on my computer and started editing my first video. Cards on the table…I was lost. It probably took me four times as long to edit the video as in Premiere Pro as I had to familarise myself with the user-interface and relearn how to make audio changes, transitions, cuts, edits and more.

Once I had completed that first video, I had a much better understanding of how everything works in DaVinci Resolve. I've since used it to edit four videos and at this point, I'm editing at around the same speed as I did with Premiere Pro.

Many appear to be much easier to complete in DaVinci Resolve. This includes creating titles, transitions, audio enhancements and adding effects.

Adobe tends to use separate applications for everything. For example, you use After Effects for advanced effects and when you export a video, you are advised to use the Adobe Media Encoder app. Likewise, whilst you can do basic audio edits in Premiere Pro, you normally have to export your audio to Adobe's Audition app in order to access advanced audio editing features.

DaVinci Resolve manages all of this better by packaging a dedicated audio editor called Fairlight directly into the video editor. Media encoding is handled internally via the Deliver page too. There are also areas for managing media, cutting, editing, creating visual effects and colour grading.

Now I do appreciate that there are many situations where having a dedicated application for doing something is better, but I quickly discovered that I prefer having everything in one application, not many. It allows you to switch between video editing, colour grading, effects and audio editing, extremely quickly.

At the time of writing, I am using DaVinci Resolve in a simplistic way as I am still learning how everything works, but it is easy to see why the software is used by many large film studios.

An Opportunity to Improve the Quality of My Videos

I think we are all guilty of being stuck in our ways and just doing the same thing day in, day out. This is certainly true for me when it comes to creating videos. I haven't improved the look of my videos for some time. In fact, I have probably been using the same lower third and outro for five years now.

Deleting my Adobe account has given me the opportunity to hit the reset button and review how I do things.

I have set the ball rolling already by testing many of the effects that are available in DaVinci Resolve. I am planning on upgrading to the studio version too as it adds support for advanced noise reduction and gives you access to many useful video effects.

There are a number of areas where I can improve the design of my videos:

• Intros and outros
• Transitions
• Effects
• Titles
• Thumbnails

I have earmarked a few websites for graphical resources to help me improve. This includes Design Bundles, a digital marketplace with close to one million products. They have a small selection of colour grading LUTs (Lookup Tables) for DaVinci Resolve and dozens of professional YouTube thumbnail templates.

Websites such as Motion Array have video templates for DaVinci Resolve, although many of them do seem to be limited to 1080p, which isn't ideal as I'm uploading videos in 4K. Ideally, what I want is a large collection of templates, effects and graphics, that I can utilise within DaVinci Resolve whenever I create a video.

What's clear is that I need to start making steps to move forward and not stand still.

Final Thoughts

It might have taken a rude shove from Adobe to convince me to start using DaVinci Resolve, however I am glad that I have jumped ship.

The software is not only free to use, it's also less buggy and makes integrating effects into videos simpler. It also comes packaged with a fantastic audio editor and 4K playback is more stable too.

Obviously, the basic editing skills I learned from Premiere Pro have helped me get going, but I am still at the start of my DaVinci Resolve journey. My hope is that the overall look and feel of my videos will improve over time because of it.

If you are looking for an affordable video editor with a ton of advanced features, I highly recommend checking it out.

Thanks for reading.

Kevin

The post Switching to the Amazing DaVinci Resolve Video Editor was written by Kevin Muldoon and appeared first on Kevin Muldoon.

Kevin Muldoon 8 Useful Tools for YouTubers

I have spent thousands of pounds on recording equipment to help me record videos for my YouTube channels. My recording setup consists of a sturdy desk, multiple cameras, webcams, studio lights, a powerful PC, monitors, microphones, video capture cards, audio interfaces, tripods, brackets and more.

Software is vital to what I do too. Adobe's Creative Cloud gives me access to over a dozen useful applications, but I mostly pay the monthly subscription fee as I use Adobe Premiere Pro to edit my videos and Adobe Photoshop to edit images.

YouTubers frequently give a behind the scenes look at their recording studio and show you what cameras they use, what lights they use and where they place important accessories such as tripods. There's normally a passing reference to their preferred video editor too, however you rarely hear about the other tools they use to produce their videos.

So what I would like to do in this article is share with you eight applications and services that help me record, edit and publish YouTube videos.

1. Screencast-O-Matic

Screencast-O-Matic is a screen recording tool that works with Windows, Mac, iOS, Android and Chromebook. It's a user-friendly solution that lets you display your webcam and make small edits to your video afterwards. Whilst I do use OBS for many screen recordings now, I continue to install Screencast-O-Matic on all my computers as there are many situations where it's the better option.

Screencast-O-Matic is free to use, however the free version places a watermark on videos and does not give you access to all features. I have been using the full version of Screencast-O-Matic almost as long as I've been publishing YouTube videos. This is the version I recommend getting as it gives you access to all features and only costs $19.80 per year, which is an effective rate of just $1.65 per month

2. OBS

You'll find many useful broadcasting applications available online, but the one that should be top of your list is OBS (Open Broadcaster Software). Available for Windows, Mac and Linux, OBS is a flexible solution that lets you do almost anything. It's undoubtedly the most popular application for recording videos through your computer, in part because it's amazing and in part because it's 100% free to download and use.

Without doubt, OBS is the most important software in my whole YouTube setup. In my recording studio, I have two Sony cameras connected to my PC using video capture cards and two Logitech Brio webcams. OBS captures footage from all of these cameras, which enables me to do live streams and record screencasts, tutorials, product reviews and more.

Many YouTubers stream live using Streamlabs and OBS Live. These applications are essentially variants of OBS that have additional features for gamers and live streamers. I do have these applications installed, but I generally prefer to use OBS to stream.

3. Handbrake

Handbrake is a free video conversion tool that is available for Windows, Mac and Linux. It can be used to convert any video into any other video format.

In an ideal world, you would never have to use an application such as Handbrake, but you will frequently find yourself in a situation where you need to convert a video's frame rate, its resolution, its file size or its codec. Even today, video editors such as Adobe Premiere Pro do not support all video codecs, which is why Handbrake is so important.

4. VideoProc

An alternative to Handbrake is VideoProc. VideoProc is a more user-friendly solution, however I've generally found Handbrake to be the more reliable video conversion tool.

VideoProc can be used to backup and convert DVDs and it also features a screen recording tool. Whilst those are useful, the reason I continue to use VideoProc every week is due to its download tool.

The VideoProc downloader lets you download complete videos and audio from over 1,000 different webites. This includes YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and more. I use it all the time to download older videos of mine so I can reference them in newer videos.

VideoProc retails from only $29.95. There's many free video downloading tools and services online, but VideoProc is the best I have used as it always allows you to download videos at their highest resolution.

Check out my full review of VideoProc to learn more about what it can do.

5. Audacity

I do my best to ensure audio is recorded correctly at the time, but from time to time you do need to isolate audio from a video and make improvements.

Adobe Audition has many tools for enhancing audio, however I usually turn to Audacity when I need to remove background noise and buzzing from clips. Audacity is free to download and is available for Windows, Mac and Linux. It's easy to use, but if you are unsure about anything, you will find a ton of Audacity tutorials on YouTube that walk you through common audio enhancement techniques.

Even if you are using another audion solution such as Adobe Audition, I recommend installing Audacity so that it's there when you need it.

6. Outro Maker

Intro and outro clips are common on YouTube and other video platforms. You can purchase professional outro clips from marketplaces such as VideoHive for around $15, and whilst these look great, they all require you to make edits yourself in Adobe After Effects or another advanced design application.

That is why services such as Outro Maker are so appealing as they simplify the whole process of making outro screens. All you have to do is select an outro template and then select the videos you want to appear on the end screen. That's it.

Outro Maker is available from only $2.99 per month, however their $7.99 per month premium plan is a better option as it lets you insert custom links and use custom audio and video backgrounds.

7. Social Blade

Social Blade is a marketing tool that helps you analyse social media profiles. It supports a ton of services including YouTube, Facebook, Twitch, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Daily Motion and more.

The service is popular among YouTubers as it allows you to see estimated analytics of your own YouTube channel and your competitors. This helps paint a better picture of how your channel is performing.

The service is free to use, however premium plans are available from only $3.99 that provide you with more information.

8. TubeBuddy

Another fantastic tool I recommend using is TubeBuddy. Certified by YouTube, TubeBuddy is a browser extension that provides you with dozens of tools to help you manage your channel.

There are tools to help you upload videos quicker, add cards and end screens, improve the search engine ranking of your videos, manage your publishing schedule and more. It greatly improves YouTube Studio and gives you a better insight into keywords, analytics and more.

TubeBuddy is free to use, however their premium plans unlock many more features. From only $9 per month, you can gain access to additional publishing tools, a thumbnail generator, bulk processing, additional monetisation options and advanced analytics.

Final Thoughts

I take advantage of many free and premium tools and services to help me manage my YouTube channels. Some tools help me record, some help me fix mistakes and others save me time.

Without doubt, every tool I have mentioned in this article makes my life easier so I emplore you to review your own software setup.

Thanks for reading.

Kevin

The post 8 Useful Tools for YouTubers was written by Kevin Muldoon and appeared first on Kevin Muldoon.

Kevin Muldoon The Raspberry Pi 400 – The Computer That’s Inside a Keyboard

The Raspberry Pi 400 is was announced last week by the Raspberry Pi Foundation. It's essentially a modified Raspberry Pi 4B which has been built inside a nice white/red chiclet style keyboard.

As soon as I saw the annoucement, I ordered the Pi 400 from The Pi Hut. It's available for £67 on its own, but I opted for the £94 Raspberry Pi 400 Personal Computer Kit as it also includes the official USB-C power supply, USB mouse, HDMI cable, a 16GB micro-SD card with Raspberry Pi OS and the Official Beginner's Guide book.

In the video below, I unbox the Raspberry Pi 400, open it up and show you what you can expect with Raspberry Pi OS.

Please read on to learn more about this fun little computer.

Raspberry Pi 400 Specificatons

The Raspberry Pi 400 boasts a quad-core Cortex-A72 CPU, 4GB of memory, two USB 3.0 ports, one USB 2.0 port, two micro HDMI ports, gigabit ethernet, micro SD card, USB-C port for power and a kensington lock. It also has Bluetooth 5.0 and a GPIO header which allows the computer to be expanded in many weird and wonderful ways.

I was surprised to see that the Pi 400 does not have an 8GB memory option as that is available with the Pi 4B, though the computer still feels snappy when you're using it.

The Raspberry Pi 400 specifications page gives you a full breakdown of what's inside. A Raspberry Pi 400 Product Brief can also be downloaded that gives more information about the computer.

• Broadcom BCM2711 quad-core Cortex-A72 (ARM v8) 64-bit SoC @ 1.8GHz
• 4GB LPDDR4-3200
• Dual-band (2.4GHz and 5.0GHz) IEEE 802.11b/g/n/ac wireless LAN
• Bluetooth 5.0, BLE
• Gigabit Ethernet
• 2 × USB 3.0 and 1 × USB 2.0 ports
• Horizontal 40-pin GPIO header
• 2 × micro HDMI ports (supports up to 4Kp60)
• H.265 (4Kp60 decode); H.264 (1080p60 decode, 1080p30 encode); OpenGL ES 3.0 graphics
• MicroSD card slot for operating system and data storage
• 78- or 79-key compact keyboard (depending on regional variant)
• 5V DC via USB connector
• Operating temperature: 0°C to +50°C ambient
• Maximum dimensions 286 mm × 122 mm × 23 mm

Despite being developed from the UK, the Raspberry Pi Foundation have always had a global appeal. As such, the Pi 400 is available in many regional variants: UK, US, DE, ES, FR, IT and EU.

So What is the Raspberry Pi 400 For?

The Raspberry Pi Foundation was created in 2009 to promote the study of computer science in schools, however their focus on low-powered flexible computers made them attractive to everyone.

Their first product, the Raspberry Pi Model B, was released in 2012. It was something I was keen on getting right away, but I did not jump into the world of Raspberry Pis until five years later when I picked up the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B. I published a host of YouTube videos about it at the time including a general setup guide, a guide about how to play retro games on the computer and many game playing sessions.

So what is the Raspberry Pi 400 for?

Well, out of the box, it's a useful little personal computer that has everything you need to learn programming. Some people assume that's all it's for, but they're missing the whole point of buying a Raspberry Pi computer.

Raspberry Pis are low powered devices. Whilst laptops generally use 30 to 150 watts of power and desktop computers can use several hundred watts, a Raspberry Pi usually uses around three to five watts. This makes them a great choice for systems that are online 24 hours a day.

Dozens of operating systems are available to Raspberry Pi users and there's a market with thousands of affordable accessories. This allows Pi computers to be…well…almost anything.

You can use a Pi such as the Raspberry Pi 400 to play retro games, automate your connected home, create a home security system, remove advertisements from your home network, create a NAS drive, build a magic mirror that shows news and weather and more.

If none of that interests you, you can simply use the Pi 400 to experience Unix, Linux or Windows!

Final Thoughts

The Pi 400 only arrived on my doorstep seven days ago and unfortunately, I have yet to experiment with it as I've been so busy with work and fixing things around the house.

Raspberry Pis can be used for almost anything, but the fact the Pi 400 has an integrated keyboard means that it lends itself to certain projects over others. It just makes sense to use a Pi Zero for smaller devices and the Pi 4B when no keyboard is required.

So what will I use the Pi 400 for?

At the moment, I am leaning towards a few different projects:

• Personal Computer: Keeping it as a personal computer and using it to test Linux distributions, familiarise myself with Unix and learn Python and other programming languages.
• Retro Games Computers: My Raspberry Pi 3B can already emulate most games consoles up until around 1995, but the Pi 400's integrated keyboard makes it a great fit for building a gaming console specifically for the Spectrum, Amstrad, Commodore 64, Atari ST, Amiga 500 etc.
• Home Network: I have been building a home network recently. My whole house is wired and I'm in the process of purchasing access points. Raspberry Pis can be used for firewalls, access points, VPNs, blocking advertisements, monitoring network bandwidth, NAS drives and more. Whilst a Raspberry Pi 4B could do all this, the integrated keyboard could prove simplifiy the whole setup.

Please visit the official Raspberry Pi 400 page to learn more about what this versatile computer can do.

Thanks for reading.

Kevin

The post The Raspberry Pi 400 – The Computer That’s Inside a Keyboard was written by Kevin Muldoon and appeared first on Kevin Muldoon.

Kevin Muldoon 9 Online Accounting & Invoicing Services to Manage Your Online Empire

Whilst I do my best to prioritise tasks, many things get put to the side time and time again due to a lack of time. One aspect of my business I have continually put to the side is accounting. For over 20 years, I have had an extremely dated and impractical way of managing payments, invoices, income and expenditure.

I have handled most things manually. For example, I regularly create invoices in Microsoft Word Online and then download the invoice in PDF format and email it to clients. Likewise, when advertisers need to pay me, I just send them my PayPal email address or direct them to this blog's advertising area that displays simple PayPal buttons.

It's time to drag my ass into the 21st century. As such, I have been checking out many online invoice and billing services. My hope is that one of these services will reduce the time I manage invoices and payments and help me streamline tax returns every April.

In this article, I would like to share with you the best accounting, invoicing and billing services, that I have came across so far.

Enjoy.

A Quick Word About Pricing

On this blog, I generally reference USD ($) whilst talking about products and services as its the de-facto currency of most online companies. A few of the accounting companies I have referenced in this article market their services differently in each region, which can lead to different prices across the globe.

Whilst it is not practical for me to reference pricing from every country, I have referenced GBP (£) prices for a few services as this helps paint a better picture as what you can expect to pay (in Europe (as UK prices tend to be a little higher!).

1. FreshBooks

FreshBooks is undoubtedly one of the most recognised accounting services online. It's a modern solution that features a dedicated iOS and Android app for managing your business whilst on the move.

The service helps you manage invoices, payments, expenses, time tracking and project management. Proposal estimation software is also available together with a host of accounting tools to help you automate the financial side of your business. Their reports look fantastic too and each plan includes access for two staff members.

FreshBooks is an affordable solution and they frequently run offers to reduce prices further. The price you pay depends on the number of billable clients you need and if you choose to pay monthly rather than yearly, prices increase by 10%.

At the time of writing, they're running a three month 60% discount offer in the USA and a 70% discount in the UK. For example, with the FreshBooks entry-level Lite plan, the USA price drops from $15 to $6 and the UK price drops from £11 to £3.34. After three months, it reverts back to the regular price.

The FreshBooks Plus plan ($25/£19) will be a more practical option for most businesses as it increases the number of billable clients from five to 50.

As I tend to only work with two or three clients at the one time, the cheaper Lite plan should work for me as it works out at an effective rate of around £9 per month and gives me everything I need.

2. Xero

Another accounting service which has caught my attention is Xero. I like the look of its minimal styling and its mobile apps for smartphones and tablets look great too.

Xero can be used to accept payments online, display reports, manage assets, manage files, note expenses, produce invoices, pay bills, manage projects, send quotes and more.

The company has a simple pricing strategy with three plan options. In the USA, these are called Early, Growing and Established, and retail at $9 per month, $30 per month and $60 per month, respectively. In the UK, the plans are called Starter, Standard and Premium, and cost £10 per month, £24 per month and £30 per month.

Their cheapest plan limits you to 20 invoices and quotes and five bills. This restriction is lifted if you upgrade to the Growing/Standard plan. Unfortunately, you do need to upgrade to their top plan in order to charge in multiple currencies and gain access to expenses and project management features. This is a stumbling block for me as whilst I do charge clients in US dollars most of the time, there are occasions where I need to charge in Euros or Great British Pounds.

3. FreeAgent

FreeAgent is an accounting service that helps you manage invoicing, expenses, time tracking and banking. It also offers a mobile app for checking everything on tablets and smartphones.

They are one of the few companies that do not try and tie customers into long-term contracts. All of their plans give you an unlimited number of users, clients and projects. A 30 day free trial is available and you can then select a monthly plan that can be cancelled at any time. The first six months of service are also charged at half the normal price.

In the USA, there is only one plan available and it is charged at $12 per month for six months and then $24 per month afterwards.

The company is based in Edinburgh, Scotland, so UK customers have a few more pricing options. It starts with their sole trader plan that costs £9.50 per month for six months and then £19 per month afterwards. There are additional plans for partnerships and limited companies that offer extra options for profit sharing, divideds and corporation tax .

4. Clear Books

Clear Books is a UK accounting service that supports invoices, bill and receipt tracking, payments, reporting, project management and integration with third-party services.

As you would expect from a company that focuses solely on the UK market, Clear Books tends to have better support than international companies for the UK's Inland Revenue.

A 30 day free trial is available for Clear Books to help you test their service. Afterwards, you can select either their Small plan or their Large plan. A 10% discount is applied if you pay annually and a 20% discount if you pay two years in advance. A 50% discount is also given for the first three months of your account.

The Small plan costs £5 per month for three months and then goes up to its usual price of £10 per month. The Large plan costs £11 per month for three months and then goes to £22 per month. Upgrading to the more expensive Large plan will give you support for multiple currencies, CIS accounting and digital tax reporting.

5. Invoicely

Invoicely is an attractive accounting solution that has mobile apps to help you use the service on smartphones and tablets. It lets you manage invoicing, online payments, time tracking, expenses, driving mileage tracking and dynamic reports.

With a name like Invoicely, it should be no surprise that the service helps you generate simple and colourful invoices.

Invoicely is one of the few companies that offer a 100% free plan. Their free plan allows three saved clients, five monthly bills, no additional team members and payments via PayPal. This is going to be restrictive for businesses, however it is perfect for anyone who just sends the odd invoice. Especially as multiple currencies are supported under the free plan.

Their premium plans retail at $9.99 per month, $19.99 per month and $29.99 per month, respectively. These plans expand your branding options, let you track things such as time and give you support for Stripe and other payment services. They also add team members and increase the total number of saved clients and total monthly invoices.

6. Due

Due is a versatile accounting service and payment processor in one that offers unlimited invoices, expense tracking, time tracking, projects and reports.

At the heart of their service is the Due Digital Wallet. The wallet supports PayPal and Stripe and promises to help you get paid quicker. Only 2.8% fees are charged on transactions. That's not as low as the 2.49% fee that PayCafe lets you charge on your website, but Due isn't just a credit card processing company. It handles your bookkeeping too.

A 30 day free trial is available to help you test Due before you select one of three available plans: Basic, Pro or Premium. These plans are charged on a monthly basis at $7.99, $16.99 and $27.99, respectively. If you are happy to pay a year in advance, the effective rate drops to $6.99, $14.99 and $23.99.

Basic includes ten clients and three team members, Pro includes 75 clients and 15 team members and Premium has unlimited clients and 15 team members. All other features are unlimited across all plans.

7. ZarMoney

ZarMoney is an affordable accounting service that lets you create and send invoices in a few seconds. It can be used to manage bills online, track inventory, accept payments online, send quotes and estimates, process purchase orders and sales orders, automatic sales tax calculations and more.

ZarMoney Insight gives you access to over 40 built-in reports and over 1,000 customisable reports. Several payment processing services are supported together with third-party services such as MailChimp, Zapier and Shopify.

What makes ZarMoney stand out for me is their pricing policy. It's simple and it's fairly priced and if it's only you or just a few staff members who need access to your company accounts, ZarMoney could prove to be your cheapest accounting solution.

All plans gain access to the same features and have unlimited transactions, but the cost depends on the number of users you need. It's $5 per user per month with all subsequent users charged at $7 per month. Therefore, it's $5 for one user, $14 for two users, $21 for three users, and so on.

There's also an Enterprise plan that starts from $350 per month for over 30 years. This is geared towards large companies and comes with priority support and a dedicated account representative.

8. Intuit QuickBooks

Intuit QuickBooks is a popular accounting service that gives you an overview of your company's sales, banking, expenses, time, projects, workers, taxes and reports.

Beautiful invoices can be created quickly in Intuit QuickBooks and if you process payments through them, credit card and debit card transaction fees are reduced considerably.

During my research into accounting services, I noticed that some services that are available throughout the world do not cater their product for each region (beyond supporting local currencies etc). I cannot throw this criticiam at Intuit QuickBooks. If you're based in the USA, you will receive support for USA tax laws and rules. Here in the UK, the service is HMRC recognised due to its great support of UK tax laws.

Intuit QuickBooks is priced fairly, though I'm not sure I fully agree with their promotion to new customers as it's designed to encourage you to pass up a free trial. They offer a one month free trial to those who want to test their service, but if you are willing to forgo that free trial, you will get a 50% discount for three months (six months if you're in the UK).

In the USA, the available plans retail at $15 per month, $25 per month, $70 per month and $150 per month. Here in the UK, the plans are £12 per month, £20 per month and £30 per month. In all regions, payroll functionality is charged separately.

Each plan includes a different set of features and supports a different number of users, so be sure to review all plans so get access to the functionality you need.

9. Zoho Invoice

The last accounting service I want to talk about is Zoho Invoice. It boasts a clean user-interface, mobile apps for iOS and Android and great support for third-party products and services. It also has a highly competitive pricing structure.

Using Zoho Invoice, you can create customisable invoice templates, request payments online, send quotes and estimates, track expenses and use time tracking for projects to help you bill clients fairly and accurately.

For the most part, all Zoho Invoice plans include the same set of features. The more expensive plans simply increase the number of customers you can invoice, number of users and total number of automated workflows. Without doubt, I prefer this type of pricing structure as it means you are not forced to upgrade to a higher-tiered plan in order to get the functionality you need.

Like Invoicely, Zoho Invoice kindly offers customers a free plan. The free plan is suitable for one person and allows you to invoice up to five customers. The overall package of the free plan is quite generous as includes all the same features as the premium plans. This includes support for multiple payment currencies, time tracking, expense tracking, timesheets and recurring invoices.

Three premium plans are available: Basic (50 customers), Standard (500 customers) and Professional (unlimited customers). In the USA, they're priced at $9 per month, $19 per month and $29 per month, respectively. In the UK, the monthly cost is £6, £12 and £18. Two months of service is offered on all plans if you choose to pay annually instead of monthly, which effectively reduces the monthly cost of these plans to $7.5/£5, $15.83/£10 and $24.17/£15.

So What's the The Best Option for Me?

At the time of writing, I am still reviewing my options to see which service is best for me and what I do online.

In some respects, my requirements at this time are basic, however there are features in comprehensive services such as FreshBooks that are appealing.

I am primarily looking for a way to:

• Send a few invoices every month
• Track expenses
• Track affiliate commissions and other income
• Reduce the time I spend doing taxes at the end of the year

From an invoicing point of view, services such as Invoicely, ZarMoney and Zoho Invoice, suit my needs better.

The free plan of Invoicely is attractive as its limitations of five monthly invoices, three clients and PayPal only payments, fit in with what I do most months. I would have to upgrade to their $9.99 per month plan to be able to do anything beyond invoicing though.

The free plan of Zoho Invoice is much more generous, allowing five customers and an unlimited number of invoices. It basically gives you access to their whole service free of charge if you stay under the five customer limit. At only $5 per month, ZarMoney is an attractive option too since no features are restrictred.

When I start to consider that I need to track income and expenditure, my attention turns to more advanced services again, particularly those that have good support for UK tax laws and regulations. This is where FreshBooks and services such as Clear Books and Intuit QuickBooks become more attractive.

I will be sure to let you all know which service I opted for in a future article :)

Final Thoughts

Writing this article pushed me to research accounting and invoicing services and helped me see what was available online. Whilst some of these cloud accounting services do stand out because of features or usability or pricing, there is no clear winner.

To make an informed decision, you need to review exactly what you and your business needs in order to operate efficiently and then see which service fits those requirements. As you can see from what I wrote about my own situation, this is not always easy to do, especially with every company charging different prices for different features.

So I recommend taking advantage of free trials and reviewing each service thoroughly. Using trial and error, you should be able to narrow down your best options.

Here's a quick summary of the services I included in my list:

1. FreshBooks – A beautiful user-friendly service with many cool features
2. Xero – A versatile service, however many key features are restricted to their most expensive plan
3. FreeAgent – A UK based company that offers essential accounting tools and stylish reports
4. Clear Books – An affordable UK accounting service that has great support for HM Revenue and Customs
5. Invoicely – Lacks advanced features, but its simplicity and price make it an attractive option
6. Due – An all-in-one service that offers invoicing, accounting and payment processing
7. ZarMoney – A great collection of features and a sensible pricing structure
8. Intuit QuickBooks – One of the most advanced solutions on the market
9. Zoho Invoice – Easy to use, lots of great features and affordable pricing

I hope you have found this article about online accounting services useful. If so, I encourage you to subscribe to this blog for email updates. Alternatively, you can follow me on Twitter.

Thanks for reading.

Kevin

Featured Image: Steve Buissinne from Pixabay

The post 9 Online Accounting & Invoicing Services to Manage Your Online Empire was written by Kevin Muldoon and appeared first on Kevin Muldoon.

Kevin Muldoon 9 Website Builders to Help You Create the Perfect Website

Website builders help you create professional websites in minutes. They can be used to create blogs, business websites, resumes, online portfolios, eCommerce stores and more.

All you have to do is select a pre-made website design, move things around using a drag and drop page builder and then add your content. That's all there is to it as the website building service takes care of hosting and all website maintenance. This simple approach to creating a website is why website building services are popular with beginners and experienced website owners alike.

In this article, I would like to share with you what I consider to be the best nine website building services available online.

Enjoy!

1. WordPress.com – FREE / $4+ Per Month

WordPress.com is the hosted version of the world's most popular CMS. Dozens of responsive website designs are available free of charge, however there is also a large market for premium WordPress.com themes for customers.

The service offers a beautiful drag and drop visual editor, built-in stats, support for social media sharing and a host of desktop and mobile apps to help you update and maintain your website whilst on the move.

In many ways, the experience of creating a website using WordPress.com is better than the self-hosted version of the platform as it's less bloated. Plus you don't have to worry about as many website maintenance tasks as WordPress.com takes care of these for you.

The free version of WordPress.com comes with 3GB of storage, however this plan is supported by ads and all websites are hosted at a WordPress.com sub-domain. Their entry-level Personal plan costs an effective rate of $4 per month. Since all WordPress.com plans are charged annually, you will be charged $48 . It removes advertising, adds a free domain name, increases storage to 6GB and gives email support. It also allows you to take payments through your website and offer content and newsletters to paying subscribers.

The $8 per month Premium plan increases storage to 13GB and gives you access to unlimited premium WordPress themes. It also adds support for PayPal, Google Analytics and VideoPress. Business and eCommerce plans are also available at an effective rate of $25 and $45 per month, respectively. These plans increase storage to 200GB and give you access to WordPress plugins, SEO tools and automated backups. The more expensive eCommerce plan helps you sell an unlimited number of products and services around the world.

2. Webflow – $12+ Per Month

Webflow is a modern website builder with a gorgeous website designer that utilises HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript. Most website customisations and administration takes place within their designer. From there you can select website designs and add website interactions, animations, text, colours and more.

A large selection of SEO tools are built into Webflow and you can create an advanced eCommerce store that supports custom delivery options and payments from multiple payment processors. Whilst Webflow is a great option for shop owners, it is not a good choice for bloggers. The whole experience of writing in Webflow is frustrating and you are restricted to publishing 100 pages. Blog posts are categorised with other content as collections, however collection limits are thankfully higher.

Two websites can be created and staged in Webflow free of charge, but you will need to select a premium plan when you want to publish your website. Their Basic plan costs an effective rate of $12 per month if paid annually or $15 if you pay monthly. It supports custom domains and allows 100 pages, 500 form submissions, 25,000 monthly visitors and 50GB of CDN bandwidth.

The CMS plan costs an effective rate of $16 per month if paid annually or $20 if you pay monthly. It increases form submissions to 1,000, traffic to 100,000 monthly visitors and CDN bandwidth to 200GB. This plan also includes 2,000 collection items, three content editors and support for site search, which are features which are sorely missed from the Basic plan.

There's also a Business plan that costs an effective rate of $36 per month if you pay annually or $45 if you pay monthly. This plan increases monthly visitors to 1,000,000 and increases collection and CDN bandwidth allocations too.

3. Squarespace – $12+ Per Month

Squarespace is one of the best website building services on the market and one of the oldest website building companies online, being launched in 2004 (a year before WordPress.com).

Their service has a huge collection of beautiful designs and a minimalistic website designer which has many options to help you publish portfolios, blogs and online shops. It supports dozens of content types and supports multiple user access levels, password protection, custom redirects, social media sharing, an image editor and advanced eCommerce support for selling products, services and subscriptions.

Squarespace also integrates with dozens of third-party products and services. This opens the doors to streamlining publication, email marketing, custom retention and more.

There are four plans available for Squarespace and all plans come with a free domain name and unlimited bandwidth and storage. The plans are Personal, Business, Basic Commerce and Advanced Commerce. These retail at $16, $26, $30 and $46, per month, however if you pay annually, the effective monthly price reduces to $12, $18, $26 and $40.

The Personal plan gives you basic metrics and access to third-party extensions. If you move up to the Business plan, you unlock advanced analytics, a host of marketing tools and the option of building an eCommerce website. The Commerce plans reduce transaction fees from 3% to 0% and adds additional eCommerce analytics and features.

Be sure to take advantage of Squarespace's 14 day free trial before selecting a premium plan for your website.

4. Duda – $14+ Per Month

Most website building companies put a lot of energy into attracting beginners to their service, however Duda was developed specifically for website agencies, SaaS platforms and hosting companies. Using its drag and drop website designer, you can create websites in seconds and scale them for customers.

Duda offers a large collection of website templates and pre-made sections as well as a large content library of images, galleries, icons, widgets and more. White labelling is available too and there's a host of tools for collaborating with team members and managing clients.

Integrations are also available for marketing services, social media platforms and video websites such as YouTube and Vimeo.

A 14 day free trial of Duda is available to help you test their service. After which, you need to select one of three plans: Basic, Team or Agency. The plans retail at an effective monthly rate of $14, $22 and $44 per month, but are billed annually.

Each plan allows a limited number of websites, however additional websites can be added to your account for a fee. Ecommerce functionality is based upon how many products your store sells. It's $7.25 per month for 100 products, $19.25 per month for 2,500 products and $39 per month for unlinted products.

The Basic plan allows one website and one team member. It is not a practical solution for most users as it restricts access to the content library and does not include website comments or website analytics. The Team plan allows one website and four team members and the Agency plan allows four websites and ten members. Both of these plans unlock collaboration and management features, though you will need to opt for the Agency plan to gain access to instant websites, website exporting and a widget builder.

5. Weebly – FREE / $6 Per Month

Weebly is a flexible website builder that lets you create traditional websites or online stores. It boasts a large collection of responsive website themes and a drag and drop website builder that supports custom fonts, video backgrounds, animation effects and image editing.

It has tools for blogging, SEO, social media, email marketing and website security. Detailed website analytics are provided too and there's a Weebly mobile app that helps you manage your websites on the move.

Weebly offer a free website plan that has 500MB of storage. It stores your website at a mybusiness.com sub-domain and includes search engine optimisation, email lead captures and contact forms. The Personal plan costs an effective rate of $6 per month if paid annually or $9 per month if paid monthly. This plan gives you the same amount of website storage, but allows you to use your own custom domain

Weebly ads are understandably displayed on websites hosted on free plans, but they are also displayed on websites hosted on Personal plans. Although the Personal plan is cheap, it's disappointing to see a premium plan display advertisements. On a positive note, users under the free plan also gain access to a support forum, chat support and email support.

The Professional plan costs an effective rate of $12 per month if paid annually or $16 per month if you pay monthly. This plan removes advertisements and adds website searching, advanced website statistics, shopping cart functionality and telephone support. The Performance plan costs an effective rate of $26 per month if paid annually or $29 per month if you pay monthly. It adds advanced website statistics and unlocks eCommerce functionality.

Annoyingly, Weebly separates their plan structure between regular websites and online stores, despite the fact the performance plan has eCommerce functionality. Even more confusing is the fact that Weebly calls their plans by different names in other regions. For example, in some countries, the Personal plan is called Connect, the Professional plan is called Pro and the Performance plan is called Business.

The top online store plan is called in Business Plus in most countries. Retailing at an effective rate of $38 per month if paid annually or $46 per month if paid monthly, it offers shipping discounts, abandoned cart emails and real-time shipping. Apart from the entry-level Personal (Connect) plan, all plans come packaged with a free domain name and $100 worth of Google Ads credit.

6. Ghost – $29 Per Month

Boasting a gorgeous editor that makes writing an absolute pleasure, Ghost is rightfully recognised by many as a fantastic platform blogging. I agree with this and would add that from a blogging perspective, Ghost is a better option than Medium as you will at least own your own content.

Ghost is not just for blogs though. It's a true content management system that can be used to develop traditional websites.

It has a minimal user-interface that boasts a powerful editor, built-in content delivery network, email newsletter functionality, SEO tools and integration support for dozens of third-party products and services. As you would expect, users also gain access to a large collection of professional website designs too.

Ghost's membership functionality can be used to sell premium content and build subscription-based membership websites and online courses.

A 14 day free trial is available to help you test Ghost. You will then need to select one of three plans. All plans give you access to the same features, however the top plan gives you a custom SSL certificate and lets you run Ghost on a sub-directory.

The Basic plan costs an effective rate of $29 per month if billed annually or $36 per month if you would prefer to pay monthly. It allows 100,000 monthly views, two staff users and 1,000 members. The Standard plan sells at an effective rate of $79 per month if paid annually or $99 per month if paid monthly. It increases your allocation to 500,000 monthly views, five staff users and 8,000 members.

The most expensive plan is the Business plan. Retailing at an effective rate of $199 per month if paid annually or $249 per month if paid monthly. It allows up to 1,000,000 views per month, 15 staff users and 35,000 members.

7. SITE123 – FREE / $12.80 Per Month

SITE123 is an affordable website building service that has a large collection of mobile-friendly website designs

When you create a new website, Site123 asks what type of website you want to build. 16 categories are available including business, online store, blog, photography, events and music. Once you have named your website, you will see Site123's user-friendly drag and drop page builder. From here, you can add pages, add text, change colours, apply templates and more.

In comparison to other services, Site123's page builder lacks the advanced settings that are found in other website builders, however I have no doubt that beginner's will appreciate its simplicity.

Everyone will love the straightforward and affordable pricing policy that SITE123 have adopted too. There's a free plan and one premium plan available. Given how confusing plan comparisons become with companies such as Weebly, it's refreshing to see a company simplify the upgrade process.

Their free plan has 500MB of storage and 1GB of bandwidth. The main downside is that a SITE123 floating tag will be displayed on your website.

SITE123 Premium costs $12.80 per month and removes the floating tag, gives you a free website domain name for one year and lets you use your own custom domain name if you wish. It also increases your resource allocation to 10GB of storage and 5GB of bandwidth. Premium plan customers also gain access to eCommerce features and functionality.

Despite offering users a free plan, SITE123 still offer a 14 day money back guarantee to those who choose to upgrade to the premium plan.

8. Jimdo – FREE / $9+ Per Month

Jimdo is a website building service that helps you create business websites, blogs, portfolios and online stores. It features a modern drag and drop builder that supports layout designs using blocks.

The service offers many unique features for businesses including a GDPR-compliant legal text generator and an option to sync your website business listings on over ten platforms. Social media is supported too and all customers gain access to a large copyright-free image library.

Interestingly, if you build an online store with Jimdo, there are no transaction fees for the products you sell. Many payment options are available for your online stores and you can manage orders straight from your smartphone.

Three website plans are available for Jimdo: Play, Start and Grow. There are also three online store plans: Basic, Business and VIP. All plan prices are displayed on a monthly basis, however these are an effective rate as they are charged annually.

The ad-supported Play plan is free to use. It gives you a website at a jimdosite.com subdomain, 500MB of storage, 2GB of bandwith and five website pages.

The $9 per month Start plan increases storage to 5GB, bandwidth to 10GB and website pages to ten. It also adds website statistics and SEO indexing, removes advertisements and lets you use your own custom domain name. The $15 per month Grow plan upgrades storage to 15GB, bandwidth to 20GB and website pages to 50. Support times are also improved from one to two days to within four hours.

The Basic online store plan costs $15 per month and gives basic shop features, 10GB of storage and ten website pages. The $19 per month Business plan increases storage to 15GB and pages to 50. It also adds additional product layouts.

The most expensive online plan is the $39 per month VIP plan. It offers unlimited storage and pages, support response times of less than an hour and additional features such as business listings.

9. Zyro – FREE / $1.99+ Per Month

My last recommendation is the affordable website building solution Zyro. The service comes with a large collection of responsive website templates to help you build blogs, business websites, portfolios and online stores.

Once you have selected a website design, you can adjust your layout and change images, text, colours and backgrounds, using the Zyro drag and drop page builder. Zyro offers customers many additional tools too. This includes a logo maker, blog title generator, heatmap and an AI generator that automatically fills your website with content. You will find these tools elsewhere online, but it is good to see them included within the Zyro suite.

Zyro is undoubtedly one of the most affordable eCommerce solutions online, but it still has everything you need to sell products and services. It supports payments from multiple payment processors, is commission-free and supports unlimited products, discounts and gift codes.

It is difficult to pinpoint the usual price of Zyro as they always have sales on that discount prices by between 50% and 85%.

Their ad-supported Free plan allows 500MB of storage and 500MB of bandwidth. This is suitable for testing their platform and getting started, but with their premium plans costing so little, it makes sense to upgrade.

Four premium plans are available for Zyro: Basic, Unleashed, Ecommerce and Ecommerce+. At the time of writing, these plans retail at $1.99 per month, $2.99 per month, $8.99 per month and $13.99 per month, respectively.

All plans share a core set of features. This includes a 30-day money-back guarantee, removal of advertisements, use of a custom domain, ad-removal and access to all website templates. The Basic plan offers 1GB of storage and 3GB of bandwidth, but all other plans have unlimited storage and bandwith and the addition of a free domain.

The Unleashed plan builds upon the Basic plan by adding advanced features such as Google Analytics and social media integration. As the name suggests, the Ecommerce plan allows you to create an online store, but if you move up to the Ecommerce+ plan, you get additional features such as abandoned cart recovery, multiple languages, product filters and dedicated stores for Facebook, Instagram and Amazon.

Why Isn't Wix Included?

If you are looked into website builders before, you may be wondering why Wix is not included in my article. The reason is simple: I cannot recommend them.

I dealt with the company as an affiliate many years ago and they were terrible to work with. Their customer service was awful and they have screwed website owers like myself over by not paying us.

If you look in the comment section of my video above, you will see many disgruntled Wix users who have had poor experiences with the company. Of course, if you dig deep enough and research any website building company, you will find complaints from current customers and former customers, however Wix are widely recognised as one of the worst website building services to deal with.

Obviously, you are free to choose any website builder you want and if you choose Wix, I hope your experience with them is better than mine, but it is not a service I can recommend.

Final Thoughts

As you can see, the market for website builders is competitive. There's never been a better time to build a website for such little effort, time and money.

There are pros and cons to using each service, therefore I encourage you to test each service yourself to see if their features and functionality match your expectations. This is important to do as most website building companies charge annually for their services, therefore changing to another service could be costly. So be sure to take advantage of free plans and free trials wherever possible.

Every project is unique so you should be prepared to use different services for different projects too. For example, you may use Ghost for a blog, Squarespace for your online store and Jimdo for a client's business website.

Here is a quick summary of all website builders that were featured in this article:

1. WordPress.com – The hosted version of the most popular CMS on the internet
2. Webflow – A user-friendly website builder, but bloggers should avoid this one
3. Squarespace – A refined website building experience with beautiful website templates
4. Duda – Helps agencies and hosting companies create and scale websites for clients
5. Weebly – A versatile website building solution
6. Ghost – Provides an amazing writing experience and lets you sell memberships
7. SITE123 – A solid website building service with a sensible pricing policy
8. Jimdo – A good choice for business owners
9. Zyro – One of the most affordable website builders online

I hope you have enjoyed this look at the best website building services on the market today. If so, I encourage you to subscribe to my blog for email updates or follow me on Twitter :)

Thanks for reading.

Kevin

Featured Image Credit: Mudassar Iqbal from Pixabay

The post 9 Website Builders to Help You Create the Perfect Website was written by Kevin Muldoon and appeared first on Kevin Muldoon.

Kevin Muldoon Building an Online Community with WordPress

It should be no surprise that WordPress is one of the most popular platforms for online communities.

With a built-in user system, simple publishing options and website design customiser, the core version of WordPress is a great starting point for a community. All you need to do is choose one of the many community WordPress plugins that are available to you.

In this article, I would like to show you the best WordPress community plugins available today. These can be used to create discussion forums, content websites, membership websites, online courses, private communities and more.

Enjoy.

* Plugins are not ranked in any particular order :)

Discussion Forums

Even after all these years, it still impresses me that WordPress can used to power a fully functional discussion forum, but is it the right software for this task?

It depends on the project.

If you are looking to run a large discussion forum, a dedicated solution such as xenForo, vBulletin, phpBB or Invision, makes much more sense. These applications were designed to run discussion forums from the ground up and are better equipped to manage and scale large communities.

WordPress is, however, the smarter choice in many situations.

For example, it works well for small support forums and question and answer rooms, particularly if your main website was created using WordPress.

bbPress – FREE

bbPress has been around nearly as long as WordPress itself, with development starting in 2004 by WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg. The simplicity of bbPress makes it a good choice for a support forum or a small community that compliments your main website.

The core plugin lacks important forum functionality found in other solutions. Thankfully, plugin extensions are availble that allow you to add additional features. For example, GD bbPress Attachments allows users to upload images, bbp style pack lets you easily style your forums and bbPress Notify helps you control who receives notifications. 

There's also a large number of integration plugins available which allow you to integrate bbPress with popular WordPress themes and plugins.

wpForo – FREE

wpForo is a modern WordPress forum solution that offers multiple layouts, a mobile-friendly design, advanced member profiles and a user rating system.

There's a number of great moderation tools to help you moderate your forum and you can easily change styles too.

wpForo is free to use, however 10 premium plugin extensions are available that let you add functionality for advertisements, polls, custom fields and more. They retail from between $11 and $35 each.

Asgaros Forum – FREE

Asgaros Forum is a versatile free forum WordPress plugin that features a customisable responsive design, a members list page, profile pages, statistics, polls and widgets.

There are moderator tools for approving, banning and reporting members and posts. A like system is built-in too and there is an integrated advertising system and many free addons that increase functionality.

WP Discussion Board – FREE / $49+

WP Discussion Board is a WordPress forum plugin that features many anti-spam tools. It can be integrated into an existing WordPress website using shortcodes.

The free version of is quite limiting, restricting you to only one board and removing essential features such as user profiles. Due to this, I believe most people should upgrade to WP Discussion Board Pro instead so that you can add as many rooms as you wish. It retails at $49 per for a single website license and $89 pery ear for an unlimited website license.

The full version allows you to approve registrations and adds forum permissions, child forums, subscriptions, media uploads, user profiles, top posters and more.

Simple:Press – FREE / $99+

Simple:Press is a feature-rich forum solution that offers unlimited forums, forum groups, an advanced user system, rankings, moderation tools and anti-spam options.

The plugin is 100% free to use, however you can extend Simple:Press significantly by purchasing one of the Simple:Press bundle plans. Retailing from $99 per year for a single website license, the bundle plans give you access to over 70 premium add ons and access to premium themes.

Add ons help you add many new features and functionality. This includes advertising, analytics, announcements, questions and answers, featured topics and integration with popular WordPress plugins.

ForumWP – $99+

Created by the same people behind Ultimate Member, ForumWP is a premium forum WordPress plugin that has a clean lightweight mobile-friendly design. It allows you to style each forum room individually and gives every user an informatitive profile page.

Three basic modules are available which add subscriptions, bookmarking and a like system. Their plus modules add post moderation, private replies, a voting system and an option to mark a topic as solved.

Given the price of other WordPress forum solutions, ForumWP is a hard sell. It retails at $99 per year for a single license and this particular plan does not even include plus modules. You need to upgrade to their three website $149 per year license in order to get the full version.

Website Toolbox – £420+

Website Toolbox is a hosted forum solution that is targeted to WordPress, Drupal and Joomla users. Rather than integrate with your WordPress website via a plugin, Website Toolbox hosts your forum in the cloud and syncs logins between your forum and your main WordPress website.

The service integrates many useful features such as social media support, styling tools and monetisation options. From a performance point of view, there is a good argument for hosting forums separately from WordPress, however the ridiculous pricing scheme of Website Toolbox makes it difficult to recommend to most website owners.

If paid annually, the cost is £420 per year for 10,000 monthly views, £1,020 per year for 100,000 monthly views and a whopping £3,000 per year for 500,000 monthly views. These prices increase if you pay monthly.

Sabai Discuss – $24

Sabai Discuss is a simple discussion WordPress plugin that is suitable for support rooms and question and answer rooms.

It features a visual form editor and allows you to mark questions as featured. Questions and answers can also be marked as spam and users can upload images to help explain the problems they're facing.

Sabai Discuss sells for $24 on CodeCanyon.

Forym – $22

Formerly known as WP Pro Forum system, Forym is a simple WordPress discussion forum plugin that can be used for small support rooms and question and answers areas.

It features a drag and drop file uploader, a light and dark theme, profanity filter and support for @mentions. Interestingly, Forym can take over your WordPress comments.

Forym is available from CodeCanyon for a one-off fee of $22.

DW Question & Answer Pro – $39

DW Question & Answer Pro is a beautiful question and answer forum WordPress plugin that is a perfect fit for support forums. It integrates perfectly with WordPress and lets you administrate everything from the frontend of your website.

Answers can be selected as the best and questions can be marked as private. Other cool features include voting, instant search, file management, advanced permissions, spam control, social media sharing and templates for email notifications and forum designs.

DW Question & Answer Pro retails at a one-off fee of $39 from CodeCanyon.

A free version of the plugin does exist, but at the time of writing it has not been updated for over a year so it is difficult to recommend. Thankfully, the premium version continues to be updated regularly.

QaForum – $29

QaForum is a user-friendly WordPress forum plugin that was designed for support forums and question and answer areas. It has built-in search functionality that allows users to filter content by categories and keywords.

Questions can be marked as the accepted answer and all answers can be voted up or down. Behind the scenes, there are many settings to help you define who can access the forum and what they can and cannot do.

The plugin is available for a one-off fee of $29 from CodeCanyon.

WP Answers – $34

Another option for creating a question and answer forum is the WordPress plugin WP Answers. It comes packaged with its own WordPress theme to help you build a community, but this is optional as WP Answers will work with any WordPress website.

It features social media logins, advanced moderation and spam protection options and support for importing questions and answers from StackOverflow. Users can upvote and downvote answers and you can charge users a member fee via PayPal. You can also reward users to encourage participation.

WP Answers retails at a one-off fee of $34.

Enhanced Comments

The comment area is an important part of many successful blogs and a great tool when creating a community around good content.

WordPress natively allows readers to publish comments, but the core functionality is quite basic. There is no support for social media and no way for commenters to subscribe to comment updates.

Thankfully, a number of comment WordPress plugins are available that allow you to enhance the comment area significantly. This will help you encourage readers to comment regularly.

Thrive Comments – $39+

One of the leading products of Thrive Themes, Thrive Comments is a fantastic WordPress plugin that will transform WordPress' native comment system and greatly increase the engagement in your comment area.

It features social media logins and allows commenters to share individual comments. A number of tools are also available to help increase participation. This includes user badges, an integrated comment voting system, featured comments and an option to subscribe to a poster's comments. Blog posts with a large volume of comments can be divided into multiple pages too.

The plugin helps make your comment area look beautiful and lazy-loading helps everything load quickly. The backend also features an advanced moderation system, detailed comment reports, auto-link keyword functionality, comment filtering and more.

Thrive Comments retails at $39 for a one website license, $47 for a five website license and $97 for a 15 website license. All plans offer the same features and come with one year of support and updates and a 30 day money back guarantee.

GraphComment – FREE / $7+ Per Month

GraphComment is a versatile WordPress comment plugin that syncs your website comments to webservers across France. All comments are continually synced to your WordPress website, but by hosting the comments on an external server, you can greatly reduce the size of your WordPress database.

It offers social media logins, a unique voting system that is built upon the reputation of users, badges and awards, text formatting, comment widgets and light and dark themes. Several comment widgets are provided together with analytics and a host of moderation tools to help you maintain your community.

Their $7 per month starter plan lets you pin the best discussions, use keyword alerts and customise branding and emails. It also has a live discussion mode. High-traffic websites may want to consider the $74 per month pro plan as it increases the number of data loads from 1.5 million to 5 million.

wpDiscuz – FREE

wpDiscuz is a fast AJAX-powered comment solution that enhances the core WordPress comment system. It features social media logins, live notifications, comment ratings, nested comments, comment highlighting, custom fields and subscription via email.

Lazy loading and avatar caching are available to help optimise the performance of your comment area. There's a wealth of moderation, security and anti-spam tools, as well.

18 plugin extensions are available for wpDiscuz that add functionality such as advertising integration, user mentions and media uploading. These retail between $9 and $25 each, however a bundle is available that lets you purchase all extensions for $99.

Jetpack Comments – FREE

If you are looking for a simpler comment solution, you may want to consider Jetpack Comments. It replaces the default WordPress form with a comment form that has social media logins for WordPress.com, Facebook, Twitter and Google.

This Jetpack module also ties in with the Jetpack Subscriptions module to allow readers to subscribe to new comments and posts via email.

Disqus – FREE /$9 Per Month

Disqus is a hosted comment service that syncs comments back to your WordPress database. At one point, Disqus was one of the most popular comment solutions for WordPress, however it has fell out of favour a little over the last few years and at the time of writing, the Discus WordPress Plugin has not been updated for two years.

Despite this, Disqus is still a service I can recommend. It looks great, supports many social media services for logins and supports real-time comments. There's some great moderation tools available in Disqus including pre-moderating comments, banned lists and trusted lists, shadow banning and more.

Disqus is free to use as it is supported by advertisements. For $9 per month, you can remove advertising, although you are restricted to three websites and 50,000 views. The $89 per month pro plan increases these limits to 20 websites and 150,000 views and adds advanced analytics, star ratings and custom reactions.

Subscribe To Comments Reloaded – FREE

If you like the native WordPress comment system, you may want to use Subscribe To Comments Reloaded. The plugin adds a versatile comment subscription service to your website that allows readers to subscribe to comment updates via email.

Commenters can subscribe and unsubscribe from updates via email and through a dedicated subscriptions page which I believe most commenters will prefer over Jetpack. All emails are customisable through the plugin too.

In comparison to other comment solutions I have referenced, Subscribe To Comments Reloaded is a simple solution that only adds one feature to your website, yet it remains one of my favourite WordPress comment plugins as it keeps commenters coming back to your website.

Community & User Profiles

Community WordPress plugins can be used to transform your website into a large community with unique user profiles, groups, notifications, private messaging and more.

Solutions such as BuddyPress can be used to create a community for friends, your local club or for your business.

On a smaller scale, you will also find a host of user profile and registration WordPress plugins. These plugins will drastically improve the website experience for users.

WordPress Multisite – FREE

Originally a separate project called WordPress MU, multisite is now a part of the core version of WordPress. It allows you to create a network of WordPress websites (similar to WordPress.com) with the same core WordPress installation files being shared across all network websites.

To enble multisite functionality, all you have to do is add a small line of code before the end of your wp-config.php file. You can then start adding network websites using sub-domains or sub-directories.

/* Multisite */
define( 'WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE', true );

If you are looking to create a large community with many websites, you may want to consider using WordPress multisite, though my recommendation is to test this functionality in your test area first to learn what it can and cannot do.

Setting up WordPress multisite is beyond the scope of this article, but be aware that some WordPress hosting companies are not prepared for hosting a full network so always be sure to speak with your host to see what they offer.

One company that does have great experience in this area is WPMUDev. They have years of experience with WordPress multisite and sell many multisite WordPress plugins to help you maintain your network.

BuddyPress – FREE

With development starting in 2008, BuddyPress is one of the longest running WordPress projects online. The plugin lets you add many useful community features to your website such as custom profiles, groups, friend connections, activity streams and private messaging.

A popular companion for BuddyPress is the forum WordPress plugin bbPress (which should be no surprise given that they're both developed by Automattic), though BuddyPress is well supported throughout the WordPress community. As such, you will find many great BuddyPress WordPress themes and plugins to help you build your community.

Without doubt, BuddyPress is one of the best ways to transform your WordPress website into a fully functioning community.

Youzer – $49

Youzer is a BuddyPress WordPress plugin that adds hundreds of options to your community. It adds colour schemes, support for advertising on profiles, new membership fields, custom widgets and more.

The plugin also enhances your website security using Captcha fields, password resets and limited login attempts.

It's available from CodeCanyon for $49.

BuddyBoss – $228

It's hard to categorise BuddyBoss as it can do so many things. It can be used to power an online community, sell courses online or create a WordPress membership website. As its name suggests, BuddyBoss was based upon BuddyPress, which means that many BuddyPress plugins work with BuddyBoss.

There are a lot of great community features in BuddyBoss that you will not find elsewhere. It offers member profiles, social groups, forums, Zoom integration, private and group messaging, albums, custom brand emails, private communities, events, jobs and more.

It boasts the ability to sell courses and memberships, but also supports integration with popular membership websites, e-learning applications such as LearnDash and the WordPress gaming application GamiPress.

BuddyBoss retails at $228 for a one website license, $288 for a five website license and $328 for a ten website license. All plans come with one year of support and updates and a 14 day money back guarantee.

Ultimate Member – FREE / $249+

Ultimate Member is a user-profile WordPress plugin that has a drag and drop page builder for creating stylish front-end registration forms and login forms. Custom form fields are available and you can use conditional logic to change what fields are displayed in different situations.

The free version of Ultimate Member also has many features to help you create a membership website. This includes custom user roles, member directories and content restriction.

23 premium extensions are available which expand functionality siginificantly. These include social media logins, private messaging, user reviews, groups and more. Most extensions cost around $50 for a single website license, however you can gain access to all plugin extensions for $249 per year.

WP Symposium Pro – FREE / $79.99

WP Symposium Pro is a community and social media WordPress plugin that offers user profiles, discussion forums, social media integration, groups, galleries and more.

The core version of the plugin features profiles, activities, forums and alerts. To unlock all social networking features, you need to purchase the social network plugin extension.

Ultra Community – FREE

Ultra Community is a community WordPress plugin that adds front-end logins and registrations, user profiles, custom user roles, groups and directories of members and groups.

11 plugin extensions are available at $14.99 each for a single website license (Curiously, no bundle deal is available). Extensions include user notifications, user post submissions, social media sharing and bbPress integration.

ProfileGrid – FREE / $79+

ProfileGrid is a flexible community WordPress plugin that lets you create customisable user profiles for WordPress, WooCommerce and bbPress.

The plugin does much more than add user profiles though. You can activate private messaging, groups, user blogs, friends system and registration forms through RegistrationMagic. Content restriction is available too, which allows you to create a membership website. Seven free plugin extensions help you integrate ProfileGrid with other WordPress plugins, customise user display names and display custom profile URL slugs.

The premium version of ProfileGrid gives you access to 22 premium plugin extensions. These allow you to take payments through your website and adds social media logins, an advanced group manager, additional integration support and more.

ProfileGrid Pro retails at $79 for a one website license with one year of support and updates or $139 for an unlimited website license with lifetime support and updates.

RegistrationMagic – FREE / $89+

Developed by the same people behind ProfileGrid, RegistrationMagic is a registration WordPress plugin that lets you create professional registration forms and contact forms using a form builder.

For each form, you can specify fields, design settings, reCAPTCHA anti-spam details, automatic email responses and integrations with third-party WordPress plugins and services. Your forms can then be inserted into your website using shortcodes, widgets and more. What's really interesting is all the additional features that are available, such as attachments, custom user roles, bulk emailing and detailed analytics.

The premium version of RegistrationMagic gives you access to 52 plugin extensions. It retails at $89 for a one website license with one year of support and updates and $189 for an unlimited website license with lifetime support and updates.

These plugin extensions add hundreds of new options such as HTML code embeds, PDF submissions, conditional fields and IP banning.

User Registration – FREE / $69+

User Registration is a user-friendly drag and drop registration WordPress plugin that helps you create advanced registration forms. It supports many additional fields such as country, telephone number and password.

A total of 20 premium plugin extensions are available in the full version of User Registration. The entry level $69 per year personal plan includes eight extensions. These include advanced fields, PDF submissions, social media connections and WooCommerce and MailChimp integration.

The $149 plus plan increases your license from one website to five and the $299 professional license allows unlimited website support and updates. Both of these plans include 12 additional plugin extensions for unlocking conditional logic, multi-step forms, a style customiser, payment processing and more.

All premium plans come with a 14 day money back guarantee.

UserPro – $39

UserPro is a vertsaile WordPress plugin that offers beautiful user profiles, a detailed member directory, social media integration, content restriction and customisable login forms and registration forms. The plugin also has support for popular email marketing services and integrates well with BuddyPress, WooCommerce, WPML and other WordPress plugins.

Whilst it is primarily marketed as a community plugin, UserPro can be used to create membership websites. All you have to do is restrict content to specific user groups and charge them using PayPal or using WooCommerce's payment system.

UserPro is available for a one-off fee of $39 from CodeCanyon.

PeepSo – FREE / $129+

PeepSo is a community WordPress plugin that can be used to create a social network on your website that looks similar to Facebook or LinkedIn.

In the free version of the plugin, your community can be built up using shortcodes. There are shortcodes to help you publish user profiles, members, user activity, registration forms and more. If you upgrade to the full version of Peepso, you gain access to their responsive Gecko WordPress theme.

The basic bundle for PeepSo Pro costs $129 for a one website license and comes with one year of updates and two weeks of support. In addition to the Gecko theme, it comes with plugin extensions to add photos, chat, friends and groups. The starter bundle costs $249 for a one website license and comes with a total of 11 plugin extensions and one year of updates and support. The additional plugins add functionality for videos, polls, user limits and more.

The most expensive option is the ultimate bundle. Retailing at $349 for a one website license, it features a total of 20 plugin extensions. This package allows you to integrate Peepso with many third-party services and WordPress plugins.

ProfilePress – FREE / $69+

As its name suggests, ProfilePress is a WordPress plugin that helps you control user profiles in the front end and backend of your website. It lets you redirect users from the default WordPress login page and registration page to a custom page instead. Users can also be redirected to other pages after logging in and lopgging out.

The full version of ProfilePress adds support for multi-step forms, AJAX forms, social media logins, anti-spam features and pre-made themes for profile pages, login pages and registration forms.

A personal license retails at $69 and comes with one year of support and updates. The $99 business license increases support and updates to three websites and adds support for MailChimp, Campaign Monitor and Polylang. An unlimited website license is available at $199 per year or a one-off fee of $599.

WP User Frontend – FREE / $49+

The developers of WP User Frontend call it the “Ultimate Frontend Solution to WordPress”. It boasts a drag and drop form builder which can be used to create forms for a variety of purposes such as guest post submissions, WooCommerce orders and member subscriptions.

A registration form can be added using a shortcode, however if you upgrade to WP User Frontend Pro with the $49 per year personal license, you can create profiles and registration forms using a form builder. Upgrading also adds advanced fields, content restriction, social media logins, recurring payments, condition logic and more.

The $89 per year professional license increases usage to five websites and adds support for Stripe payments, email templates, a user directory, user analytics, BuddyPress integration and support for email marketing services.

At the top end is the $159 per year business license. This plan increases support and updates to 15 websites and adds private messaging, reports, support for Paid Memberships Pro, support for Zapier and more.

Profile Builder – FREE / $69

Profile Builder is a useful WordPress plugin that allows you to create advanced profile pages, login forms and registration forms. You can also restrict content based upon a user's login status or user role. The plugin gives you great control over your users. For example, you can specify the minimum length of passwords and which user group they are assigned to upon registration.

Over a dozen free plugin extensions are available for Profile Builder. There are plugins for adding custom login page templates, phone number validation, custom CSS and more.

Profile Builder Pro retails at $69 for a single license and comes with ten plugin extensions. New features include social media logins, custom profile menus and support for WooCommerce and popular email marketing services. The $149 unlimited website license adds integration support for BuddyPress and adds features such as front-end users, multiple registration forms and custom redirects.

Both plans come with one year of support and updates.

Final User – $39

Retailing at a one-off fee of $39, Final User is a front-end profile WordPress plugin that gives users a detailed front-end dashboard. Profiles can include photos, videos, associated blog posts, WooCommerce customer information, BuddyPress activity and more.

Final User can also be used to create a membership website. You can offer free accounts or charge users a one time payment or recurring payment. You can even offer free and paid trials.

Memberships

Once you have used a membership WordPress plugin, you understand just how powerful the WordPress platform is.

You can use membership plugins to create large communities, restrict content to specific user groups, sell online courses and even sell individual articles.

Many of the community and user-profile WordPress plugins that I referenced above support content restriction and let you sell memberships too. Generally speaking, however, dedicated membership WordPress plugins give you more control over users, more ways to restrict content and better support for marketing services and payment processors.

WP-Members – FREE / $125

WP-Members is a membership WordPress plugin that lets you restrict blog posts, pages and custom post types. It has shortcodes for custom login forms, registration pages, profile pages and content restriction. Two free plugin extensions are also available which allow you to prevent spam registrations and send test emails.

The WP Members Pro Bundle retails at $125 and comes with one year of support and updates. It adds advanced options, download protection, membership invite codes, security features, a text string editor, user list, user tracking and integration support for PayPal, MailChimp and SalesForce.

All of these pro features are available as individual plugin extensions, but with many of them costing $47 each, it makes more sense to purchase the bundle.

Members – FREE

Members is the free version of MemberPress, although it is better to consider them seperate products as they are so different. The plugin offers an advanced user role editor that lets you modify existing user roles and create new ones.

Using Members, you can grant access or deny access to dozens of website permissions. This includes accessible pages, posts, pages, media, plugins and more.

In the add-ons section, you can activate additional features such as WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads integration support, however Members does not allow you to charge for memberships directly.

You could, however, use Members to create a free membership website and use another plugin to accept payments.

MemberPress – $149

The full version of MemberPress is significantly more advanced that its free equivalent. It gives you complete control over what users can do and exactly what content they can access on your website. To keep members subscribed, content can also be drip fed to them.

Kevin Muldoon SEO Companies are Getting Guest Posts All Wrong

If my daily emails are anything to go by, all you need to call yourself an SEO expert these days is a Gmail account and cheap email blasting software to spam the crap out of half the internet.

In an average week, I get around 25 emails from “SEO Experts” who want to contribute an article to this blog. That number is increasing every day.

Despite receiving thousands of guest post submissions and guest post requests over the last ten years, I have yet to receive one good guest post.

Not even one.

I will say that again….in the last ten years, I have not had one good article that has been sent to me!

99.9% of the guest posts that have been submitted are garbage. Of the 0.1% that were accepted, I had to spend hours fixing images and correcting spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. With all of these articles, I would have been better, and quicker, just writing the article from scratch myself.

The reality is that most SEO companies have no clue what they're doing. Their sole strategy is to bombard website owners with requests for publishing cheap content.

Quality Content Should Be Made Priority

The focus of every blog should be to publish high-quality content, regardless of whether you wrote the article yourself or whether it was a guest post or sponsored post.

Good content attracts readers. Poor content drives them away.

Most internet users are aware of this, however marketers have managed to convince website owners that they are doing them a favour by giving them free access to their audience.

I ran multiple blogs throughout the 2000s.

Back then, guest post submissions came from fellow bloggers and writers who were trying to establish themselves. They would therefore contribute their best articles. Frequently, the articles guest posters submitted to top websites were better than the articles on their own website as they understood that the content was an advertisment of their website and their own writing ability.

Obviously, publishing good content on another website and poor content on your own is a poor marketing strategy, but every guest poster recognised that it was a privilege to be able to use someone else's website as a platform to launch yourself (though I do not believe any writer should be actively offering their services free of charge).

Fast forward to today, guest post submissions are coming from SEO companies and SEO agents, not writers who are looking to establish a reputation. Due to this, the goal of the guest poster has been changed from showcasing writing ability to shoehorning links to client websites into the article.

As every website owner will tell you, SEO companies are frustrating to deal with. They do not appreciate that publishing content on someone's website is a privilege, arrogantly assuming that website owners should be grateful for “Free Content” (Remember, it's not free if the content is stuffed with links to the company's clients).

Every day, I get an email from an SEO company who is flabbergasted that I have rejected their article or surprised that I thought the articles they published elsewhere were poor quality. They'll lie to you outright and state that the article has not been paid for, despite the fact its full of irrelevant links.

Their whole mindset about search engine optimisation is wrong.

If they contributed high-quality articles to websites, those articles would receive more social media likes and shares. This would lead to clients having links on pages that are ranked better.

Instead, SEO companies focus on quantity over quality, blasting emails out to thousands of website owners using software and working with cheap writers with a poor grasp of English. All of this is done in order to maximise profits and minimise the time they work themselves.

The whole strategy is short-sighted.

I Need to Change My Policy…Again

The vast majority of emails I receive through this blog are from time-wasters who want something for free.

In the past, I tackled this issue by making my advertising area and contact page crystal clear about how much guest posts cost and what would be accepted.

So what happened?

Nothing.

Most spam I receive still comes from SEO companies and they're all time wasters. They simply don't read the information I have published about guest posts and email me directly with their standard cut and paste email template.

I've been too accomodating with this and continued to respond to them. That stops now.

From now on, any guest post emails that do not come through my guest post submission or contact forms will be instantly sent to the spam folder.

In the long-term, however, I will probably have to stop accepting guest posts on this website. It just isn't worth the time I spend administrating them.

Final Thoughts

On paper, guest posts should be mutually beneficial for website owners, advertisers and SEO companies. Website owners receive a good article that readers will enjoy, advertisers improve their search engine presence and SEO agencies get a slice of the pie.

Unfortunately, that is not the case.

The whole strategy of SEO companies is to blast out pre-made impersonal emails to website owners in the hope they will accept poorly written articles that have been stuffed with links.

If SEO companies would invest in better writers, maybe everyone could be a winner in the guest post game.

If they don't, guest posting is dead.

Thanks for reading.

Kevin

The post SEO Companies are Getting Guest Posts All Wrong was written by Kevin Muldoon and appeared first on Kevin Muldoon.

Kevin Muldoon 5 Affiliate Programs That Make Me Money

To say that 2020 has been a crazy year for everyone would be an understatement. Few of us were prepared for Covid or a world where no one knew how to deal with it.

Like everyone else, I've had many few ups and downs myself this year. I've sadly lost a family member, caught covid and spent months being lethargic from it, got married and then moved up to Edinburgh with my beautiful new wife.

From a work point of view, the last two months have been unproductive as I've had little time to create blog posts or YouTube videos. Moving house and putting your home up for sale is incredibly time-consuming, so I don't recommend throwing a covid-wedding in the middle of it!

As I began to settle into my new home, I have more time to write articles, produce videos and think about what I work on over the next few months. I have many good articles planned for this blog and my hope is that these articles will not only attract new readers, but increase the affiliate income I generate.

In this article, I would like to share the affiliate programs that are generating income for me at the moment.

How I Make Money Online

Whilst I do still make a little money from the books I have published and have dabbled in eCommerce in the past, most of my online income is generated from affiliate marketing. This income is topped up by the occasional writing gigs, product reviews and other advertising options on this blog and other websites I own.

I see many people online calling themselves self-indulgent names like CEOs, experts and entrepreneurs, but I like to think of myself as a content creator.

Everything I do online is built upon me producing good content. Through this blog and my YouTube channels, I publish detailed reviews, tutorials, recommendations and other guides. Affiliate income is built upon this foundation of good content.

The Affiliate Programs That Make Me Money

In this section, I have listed five affiliate programs that have generated the most income for me in 2020.

Please be aware that this list is by no means complete.

The most obvious exclusion from the list is my YouTube revenue earnings from banner ads. Google used to display this revenue through Google AdSense, however they now display YouTube earnings within YouTube itself. My technology YouTube channel generates around $650 per month, though as the YouTube partner program is not an affiliate program, I have not included it in the list.

I have also ommitted dozens of other affiliate programs. Individually, they do not make me a lot of money, but collectively they earn me over a thousand dollars every year.

1. Amazon

I have known many marketers to disregard the Amazon Associate Program because

1. Commission rates are between 1% and 10%.
2. There are many affiliates fighting for the same piece of the pie
3. Amazon is so established now that most customers will go directly to the website

All of this is, of course, true. Amazon's commission rates are low when compared to other affiliate programs and there are thousands of website owners trying to send people to a website that we are all familiar with. Despite this, I have found Amazon to be one of my most profitable affiliate programs online, in part because of Amazon's brand loyalty.

99% of my affiliate income from Amazon is generated from my YouTube channels, not this blog. Publishing product reviews on YouTube and displaying Amazon affiliate links underneath can be extremely profitable if the video ranks well as most viewers are already interested in the product.

The good thing about Amazon's affiliate program is that if a customer visits Amazon through your link, you can generate commissions from the customer buying other items too.

2. Fiverr

The Fiverr freelancing marketplace exploded onto the scene in February 2010. Freelancing marketplaces had been around for over a decade at this point, but Fiverr did things differently by solely listing small jobs and contracts. It spawned a bizarre community of workers who would do anything for $5 and, no surprise, many competing gig websites sprung up over time.

Despite being known as a place to hire people cheaply, the official Fiverr affiliate program pays well. You can choose to make $10 per lead and a 10% revenue share or a dymanic CPA option that pays up to $150 per customer.

How much you actually earn depends on the category that the customer purchases a service. For example, you will make $30 if they purchase a creative writing gig and $60 if they buy a whiteboard explainer video. Their $150 payment is reserved for when customers purchase Fiverr PRO Services.

I have made a lot of money by promoting Fiverr, but as an affiliate, the company has always been terrible to deal with. As noted in my article “Why I’m Getting a Payment of Over $8,000 By Promoting Fiverr“, their stats were completely unreliable* and their support team was unresponsive (* To clarify, when I say unreliable, I mean their stats showed considerably less traffic than what I was sending them).

Thankfully, Fiverr also host an affiliate program with Awin.

Awin are a reliable affiliate network and you can trust that your clicks and leads will be tracked effectively. Therefore, if you want to make money promoting Fiverr, I recommend doing so through Awin instead.

3. WP Engine

WP Engine are one of the leading managed WordPress hosting services on the market. It's an easy recommendation for WordPress users as they are an established brand with a good reputation. They also sweeten the deal by offering hosting customers the full range of Genesis-powered WordPress themes from StudioPress.

The WP Engine affiliate program is hosted by ShareASale.

ShareASale are my favourite affiliate network at the moment as they always pay on time and have thousands of great companies to choose from. The network was acquired by Awin in 2017, but it continues to be run as a separate brand.

The WP Engine affiliate program is impressive. They pay $200 or 100% of a customer's first month's payment, whatever is greater. Healthy bonuses are paid when your referrals increase too.

They also give you 35% of any StudioPress theme purchases. So if you refer someone to WP Engine and they buy a StudioPress WordPress theme instead of a hosting plan, you will get a commission.

4. Thrive Themes

Thrive Themes are a popular WordPress company that are behind many great WordPress products. This includes the page builder Thrive Architect, the landing page plugin Thrive Leads, the quiz builder Thrive Quiz Builder and the discussion plugin Thrive Comments.

I have tested most of their plugins whilst writing articles for other WordPress websites. All of their plugins are high quality and easy to recommend so I would like to do more reviews to increase my commissions from them. At the moment, I make less than $500 from them every year, but I know I can earn more.

The company pays 35% of all referred purchases and 25% of any recurring revenue you generate. Their minimum payout is only $20 too so you can expect regular commissions from them.

5. Envato

Envato sells hundreds of thousands of digital products through marketplaces such as CodeCanyon and ThemeForest.

I consistently made several hundred dollars a month recommending Envato products for many years. For the traffic I sent them, I should have been making tens of thousands of dollars.

Despite not actively promoting them, I still make a few hundreds bucks with them every year due to existing links on my blog.

Sadly, Envato have always had one of the least generous affiliate programs online, only offering a 30% commission on a customer's first purchase, with no commission if your referral is already a member and no recurring revenue on future purchases either. This is poor, particularly when you consider that low rate affiliate programs such as Amazon will at least pay you a commission for directing existing customers back to their website.

Envato is an established marketplace too, which means that if you send them 100 people, perhaps only four or five will be new members. If one of those members buys something for $5, you will only receive $1.50 in commissions, even if that member goes on to spend thousands of dollars over Envato over the following years.

In other words, you need to send a ton of traffic to Envato in order to make money and even if you do that, you are unlikely to make great money.

Envato also has a digital membership website called Envato Elements that gives members unlimited access to a catalogue of digital products. Their Envato Elements affiliate program pays $60 over three months for monthly customers or $120 if they pay a year in advance, but since it is a membership website, it will be difficult to make great money from the service long-term.

From an affiliate management point of view, Envato have always been terrible too. Their in-house affiliate program had terrible support and they actively allowed others to redirect users and steal commissions.

They now host everything through the Impact Radius affiliate network. It should be no surprise that the transition to Impact Radius was a shambles!

Whilst I do still make a little money with Envato, it's difficult to recommend them to affiliate marketers.

Final Thoughts

I hope you have enjoyed this look at the five affiliate programs that are currently generating income for me.

Moving forward, my hope is that I greatly increase affiliate income and diversify where affiliate income is being generated. Amazon is a company I will continue to promote as I use them so much and their associates program converts well, but I will not be actively promoting services such as Envato anymore.

Making money from affiliation through content marketing can be hit or miss, particularly as the ranking of blog posts and pages are liable to change, however by publishing more high-quality articles and testing new affiliate programs, I should be able to generate income from different products and services in the future.

Thanks for reading.

Kevin

Featured image courtesy of mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

The post 5 Affiliate Programs That Make Me Money was written by Kevin Muldoon and appeared first on Kevin Muldoon.

Kevin Muldoon Case Study: Selling an Old Website at a Huge Loss

It is common for those who work online to share their successes with the world.

Whether it be a successful launch of a new product, a new sales record or a new social media milestone, people who work online do like to pay themselves on the back to demonstrate social proof.

I did this earlier this year when I wrote about my technology YouTube channel hitting the 10,000 subscriber milestone. A big yay for me!!!

Publishing your successful milestones can give the world a false impression that you are always hitting home runs.

As you can imagine, that is not the case.

Whether you work online alone or manage a large company, you are going to make many mistakes along the way.

In the interest of transparency, I would like to speak about my sale of MartialArtsVideos.com, a website which I sold at a huge loss.

What Went Wrong with Martial Arts Videos?

Martial Arts Videos was a website I launched in 2012.

The website published top lists of martial arts films and video clips.

It proved to be quite popular at the beginning and was generating good traffic and decent Google Adsense revenue, therefore I made the decision to invest more money in the project.

The website originally launched under the domain name MartialArtsVidz.com, but I soon picked up the domain name MartialArtsVideos.com for $7,100 and MartialArtsVideo.com for $1,000.

That's over $8,100 for the domain names alone and a few hundred dollars more if you add eight additional years of domain renewal years.

Another $12,000 was invested in Facebook Ads and I paid writers to write articles for the website for a year or so too.

So in total, I suspect my total costs for the website were over $22,000 and I only brought in a few thousand dollars back in ad revenue.

The amount I invested in Facebook sounds a little crazy today, but this strategy was actually working well initially as after the initial investment, the page started growing organically on its own quickly.

I had over 65,000 Facebook followers at one point and frequent post updates on Facebook helped send lots of traffic to the website.

Unfortunately, I had all my eggs in the Facebook basket and in one fell swoop, my traffic was decimated by a major change in Facebook's page publishing policy.

Facebook previously delivered post updates to 100% of the people who subscribed to a page, but they then made the decision to reduce this to less than 5%. Sometimes it was as low as 1%.

Previously, when I had 50,000 followers, an update about a new article was previously shown on the home page feed of all 50,000 followers.

After the change, an update was only shown to 1,000 to 2,000 people at most.

Before Facebook had implemented this change, I was on track to break even with my investment in three to six months due to the growth of the Facebook page, but that completely fell apart when Facebook decided to only deliver updates to a small number of followers.

Despite this, the website still had a huge amount of potential.

It has one of the best domain names available for that niche, the Google Adsense page RPM was relatively high and the website was easy to update.

That is why I spent time relaunching the website in 2013, which I documented in my case study “The Relaunch of Martial Arts Videos“.

I encourage you to read the article to get a better understanding of how I was trying to make the website profitable again.

Selling Martial Arts Videos on Flippa

Six months ago, I made the decision to sell MartialArtsVideos.com.

I had =listed it for sale on Flippa a few years ago, however I had not received a bid I was happy with.

This time, I set the reserve at $3,000, with the expectation that I would get at least $5,000 for it.

In the end, I accepted $4,500 for it, which worked out at $4,255 after Flippa and Escrow fees.

I am one of the oldest members of Flippa.

Flippa states that my account is 19 years old, but I had been selling websites on SitePoint's marketplace since 2000, before the marketplace was transformed into the Flippa marketplace we all know today.

The overall experience of selling on Flippa can be frustrating due to the large number of time-wasters who participate in website trading.

I got dozens of messages from people asking about Martial Arts Videos.

• Many would ask questions that were already answered in the sales thread
• Many would ask for access to Google Analytics, despite the fact they had zero trades (i.e. a large percentage were just nosy)
• Many would ask question after question, then say their budget is only $250

Before a serious bid came in, I was leaning towards pulling the sale of the website as responding to messages was taking up so much of my time.

Thankfully, the person who bought the website was professional, placing a bid shortly after I answered a couple of questions.

Less than a few months later, the buyer abandoned the website and redirected it to another martial arts website they owned. This sounds bizarre, however it is more common than you think. Even websites I sold for tens of thousands of dollars were quickly dropped or redirected to another website.

It's testament to the fact that a lot of website traders have money to invest in websites, but do not know how to maintain them or develop them further.

Understanding the Mistakes You Make

I still strongly believe that MartialArtsVideos.com had great potential.

Eight years later after I launched the website, I was still receiving dozens of messages from martial artists who wanted to publish their videos there, which is testament to the fact there is a market for that type of website.

So why was it not a success?

I could give you many valid reasons, and many excuses, as to why Martial Arts Videos was not successful, however the biggest reason was time.

There is only so many hours that you can spend working every week. I was dividing my time between this blog, YouTube and several other website projects.

I was always reluctant to commit the time that the project needed as it was not making good money. Additionally, at the back of my mind, I was always concerned that I was throwing money away as there were safer projects I could have invested in.

It is easy to underestimate the time and energy that is required to not only develop a website, but maintain it. This is especially true if your time is divided between many different projects.

You can, of course, bring people in to help you. This is easy to justify when a website makes money, but difficult when it has been running at a loss for years.

In over 20 years of working online, one of the mistakes I have repeatedly made is to not sell a website when I had no time to take it forward.

Instead of selling MartialArtsVideos, I did nothing. Slowly, but surely, the website became stagnant and traffic reduced over time.

Selling a website that has not met its potential means you have to accept selling it at a lower price. It can be difficult to accept this initially, however if you have no plans to develop the website further, you need to sell it.

Moving forward, I plan on addressing this problem and selling several older projects that I have.

Doing this means accepting that I will not get a great price for those websites, but it also means that I will be losing dead weight and freeing up more time to work on projects that matter.

Final Thoughts

I hope you have enjoyed this look at my sale of MartialArtsVideos.com. The website is one of many websites that I hope to sell over the next year so that I can focus 100% on active projects.

I am confident of increasing my income significantly over the next few years, but make no qualms about it, I will still make mistakes along the way.

That is the price you pay for taking risks.

Thanks for reading.

Kevin

The post Case Study: Selling an Old Website at a Huge Loss was written by Kevin Muldoon and appeared first on Kevin Muldoon.

Kevin Muldoon Taking My Tech YouTube Channel in a Different Direction

I do not enjoy sitting analysing statistics all day long, but from time to time it is important to review things. When I began to analyse traffic stats for my technology channel recently, it quickly became apparent that I need to change things moving forward.

The channel continues to grow every week, however I am not growing fast enough. Certainly not for the time I am investing into the channel.

Without doubt, I am at a crossroads.

Covering Too Many Topics

When I initially launched my tech channel, I mainly focused on travel, business related issues and WordPress. It made sense at the time as I was backpacking through South America and was still updating this blog regularly.

Once I got back to the UK, I started focusing on technology topics instead. The channel covers a wide number of tech topics including cameras, smartphones, tablets, laptops, computers, graphics cards, hard drives, gaming and more.

I have always enjoyed covering a wide range of topics on the channel as it keeps things interesting for me, however this decision has undoubtedly cost me many subscribers.

It is much easier to grow a YouTube channel that focuses on one topic as you do not alienate subscribers. Subscribers who enjoy my videos about smartphones, may not care about cameras. Likewise, though who enjoyed my laptop reviews, may not be interested in gaming.

Therefore, when people subscribe to your channel for different reasons, you risk alienating a large percentage of your subscribers every time you upload a video.

Moving forward, I may have to start being more selective about the topics I cover. If not, subscriber growth will continue to stagnate.

Following the Latest Trends On YouTube

Covering too many topics is one reason why my channel is not growing at the rate I want, but a bigger reason is the “Type of Products” that I have been covering.

A quick look at my stats shows that news videos perform really well on YouTube. From my end, these videos take considerably less time to produce too.

Product reviews and tutorials do well too, but it is clear that only newer products are generating thousands of views. If I review a product that was not released within the last few months, I sometimes struggle to get 100 views. That is abysmal, especially when you consider these videos sometimes take a day to produce.

You may be thinking “Why not just post news videos all the time?”.

Whilst there are YouTube channels who do just that, it is not something I ever wanted. Ideally, I would like my channel to focus mostly on reviews and tutorials with occasional news videos on stories that interest me.

The exception to this rule is live streams. I am a huge fan of doing live streams and talking discussing the latest tech news with subscribers. Unfortunately, it is not something that would grow my channel. It does help me connect with subscribers, but as live streams are long, their recordings generate few views afterwards.

Here's a summary of my review problem.

• Companies offer products to me to review every day of the week, however the products that are offered rarely generate views
• These reviews still take a lot of time to research, record, edit and upload
• My YouTube channel is not popular enough to receive review offers from companies that manufacturer new and popular products
• Whilst these new products would generate more views, I would need to spend thousands on them
• The cost of buying new products can be mitigated by selling them after the reviews have been completed
• Selling products is time-consuming and you sometimes lose 30% of the cost when you sell the product on

With an unlimited budget, I could continually buy new products to generate views. Obviously, I don't have that an unlimited budget, however I do not want to get caught in the review rat race with other YouTubers anyways.

I believe I need to take a stand back and rethink how I approach my technology YouTube channel so that I am more productive with my time.

• I should spend more time updating this blog in order to increase income
• Additional income can be put towards reviewing better products
• Product quality should be improved – Less is more!

There is no doubt that I need to shake things up and switch the direction of my channel, but there are positives to be taken from my YouTube journey over the last two years too. For example, the quality of my videos has generally improved during this time and my channel continues to grow.

Final Thoughts

It does not matter if you are developing a blog, a YouTube channel or an online store. Like every project, there is a risk of reaching a place of comfort and running on auto-pilot.

I have been guilty of this. Every week I have been churning out content without really thinking about the direction I was taking my channel.

Whilst I am acutely aware of the mistakes I have made, I am positive about the future. I have learned a lot over the last few years and I believe the experience I have gained will serve me well.

Moving forward, I need to think more about how I advance this channel. Traffic is always easier to come by if you publish content about trending topics, however my long-term goal is a loyal subscriber base. Therefore, I do have to give strong consideration to talking about less topics.

Thanks for reading.

Kevin

The post Taking My Tech YouTube Channel in a Different Direction was written by Kevin Muldoon and appeared first on Kevin Muldoon.

Kevin Muldoon YouTube Changes Mid-Roll Ad Break Policy

YouTube refers to any advertisements during a video as a “Mid-Roll Ad Break”. On 27 July 2020, YouTube introduced some changes to mid-roll ad breaks that change the number of advertisements that are shown during YouTube videos.

Since most of my videos are longer than eight minutes, these changes effect most of my videos, but is this a good step by YouTube?

I discuss this issue in the video below.

Keep reading on to learn more about these changes.

Mid-Roll Advertisements

YouTube gives content creators various ways to insert advertisements into their videos.

The first thing they ask you is what types of ads you want to display. There are five options: Display Ads, Overlay Ads, Sponsored Cards, Skippable video ads and Non-skippable video ads. By default, all five ad types are selected, however, you can deselect any ad types you do not want to use.

YouTube also allows you to select the location of ads. You can choose to display ads before, during and after videos.

Throughout my YouTube journey, I have just displayed advertisements before a video starts and never during or after a video. As you can see from the screenshot below, YouTube are now automatically inserting mid-roll ads into my videos too.

In the video below, Google explains how mid-roll ads work.

Until YouTube implemented these new changes, I had never inserted a mid-roll ad into any of my videos, however other YouTubers have been using them for years to increase income on their website.

YouTube can insert these ads automatically or, if you prefer, you can select exactly when mid-roll advertisements are shown.

I think mid-roll ads are a great idea for long-form content such as live stream playbacks, podcast style interviews and other long videos. I do think, however, that many YouTubers are abusing the feature and inserting too many advertisements into their videos.

The Mid-Roll Ad Break Changes

Let's talk about the exact changes YouTube has introduced.

In “Manage mid-roll ad breaks in long videos“, YouTube notes that:

• The eligibility threshold for videos to have mid-roll ads has been reduced from 10 to 8 minutes
• Mid-roll ads have been turned on by default for all eligible existing videos and set as the default for future video uploads 

So you can now introduce mid-roll videos at eight minutes instead of ten, but the big change here is that mid-roll advertisements have been automatically enabled for all existing videos that are eligible.

I have reviewed many of my videos to see exactly what has changed.

As I noted earlier, I had previously enabled pre-roll ads so that the only advertisement was displayed at the start of the video. On some of my videos, the pre-roll advertisement at the start as been replaced with a mid-roll advertisement instead. In others, they have enabled an advertisement at the beginning and end of the video, but no mid-roll ads are displayed.

My initial concern about this new change was that I would overwhelm viewers with advertisements, however it appears that they are simply refining when advertisements are displayed.

And the Results Are In…

I was not initially convinced by this new change to mid-roll ads. My first thought was to disable mid-roll ads altogether, but I wanted to test it out a few weeks to see how it affected views and income.

Surprisingly, this change to mid-roll advertisements does not appear to have changed anything. I haven't seen any dramatic change to page views or to income. On the plus side, this means the new changes are not scaring viewers away. On the down side, income is not increasing.

Whilst I make a point of not overwhelming viewers with ads, others will insert as many advertisements as possible. I do believe that it is up to every YouTuber to decide how many advertisements they insert into their videos, however I also recognise that the actions of others affect my channel too.

If YouTubers increase the number of advertisements being displayed, we may see more users use ad blocking scripts and browsers. This would lead to a decrease in revenue for everyone, not just those that are blasting users with ads.

Final Thoughts

Whilst the introduction of automatic mid-roll advertisements will not please everyone, I am pleased by the fact that YouTube are experimenting with ads as I believe there is room for improvement.

Advertisement integration will evolve over time as users viewing habits change. YouTube are keen to push users to YouTube Premium, but adoption has been slow so far. I am planning on signing up to YouTube Premium myself so that I do not see any ads when I use YouTube. Perhaps other users will do the same. We shall see.

Thanks for reading.

Kevin

The post YouTube Changes Mid-Roll Ad Break Policy was written by Kevin Muldoon and appeared first on Kevin Muldoon.

Kevin Muldoon Can You Have Too Many WordPress Plugins?

Ever since WordPress launched, many people have been advising others not to install many WordPress plugins. The thinking behind this is that when more WordPress plugins are installed on your website, your website will be slower and less secure.

Is this actually true?

In my experience, no. The number of WordPress plugins you have installed on your website is not indicative of the speed and security of your website.

Check out my video above where I explore the idea of many WordPress plugins bloating your website.

The “Too Many Plugins” Argument

The idea that too many WordPress plugins is detrimental to your website has been circulating for years. There are countless discussions about it on WordPress.org and on thousands of blogs.

For example, in the article “WordPress Plugins: How Many is Too Many?“, Brad Smith says :

Too many plugins can lead to security breaches on your site, site crashes, bad performance, slow loading speeds, and more. A good rule of thumb is to never exceed 20 plugins. If your site is hosted on shared or budget cloud hosting, try not to use more than 5 plugins.

Brad Smith – TorqueMag

Brad's article does have have good tips such as removing inactive WordPress plugins and only installing plugins that were developed by reputable companies, but the idea that you should never exceed 20 plugins is ridiculous. It just isn't true that more WordPress plugins equates to more problems.

At the time of writing, this blog has 38 installed WordPress plugins and is secure. I have no idea how many WordPress plugins TorgueMag has activated at this time, but their website is slow, taking over six seconds to load their home page using 137 requests. In comparison, my home page loads in one second using only 8 requests.

I am not pointing this out to be critical of TorqueMag, but to illustrate that having many WordPress plugins does not mean that your website is slow to load. It just isn't true. Websites that have many active WordPress plugins can be optimised in the same way as websites with just a few.

What about website security?

The idea that if you have many WordPress plugins active on your website, you are more likely to have security holes and vulnerabilities. This way of thinking is too simplistic as it as assumes that all WordPress plugins are equal. They are not.

In my opinion, you will not make your WordPress less secure by activating more plugins if you ensure:

• All plugins are developed by good companies and individuals
• All plugins are regularly updated
• You only activate necessary plugins
• Inactive plugins are deleted
• You use one or more WordPress security plugins

Security plugins are sometimes left out of the “Too Many Plugins” discussion, but they should not be.

What would you rather have:

• A WordPress website with 100 activated plugins that used security plugins to protect brute force logins, remove common threats and scan for vulnerabilities
• or
• A WordPress website with five activated plugins, but no active security plugin

Going back to Brad Smith's article, he notes that the problem with too many plugins is that it causes security vulnerabilities, yet the examples of hacking he gives had nothing to do with how many WordPress plugins were installed and everything to do with those plugins being outdated and insecure.

Brad also suggests that more WordPress plugins increases the chance of your website crashing. This is simply not true if you use secure reliable WordPress plugins. If you actively maintain your WordPress website, it doesn't matter if you have five WordPress plugins activated or 50.

Please also remember that every WordPress plugins are different. Some plugins insert a couple of lines of code into your website, whilst others add dozens of database tables and are constantly running cron jobs to operate.

Final Thoughts

The whole idea that you should limit your WordPress website to a predefined number of WordPress plugins is misleading as it does not take into account more important WordPress maintenance issues such as updates, website optimisation and website security.

It does not take into account how much functionality each WordPress plugin is adding to your website either and how many resources they use as certain WordPress plugins require more resources.

For example, if you install security WordPress plugins, related posts plugins, forum plugins etc, your server will require more CPU and memory to operate efficiently. Due to this, you may have to upgrade to a more powerful website hosting package and use content delivery networks to ensure your page loading times do not increase.

Thank you for reading.

Kevin

The post Can You Have Too Many WordPress Plugins? was written by Kevin Muldoon and appeared first on Kevin Muldoon.