Brian Feeley Title: WordPress Support Engineer Who am I? In 1996, I started a high school class doing web design hosted on Geocities. I spent many years as a Business Solutions Analyst doing contract work. Then, I evolved back into web design and large scale hosting support. I’ve always had a passion for PHP and WordPress, so I decided a few years ago to specialize in that field. I ended up at Pagely in my search for the best managed WordPress host. What I do at Pagely My job consists of providing chat and ticket support. This often includes onboarding customers, conducting security assessments, repairing email and ensuring that each site meets the right requirements for success. I also like to dabble in the customer experience and quality assurance whenever new items are released by our amazing development team. When working in support and site optimization, it’s important that we collaborate with the customer or their developer to find an efficient resolution. Once we isolate an issue, we work with the full team at Pagely to achieve the best solution, whether it be custom configuration to NGINX, or adding additional object cache. One constant thought on my mind is how to limit the risk of having a web presence. A lot of time and money is involved in your little bit of digital real estate, and the last thing you want is something destroying your credibility. We spend many hours of research discovering the best solutions to common problems, and all of that information gets translated into our knowledge base. If you have a question that needs solving, spend a little time on the Pagely Support page and see if you can find your solution. Here, you’ll find everything from getting started in Atomic to how to achieve successful onboarding, staging and testing environments. If something is not covered in the knowledge base, we want to know. Send what we’re missing to support@pagely.com, and we’ll continue creating helpful articles that help each site reach its full potential.
From famous cases of forgery to instances of accidental self-plagiarism, anyone can become a victim of content theft in one way or another. Anytime you publish original content online, you become vulnerable to the threat of being plagiarized. You also increase the risk of unknowingly plagiarizing someone else. To protect yourself and your brand from the consequences of plagiarism, it’s important to do your part to prevent it. If you’re working with multiple website contributors or authors, these measures are especially important for ensuring the authenticity of your website’s content. Here, we’ll outline some of the best plagiarism checker tools — and a few essential tips for preventing plagiarizers from targeting your website. Free Anti-Plagiarism Tools for WordPress There are a number of anti-plagiarism options in the WordPress plugin directory. After testing out the most popular options, these are the ones which stand out the most. Copyfight With protection for shortcode, posts, and pages, Copyfight provides an exceptional defense against plagiarism. The plugin also prevents people from thieving email addresses, which is a unique feature among other anti-plagiarism plugins. Copyfight can be easily accessed from the WordPress dashboard and provides a seamless experience for keeping your content safe. Free Online Plagiarism Checker One downside of plagiarism is that it leads to duplicate content, which can cause decreased search engine rankings due to Google penalties. This straightforward, yet powerful app reduces this risk by making checking for plagiarism a breeze. Free Online Plagiarism Checker works directly with drafted posts in WordPress, so you can scan each post before it goes live. DMCA Protection Badge The DMCA protection badge is a great way to ward off potential thieves. Once you sign up for a free account and place the badge on your website pages, you’ll also get access to a secure portal where you can view the status of your pages. If you do identify an instance of plagiarism, DMCA offers an affordable takedown service that can eliminate the content quickly. The DMCA tool can also protect imagery and videos, making it a smart precaution for content-rich sites. Plagiarism Checkers Outside of WordPress Having a plagiarism checker within your WordPress site is an easy, efficient way to check for authenticity. But if you want to be comprehensive in your plagiarism precautions, you’ll want to have plagiarism checkers handy for everything you write. Grammarly One of the best digital writing tools to date, Grammarly provides support with everything from grammar to plagiarism. To check how your writing compares to other publicly available websites, simply sign up for a free Grammarly account and paste your content into the Grammarly Editor. Then, click the circle on the left-hand navigation bar. This will tell you if there are any other websites featuring the content you’ve pasted. While this option is only available to Premium users, it’s certainly worth the investment if you’ll be checking large quantities of content often. Copyscape Copyscape offers a free plagiarism checker that makes it easy to scan for copy theft on the web. Rather than copying and pasting specific pieces of content, Copyscape scans your entire website using just the URL. Copyscape provides additional free plagiarism resources, such as a tool that compares two blog posts or web pages for similarities. They also offer a helpful guide on how to understand your digital rights and manage online plagiarism. Final Thoughts None of these methods is foolproof, and those committed to stealing your content can always find a way to do so. However, taking measures to protect yourself is better than doing nothing. And when you use multiple tools to safeguard your site, you’ll reduce the odds of getting mixed up in plagiarism fiasco. If you have any tips for dealing with plagiarism, please share them in the comments below.
From forums and chat rooms to blog posts and conferences, the amount of WordPress support available truly is infinite; but, with so many resources at our fingertips, how does one find the answer to a simple WordPress question? To sort through all the information, it’s important to know where you can go to ask for WordPress help. This post is filled with resources on all aspects of WordPress support, ranging from the deeply technical to the inspiring and educational. The Right Host for WordPress Help What’s the first step in getting proper WordPress help? Choosing the right host. With three kinds of WordPress hosting available — single, VPS, and managed — it’s important to know exactly what you’re signing up for. Single and VPS Hosting Single and VPS-hosted sites allow for more autonomy in WordPress development and maintenance. They also require much greater independence when it comes to troubleshooting. This ends up putting the user in charge of updates, security, and other support aspects. Managed Hosting If you’re not keen on the idea of solving every WordPress problem on your own, consider the benefits of managed WordPress. Essentially, managed WordPress is a service that maintains all technical aspects of maintaining a WordPress website. Managed hosts handle important details, like security enforcement, malware scanning, and instant software updates. They also improve site reliability, increase speed, conduct daily backups, and monitor downtime. Most managed hosts also offer technical support, so no need to worry about getting your questions answered. Managed WordPress provides the most balance in terms of both customization and support. How? Because delegating these essential, yet time-consuming tasks allows you to get more involved in the WordPress community. Ask questions, generate discussions, and learn more about the ins and outs of the world’s favorite CMS. Unless you’re skilled in technical support, it’s in your best interest to adopt managed WordPress and let experts work for you. WordPress Technical Support To get started with technical support, you can check out the two main forums on wordpress.org. Browse the main support page or you can head to the how-to and troubleshooting page for problems after setting up WordPress. WordPress.org also has its own requests and feedback forum where you can see similar questions, or ask your own. To make sure you ask questions that solicit helpful answers, check out this article on how to write a great WordPress support request. If you’re looking for a quick answer to an error message, this Codex page shows users how to search by keywords in a WordPress error message for more effective search engine searches. Additionally, WordPress.tv has a number of great support videos on a wide range of topics designed for both novice and expert WordPress users. In this video, Justin Ferriman shows how to get support for premium themes and plugins. Plugins are another factor to consider when it comes to technical WordPress help. Installing the right plugin might be the answer to your problem. For example, you might wonder how can you reduce server load to make yo ht be the answer to your problem. For example, you might wonder how can you reduce server load to make your website faster? You will find the answer to this, as well as many others challenges, in the expansive WordPress plugin gallery. To narrow your plugin search, here’s a roundup of WordPress plugins for business websites, and 37 essential WordPress plugins you should know. Also, this impressive list of 200 plugins, curated by 40 global WordPress experts, will get the job done. WordPress Design and UX Support If you’re new to WordPress, the level of visual customization available will suprise you. This also is a little overwhelming. These resources will help you solve issues that may arise while editing visual elements of your site, such as your theme, logo, and photos. For some initial inspiration, you might want to check out the Awwwards website. Awwwards has a panel of web design experts who judge and curate website submissions from around the world. The Awwwards WordPress page has over 1,900 websites that can inspire your new design. Each submission is tagged with different keywords, so you can filter through the submissions based on a certain design element or theme that’s relevant to your project. The next step after choosing a theme is learning how to customize that theme the right way. Even if you’ve got a firm grasp on HTML and CSS for theme customization, there’s always more to learn. This guide on how to customize a WordPress theme is a comprehensive place to brush up on theme questions. It also has a special page dedicated to rookie mistakes, which is definitely worth checking out no matter how advanced you are. Help From The WordPress Community One of the biggest benefits of WordPress is its amazing, worldwide community eager to answer questions and offer support. The official forum is a wonderful resource and many questions that you have will already have answers. If you want a more casual environment, the Facebook group “WordPress, SEO and Internet Questions” is a great resource. With over 16,000 members and a well-defined set of guidelines for interaction, your questions will get answered promptly and honestly. If you’d simply like to expand your knowledge on how to make the most of WordPress, check out Post Status. The website is full of podcasts and articles covering all things WordPress, ranging from insightful expert interviews to helpful posts on choosing plugin libraries and frameworks. WP Tavern is a community website that seeks to leverage the best of the WordPress community in order to generate riveting conversations about WordPress news. One of the ways we stay up-to-date with WordPress is to sign up to the WpMail newsletter, a weekly roundup of WordPress news, tutorials, videos and more. Creating a Recovery Plan Whether your website goes down, you fall victim to a hacker, or any other disaster scenario, it’s important to have a plan in place. Adopting a managed WordPress host is the best possible way to avoid these issues; however, it’s important to have a step-by-step action plan if any problem arises, with or without a managed host. This disaster recovery plan for WordPress has great tips for identifying and solving problems quickly. With the resources mentioned above and help from the WordPress community, WordPress support is never far from reach.
Higher domain authority. Improved brand visibility. Increased traffic and conversion rates. You understand the benefits of a WordPress content marketing plan, but where do you start? You could just create whatever content you feel like without a strategy, but that’s a dangerous playing field. To create a content marketing program that’s truly successful, it’s important to have a strategic plan. Devising this plan starts by knowing about the features, tools, and plugins designed specifically to help people like you excel at content marketing. Follow these four steps to plan, execute, and track a successful content strategy, plus learn the best tools, tips, and tricks for generating more leads through your content. 1. Determine your Content Marketing Goals The first step in creating a successful content marketing campaign is determining what you want to accomplish. The topics you cover and the types of content you create will all be determined by your end goal. If you want to capture more email leads, for example, you’ll want to create more long form content that you can gate behind an email opt-in page. If you want to simply generate more shares and increase brand awareness, you might test catchy blog headlines and focus more on visual content that’s easily shareable on social media. To show you how to set and achieve a business goal through WordPress content marketing, we’re going to choose one of the most common business goals as an example. Since all businesses require more sales to survive, we’re going to focus our example on attracting prospective customers, or qualified leads. To attract potential customers to our site, we’ll need to create informative, SEO-optimized blog posts, plus drive interest using social media. Once we attract potential customers, we’ll want to capture contact information for potential leads. To do this, you need to create an opt-in form, or squeeze page, that entices people to provide their contact information. Now that we understand our main goals — and how we’ll achieve them through specific types of content — it’s time for some research. 2. Conduct Keyword Research When you’re creating a WordPress content marketing strategy, it’s important to use keyword research both for post ideation and content theme creation. WordPress makes it easy to create categories, which help organize content for the reader and diversify your blog’s content. To create categories and content that attract people’s attention, you need to learn which topics, ideas, and questions are most prevalent in your industry. What terms are potential customers searching for? What questions are your target market asking? To answer these questions, you need to develop a keyword research strategy. We’ve already written about how to conduct keyword research using Google Keyword Planner and Market Samurai. You can also conduct keyword research without leaving WordPress at all. RB keyword research is a plugin that leverages Google’s autocomplete functionality. This plugin shows you which phrases are most commonly typed into Google using a given keyword, so you can discover new keywords related to the ones that are already on your radar. Once you’ve installed and tested a combination of keyword tools, it’s a good idea to set up at least 4-6 categories for each post to be filed under (remember: you can always add more later). 3. Devise Content Ideas Brainstorming content can be a daunting and inefficient process. Refer to the content brainstorming key, or try using Buzzsumo, one of the best tools for understanding which topics are gaining the most traction at any given time. Simply search for a topic and you’ll see what was most shared, who shared it, and what medium they shared it on. Another handy ideation tool comes from CoSchedule — we’ll go into more detail about CoSchedule’s content scheduling tool below — but for now let’s take a look at the headline analyzer. This free headline analyzer for WordPress provides a succinct analysis of your proposed headline’s structure, grammar, and readability. It shows you exactly how to improve your headline for greater click-throughs, and it can be a great way to tweak new content ideas to improve their success rate. If your WordPress content marketing strategy is going to involve an opt-in form for long form content, brainstorm eBook and whitepaper ideas that might entice your audience, based on the keyword research you’ve already conducted. If you’re not going to include long form content but you’re still focused on generating new leads, try brainstorming email newsletter ideas based on the topics your target audience is interested in. It’s a smart idea to install an opt-in plugin before you start publishing, so you can capture all potential leads from the very start. SumoMe and Optinmonster are two of the most popular WordPress plugins for opt-in boxes, and both can be customized to meet your needs. 4. Schedule and Track Once you’ve developed at least a dozen content ideas, you need to determine when they’ll be posted. This may require some guesswork at first, and it’s a good idea to test out different posting times on different days of the week to see which times your audience prefers. To keep your content consistent and well-varied, use CoSchedule’s editorial calendar. The tool allows multiple teams to collaborate in the same calendar, and it also has capabilities for social sharing, so you can manage all of your publishing and social sharing directly from the WordPress platform. While scheduling your content and planning its promotion, remember to maximize the ROI of a single content piece through strategic repurposing. This is a great way to drive revenue with the resources you have available, especially when you’re just starting out in the world of content marketing. After your posts have been written and scheduled, the last thing you need to do is track your content. The free version of Google analytics is perhaps the best place to start for tracking events, analyzing your content, and assessing specific areas of improvement in your content marketing plan.
There’s no denying that WordPress is one of the most powerful website hosting platforms on the market today. It offers extensive SEO capabilities, robust security, and all the customization features a website owner might need. WordPress also has a worldwide community of developers, bloggers, and experts dedicated to growing and improving the open-source platform. However, businesses looking to adopt WordPress should first distinguish the difference between managed WordPress hosting and unmanaged, or shared, WordPress hosting. Understanding the nuanced benefits of managed WordPress hosting can help you make the best choice for your business website. What is Managed WordPress Hosting? Managed WordPress hosting is a professional service that controls and maintains the technical elements of a WordPress website. Managed WordPress hosts are a more sophisticated option for businesses and institutions in all industries, offering invaluable advantages, such as cutting-edge security, superior customer support, optimal site speed, improved performance, and a variety of other benefits. Unmanaged vs. Managed Hosting While unmanaged hosting is traditionally less expensive than managed WordPress hosting, unmanaged sites often offer minimal features and require much more work to create and maintain. The minimal nature of unmanaged WordPress hosts can be a great option for individuals, bloggers, or independent contractors looking to create a personal website or establish an online presence. It can also help engineers and other individuals who want to learn more about WordPress development and customization. For businesses trying to grow their brand and expand their audience reach, however, managed WordPress is a much more effective and reliable option. Why? Because managed WordPress hosts like Pagely oversee the more challenging and technical aspects of a WordPress business site. For example, managed hosts conduct routine backups, monitor site downtime, and ensure speed and reliability. Managed WordPress sites almost always guarantee faster site speeds, despite the amount of traffic your website receives. And with automatic updates, you’ll always have the most up-to-date version of WordPress — without having to spend time checking for updates and waiting for downloads. With the specific knowledge and skills required to manage such technical elements, managed WordPress hosts provide business owners with a hassle-free experience and piece of mind. As a result, investing in managed WordPress frees up resources that website owners can dedicate to other key areas of business development. What are the benefits of managed WordPress hosting? The number of sites relying on managed WordPress has grown rapidly in the last seven years, and it has become a dominant content management system for companies of all sizes and industries. And if you’re considering a managed WordPress host for your company, it’s important to understand the main differences between managed hosting and unmanaged hosting. Here’s a more detailed look into four key benefits of managed WordPress hosting. Site Security One of the most beneficial aspects of managed WordPress hosting is that it offers unparalleled security. With an unmanaged WordPress site, for example, you’re responsible for finding the right tools, scans, and updates you need to keep your site secure. This might work if you’re a one person team who has experience in malware and file scanning and DDoS mitigation. If not, no problem. Managed sites implement the highest level of security on your site, plus they’ll conduct daily backups, malware scans and frequent updates that prevent hackers from disturbing your website. Uptime Monitoring The speed and performance of your WordPress site has a direct impact on your search engine rankings and your user experience. So when your website experiences slow speed, downtime, or other performance issues, it’s important to identify and remedy these issues promptly. Most managed WordPress hosts offer 24/7 website monitoring, so business owners don’t have to worry about checking their site’s performance at every waking moment. For busy business owners who want to maintain a strong reputation and customer experience, performance monitoring is a huge plus of Managed WordPress. Customer Support When you invest in managed WordPress hosting, you’re paying for highly-skilled support agents that can assist with all your needs 24/7. Managed WordPress hosts train support technicians who can understand the technical nuances of WordPress, helping to solve both common and complex problems. For example, Pagely equips every member of its support team with a comprehensive skill set and contextual client knowledge. Every person who calls Pagely support receives consistent, high-quality support tailored to their website’s specific needs. This is just one example of how technical support differs between managed and unmanaged WordPress. Customizable Hosting Solutions Most managed WordPress hosts have the customization capacity to support all industries, from higher education, to eCommerce companies, and everything in between. If you’re in the healthcare industry, for example, Pagely supports regulatory compliance statues like HIPAA. If you’re an online retailer, you can protect cardholder security through PCI DSS support. Additionally, managed WordPress sites can be a great solution for agencies. By managing critical site elements like server management, speed tuning and caching, agencies can launch creative work confidently and securely. Choosing a Managed WordPress Host Once you’ve decided that managed WordPress hosting is right for you, it’s time to choose the right provider. And while many managed WordPress hosts are designed to support a variety of industries, every website’s needs are unique and some hosts may meet your needs better than others. This article features reviews of managed WordPress hosts, and it’ll provide you with some industry-specific details. If you’re new to managed WordPress hosting, this is a great place to start learning about the marketplace.
Generate qualified leads. Increase conversions. Drive revenue. These three initiatives are at the top of every digital marketer’s to-do list. They’re also incredibly difficult to achieve. Generating leads is so difficult, in fact, that 65% of marketers say its the single biggest challenge they face (according to HubSpot’s 2016 report). If you’re like these marketers and you’re discouraged with your lead generation struggles, don’t give up just yet. We’re here to explain how you can increase qualified leads with squeeze pages–a type of landing page specifically designed to capture customer information for the purpose of lead generation. Here are 4 steps to planning, designing, launching, and tracking effective squeeze pages. 1. Campaigns That Provide Value Many marketers see squeeze pages as an opportunity to promote their product. This is an ineffective approach because it fails to provide value. And if people don’t see any value in what you’re offering them, why would they provide their contact information? To craft a campaign that’s perceived as valuable, you must consider your buyer personas. What are their implicit motivations for buying your product? Maybe they want to improve their performance at work, or maybe they’re motivated by something more personal. Understanding these types of personal motivations and desires is essential for connecting with your audience on an emotional level. These same considerations are important for helping you decide what type of content you gate behind your squeeze page. Whether it’s an eBook, a white paper or a case study, allow the needs and desires of your audience to guide you. 2. Your Audience’s Pain Points The most effective squeeze pages guide visitors through a three-part sequence: pain, understanding, and solution. To see how these three parts work together in action, take a look at how Oz Content targets its audience’s pain points. On the squeeze page for its eBook “The Content Gate Debate,” Oz Content attracts the reader by relating to a pain point in the very first line: “Many marketers don’t know when to gate content and how to best capture leads.” This relates to Oz Content’s target audience (marketing professionals) in a simple, yet powerful way. Next, Oz Content generates intrigue and excitement by planting a seed in the reader’s head: what if we reframed this age-old question? Lastly, a squeeze page has to provide a tangible solution to the audience’s pain. As an InVision article suggests: “Show them how much better life could be if that pain were fixed. See them out of the nightmare and into the dream.” Oz Content shows its audience out of their nightmare (confusion about gated content) with this powerful line: “It’s not about whether to gate content, but rather, where, when, and how to gate content for maximum lead capture and B2B lead nurturing.” Intriguing, right? This sequence is followed by a summary of the piece’s key takeaways. Bullet points are a great way to help viewers quickly grasp what the content has to offer. And while you do want the reader to understand why they need the offer, you don’t want to give away so much information on the landing page that the offer isn’t helpful. Effective squeeze pages balance informative statements with points of intrigue, leaving the content to reveal a few golden nuggets that delight the reader. 3. The Use of Minimal Design Getting people to your landing page is an incredible feat, but it’s only half the battle. For visitors to give up their contact information, it’s key to minimize distractions. Be sure to eliminate all extra links, buttons, and navigation capabilities that can lead your audience astray. Just take a look at this landing page example from life coach Marie Forleo. This landing page promotes Forleo’s award-winning audio training with a crisp gray background and clean, modern design. As you can see, visitors only have two choices here: to fill out the form or exit the window. Reducing the number of choices is a great strategy for increasing signup numbers. Forleo’s minimally designed page also raises a common industry question: how many form fields do effective squeeze pages have? Rather than relying on a magic number to answer this, consider the main goals you’re trying to achieve. For companies who want to increase lead quantity, it’s a good idea to stick with just one or two form fields. Companies who prefer quality over quantity may want to include more details, like company name and job role. 4. Testing and Tracking for Optimization After you’ve assembled your page with effective copy and compelling design, it’s important to check for consistency across language, design, and visual elements. Is your body copy aligned with your headline and CTA? Do your visual elements align with the piece of content being offered? If your squeeze page is tied to an email or social media campaign, be sure to check for consistency there as well. After evaluating your squeeze page for consistency, it’s critical to test your page elements for optimal conversion. There are many A/B testing tools for WordPress that make it easy to evaluate different elements on your site. If you’re new to landing page testing, consider these three areas: Headline Create a handful of varying headline options to see which language best resonates with your audience. Also, try different combinations of font colors and sizes to determine if that has an impact on conversions. CTA Copy Try testing different actionable phrases like “Get started!” and “Get my free eBook!” to get a feel for what language your audience prefers. CTA Style Whether your squeeze page has 3 calls to action or just one, it’s important to test their visual appeal. Implement different shapes and button colors in individual tests to see how they perform. If you’re new to A/B testing, remember that many tools offer advanced analytics functionality, such as heat mapping and custom reporting, which simplify the process considerably. If you enjoyed this post on creating effective squeeze pages, check out our three-part series on content marketing strategy.
From generating qualified leads to boosting SERP rankings, a successful enterprise WordPress site must achieve a balance between driving sales and generating brand awareness. For corporations that want to take advantage of all WordPress has to offer, there are a handful of questions that typically come to mind. Will WordPress scale to meet our needs? Is WordPress secure enough for our brand? How do we incorporate marketing efforts into our WordPress site? If your team is asking questions like these, it’s important to understand what capabilities and features WordPress offers specifically for large corporations. Let’s take a look at the 5 elements of every successful enterprise WordPress site: speed, uptime, security, conversion, and marketing. 1. Speed Website speed and bounce rates are directly correlated: the longer a website takes to load, the more likely it is to have high rates of page abandonment. A slow website turns away potential customers and signifies a poor user experience, which causes Google and other search engines to rank that site below competitors with more nimble loading times. You understand that speed affects your SERP ranking, but how can you create a faster website? One feature that’s considered a must amongst enterprise WordPress users is page caching. Caching essentially speeds up your website to a global audience by reducing the amount of information that needs to be processed between the website’s server and the end user. While there are a handful of great plugins for improving caching on a small scale, large companies with high-traffic websites require more complex server caching systems. Some managed website hosts offer geo-caching and geo-replication mechanisms, which are designed specifically to speed up WordPress sites for a more efficient user experience. Pagely uses NGINX full-page caching to accelerate the front end and Redis object caching to accelerate backend database access. Contact sales to learn about what we can do in terms of setting up shared geocache nodes to give your global visitors a faster user experience. 2. Uptime Unplanned website downtime is one of the most frustrating things that can happen for a high-traffic business website. But since downtime is bound to happen at some point or another, it’s important to be prepared for when it does happen. The best way to prepare for downtime is to adopt a form of uptime monitoring that minimizes the extent of downtime periods. Choosing the right uptime monitor for your business depends on how much traffic your website receives daily. While basic tools check your website’s uptime every 5 minutes, for example, you probably want advanced functionality that will monitor your website 24/7. Many tools are also equipped with automatic alerts, which is the most efficient way your team can learn about downtime (and the quickest way you can get your site up and running before angering more customers). Some uptime monitoring tools on WordPress also provide businesses with critical insights into how their website’s user experience is impacting conversions. For example, you may learn that a shopping cart is malfunctioning, or that there’s a problem with your opt-in form. This is especially important for websites with global audiences, because it sheds light on how user experience translates into different languages. 3. Security Security is perhaps the biggest concern of large corporations using WordPress, and rightfully so. One thing to keep in mind is that WordPress is constantly reforming its security features. It’s important to update WordPress every time a new version is available, as this will ensure that your site has state-of-the-art protection at all times. Pagely keeps the entire software stack updated from the machine kernel up through all core services to the plugins and wp core files. Corporations with hundreds of internal users will want to take a preventative approach to securing user accounts. One way to prevent security threats on WordPress is to adopt multi-factor authentication, also known as MFA or 2-factor authentication. This system prompts all of your website’s users to enter an additional verification code every time they log in. This safely verifies everyone’s identity and helps prevent hackers from breaking into your website. Google Authenticator is one commonly used tool that sends a unique verification code to each user through a mobile app. We offer 2fa as an option for all users on their Pagely admin. Another way to make your WordPress site more secure is to use a web application firewall. Industry standard firewall mod_security uses a set of rules to prevent common threats like code injection attacks. Large corporations should consider the benefit of managed WordPress hosts, which offer built-in security features that conduct all security measures, including screening for malware, conducting bot scans, preventing brute force attempts, and more. At Pagely we’re constantly monitoring new exploits and baking rules into our software firewall as well as our malware scanning process so that you’re protected and benefiting from the collective intelligence and surface area of thousands of customers. 4. Conversion Your corporation’s website is an extension of your sales team, and it should succeed at creating memorable brand experiences and generating leads. To understand how your marketing efforts impact conversion rates, it’s essential to take advantage of conversion tracking. This offers detailed insights into what steps a visitor takes on your website, from the first time they land on your homepage until they take a specific action. The key here is to focus on a specific conversion feature and then track it to better understand user behavior. For example, you might want to use tags to determine how often a certain link is clicked, which CTA buttons get the most hits, and whether or not people are using your social share buttons. When you have access to this information, you’ll be able to optimize your site for more effective conversions. Before the conversion though you ideally want to be tracking all the lead sources you control via UTM parameters. If you’re not familiar with this practice see this primer we wrote on using UTM parameters to track attribution. It’s also helpful to combine your conversion tracking and analytics data in the same dashboard. This is not only easier for everyone, but also more secure. Automatic tag managers like Google Tag Manager allow developers and marketers to create, edit, and delete conversion tags from a single location, without having to access or edit code. Keeping your code secure enables marketers to focus on conversion tagging strategies without compromising security. 5. Marketing After gaining information about how visitors interact with your site, it’s important to offer content that provides value and converts customers. Generating qualified leads starts with an effective marketing lifecycle — the ability to create valuable top-of-funnel, middle-of-funnel, and bottom-of-funnel content is key. WordPress makes this easy by offering customizable features and plugins for every stage of the buyer journey. To generate awareness from your blog, for example, you can implement a scroll-triggered opt-in form that encourages users to sign up for your newsletter. One free plugin that allows you to create a lightbox pop-up is called Pop-Up CC. WordPress also offers many plugins for creating landing pages, such as Unbounce, LeadPages, Thrive Landing Pages, and Optimize Press. Here, you can host informational middle-of-funnel content like eBooks and white papers behind a gated page that captures visitor information. When it comes to bottom-of-funnel content, you can use the conversion tracking tips listed in tip 4 to test the effectiveness of a “get demo” or “contact sales” page. To learn more about hosting your corporation’s website with Pagely, visit our page on enterprise WordPress hosting solutions today.
B A N A N A S Pretty much sums up the last year – It’s been bananas. Never ending Pandemic, New Brands, Growth, Working towards compliance, New Product Launches, and more. This September 2021 is a very special month for us. Pagely, and by extension the entire multi-billion dollar Managed WordPress Hosting channel, is 12yrs old! Quick Flashback: In Early 2009 I opened up my IDE and started looking at some code we wrote in 2006 for a website builder based on WordPress. I added a few features to it, picked a new leet domain name, and in September 2009 – Launched Page.ly – The world’s first Managed WordPress hosting company. All the WordPress hosting buzzwords you know and love: Automatic Backups Automatic Updates Blazingly Fast Secure like Fort Knox 1 Click Staging Caching All. Of. It. Started. Here. Yes of course it is true we did not actually create everything under the sun, however the early work we did in the space is the parent to every Managed WordPress product offering available, regardless of the company selling it. Except billing for Pageviews, eff that noise – we don’t want any part of that. Team Retreat in 2015 Always Forward As Pagely begins it’s 13th year we have a strong wind at our back once again. I’m sure in some companies, especially investor fueled ones, growth is always fast and up while profitability is tied up in ropes and cinder blocks, then thrown off the end of the pier. In our company we’ve had our periods of growth insanity and just normal one foot in front of the other measured progress to increased profitability and high NPS scores. 2018 through most of 2020 was a bit of an odd timeframe for us when looking back – we invested heavily into the development of NorthStack and gained deep technical learnings. These lessons were then applied to Pagely as the decision was made to pause the NorthStack product while we felt out how the world was going to react to a fast spreading novel Coronavirus. Team Retreat Early 2020 As we came up to a major revenue milestone in 2020 we turned our focus inward to reevaluate our processes and to create new ones, address team makeup, and revisited our mission and values. We took the time to prepare for what was coming and to lay the foundational groundwork for our future goals. Less manic startup energy – more “we’re a real business now” mentality. We hired into newly created roles in team management, finance, enterprise sales, and compliance. Sally and I handed off more and more of the day-to-day responsibilities to our skilled team so we could take stock of where we are, and where we needed to go. Then we all worked together to formulate the plan to get us there. Allison’s (SupportOps Manager) dogs: Winne and Lola (“Karen”). The last year has been all about executing on that plan. We added 30% to our headcount – while improving and expanding our benefit offerings. We’ve engaged the services of an auditing firm and will shortly achieve SOC 2 – Type 2 compliance certification. Our brand glow up – which is the culmination of months of work by our Dir of Marketing Dave Amirault, and the creative team at Struck – will be launching momentarily. We’ve delivered on many of the requested features to our Enterprise clientele such as Single Sign On (SSO) to our services, and expanded support models and enhanced SLA’s. Back of the napkin math tells me our employees significantly increased their usage of PTO – after much encouragement and prodding from myself and their team leads. We launched Mercury just a few weeks back, which is a major win for our bottom line and our customers’ site performance. 20-30% faster network speeds on every request at cheaper data rates. Truly a win-win. These and many more items that are part of our strategic plan have resulted in a steadily growing sales pipeline and a pronounced upward shift in our momentum heading into 2022. Did I mention we are hiring? Get your tech jobs here. Times have changed. The important stuff has not. Jeff Matson’s doggo – Henry 2021 was also an emotional roller-coaster as we all bared witness to the, at times, abject selfish nature of people — and — the grit, empathy, and kindness of others. Sally and I have personally seen all of this up close and personal this year, a story we may share at another time. Each day though we took heart that by and large, the world is good and things tend to work out in the end. Keep the good people in your life close, and hug your kids every day. It costs you nothing to be kind. We lean on our core values as we make decisions and plan for the future. We also relied on them heavily in the past as we navigated the ups and downs of the pandemic. Sally has always said that if we do the right thing, success will follow. Doing the right thing by the people in our lives, our companies, and our communities is typically a selfless act with no expectation of return. At times though, the universe does surprise you with a healthy payback of goodwill, tenfold. There are lot’s of new faces at Pagely, as we said goodbye to others. It seems everyone has collectively reevaluated how they wish to invest their work time. Many leaned into the stability of good careers, others felt it was time to explore new options. At each coming and going I’m thankful to see new faces embrace our vision and values and old friends take a little part of the Pagely magic with them as they move forward to a new adventure. We are just as committed today as we were yesterday, and every day prior to becoming the best version of Pagely we can be. Branding work in 2021 Looking forward is as exciting today as it has been at each one of our 11 prior birthdays. I want to personally thank the team here at Pagely, and all of our customers and the fans we have in the WordPress community for being part of our journey thus far. Happy Birthday to Us. This coming year is going be the most interesting chapter in our story yet. I guarantee it.
