Bringing Push Notifications To Your WordPress Blog
Roost enables WordPress sites to send push notifications to users of mobile devices, including iOS and Android, as well as to a number of different browsers. Getting push notifications right can be tricky. There’s a fine line between keeping your subscribers up-to-date and spamming them with intrusive and unnecessary interruptions. For most bloggers and business users of WordPress, push notifications are unnecessary. There are plenty of other mechanisms for getting the word out to subscribers, including the sadly declining RSS feed, email, and social media channels — particularly Twitter, which has taken the place of RSS for many. But, there are some use cases where it’s important to give up-to-date information immediately. A news site that publishes time sensitive information, the value of which degrades with time. A close-knit blogging community whose members want to be kept apprised of recent post publications. A WordPress eCommerce site that runs frequent promotions that users want to be made aware of. Push notifications, to mobile devices in particular, should adhere to a few simple rules in order to avoid alienating users. They should be: Used infrequently. Only used for important updates. Used minimally for marketing purposes to avoid spamming. Easy to subscribe to and even easier to unsubscribe from. Introducing Roost Roost is a notification service that can send push notifications to iOS and Android devices as well as some web browsers. The Roost service provides a collection of tools that make implementing push notifications on various platforms relatively straightforward. Roost provides a WordPress plugin, which put the registration box in WordPress site’s header or footer, allowing users to easily opt in to push notifications. It will automatically send notifications with custom text to subscribers on the publication of blog articles. The fly in the ointment is that users who want to receive push notifications will have to install Roost’s native app on that device, which means that your users become Roost’s users too, but there’s really no way of getting push notifications on to mobile platforms without this step. A particularly useful feature of Roost is that it provides a detailed analytics dashboard, so that users can track the effectiveness of their push notifications. Roost is a solid solution for businesses that prefer to put their development effort towards creating a mobile web presence, rather than investing in the development of a web app for multiple platforms. It allows them to make use of some of the marketing advantages specific to mobile platforms without going fully mobile native. About the author Graeme Caldwell works as an inbound marketer for Nexcess, a leading provider of Magento and WordPress hosting. Follow Nexcess on Twitter at @nexcess and check out their tech/hosting...
Read MoreAdvanced SEO Tips for your WordPress Blog
Throughout the years there have been many changes to Google’s algorithm and fewer SEO criteria stay the same. One of them is the power of WordPress! It is still a powerful way to rank high on Google. It’s also probably one of the best platforms to use because it is already optimized and you don’t have to spend time doing this. But only by installing WordPress don’t expect to be immediately ranked high on Google. Instead expect SEO to be a lot easier for you. Now, to make your blog even more powerful, there are several changes you can implement. And fortunately, they can be done easily. WordPress Installation One common mistake people make is they create a site and then install WordPress in their sub directory, such as www.mysite.com/blog. If you are sure that you want to create your site without WordPress and create only a blog, then doing so may help but you will probably hurt your blog’s chances of a high rank. This is because all of your posts and pages in your blog will be seen on Google below the third level or it could be ranked even less. Such examples will look like: www.mysite.com/blog/post. So the best way is to install WordPress directly to your site. There are many themes to choose from to make your WordPress blog look like the site you desire. Changes to your WordPress As I said before most things on WordPress are already optimized, so you won’t have to spend a lot of time making changes. Here are some things I’d suggest you do change. Go to “Setting” and then click “General”. There you’ll see your WordPress Address (URL) and Site Address (URL). From here you can change how Google will index your site. If you use mysite.com there, these structures your site and your page will be shown this way. But you can change these to www.mysites.com. That way Google will index you with www. The key is to be consistent and use only urls with www or without www. It wouldn’t be good to use a link with www on one page and then not www for the next. Go to “Settings” and then click “Writing” and check under “Update services”. There you can add pings. You’ll then see http://rpc.pingomatic.com/. WordPress will use all on this list to ping once you publish a new post. If you want you can list more here. Go to “Setting” and then click “Permalinks”. This will be a very important change to make. This is how your url will look. I’d suggest you use this: http://www.mysite.com/sample-post/. That way you can choose your keywords in the url for all of your posts. Keep in mind that this will give you a better chance for a high rank. For example, let’s say you want to rank for “make money online”. It is better to change the permalink to: http://www.mysite.com/make-money-online than it to: http://www.mysite.com/how-to-make-money-online. Keywords that are after the url looks much more important for Google. There are more changes that you can make. I’d suggest you to spend some time to make your blog the way you like it, but what I mentioned is enough for SEO. What Plugins to Use A great thing about WordPress is that it allows you to use any kind of plugins, and there are a ton of them. Most of them can be found for free. Here are some of the most important to use for SEO. SEO All in One. This is a great plugin that will help you with your SEO. The most important thing...
Read MoreExclusive Icon Pack From Freepik
Are you looking for DIY icons? Sometimes it’s difficult to find full packs on the same topic, but today we bring you an awesome iconset that Freepik has prepared for us. This is 300 icons DIY, masonry, painting, carpentry, etc., in two versions: full and stroke. Download it now and enjoy! And, if you need more free graphic resources about DIY, look for them on Freepik. You will find thousands of images, vectors, and PSD about hundreds of...
Read MoreTop 6 Graphic Web Design Trends
The internet landscape and tech-savvy market are both constantly changing. Web designers need to catch up with the trends to remain competitive. Listed below are the top six graphic design trends for websites. 1. Typography to Express Emotion Websites with readable fonts are popular before. These fonts include Sans-Serif fonts, such as Calibri or Arial. However, things are starting to change and improve even more. The trend nowadays is to use fonts that express emotion and relate more to the theme and tone of the website. For instance, the use of spaghetti-like font for a food-related blog or recipe website is a hit and the use of curvy, flowery and girly font for a women-related blog is trending. Web designers should stick to fonts that are readable for the bulk of website content, but stylish and creative typography must also be applied for the headings and page titles. 2. Interactive Designs and Unconventional Navigation A new web design trend is to use an interactive and creative navigation design where readers have to click some certain items to land them to another page. For instance, the use of a collage food like bread, drinks and sweets for a recipe website is fun and entertaining. When a reader clicks a certain food or object, it takes them to a particular recipe page. With the rampant use of touch screen devices, this design is popular right now. It engages the reader even more, whether they are using a chunky desktop computer, tablet, or Smartphone. 3. 3D Illustrations and Textures The use of bold images and textures is nnother trend in web design right now. Web designers avoided the use of these designs in the past because graphic images are difficult to load in a website. However, with the advancements in technology, loading time is not usually a problem anymore. This gives web designers and graphic artists the freedom and flexibility to choose and create custom designs and images. 3D technology, elements and textures to images have been popular in web design since 3D movies became trendy on the big screen. 3D technology draws attention and makes a website more alive and functional Some tools that can help include Online 3D Sketch Tool and Patternizer. 4. Vibrant and Bold Color Combinations In web design, color trends are always changing. Gone are the days of gray and blue shades with dark fonts and light backgrounds. Today, it is usual to see vibrant and bold colors in various combinations and shades. As far as colors is concerned, there are no more rules anymore. The more creative and unique the web designer is, the more he can make the website look better. However, inclusion of brand colors in the web design is still common. 5. Infographics Instead of Written Content Internet readers are skimmers and their focus and attention are usually drawn to things that are appealing to their eyes. That is the reason why Infographics are one of the fast growing design trends. Graphic artists are usually asked to turn web content into pictures or informational materials to keep readers on websites longer. 6. Fewer Ad Blocks in the Design One of the popular ways many websites do to make money online is through hosted ads. However, many readers are turned off by websites with loaded hosted ads. Web designers must be creative with ad placements. For instance, some ads can be included in the content. The main goal of a web designer is to create websites that are pleasing and attractive to the eyes. Implementation of ad space is only a second priority. It will...
Read More5 Flickr Groups For Typography Fanatics
Typography involves the utilization of type to form artistic, attractive, and useful statements with language. It is used everywhere from advertising to brand messaging to architecture and has been gaining popularity and usefulness as more and more different typefaces become available. It has gone from a very specialized field of master typographers to something almost everyone does at some point or another, often without realizing it. The Flickr groups below bring those with a passion for typography together. Found Typography While this group has hundreds of members and over ten thousand images, what makes them unique is that images submitted by members are picked to be a part of a webzine called Typezine. This adds an extra level of competitiveness along with the opportunity to have your work featured. All images used in the zine are fully credited back to the members flickr page or personal website, so it could also be a great way to promote yourself. Typophile Typophile’s member base dwarfs many of the others in this selection with over 6,000 members. It also boasts over 40,000 images that are sure to keep you busy and inspired for quite awhile. They have a very active forum community as well and make it easy to locate an obscure typeface or to get feedback on your own typography. This community has been around for awhile and doesn’t show signs of slowing down any time soon! Typography and Lettering While Typophile may have many members, the biggest group in our list is Typography and Lettering with almost 20,000 members and over 135,000 images. One of my favorite things about this group is that they have some really interesting and active discussions, including one about what fonts the members hate the most. Certainly there is a lot of disagreement, but also a lot of great discussion and interesting points of view. With such a great array of members from all different background and such an incredible selection of images to look through, this is one group where you can spend quite a bit of time and not come close to getting bored! Vintage Typography This group has nearly 3,000 members and nearly 10,000 images, but what makes them actually stand out is that this is a group for vintage typography. It celebrates that which has long since faded from being in fashion but still remains and important part of typography culture. It is an attractive and compelling walk down memory lane while celebrating some gorgeous typography. Your Typography What makes this group unique is that they only accept original typography rather than photos or other images of typography people just found and liked. That means that you have an opportunity to interact with the creators, give feedback, praise, and constructive criticism for the images. It also will allow you the chance to post your own and get the same kind of response from others who are also involved in the typography field. These are just some of the best groups among many great Flickr typography groups that celebrate the art and function of wonderful typography. What groups have you joined? What do you like about them? Share those and any great typography images below in the comments. By Annie Wallace Annie Wallace is the typography amateur and creative blogger for Cartridge Ink, the eco-friendly printer supplies...
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