Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
As I mentioned here and here, both Google and Bing now give mobile-friendly websites an extra boost in their search engine rankings.
That’s why I strongly recommend that you add a mobile-friendly theme to your blog if you haven’t done so already.
If you think your blog might already be optimized for mobile, you can find out for sure by typing your blog’s URL into Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool.
Question from Melanie: Hi, Rick. I’m hoping you can answer a question I have about my WordPress blog.
Is there any way to hide a category from the home page?
In other words I want to keep the posts in this one specific category from showing up on the main page of my blog.
I’ve searched the settings pages from top to bottom and I can’t find a setting to hide a category from the home page. If there is one can you tell me how to find it?
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
Question from Carrie: I have a WordPress blog that averages around 2200 visitors a day.
When I first started this blog the pages loaded very quickly, almost instantly. But now it takes them forever to load, often as long as a minute or more.
I’ve read everything I could find about how to make blog pages load faster and so far nothing has helped.
I’ve cut back on my images quite a bit and optimized the ones I’m still using. I cut the number of WordPress plugins I was using from 16 to 5.
I even ran a malware scan in my blog like you recommended in this post.
I’m at a loss as to what I’m doing wrong. Do you have any idea what could be making my blog load so slowly? [Read more…]
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There are a number of very important decisions that one must make when preparing to start a blog, and one of the most important of all is your choice of a web hosting company.
Many people when planning their first blog make the mistake of choosing a web host based on price alone, and this is a huge mistake.
Most hosting companies are within the same ball park when it comes to pricing the various tiers of hosting plans, but the quality and value of those plans can vary by a huge margin.
Choosing a mediocre or even bad web host just to save a buck or two per month will almost always come back to haunt you.
Here are a few things to consider when it comes time to choose a web host for your blog: [Read more…]
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Question from Jay: I have a WordPress blog and it started going down on me at random times a couple of months ago.
I’ve signed up for a better hosting account with a different company and they’ll move the blog to the new server for me at no cost.
I’m planning to put in the request for the move when I get back to the office on Monday, but I’d like to ask you a question in the meantime.
I’ve been told that it could take quite a while for my blog to start loading from the new server after they make the switch. How will I be able to tell when my blog starts loading from the new server instead of the old one? [Read more…]