Top Rated Hosting

Do a quick search on the web for content management systems and you will see that there are thousands out there, and most of them are free. Almost all of them have the basic features necessary to run a blog, but not all of them are designed specifically with blogging in mind. Is any one of them sufficient for general blogging, or is there an advantage to using a CMS specifically designed for it?

Probably the most popular blogging platform these days is WordPress. It is made for blogging before anything else, although it does have other general web content management features. Because it is designed specifically for blogging, it has features such as content spam filtering and trackbacks built into it. It also supports a plethora of plugins, many of which are catered to bloggers.

Other content management systems may also have blogging features and may even have plugins designed to support blogging. Many also have features that a CMS like WordPress would not have, such as robust e-commerce support out of the box.
Ultimately, the CMS you choose largely depends on your needs. If blogging or news publishing is your primary goal, WordPress or another blogging platform with similar features would be better. If, however, you have other goals for your website that take precedence over blogging, you may be better off using a CMS that can more easily accommodate those goals. If you need both, it is very common to use more than one CMS to meet a variety of needs.

Will Any CMS Suffice for Blogging?

In a previous post, we looked at WordPress plugins and asked how many plugins were too many to have on one blog. Another question that many may ask is: “How important are WordPress plugin updates?”

WordPress is updated frequently enough, but then you have to deal with seemingly constant updates of all of your plugins. So, what happens if you just ignore the plugin updates?

Generally speaking, your WordPress installation should continue to function properly. Nevertheless, there are a number of reasons why you should still keep your plugins update.

1. Sometimes, new plugin versions are released to fix serious security flaws, just like many WordPress upgrades.
2. If you just upgraded WordPress, you may need to also upgrade your plugin in order for the plugin to continue functioning properly
3. The new plugin version may have new and improved features, and you have nothing to lose by updating.
4. Updating literally takes seconds.
5. You can update all plugins at once with a single click of your mouse button.
6. Updating takes less time than it takes to read this article.
7. Seriously, why are you still reading this and not updating already?

By now, you should feel guilty for not updating your plugins when it is so incredibly easy. All you have to do is click a few links and all of your plugins will be updated. The same applies to WordPress itself. So, is there really any good reason to not keep everything up-to-date? Keeping your WordPress installation up-to-date is easy to do, and it may very well save your website from serious security issues.

How Important Are WordPress Plugin Updates?

Normally, when a WordPress update is released, the changes are pretty subtle. Although the developers often add new features to the free and open source blogging software, the interface has remained pretty consistent since the last major release. WordPress 3.3 is codenamed Sonny after the legendary jazz saxophonist Sonny Stitt, and this time around the developers decided to improvise and bring in a new interface.

Some of the new features in WordPress 3.3 include:

• hover menus – In older versions, the collapsed menu only showed buttons and revealed the top-level menu options when you hovered over them. WordPress 3.3 furthers the usage of hover menus even to the expanded form, providing them for all sub-menus. Rather than needing to click the expand arrow for each item, you can just hover over it to reveal its sub-menu
• drag-and-drop uploader – There is now a single upload button for all media types, and you can now drag and drop media directly from your desktop or file manager. This uploader works without the aid of Flash player.
• Pointer tips – To help you get used to new features or even old ones if you are a new user, pointer tips popup and reveal important information.
• Better touch screen support – As the world moves to more touch-oriented devices like smartphones and tablets, many users occasionally need to blog on the move without having a laptop handy. WordPress has improved this experience.

Many of the top web hosting companies offer free WordPress installation as part of their standard packages. Even if they do not install the latest version, you can easily log into the WordPress dashboard and perform the update with a few clicks.

A Quick Guide to New Features in WordPress 3.3

Blogs make use of content management systems that in turn depend on the combination of server-side scripting and databases. This allows bloggers to create dynamic content without needing to write HTML code every time they publish something.

Over time, the constant creation and modification of content causes a blog’s database to become unruly and possibly even corrupted. Optimizing your blog’s database can increase speed and overall performance. With a MySQL database, you can use a graphical tool like phpMyAdmin to make your optimizations. In most cases, you can access phpMyAdmin from within your web-based control panel, such as cPanel.

To optimize databases using phpMyAdmin, do the following:

1. Login to phpMyAdmin
2. Select the database you want to optimize
3. Scroll to the bottom of the list of tables and click “Check All”
4. Click the dropdown menu that says “With selected” and choose “optimize table”

If all goes well, it will say “Your SQL query has been executed successfully” and show the query itself below that message. Beneath the query, you can view the list of all tables and their “optimize status”. It most cases, it will return results like “OK” or “table is already up to date”.

When you execute the “OPTIMIZE TABLE” command in MySQL, you tell it to reclaim unused space in a table and defragment the data file. Fragmentation usually occurs when a table has deleted rows and has undergone frequent changes. Using the quick and easy optimization tool in phpMyAdmin from time to time, you can often significantly improve your blog’s performance.

Database Optimization for Your Blog

One of the factors that often makes blogs more successful than standard websites is that they are constantly being updated. A blog has a stream of content from both the authors and the users who leave comments and even engage in discussions. As your blog traffic increases, however, you will need to find ways to reduce bandwidth consumption and keep your hosting costs low.

If you offer media or software for downloading, there are two primary reasons why you might want to reduce the amount of data being downloaded from your site: 1) to reduce the cost of bandwidth and 2) to lower server loads and make the website faster.

The following are four techniques for reducing the amount of bandwidth that downloaded files generate.

1. File compression – This is applicable for both static files that you offer as downloads and dynamically-created pages. If you offer software or media for download, you can compress the files using zip, tar+gzip, bzip2, rar, or another compression method. For web pages, you should use gzip compression, which is supported by all modern browsers.

2. P2P File Sharing – With peer-to-peer file sharing, you can offer large file downloads and not have to worry about bandwidth costs at all. Users will share your files and greatly reduce the impact on your server.

3. File Hosting – Particularly effective when offering multiple downloads, file hosting is affordable and easy to setup. Some hosting sites require users to register or wait for long periods of time before downloading, so make sure you have one setup that makes it easy for users to get your files.

4. Cloud storage – Like file compression, cloud storage is useful for both static file downloads and dynamic content delivery. Cloud services still charge fees, but they may be less expensive than your own server’s. Moreover, it can greatly reduce the load on your server.

4 Ways to Minimize Download Bandwidth

This is a difficult question to answer. Almost all WordPress blogs will have at least a few plugins, but the number of plugins your blog can support may be determined by several factors. One thing is clear: too many plugins can slow down your site, so you should choose them wisely.

WordPress is a dynamic blog content management system that uses a combination of PHP (an open scripting language) and MySQL (a free and open source relational database management system) to create web pages on the fly, as they are requested. This means that every time a user clicks a link that takes them to a page on the blog, the web server has to call up the database and create that page.

Every WordPress plugin adds additional PHP code to WordPress and must be loaded whenever a user accesses the site. Too many of these little code snippets can add up to a big chunk of extra code required just to get your site loaded and viewable in a browser. While caching and other performance tools can help reduce the amount of time it takes to load pages, there is no substitute for using discretion when installing plugins.

Another reason to be careful about the number of plugins you install is that you have to maintain plugins just as you maintain your WordPress installation. They need updates, and some lower-quality plugins may stop working with newer versions of WordPress, while the developers are long gone and have no intentions of providing updates.

The key to good plugin management is to start with the plugins you actually need. There may be a handful, perhaps 3 to 5 plugins, that you must have on your blog. Others may seem attractive, but only add those that will actually be of benefit. If you stop using one, do not forget to uninstall it.

How Many WordPress Plugins are Too Many?

Just like when you change your home address after a move, it is common for websites to change URLs. It may be because you have implemented some new SEO technology, switched to a different content management system, or simply changed your website domain altogether. In any case, you will need to redirect your users to the new address.

There are benefits and drawbacks redirecting users, but that is a discussion best left to a search engine or marketing expert. From a technical standpoint, the only concern you should have is making sure every browser will redirect so that you do not alienate some users. Therefore, it is a good idea to avoid something like a javascript redirect, as it requires users to have that feature enabled in their browsers. The following redirect methods should work on most browsers.

1. HTTP redirect

The most basic method of redirection often employed is a standard meta refresh. You would use code within the <head></head> tags of the index.html file on the site to look like this:

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="1;url=http://www.new-url.tld">

It is possible, however, that some browsers may ignore this, especially if the user has intentionally disabled it.

2. PHP redirect

If your server supports PHP, you can use a PHP as your site’s index and place the following code in it:

<?
Header( "HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently" );
Header( "Location: http://www.new-url.tld" );
?>

Since PHP files are always server-side scripts, all browsers should respond to this the same way.

3. Htaccess redirect

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^new-url.tld [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.new-url.tld/$1 [r=301,nc]

An .htaccess file will send directives to an Apache web server and tell it to follow whatever instructions are inside. In this case, it will use the mod_rewrite engine to turn any URL requests into the new domain you have specified. This is particularly useful if you need to redirect several URLs to a new site.

3 Ways To Redirect Blog or Website Visitors

The web is filled with millions of blogs. Many of them, perhaps the majority, have been abandoned. They float aimlessly in the void of cyberspace. A few are successful, and the rest sit somewhere in between. In order to propel your blog ahead of the rest, you need some type of competitive edge. While nothing is more important than good content, there are also some technical changes you can make to have a better blogging experience.

1. Find a Blogging Web Host

Probably all web hosting companies have the technology to host blogs. The software is not very complicated, and many, such as WordPress, are available for free. But many hosts do not optimize their hosting accounts for blogging. If you find one that does, you will get better performance, have easier site management, and get better support.

2. Use Plugins Wisely

With WordPress in particular, it is extremely easy to become addicted to plugins. They are so easy to install and can add so many exciting features. In reality, you will probably only need 5 to 10 – maybe even less. Too many plugins may bog down your site, and indiscriminately adding them might bring you to one that crashes your site completely. Focus on functionality first, and if you still have room for a few more, add a little style.

3. Learn Some Hosting Basics

Your web host may have installed your blog CMS for you and even provided you with a pre-designed template, but it is probably still a good idea to learn a little about how to make and manage a website. That way, if something ever goes wrong, you may be able to fix smaller problems yourself.

If you thought blogging was just about writing, you should have a different understanding now. Just as novel writer needs to know how to use word processing software, a blogger needs to know about the web. Doing so will help you tremendously down the line.

3 Tips for a Better Blogging Experience

It is a frightening scenario. Your WordPress blog has been running just fine for years, but you finally decided to try out some new themes. One of the themes you try goes crazy and completely brings down your WordPress site. Instead of the blog you worked so hard to create, you are left with a white page and a single-line error.

First of all, do not panic. While it seems quite awful, you can fix this situation. There are a few reasons why a theme or plugin might knock out service on your blog, but we will cover those later. First, you need to get it working again. If the culprit is your new theme, the easiest solution is to FTP into your server and delete the theme directory found in “wp-content/themes.” Once it is gone, WordPress will detect its absence and allow you to login to “wp-admin” and change the theme back to something that works.

For plugins you need to do the same thing only with a different directory. Find the plugins directory associated with your rogue plugin in “wp-content/plugins” and remove it. You should now be able to login to WordPress, and it will inform you that the plugin is missing and has therefore been deactivated. If WordPress still shows remnants of the plugin, make sure you remove it completely. If you installed multiple plugins and do not know which one caused the mess, you can use a database method to disable all your plugins at once.

Some themes cause WordPress to choke because they require other components that you have not installed. Often times this is because the theme is part of a set that requires a particular theme engine. If you install the theme engine first, it will work. For plugins, the problems are wide-ranging. Some are just incompatible with your version. Others may have problems with settings on your web server. You may need to consult the plugin creator for more help.

How to Fix WordPress Theme Errors

It is a bit frightening when you go online one day and expect to find your blog, only to be met with a white page and an error like this:

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of ######## bytes exhausted (tried to allocate ## bytes) in /home/user/public_html/wp-includes/phpfile.php on line 80.

The exact message may vary, but with this error, it is all about the “allowed memory size”. Chances are, you just installed a new plugin or theme, and suddenly, WordPress is acting like it is no longer your friend. This error can be tricky, but it is fixable.

You can control the allowed PHP memory limit for your website in several different places, and it may be that only one works for your server. You might want to check with your blog hosting provider for exact details.

If you have access to your php.ini file, find the following line:

memory_limit = 32M ; Maximum amount of memory a script may consume

If the line shows “32M”, try increasing it to “64M’. Some web hosts have memory limits, the maximum amount you can set.

In the event that you do not have access to a php.ini file, you may be able to add the same line to the .htaccess file in your WordPress installation’s main directory. If that does not work, you should contact your hosting provider to see if there is any way to increase the limit.

Finally, if increasing the limit does nothing, you may have a rogue WordPress plugin that needs fixing. Try disabling any recently installed plugins. Since you may not be able to access your dashboard, you will need to disable your plugin manually.

How to Fix WordPress PHP Memory Errors