When every WordPress website owner is figuring out what the latest WordPress 5.X version and Gutenberg editor is, we are thrilled to give you the 5 steps to do the upgrade.

1.Check Compatibility:

Before proceeding with the upgrade, first check whether your theme and installed plugins are compatible with new Gutenberg editor.

1. If you have premium theme installed, check with the theme author’s website whether its compatible with Gutenberg; if no information available, its better to contact and confirm.
2. Same for plugins – check each and every plugin’s pages and confirm about its compatibility.

2.Backup:

Before we kick-start any of the upgrade work, first we need to backup both the files as well as the database. To do this,

1. First login into your hosting cPanel.
2. Search for ‘File Manager’ and open it.
3. Select all the WordPress related files, right-click and select ‘Compress’ – wait until the ZIP created.
   
4. Now its time for database backup. Search for ‘phpMyAdmin’ in cPanel and open it.
5. Select your WordPress database in the left window (if you have more than one database, you can identify your WordPress database by opening ‘wp-config.php’ file in root in define(‘DB_NAME’, ‘wordpress’);).
6. Go to ‘Export’ tab of phpMyAdmin, change any options (but we recommending to keep default options) and click on ‘Go’. Wait until your database exported.
   

3.Upgrade WordPress:

Now we have come to the most important step – WordPress upgrade.

1. Login into your WordPress admin panel using Administrator credentials.
2. Navigate to ‘Dashboard > Updates’ from the left panel.
3. Click on ‘Update Now’ button below ‘An updated version of WordPress is available.’ section.
   
4. Wait until WordPress upgrade to latest 5.X version.
5. Clear the cache if you have any cache plugin installed.
6. Check the site once whether everything works fine – like sliders, contact forms, etc.
7. Also, the important one – check the admin panel whether everything gets saved if you edit anything.

4.Upgrade Plugins & Themes:

The next important step is the Plugins and Themes upgrade.

1. Login into your WordPress admin panel using Administrator credentials.
2. Navigate to ‘Dashboard > Updates’ from the left panel.
3. You can see the updates available seperately under ‘Plugins’ and ‘Themes’ section.
4. Select all plugins and click ‘Update Plugins’ – wait for all plugins update.
5. Select all themes and click ‘Update Themes’ – wait for all themes update.
6. Some plugins and themes may ask you to upgrade the database or settings (which would be probably shown at the top of admin pages) and don’t miss to apply those.
7. Clear the cache if you have any cache plugin installed.
8. Again check the site once whether everything works fine – like sliders, contact forms, etc.
9. Check the admin panel toowhether everything gets saved if you edit anything.

5.The New Gutenberg Editor:

Now you are ready to experience the all new Gutenberg editor.

1. Navigate to edit page of any of your post or page and you will see the new editor.
2. In default, it will show the old content as a single block and you can convert into individual blocks (which was the basic purpose of Gutenberg editor), by clicking ‘Convert to Blocks’ option from the last hamburger icon.
3. Click ‘Update’ button and check whether its proper in front-end.
4. Also if you have any custom fields added (by using some plugins like – Advanced Custom Fields), ensure that its layout was proper and everything gets saved when you update.
   

6.Troubleshooting Issues:

Issues during WordPress 5.X upgrade is something that you can expect, given the list of compatibility cross-checkings that need to be done. Missing any one can trigger issues and the upgrade may fail. This means your website is not shown anymore! That would be pretty bad and during such times, we need to roll back the website to the previous state.

We are giving you this additional step in case you face such issues during the upgrade.

1. Identify whether the issue was with a plugin or your theme.
2. Check the developer’s documentation for any fix (may be in beta release and we can fix that temporarily by directly editing theme or plugin file – but should be very careful).
3. If no luck, you can switch to the classic editor via ‘Settings > Writing’ by selecting ‘Classic Editor’ in ‘Default editor for all users’ which should fix the issues.
4. Worst case, if no luck with above all, we need to revoke to old WordPress version using the backup we have created initially – just extract the ZIP file using the hosting cPanel’s ‘File Manager’ and import the database via ‘phpMyAdmin’.

As of now (Jan 3, 2018) – WordPress has the new version 5.0.2 for your upgrade.

We trust you will enjoy doing the upgrade. Feel free to write to us for any queries.

Still not confident doing it yourself? Do you require help in upgrading your WordPress blog or WordPress website to WordPesss 5.0 Gutenburg Edition?

Our expert team of WordPress professionals can help you

Feel free to inquire us today for a no-obligation quote.

contact now

The post Step by Step guide to upgrade your blog or website to WordPress 5.0 Gutenberg first appeared on Macronimous Blog.

Accelerated Mobile pages

It hasn’t been unknown that Google is leaning heavily towards providing a better mobile experience for quite some time now. Case in point – In April 2015′ algorithm update that considers mobile friendliness as one of the ranking signals. Another update rolled out in October 2015 saw Google come up with Accelerated Mobile Pages or AMP. This open source project has the support of Google, WordPress, Twitter, and LinkedIn, among 30 other publishers and developers.

What is it mean for you?

At the heart of the initiative is to help the mobile user get a better reading and browsing experience, with pages that are fast to load and thus achieve optimized mobile web performance. The AMP HTML is a more mobile efficient version of HTML. This development framework is geared to let developers create web pages that are light and fast. There are 3 main parts worth considering

1. AMP HTML – The technical standards have been altered to exclude certain tags and limits some functionality. For instance, programming interstitials (ads that come up during page download) will be a thing of the past.
2. AMP JavaScript – AMP doesn’t allow third party JavaScript
3. AMT CDN – This optional element will implement caching and bring in further performance improvement

Tips for AMPing your website

1. Keep two versions of the web page – a standard page and an AMP version of the same page
2. Be ready to rewrite certain portions of the code to conform to AMP norms – for instance, only < 50kb CSS is permitted in AMP
3. Image handling is the one substantial change you need to look out for. Check out the new amp-img element that needs to be used.
4. Video handling too needs special treatment with help of amp-video and amp-youtube
5. If your website or blog is built on WordPress, things could be pretty easy, as you can install WordPress AMP Plugin. This will create an AMP version of your website, that could be accessible by another URL with a /amp/ in the rear. (Eg. https://www.macronimous.com/blog/be-mean-and-lean-in-web-app-development-build-apps-with-mean-stack/)

What is the latest on AMP?

As of Feb 2016, Google has already added AMP listings to its mobile search results. Google has put up a demo here of how fast the mobile search and reading experience will be. For developers and SEO experts, this news means that they need to start incorporating AMP into the website development, so that mobile rankings do not drop for their clients.

Though Google’s John Mueller says that at the moment AMP is not considered as an SEO signal. However, we can expect Google to announce this, if not now, but later.

Related articles across the web

• What Are Accelerated Mobile Pages and Should Your Website Implement AMP?
• Google Adds AMP Data To Search Analytics
• AMP Remove unused CSS (New)

The post ‘AMP’lify your mobile website with Accelerated Mobile Pages – AMP first appeared on Macronimous Blog.

Ten years ago, there were only a handful of bloggers in the blog vile. People who had a good command of English had a blog of their own. But today, every Tom, Dick, and Harry has a blog. Yes! Everyone and their brothers are blogging now irrespective of whether they have readers or not. Some of you might try to write everything under the Sun. But, have you gone through the phase where your blog posts do not even get 50 hits? You might have thought what went wrong and why people do not read your content. You might have even thought of quitting for good. Is yes, just keep reading and this post might answer your questions. I have listed down ten simple steps and you will be surprised to find these tips would make the page hits graph going up.

After reading this tips, feel free to share them with your little brother who desperately need them too.

1) Keep a “bait” in your Titles
The first thing that the reader will notice about your blog is the title of the blog. Even if you have a wonderful story to tell, if you do not pull your audience with a catchy title, your story might not even reach your audience. This is where many of you will get dejected. Some of the greatest literary works are not even read by a huge audience as they are not properly marketed. Very ordinary writers have caught hold of the literature market share with their marketing skills. For example, Chetan Bhagat is a popular Indian writer. However, Literature enthusiasts will not even consider him in the top 100 writers list in India. But that doesn’t stop him to be accepted as a leading writer in India by his readers. His secret is his marketing skill. He uses the right title for his books to reach his audience (Eg. Five point someone ). Moreover, his works are simple and he doesn’t juggle with words that make his readers carry a Thesaurus all the time. So when you write a blog post, make sure that you have the right title for your blog post.

2) Let the “pictures speak” too!
If you are writing a blog post, you should upload a picture too. It could speak a thousand words. Following this simple logic, make sure that for every 1000 words you write, there is a suitable picture on your blog post. The pictures or the illustrations you use should draw readers to your post. Pictures have the pull factor. In many TV commercials, you would have seen women being used for products that men use. The whole idea is to make sure that men watch these ads. In the blog world, spend the time to add a suitable ‘dragging’ picture for your blog.
When you upload a picture, make sure that it does not violate copyright laws. Edit your pictures wisely. If you are not good at Photoshop, you can use www.pixlr.com to edit your pictures. You can add watermark to your pictures too. Add the right color mix to the pictures that you upload on your blog post.

3) “Rename” the pictures you add in your blog
The picture that you upload on your blog post should be renamed and should be search engine friendly. Just take a look at the pictures you have on your hard drive. Do not just upload your DSC00016.jpg, DSC00017.jpg, DSC00018.jpg etc. Many of you might not have the habit of renaming the pictures. When you upload these pictures in your blog post, make sure that you rename the pictures with a suitable file name (preferably some keywords as file names) that goes with your blog content. When readers search for a particular image on Google or in other search engines, they will not be using the words “DSC00016 or DSC00017”. Naming the picture increases the chances of your blog getting noticed. Start doing this today. This is one of the simplest SEO techniques that you can manually start implementing for your blog posts.

4) “Answer” to a wide number of readers
People search and keep on searching for questions all the time. If you are a blogger who writes on a specific theme, make sure that your blog has the answer to all the questions related to your field. This blog post will surely answer a lot of questions that bloggers have, and that is the sole reason for Macronimous to publish this blog. There might be umpteen number of websites that deal with the same topic. But make sure that your content has the right answers to the right questions that readers have. Once you develop a bond with the reader, the reader will become your regular visitor.

5) Keep it “Fresh”
In the game of Cricket, even Sachin Tendulkar has to retire. Unless and until your blog is updated with the changing trends in the web world, you will fall behind in the race and you would have no other choice to call it quits. Read more on the stream you blog on. Knowledge is wealth and to acquire knowledge, you should keep reading. Attend social networking meets; network with people and when you do this, even without your knowledge you would have gained knowledge. When you acquire knowledge, make sure that you share it on your blog with a suitable title, and with a suitable picture.
Keep watching the comments from your blog readers, it could give you an opportunity correct your views, typos and even include more content and facts.

6) Be a “trendsetter”
If you are blogging for more than 5 years on a particular theme but if you are not known to the public, then you are just another ordinary blogger. Do not go unnoticed. If you consider that you were failing with your blog, follow the first 5 steps and you can see that you will be noticed in the social media. If you are blogging about food, people should follow you hungrily for lip-smacking recipes and cuisines. This is where your success lies in. When people think of twitter one-liners, the first name that comes to the mind is Ramesh Srivats. When we think of an Apple, the first name that flashes across the eyes is Steve Jobs. When people think about a blog stream, your name should come to their mind. Work towards that goal.

7) Be “interactive” to comments
This is a very important thing that many bloggers fail to do. Blogging need not be just one way. It’s a platform to integrate. When people become popular, they have a tendency not to reply to each and every comment. This kind of behavior will slowly make a small group hate you. Even if you write great content, this group will stop reading your content, because they know that you would not even read their comments. Good bloggers are those who engage readers in comments and respond to all the comments. Comments help the blogger to grow more and more and also in building good networks. Do not forget to integrate social media such as Facebook’s fan box and keep it open for people to discuss.
Also, be ready for criticisms on comments and do not forget to thank constructive criticism and do not hesitate to modify your blog content if they correct or point out issues.

8) “Advertise it” in social media platforms
If you have a blog, you should also have a fan page on Facebook, a twitter handle. Active participation in other social networking platforms like Google plus, Slideshare, Youtube, Quora is pluses. Make sure to leave your blog URL in as many places as possible; but also see to that you leave your blog URL in the relevant place or else you will become popular as a spammer.

9) Keep the content “Rich” with information
Gone are the days where you can get away with philosophical gas. Now unless and until you write meaningful content, your readers will treat you like trash. Your content should be search engine friendly, crisp, to-the-point and updated.
If your blog content is the first of its kind, and if readers have to come only to your blog to read your content, then you are moving in the right direction. Create a brand for yourself. Your Brand equity will grow if you publish a content rich website.

10) “Study” your blog statistics.
Closely monitor your blog statistics to find the sources from where your readers visit your blog. Some sources might yield a number of visitors from where you didn’t expect. These sources are the ones where your presence is more. At the same time, notice the weak links and these are the sources that you need to work on.
If you follow these ten steps in your blogging journey, do not be surprised if your blog gets thousands of hits within an hour.
Have a great blogging journey. If you had liked this article share it with your friends through Facebook / Email or through any other modes.

About Prason, the Chronic Writer: Prason, popularly known as the chronic writer is a Christian writer, blogger, singer, composer, Salsa Dancer and father of a 4-year-old blogger. Prason is working for a nonprofit organization and contributes to Social Media Marketing, you can see his Humor blog at www.chronicwriter.com

Like to see this blog in simple slides?

The post How to get more readers to your blog post? first appeared on Macronimous Blog.

You already have your profiles created on FaceBook, Twitter etc for your business and even started some marketing activities with regular posts. So, you are probably well aware of social media and just how imperative it is for digital content marketing. You may fall anywhere on the spectrum of social media know-how, ranging from novice to internet marketing guru. No matter what your expertise is, the success and return on investment from marketing is contingent upon how well you leverage (and know) your resources beforehand. Many business owners or their content marketing agencies start posting content on every possible Social Media platform they know and like, and at one point they become tired of finding it ineffective. Not getting enough comments, Likes, Shares etc makes them worried and at one point they let all their effort go in vain.

Before you investigate which social media platforms will work best for your business, consider the larger scheme of what your objectives are. These sites are very useful for marketing, but they are also great for networking, client relationship management, communications, reputation management, and for branding. The strategies vary pertaining to what will best assist you as you plan on using social media to represent your business; and, surely enough, your business model will be integral when deciding which platforms will best serve your needs.

What to Do Before Using Social Media Sites for marketing

New social networking sites and applications are appearing on the market constantly and frequently. It can seem like you have to take them all on, but that doesn’t have to be the case. Not every site nor business will serve the same crowd. This crowd also includes potential new clients and customers. Nonetheless, whether or not that crowd is ideal all depends on the business, what social media platforms it uses, and why.

Nike Fuel Bank in FB

The following is a list of ideas that will help you understand what information you might want to share about your business and where you can share it. You don’t have to be limited to just one or even any of them. These are only some of the many useful considerations of the planning process:

• Will you want to inform your audience about trending news in your industry?
• Do you have a quirky workspace that your followers and fans might appreciate and want to see?
• Do you have a really narrow pool of clients or customers? Where do you think they’re hanging out and how do they communicate with their networks?
• Do things like humor, skilled employees, technology, creativity, or good customer service exemplify you? If so, make a note of it and all the other good traits so you can use them to better sell your offerings.

If a list format is too limited for the planning you would need to do, then a diagram, chart, the web, proposal, portfolio, mind maps, or a mere whiteboard doodling are all alternative methods that could help you brainstorm your social media marketing goals.

Which Social Media Sites Should You Choose for Your content marketing?

The demographic and type audience of the social platform is going to affect which one you choose to represent the brand, message, and product of your company.

Facebook

The majority of social savvy business models will find Facebook, which is the holy grail of social media,  quite essential. Taking Facebook’s Ad Manager Program as a prime example, the site has many tools that help businesses target their ideal audience better.

Our Blog posts on FB

Aside from tobacco companies and others that are highly regulated, virtually anyone can benefit from Facebook’s blog-like format. It gives the content a lot more breathing room than Twitter’s congested 140-character limit. Virtual travel agencies, popular name brands, athletes, politicians–truly, anyone can benefit from Facebook, one social site that supports over one billion users. That’s most certainly a wide audience considering the grand scheme of how vast the internet is.
Twitter

Financial advice from Twitter

Some companies that benefit from using Facebook alternatively might enjoy the micro-blogging format of Twitter. Stock brokerage firms and financial consulting companies, for instance, might like the real-time aspect of Twitter as well, since many news reporters and leaders in the global economy are actively posting on the site. It’s a constant virtual meet-and-greet there despite its strict limits on content.

Holiday Packages promotion with Twitter

LinkedIn

LinkedIn can be considered as a Facebook for Business owners and Job seekers. Some independent contractors, freelancers, and entrepreneurs have probably already enjoyed the networking culture of Twitter and several other social media sites, but nothing else quite tops LinkedIn. It is a great connector, helping its users form professional connections and find new clients. LinkedIn Business pages are a great way of building a potential customer base. Years ago we started collecting recommendations and endorsements from our customers who worked with us in the past, share the web projects that we did and started sharing business information, and I am sure which pays off.

Job Post in Linkedin

Pinterest

Pinterest provides a visual way of building backlinks. Businesses within the arts, fashion, lifestyle industries–really anyone who likes and employs pictures–could benefit immensely from the format of this platform. If you are a retailer or running an E-commerce store, building a Pinterest follower base would be something you cannot ignore. You can post your product images directly under categorized albums (called boards) and share them on Twitter and Facebook easily.

PCMag Pinterest post

Wishpond says 25% of Fortune global companies have their presence on Pinterest and over 60% of consumers who visit Pinterest found what they wanted.

Instagram and Google+

Instagram and Google+ perhaps are the newer hybrids, both bearing characteristics of Twitter and Facebook. These are extra and still growing daily, but their concepts overlap and they allow the use of hashtag keywords in their posts. Google+ profiles and pages are surprisingly beneficial to anyone who wants to enhance their SEO. Instagram is kind of like a visual extension of Twitter.

Instagram FB integration

Blogging still brings more life:

Both social media and blogging could go together. You can share your blog on Facebook or twitter, integrate Facebook comments within a blog, post some videos on Instagram videos into your blog, add tweets into your blog etc. But, why still blogging when you get all these social media sites? Blogging gives more space to design your content framework and you get the content not quickly vanishing like a Facebook post or Tweet that merges within the crowd and becomes invisible.

Social media has its technicalities, as you may have noticed when you were first introduced to it, and we can help you with this by optimizing your social media profiles and making them more productive for your marketing. Get in contact with us and a member of our team will respond to you.

Meanwhile, good luck on your search!

The post Choose the Right Social Media Platform for your business first appeared on Macronimous Blog.

Good search engine optimization factors into this because without these blogs they are less likely to be found, let alone the website itself. A blog that demonstrates proper SEO is bound to bring in traffic through the “back door” in a sense, and this very same traffic can convert into new clients and buyers.

Blogging and SEO

Simple Ways Blogging Improves SEO

For all of its SEO-boosting capabilities, internet marketing and blogging work in congruence. However, maintaining a strong blog that generates and converts traffic is not as simple as writing an article and hoping for the best. That is a build-it-and-they-will-come method, and it certainly has no place in SEO. Blogs are naturally optimized for search engines because of their format as well as these factors:

• The content is written in a simple way and often comes with simple text and HTML, which makes it easier for crawlers to read.
• Blogs are constantly updated and the process  essentially creates new web pages every time an article is published. This is a good mark as deemed by Google, Yahoo! and Bing search engines.
• Incoming traffic from backlinks to a particular blog post or from search results will increase visibility and traffic to the website that blog is a part of.
• The titles often reflect specific key terms and search phrases that internet users type in, thus, making a blog link one of the first things that someone will likely click on.
• Other bloggers are inclined to link back to a blog article they find useful. This could bring incoming traffic to a site without much more work on the webmaster’s part.

Optimizing Blogs for SEO

High volumes of traffic and quality page rankings are nice. Conversely, Google claims that something as sought after as page ranking is only one out of about 200 factors they look for when listing a web page in the search results. No matter how much internet technology evolves, those factors will be basic denominators underscoring strong search engine optimization. Here are some other simple tips that can help optimize a blog according to search engine standards:

Paginate.

Pagination refers to the numeric archiving of pages. This is commonly seen on sites that produce a lot of pages to search throughout. Google is a prime example, as they have the numbers displayed at the bottom of every search page. Paginated pages are much more conducive than the “older entries” or “newer entries” link that is common on blog hosts (i.e. Blogger), and it also simplifies the work for crawlers by reducing the amount of clicking that it needs to do. Fewer clicks mean that more relevant content is visible to the seeing eye, and all around that generates better visibility.

Backlink relevant blogs within a blog article.

Backlinks are links that point back to something relevant. The best way to implement them is to associate the link being used in the anchor text with the same keyword or key phrase that blog pertains to. For example, a backlink would look like this one on search engine optimization. This can be used to link a services page, another blog, a category, or any other relevant web page that could benefit from web traffic.

Give Links to your business pages:

Ultimately, all blogs are written for additional traffic, and it’s important to direct the traffic from the blog page to your related service page. Because your main service page is the real identity of the service you provide, and it’s important that you should lead the visitors from your blog page to your main service page. Also, You can have an attractive banner leading to your main service page with right captions on it. This is how your blogs become a gateway for new customers.
Implement categories.

Categories function in a similar capacity as does pagination by telling web crawling programs about the content of the blog and the associated articles. It would be best to label categories according to keywords that are already associated with and being used throughout the website. For instance, it might be appropriate to file a blog article about Facebook marketing under a category like “internet marketing” or “social media” depending upon the niche of business or company to whom the website belongs.

Blogging is a multifaceted tool that businesses cannot afford to neglect in a rapidly changing digital age. If you are interested in learning more about the SEO of your website or blog, contact us about our web development services.

The post How Blogging Helps SEO (Updated) first appeared on Macronimous Blog.

Frustrated bloggers and their fading blogs have caved in to glib social networks, feeling that the competition from the professional blog rate in the Technorati 100 is too fierce. The synchronization of energy and time used to create digestible, creative online content seems lost on superficial audiences who suffer willingly and culturally from short attention spans. The world has become a place where what song you’re hearing right this moment has undone the thoughtful review of the music of life itself, a one-liner world of instant gratification that’s enough to trip the trigger of eternal writer’s blog block.

The post IS “BLOGGING” DEAD? first appeared on Macronimous Blog.