How to customize your WordPress Admin Dashboard?

While creating WordPress sites or blogs for your own or for clients, it’s important to make it simple instead of adding crowded features. Your clients will get confused with the flooded features and they don’t use all the functions.

Customizing the WordPress admin dashboard is nothing but personalizing the features in the dashboard to improve the client’s experience. Dashboard with limited features is easy to use and also it doesn’t bring any confusion among them.

In this blog, we will discuss how to customize the WordPress admin dashboard and the benefits of customization for you and your clients. To make the customization process easier, we introduce four major ways. Let’s see them in our upcoming lines.

Why customize your WordPress dashboard?

we can’t say all our clients are known to handle all features in the WordPress dashboard. So, when you create a website for your clients, you make the dashboard simple, so they will use it ease without breaking the page on the WordPress site. The needs and presence of the website will differ and one client to another client. To manage all these customizing the WordPress dashboard is the only way.

There are many simple ways to customize your WordPress dashboard to make it easier for your clients. Like updating the WordPress author profile, arranging the menus, widgets, changing the theme, and fonts. This not only makes the dashboard easier, but also it will reflect on the WordPress site.

Customizing the WordPress dashboard for your clients is how practically you involved to make your client’s site more attractive and bring the brand value by adding unique features like customized logo, admin profile, and brand name instead of the default WordPress logo and taglines.

If you make the dashboard easier for your clients, you can avoid more questions from your client-side, this will help you to minimize unwanted interruptions.

4 simple ways to Customize your WordPress Dashboard

If you are Customizing the WordPress Dashboard for your clients, there four ways that will help you to improve the default look of the dashboard and to improve productivity.

1. Design a Login page with a new brand Logo.

The login page is the first thing, you client access when they use their own brand website. So, you should take extra attention to make it attractive and showcase their branding.

There are many ways to improve the WordPress login page one of them is designing a customized logo for their brand. This will increase the quality of their website and brand value.

Customizing the login page does not take more time and you can make a simple difference to make your page more attractive.

There are two ways to change the default WordPress logo of your client site, the first option is you can manually change the logo. This involves changing the default logo with your new file.

Another way is by using the WordPress plugin “LoginPress”. LoginPress plugin enables you to change the login as well as the background image of your image. Here you can customize your logo by adjusting the logo’s height, width and cropping it to fit on the dashboard.

2. Customize your admin theme to change the page styling.

Same as the templates to change the look of the front-end of your WordPress site, you can also customize your back-end dashboard with the admin theme. To change the dashboard style, you can use the admin theme plugin or manual.

Go to the users > click All users> go to Edit link to customize the theme of the dashboard.

This will show you a color scheme, select the color to match your logo or background image and click on Update User.

3. Create Custom Widgets.

Most of the clients are not familiar with WordPress navigation and they may face some trouble while handling the WordPress dashboard. Customizing the widgets helps your clients to manage the dashboard efferently.

4. Remove the unwanted Menus.

To avoid unwanted confusion among your clients on the WordPress dashboard, reduce the number of menu items on the display option. Maybe you have more experience with all those menus, just imagine you are seeing these menus for the first time, so it is hard for your clients when they using all the menus for the first time.

To ease the back-end remove the unwanted menus and make your clients clear with the menu items. Remove the unnecessary menus and make them simple for your client access.

Check out the specific need of your clients and customize your WordPress dashboard.

Summary:

As we mentioned from the starting of an article, everyone doesn’t have enough knowledge to handle the backend of the WordPress site in an efficient manner without any guidance. WordPress dashboard Customization helps to customize the dashboard for different users by adding or deleting the menus in the dashboard. So, to customize your WordPress dashboard you should replace the default logo with the brand logo, change the admin theme to the new style, customize widgets, and remove the unwanted menus in the dashboard.

If you have any quires on how to customize the WordPress dashboard for different users? Connect with us in the Comment section.

Best WordPress Plugins for Bloggers

Top-rated WordPress Plugins for bloggers

One of the major concerns of bloggers is how to increase the traffic and rank higher on SERPs. While there is no easy and definitive answer to this question, there are certainly some strategies that can increase the probabilities of attracting more visitors and improving the SEO potential of your site.

The best thing is that you don’t have to exert any manual efforts as there are several plugins in the market that make thins easier for you by automating the process and offering you better more precise performance.

We are going to present a list of 5 different plugins that allow you to get better rankings and build more audiences:

Google Analytics WD

Google Analytics WD enjoys an authoritative position for obvious reasons. As a Google product, it is strategically designed to align best with the latest Google’s guidelines. Moreover, its intuitive interface, easy processes, and efficient functionality make it equally useful for beginners as well as advanced users.

Google Analytics offers you a reliable way to monitor your site traffic, and generate comprehensive reports based on multiple metrics. It enables you to see the individual performance of each webpage which helps you to decide the top-performing pages and those with the low performance and plan your digital strategies accordingly.

The Google Analytics WD plug-in pulls all the related information into the WP admin panel in a friendly visual format so that you can see the entire information without leaving your digital workspace, i.e., dashboard. It brings you the report of your recent traffic which allows you to take relevant actions to align with the latest developments in your traffic scenario like increased penetration in new geographies or other vital changes in demographics.

Furthermore, it also adds WP-oriented functionality, for instance, generating a performance report based on specific criteria like users, tags or posts. Such reports help you to design/modify your blogging strategy more precisely for optimum results.

All in One SEO Pack

As the name suggests, this plug-in offers you a suite of automated services for managing multiple SEO aspects that improve your blog’s ranking on SERPs. It can create SEO friendly Meta Tags for your posts/pages, change URL formats to meet SEO guidelines, and does a few other key tasks to add more SEO value to your webpage or posts.

One of the major challenges for the blogs is the issue of duplicate content. The things become more difficult if you are regularly publishing posts on the same niche. With the help of sophisticated functionality, the All in the new SEO pack also relieves you from this issue and saves you from losing your rank. Based n your strategy you can also set/modify the META description and keyword to generate more SEO oriented keyword information which actively helps search spiders to index your site efficiently and gain higher SERPs ranking.

The best thing about this plug-in is that it is equally beneficial for the beginners as well as advanced users. While the former need to just install it to steadily improve their ranking the latter can explore more advanced features and use them to further fine-tune their strategy for optimum performance across multiple SEO aspects.

If you wish to save the time and efforts on your SEO strategy while enjoying optimum results, then this is the best plug-in for you.

OptinMonster

Converting visitors into regular subscribers plays a key role in defining the popularity of your blog but it seems to be an uphill task. OptinMonster empowers you to do the task more easily and efficiently.

As per some of the studies out of every 10 visitors, only 3 visitors are likely to return to your site which means that you have to take proactive steps to turn first-time visitors into subscribers if you want your blog to succeed. OptinMonster does all the heavy lifting and thus makes things easier for you

This plug-in enables you to track and understand user behavior and send them an optimized subsection message just before they close your site. So you can remain in contact with the visitors who opt for an email subscription.

Using the right communication strategy you can build rapport with them and may eventually convert them into the regular audience. It not only allows you to convert first-time visitors into regular audiences but also makes it easier for you to understand the causes behind lack of returning visitors and optimize your site accordingly.

Yoast SEO

Yoast plug-in is a highly reputed SEO plug-in that combines a comprehensive arsenal of powerful SEO tools to make your blog search engine friendly and improve your SERPs ranking. Along with Meta tags, you can also add more advanced SEO specific features like XML sitemap and breadcrumb navigation.

The best thing about the plug-in is that it allows you the review of your site’s SEO so that you can understand the crucial gaps and take required action for optimum SEO performance. Thus it extends your control over the SEO compatibility of your website.

There are multiple logical parameters on which Yoast plug-in works to assess the SEO compatibility of your content and offers you the high-value advice and precise recommendations to optimize your content to maximize its SEO potential.

Google Sitemap Generator

Google sitemap generator adds purpose-specific XML sitemaps that allow you to structure your site in such a way that it can email by reading by search engine crawlers. It makes it easier for crawlers to index your site which increases the possibilities of gaining good ranking during relevant search queries. It increases visibility and can improve your ranking over a reasonable period.

The plug-in also allows you to exclude those URLs that you don’t wish to b indexed by search engines.

You just need to install the plug-in and you are good to go. There is no need to initiate any separate setup process. When you will ad any fresh content the search engines will automatically be notified.

Now, the time for the Bonus……

Your website design plays a very important role in the popularity of your blog. Awesome design, guided navigation, and neat design make your site search engine friendly and attractive for the netizens. For that you need a powerful plugin to give a unique character to every web page. One such plugin is PageLayer

Page Layer

The plug-in takes customization to the next level by offering your easy drag and drop editor and a friendly user interface that can further be customized to meet your working preferences.

Other features like responsive designing, inline editing undo/redo options, and real-time inline editing further extends your creative dimensions allowing you to fully personalize your website design to meet with your specific creative objectives and leave a desired impression on the clients.

Moreover, the highly sophisticated tools for images, animations, and styling enable you to add a fine creative streak to your entire website to highlight its visual appeal. PageLayer keps on frequently launching new versions for better performance and security patches as per the latest security threats. It assures better productivity and higher security.

If you still want any additional feature then you can select from a wide array of purpose-specific widgets ranging from basic widgets to premium ones. All these features and capabilities make PageLayer a perfect option to create unique websites that not only attract the users but also keep them engaged and can also improve the click-through rate. You can even create marketing, business-oriented pages/sections like landing pages, CTR and promo pages. It can go a long way in increasing the sales potential of your blog which is a big plus for sales-oriented bloggers whose primary source of income is affiliate marketing.

Conclusion

For any blogger, it is very important to increase visibility and attract more traffic. However, it can be a very tough task given the high competition in the industry. Fortunately, different plugins make things easier for you by automating the time consuming manual tasks without compromising on the performance.

In this blog, we have presented a list of such plugins. The readers are advised to carefully read the reviews of these plugins before using them or purchasing a paid version.

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7 ways to improve the loading speed of your website

How to improve the loading speed of the website?

As a website owner, your primary objective is to keep your visitors happy and site speed plays a prime role here. That is why many top ranking websites generally load at lightning speed. Fast speed can also boost the business potential of your site and can improve the conversion rate. Did you know that any interruptions or delays during crucial actions like proceeding with online checkout can increase the risk of buyers changing their minds? It is one of the main reasons behind abandoned shopping carts.

Here are some surprising facts about site loading speed:

11 out of every 100 site visitors will abandon your site’s loading speed is delayed by 1 second
The same delay can also decrease the in customer satisfaction by 16%
It also results in a conversion loss of 7%
Most importantly you will lose 40 out of every 100 visitors if your site takes 3 seconds or more to load

Google now concentrates on the mobile experience of your website. One of the prerequisites for a good mobile experience is fast loading speed. So if your site cannot load fast enough, it isn’t good enough in the eyes of Google. So, it can affect your SEO negatively.

The next question is how to increase the speed of your website? It requires you to follow a solid strategy comprising of techniques, tools and tips. In this blog we are going to mention some of the best strategies to increase the speed of your website.

How to check the loading details of your website?

Open Google Chrome
Go to the webpage, right-click and then click on inspect option
Open network tab
You will see different columns
Name: Different files on the webpage
Size: Size of individual files
Time: Time is taken by each file to load.
You can see the total requests made by clients in the bottom left corner

Minify your code

Extra whitespaces, unnecessary code and additional formatting inflate the volume without adding any additional value. The higher volume increases the number of requirements and slows down your site speed. By removing all those unnecessary formatting and codes you can reduce the volume and thus increase the loading speed. You need to delete all such unnecessary elements to boost your site speed. It is generally known as minifying the code.

Asynchronous loading

While a visitor opens a webpage the browser needs to load different files. Generally, the files load synchronously, i.e., only one file loads at a time while the others are queued up and wait until that single file loads completely. This one by one loading model significantly increases the loading time.

There is a way to speed up the process by enabling simultaneous file loading, technically known as an asynchronous loading. In asynchronous loading, multiple sites can load simultaneously, at the same time which speeds up the file loading process and makes your site faster.

WPRocket is a high caliber tool that is incredibly easy and remarkably efficient. The tool packs versatile features including speed optimization options. It allows you to minify your files and combine them, enable asynchronous loading and defer heavier files like JavaScript.

Check TTFB

TTFB or Time to the first byte refers to the time it takes the first byte to complete distance between the data center and the server. In easy words, it determines the time by which the loading process will start. Reducing this time can inevitably cut down the latency and speeds up the loading process. You can test the TTFB on the Webpage Test tool. If your TTFB is 200ms or above then you should take immediate action to reduce it

Enable caching to increase repeated visitors

If you wish to get repeated visits to your site and convert first-time visitors into regular audiences then you need to deliver them better experience on their subsequent visits. One of the easiest ways is to offer faster loading speed for repeated visitors. For that, you need to enable caching.

While requesting your webpage the browser has to perform some tedious and tough calculations to retrieve and display the page. By enabling caching you enable the visitors’ browser to memorize the final result of the calculation. It saves the browser from making complex calculations on subsequent requests. As a result, your webpage can load much faster.

WP Rocket is a strong caching plain that can automatically enable caching on your visitors mobile to help your site load faster during heir Subsequent visits.

Pick the right web hosting plan

Your hosting plans and provider plays a key role in determining your site speed. Make sure that your hosting plan offers you the required resources to ensure smooth speed of your website that meets your current speed requirements.

Shared hosting accommodates multiple tenants on the same server and offers a common pool of resources to each of them. It is best for the new sites and the ones with low traffic.

However, if your site is growing and traffic is increasing the shared hosting can affect is the performance and reduces the speed. In that case, you need to upgrade your plan.

Consider buying VPS, Cloud or Dedicated hosting plan as all these three plans offer dedicated resources and thus ensures fast loading speed, even during traffic spikes. In most of eh cases VPS works fine for sites WITH heavy traffic. However, if you experience tremendous traffic ten you may go for a dedicated server.

Compress Heavy Files

Compressing your heavy files is a great way to reduce loading time and boost the speed. The compressing process reduces the size f individual files (like images or videos) without altering the look, feel ad functionality of your site.

Tools like GIDNetwork allow you to know beforehand about the estimated time of loading after you have compressed the files. If you find that it can significantly speed up your site then you can compress your files and deliver a better loading experience to your uses.

GZip is the best tool to quickly compress diverse files on your website and thus making it lean and agile.

Reduce the size of large images

Larger image is no doubt the major reason behind a slow loading site but compressing them is not hard.

The WordPress Plug-in like WP Smush can easily compress your images and boosts your website loading speed

Conclusion

Good loading speed translates to better user experience and encourages them to interact with your site. It increases click-through rate, strengthens SEO compatibility and may also improve the conversion rate. In short, it allows you to meet your major digital goals with better certainty. In this blog, we mentioned some of the best ways to monitor your site speed and increase the same. To help our readers we have also mentioned the plugins that can facilitate these tasks with the least efforts. By wisely using the tips, tools, and techniques mentioned in this blog you can significantly increase your site speed, keep your user happy and strengthen the potential of your site.

Advice to the readers

The readers are advised to use their discretion before taking the decision. Most of the tools offer a free and trial version as well. If you are an individual user, blogger or new startup then free version could meet your initial needs.
The established businesses can go for paid versions to unlock advanced enterprise-grade features. However, it is advisable to start with the trial versions and see how well it fits with your requirements before making the final purchase.
Read the latest reviews on unbiased review sites before buying or using a tool. Check the social media handles of the tools mentioned in this post to know the real-life experience of users and the brand reputation.

7 WordPress Security Plugins for WordPress Websites

If you are looking to learn how to secure your WordPress site these WordPress security plugins will certainly help you secure your site from hackers.

WordPress is one of the most used platforms by bloggers and website developers all over the world.

It is a system that is based on PHP and MySQL and has plugin architecture and a template system feature.
The platform is highly customizable, it therefore allows users to pick and develop their website based on various options. This self-based platform started out as a blogging tool and later evolved to a website builder.
It is easy and flexible to use even without the technological know-how. There are very many advantages to using WordPress platform.
These include the fact that it is a free software, it is easy to customize with themes and plugins, it is SEO friendly, easy to manage, easy to secure and so much more.

These advantages of WordPress make it a target to hackers through different vulnerabilities. Many websites are hacked or affected by malware by exploiting the weaknesses in a plugin installed.

However there are different types of plugins you can install to upgrade the security of your website. These include;

1. Wordfence

Wordfence is one of the most popular WordPress security scanners. It is built with an end point firewall and malware scanner to protect the platform from prying eyes. It is equipped with the latest threat defense arms like firewall rules, malware signatures, and protects you from unknown IP addresses that might cause the website to crash. The scanner is used to scan through your files, plugins and themes for any viruses. It alerts you in case of any dangers. Through this, the website is made secure and faster by the use of Falcom caching engine.Bullet Proof Security

2. Bulletproof Security

Bullet Proof Security click setup interface lets you relax as it sets up the firewall interface. It is in charge of adding database and security login among others. Just like its name, the security plugin blocks malicious IP addresses, security scanners, code scanners, viruses and lots more. It notifies its user in case of any infection the proper action to take before it causes harm to your site. It increases the working speed of the site by adding caching. New vulnerabilities spring up every day and that iswhy bullet proof keeps updating itself with advanced features to protect your website from hackers.

3. Sucuri Security

Sucuri security is a security plugin offered to WordPress from the famous Sucuri Company. The security plugin is responsible for offering security features that keep your website out of reach from hackers and other vulnerabilities. These security features include; file integrity, malware auditing, blacklist monitoring, security auditing, and website firewall. In case of any alert, the plugin notifies its user through email.

4. iThemes Security

Also known as WordPress security, iThemes security plugin claims to offer more than 30 ways to secure your website from any vulnerabilities that may arise. It is a one click installation plugin therefore easy to install. Once it starts running, it scans through your themes and plugins ensuring they are secured and fix any security holes discovered.

5. Acunetix WP Security Scan

This is a security plugin that is offered by the Acunetix Company hence the name Acunetix WP Security Scan plugin. It is a security plugin designed to scan through the website for any vulnerabilities and loopholes and alert the user with the necessary measures to take. It offers security by hiding the source code information that can be used by hackers to gather data before an attack. It provides administration permission, database security, version hiding and file permission privacy among others.

6. All in One WP Security and Firewall

All in One WP Security is known to protect against login attacks and lockdown, this security plugin is designed to check vulnerabilities in your website, report any incoming harm and suggest the necessary action to be taken. It offers the necessary and recommended security practices to the user; for instance when you are saving a weak password, or if there are too many login attempts, it causes a lockdown. It allows the user to schedule a backup at their own appropriate timeand get an email notification as a reminder on the same. It blacklists and prevents any various attacks on your website and prevents various security threats

7. 6Scan Security

6Scan Security is a popular security scan that protects your website from hackers. It is equipped with an automated fix protection that offers protection against any security vulnerabilities. This particular security plugin has an auto-fix server side agent solution that automatically fixes any vulnerabilities it comes across. It also alerts its user through emails in case of any security threatening vulnerabilities thatmay cause harm to the website as well as with the possible solution to its demise.

Conclusion;

With the above listing of WordPress security plugins, you are free to choose which one to work with. Get in touch with ClickDo for all the latest tips to help protect your website from hackers,

4 Reasons Why WordPress is the best CMS for SEO

WordPress is the content management system which is used by many bloggers and the website owners to make easy updates in the website.

Here let’s see why WordPress is the best Content Management System(CMS) for Search Engine Optimization(SEO)

Easy On Page Works:

By using the WordPress CMS, you can do the On-Page SEO works very easily, You can optimize the below-listed things easily by using the WordPress

PermaLinks Optimization
Title Tag Optimization
Meta Description Updation
Interlinking
Adding Alt Text to the Images, etc

The above-listed factors are the core On-Page SEO techniques, which can be updated easily in the web pages by using the WordPress CMS.

For instance, adding Alt to the images in the WordPress can be done easily by just clicking on the Image Properties under Media Library.

Whereas when it comes to the coded site, you need to work on the backend code to add the alt attribute to the images.

Even interlinking work is made more simple in the case of WordPress CMS than the hard coded website.

Whereas when it comes to the coded website, doing the above-listed On-Page works is a bit hard.

Quick Publishing:

When you decide to publish any blogs or new web pages, it can be created and published in a very quick time by using the WordPress CMS.

When you try to create any new pages in the hard-coded website, then it will take more time. But it’s not the case in the WordPress website.

You just publish new posts or create a new page on the WordPress website as if you are using a Word Document.

The WordPress Interface is very user-friendly and hence it will make the users to easily publish new posts and pages.

Time taken to create a new web page will be very less in the WordPress website when compared to the hardcoded website.

When it comes to SEO, WordPress CMS will help you to optimize the web pages very easily and quickly when compared to the coded site.

Page Speed Optimization:

When it comes to the SEO, Page loading speed impacts your search engine ranks. Google gives priority to the web pages which has good page loading speed.

In the WordPress CMS, Page speed optimization can be done easily by using the plugins.

Hence you need not work on each and every page to improve the page speed as like you do in the Coded sites.

You can just use the pre-built WordPress plugins to optimize the page speed of your website.

But when it comes to the code website, page speed optimization becomes a complicated process.

Easy Updation:

When you try to do any updates in the existing web pages, then it can be done very easily by logging into the WordPress dashboard.

More importantly, using the WordPress CMS will save lots of time for the developers.

When you need to update any content or any media files in the existing webpage, then using WordPress CMS, you can do it in a single click.

As a blogger, its always better to use the WordPress than any other CMS, This will help you to rank the websites more easily by Quick Optimization.

Thus being a blogger or the business owner, using the WordPress CMS for your website will help you in optimizing the websites to make them rank on the Google’s SERP.

Thus Being a Business Owner, even if you own a WordPress website or Hard Coded website, you can get in touch with the ClickDo to optimize your web pages and rank well on Google.

WordPress SEO Mistakes to Avoid

common-seo-mistakes-to-avoid-in-wordpress

Many business people and the bloggers use the WordPress CMS as the Interface to make the updates and publish blogs in the website. WordPress CMS is user-friendly and also easy to optimize for SEO.

Here let’s see the common WordPress SEO mistakes to avoid.

Configure the SEO Plugin:

When you use WordPress CMS, it’s always best to use the Yoast SEO or the All in SEO to update the Title, Meta Description and the URL of the webpage.

You should configure well either of this plugin and make sure that it’s getting updated on the web page properly.

If not configured properly then it will not be fetched by Google.

Update the Time Zone:

When you install the WordPress to your website, the first thing you should do is to set the time zone.

Based on your country set the correct time zone in the Site.

This may look like a minor factor, but it will greatly impact the ranks of your web page.

You can find the time zone of your website under Settings->General.

XML Sitemap Submission:

XML Sitemap is the must for every website, This will help the Google crawler to easily fetch and index the web pages.

Create the sitemap for the contents and the attachments present in your website.

Submit the sitemap using the search console. Before submitting the sitemap make sure that it doesn’t contain any error.

This can be checked by testing the sitemap before submitting.

Set Permalinks Properly:

Usually, the WordPress will take the auto-generated permalinks based on the title of the post or the post id.

You should edit the default permalinks and should make them SEO friendly by adding the target keywords.

Keep the permalinks short as much as you can. Even you can implement the breadcrumbs if you need.

Under Settings -> Permalinks, you can edit the default type and can update based on your need.

Broken Links & Redirects:

It’s normal that all the websites will have some broken links and as a website owner, you should make sure that all the links are redirected to a proper landing page.

Broken links will make your website ranks to drop, Even if the top ranking pages are affected, you can redirect them to the other proper webpage by using the 301 redirects.

Uploading Media Content:

Media Content will help you to engage users for more time in the website. Adding media contents like Infographics, pictures by without adding any metadata will not help you to improve the ranks.

Upload the media files to the WordPress site after adding the proper meta information.

This will help the search engines to understand about the webpage and the contents present in the webpage.

Website Backups:

Mostly the sites are affected and the owners tend to lose their data sometimes. In this scenario, a handy backup will help you to recover the site back without any data loss.

There are many plugins available for WordPress which are capable of taking automatic backups in a weekly or daily basis.

This kind of backups are safe and help you to recover your website without any data loss in case of any malware injection or other attacks.

All in one WP migration will help you to take backups regularly.

Don’t fail to implement Schema Markup:

Schema markup implementation will help you to increase the Click Through Rate (CTR) of the website.

By using schema implementation, you can show review stars for your website on the Search results.

There are several kind of Schema Markup available and you can use based on the website that you are working in.

Thus these are some of the common SEO mistakes that you should avoid when working with the WordPress CMS.