Carolyn Griswold

What’s a Widget?

March 4, 2018 Carolyn Griswold

Remember when a widget was a thing you called something when you couldn’t remember what to call it?

Not anymore. WordPress turned the widget into a real thing. Or is it?

I’ve found that many new WordPress users have a little trouble understanding the Widget concept and how it fits into their website.

What is a WordPress widget?

The widget is a section under Appearances where you can add content to a section of the website. Typically and historically the widget areas were designed to be used on parts of the website that appear on many pages. Sections like the primary sidebar or the footer area are typical places where you might want to include data on many pages. Data you may want to include on many pages might be your address, a menu, e-mail sign-up form, a contact button, Social media links…you get the idea. By using a widget you only set up the data once and it appears on in multiple locations.

When you open up your Widget area under Appearance>Widgets, you’ll see something similar to that shown above, with the Available Widgets on the left side and the Widget Areas on the right. The basic concept is to pull the widget you want to use from the available Widgets into the widget area where you want the widget to display.

The Available Widgets may vary by theme or if there are plug-ins installed, but I’ve found that I use these types of widgets pretty frequently:

Custom Html – used for placing code or scripts from another source (such as an email sign-up form
Image – allows you to insert an image from your media library
Navigation Menu – Adds a custom menu
Text – Add text – handy for addresses, phones numbers, etc.
Search
Video
Audio

I have used the Genesis framework frequently over the years so there are several Genesis specific widgets I like to use:

Genesis Featured Page Advanced – allows you to pull information from a page into a widget area.
Genesis Featured Posts – allows you to pull posts or post excerpts into a widget area.
Simple Social Icons

The Widget Areas also vary by theme. Often when I use the Genesis framework, the theme home page is often set up using widget areas. This allows you to pull information to the home page dynamically, instead of having to update the home page when you create a new post or event. For example, the Testimonials Section and Marketing Tools and Tips From Our Blog section will update automatically if a new testimonial is added or if we add a new Featured post to our website.

So a Widget is a “do-hicky” or a “thing” that you use to put content into multiple places or to update content dynamically in multiple places. “Widget” seems like the perfect name for it.

More information about widgets

How to import a calendar – dates and all! And how to turn off comments.

February 26, 2018 Carolyn Griswold

Last week we launched a newly designed website. It was a fairly large website with the Timely All-in-One calendar plug-in. There were over 2000 calendar entries that we ported over to the new site.

Initially we used the WordPress Importer (located under Tools in the dashboard) that is part of the WordPress core installation to export the data from the old site and import it into the new site. That worked – kind of – but it didn’t import the dates correctly, so they didn’t appear on the calendar. Kind of important for calendar items.

What did work was using the Timely Feed option. To do that go to the calendar on the old site, click on Subscribe, then right click Add to Timely Calendar > Copy link address. Then go to the new site, under Events>Calendar Feeds. Type the URL you just copied into the feed field, check the options you desire and click the Add new subscription.

Speaking of options. There is a checkbox for Allow comments on imported events, which I apparently did not check. Oops! It turns out the client didn’t want comments.

How to turn off comments for blog posts and events.

There is a feature in WordPress to turn off comments for all posts – including past posts.

Here’s how:

Go to All Posts or in this case All Events.
Click the checkbox that selects all the posts or events.
Click and apply Edit under Bulk Actions dropdown.
Set Comments to Do Not Allow
Click Update

That should work in most cases, but it didn’t in this case. I think because of the way we imported the data through the subscription feed.

So here’s my go to fix in cases when WordPress won’t do as we’d like.

Change the display through CSS.

In this case I wanted to eliminate the display of the comment count and comment display box. To find out the CSS class that presents these options, right click on the area you want to eliminate, click “Inspect”. Look through the code to find the CSS classes that define the styles for these elements.

In this case it was “.comment-text, .comment_meta-container, .comment_container, and .comment count”. So I added the following code to the CSS styles:

.comment-text,

.comment_meta-container,

.comment_container,

.comment-count {

display:none !important;

}

Wala! Comments section is gone.

Make sure you’re modifying your CSS by using the Custom CSS option of your theme instead of updating the themes original style sheet.

Feel the love, speed and SEO all swirled together.

November 7, 2017 Carolyn Griswold

Hocus pocus, give me focus, make my website fast, loved and popular. Feel the love, speed and SEO all swirled together. Are you looking for the magic SEO potion? Ta Da! Here you go.

First, find love.

Find out what people love about you, about your product and about your business. Find out how they’re looking for love. Where are they looking? Are they looking on Google, Linkedin, Facebook. Do they even know they’re looking? How do you find out?

Use Data. Find the key to love with Analytics. It can tell you what your clients or prospects are looking for and how they’re looking for it.
Anecdotal Evidence. Ask your clients. Something as simple as “How did you find me?” “What made you decide to call me?”
Be bold. Ask for some love. Ask for online reviews on Google, Yelp, LinkedIn, or for a testimonials on your website. Ask people to Like your page, subscribe to your YouTube Channel, sign-up for your email newsletter, or meet for drinks. There are so many ways to ask for love. Find the best ways for you and ask!
Respond. Listen to your clients. Answer their questions. People love that.

Then swirl some love on your website content. Make sure your website content loves your clients – make sure it answers their questions. Make sure it presents your product or service so beautifully it’s impossible not to love (buy) it! Make sure it presents material that your analytics indicate will bring results.

Spread the love. Social media makes it easy. Share on the social media outlets that work best for you. Share your blog posts, events, product news, business news, even jokes, inspirations, photos and anecdotes.

Second, find speed.

No one wants to wait. Waiting frustrates people. It’s not loving. Make your website fast. Google loves speed. Give Google some love. They’ll love you back. Your page speed is known to be one of the factors (among many) in your search engine rank. So make your website zippy.

To find out fast your website is check out the links in the post The Need for Speed. How to check your website to see if it needs a speed tune-up.

Here are some of the most common recommendations you’ll find when you run a speed test:

Optimize images. The first thing to do is make sure your images aren’t size larger than they appear on screen. That’s just wasting bandwidth. Please. Don’t upload a 4000 px x 4000 px image to your website, if the size is going to be viewed is 400 px x 400 px. But that’s just the start of image optimization. Check out this Image Optimization article to find out just how complicated it can get.Fortunately, there are plug-ins for WordPress users that will help you optimize the images on your website. Two of the most popular are:
1. WP Smush
2. Ewww Optimizer
Eliminate or reduce CSS and Javascript rendering above the fold.Fixing the above the fold recommendation can get complicated too, as sometimes, depending on the theme, relocating scripts can break the website. There is a plug-in for it that’s worth trying. (I hope to test it on soon and will review it for you then). The plug-in is Optimizing Above the Fold. Beware, the plug-in is intended for pros and is not something you can install and it will automagically fix things for you.
Minify Javascript and CSS – Optimizing Above the Fold can handle this for you too, but Autoptimize is a simpler plug-in that might be easier to use for most users. As always with plug-ins make sure you back up your database prior to installing and running, so if something doesn’t work right, (ie. it breaks your website) you can restore to a functioning version without too much trouble.
Enable caching. W3Total cache is one popular plug-in used in WordPress sites to configure caching. Be careful with it though, the wrong settings will break your website. (BACKUP prior to use). Some hosts offer their own caching systems and disallow W3 Total Cache. WPengine is one that we use that has their own object caching process.
You could also consider a CDN. Basically a Content Delivery System that helps serve and cache your site’s static, cacheable content from multiple worldwide server locations.
Server speed is slow. Check with your web hosting provider to see if they can help you with this. You might also check your DNS settings to ensure they aren’t slowing things down.

Sometimes it’s the WordPress theme itself that is slowing things down. If that’s the case, you might be able to speed it up using some of the tools above, but if given the chance it’s best to start with a fast theme. I found a list of 20 fast themes at https://colorlib.com/wp/fast-loading-wordpress-themes/. I haven’t had a chance to install and test their speed yet, but may test out a few for review in a later post.

Let the SEO Magic begin.

Swirl some love on your website by ensuring that it provides a good user experience with interesting, valuable content and make it load fast. That’s when you’ll begin to see some SEO magic happen.

The Need for Speed. How to check your website to see if it needs a speed tune-up.

November 2, 2017 Carolyn Griswold

When you drive a high-performance vehicle and step on the gas you can feel the acceleration. Quick acceleration makes it easy to merge onto a fast-moving freeway safely or outrun a high-speed chase (just kidding – we’re not recommending anything illegal in this blog post).

Just as it’s important to have a fast, responsive automobile on the highway to have the best driving experience, it’s also important to have a fast, responsive website on the internet if you want optimum user experience for your website visitors.

Why is website speed important?

It will make your visitors happy and more likely to buy from you. Slow websites equal frustrated visitors who leave and go check out your competitors’ websites.
It may improve your website rank on search engines and that will provide greater opportunity for more people to get to your zippy, refreshingly speedy website.

How do you know if your website is fast?

There are numerous free tools online that can measure the speed of your website. Here’s a few to get you started:

There are more. You could test all day long. But the important thing to do is to run a few tests and see where your weaknesses lie. Common problems that might be slowing you down are:

Slow server response time
Images need resizing/optimization
Eliminate render-blocking JavaScript and CSS in above-the -fold content
Leverage browser caching
Minify CSS

So NOW WHAT?

There can be a lot of technical information to comprehend in the reports. The good news is that the reports provide you with links on how to fix the problems. But even with that it can be overwhelming for the average website owner to understand the problems and make the corrections.

Just like most people take their cars to a shop for a regular tune-up, it’s a good idea to have your website tuned up on a regular basis too. So whether you’re the kind of person who changes their own oil or you prefer to drop it off at the shop, it makes sense to run a few reports to check out your score and either make some of the improvements on your own, or give your website maintenance team a call to see what they can do to help you out.

Feel the love, speed and SEO all swirled together.

AstrologyBooth.com

May 27, 2016 Carolyn Griswold

WebSavvy Marketers has been my go-to company for all my website needs since they built my first website in 2000. Beyond technical know-how, these women go the extra mile for whatever needs you have. My strange requests were honored with respect. Any problems or glitches were addressed and solved in a timely fashion. I was especially impressed by the dedication and patience they brought to the process of modernizing and re-building my website last year and the quick response provided when I had a near-crisis at the end of of the year launching my calendar ebook sales on my site. And these gals are so pleasant to work with! Our conversations always include a laugh. Nowadays many business people look for the lowest-cost option and even outsource to other countries for a cheap hourly rate. Not me! You can’t put a price on good vendor relations and loyalty, and you don’t get customer service like WebSavvy’s anywhere else.

—Janet Booth, AstrologyBooth.com

So Much Money, So Little Time

November 20, 2015 Carolyn Griswold

CCAT, CT Innovations, DECD, NETAAC, SBDC, STEP, etc., etc., etc. When it comes to marketing dollars for manufacturers, there’s no shortage of options. Each day, the manufacturers we work with receive emails informing them of opportunities. This is a good thing. However, understanding which program to use can be a bit overwhelming.

Some programs offer free money, some have a 50/50 match, others are low interest loans. There’s also the question of qualifying. Some money needs to be used towards international marketing, and in other cases, funding is based upon the size of your business or your business situation (work lost to an overseas competitor).

Then there’s the time involved in looking into the options. In fact, from state and federally run operations to manufacturing associations and other resources, there are more than 20 organizations with multiple programs to assist manufacturers in CT. The confusion lies in the myriad of choices as each one of these organizations has up to 3 different programs to choose from.

Save yourself time and access the most money by investigating all options. Contact Web Savvy Marketers to discuss your marketing needs and determine which funding program would work for you.

Sirois Tool

August 11, 2015 Carolyn Griswold

Web Savvy Marketers saves us tremendous amounts of time. As a small business owner who is concerned with every detail including insurance, healthcare, personnel, operations, etc. working with Web Savvy allows us to focus on what we do best – manufacture. Anytime we get an inquiry for sales or marketing, whether it’s advertising in a publication, a press release, or email marketing, we send it to them. They understand what makes sense for us and make recommendations that work for our business. – Alan Ortner – President, Sirois Tool.

PTI Industries Inc.

June 23, 2015 Carolyn Griswold

Web Savvy Marketers takes care of everything for us — blogging, website updates, e-newsletters, strategic inbound marketing, etc. — so we don’t have to. Plus, they save us a lot of money. They continually fine-tune our marketing and advertising programs so that our marketing dollars produce better results. We’re now getting more leads, and the leads we are getting are way more qualified.” – Jessica Cartelli, Business Development Manager – PTI Industries, Inc.

Beautiful You Beads

April 24, 2015 Carolyn Griswold

No-Worries E-commerce Website

How to Stay Safe With WordPress Updates

April 22, 2015 Carolyn Griswold

wordpresssecurity

WordPress is a fantastic content management system and blogging platform, but like most popular open source software it can be vulnerable to certain malicious activities–especially if your software, theme and plug-ins are not kept up to date and running the most current version.

What kind of malicious activities might occur?

Someone could install files with malicious scripts within your WordPress installation that send out SPAM. This could lead to an exceptional load on the hosting server causing it to slow down website performance and the volume of SPAM can cause the mail server to be blacklisted. The blacklist could prevent other folks from receiving your emails that you send causing you to lose business. And it can be time-consuming to get a server off a blacklist.
A malicious script redirects your site to another (SPAMMY) location causing you to lose business, damage your reputation and hurt your search engine rank.
Any number of other mean-spirited activities the hackers decide to wreak upon your site that will cause you to lose business, or your reputation or both.

It’s important to protect your website.

We’ve talked about WordPress security before (and will probably talk about it again). See No-Worries Website Security , More Password Hacking Methods and How to Stay Safe, How to Change Your WordPress Username, and How To Prevent Zombie Hack of Your WordPress Site, and 6 Ways Your Site Is Hacked and What To Do About It for some previous posts.

There are many tools and plug-ins useful for keeping you site secure, but today we’re going to talk about managing WordPress updates. Let’s get started.

How to Manage Your WordPress Updates

WordPress makes it very easy to keep your website up to date. The most important thing to ensure is that you have a current and complete backup of your database and your files.

There are many ways to backup your website, but here are the easiest and most common.

You can create a backup from your web hosting cPanel.
There are backup plug-ins that you can install in your WordPress dashboard that will automatically backup your site at set intervals.

Once you ensure that you have a current backup, it’s very easy to complete the updates from within your dashboard. All updates for plug-ins, themes and WordPress versions will be noted under WordPress updates in your dashboard. Simply click the update links and in most cases the site will begin updating.

The Order of Operations

In my experience I find it best to start with the plug-ins and update all the plug-ins that have updates available. Once those have updates have completed, move on to the theme (see theme warning below) and update it, then update WordPress itself.

Theme Warning – Why it’s important to use child themes.

Ensure that your theme hasn’t been modified or your updated theme may not display your website the way you want it to look. We usually build websites with all the style modifications made to the child theme so it’s less likely to cause a problem when updating the theme.

OOPs! Something went wrong!!!

You’ve made your updates but now…

Your website doesn’t look right – See theme warning above.
You can’t even see your website and you see a “Fatal Error” message(s) instead.

Now what do you do?

Disable Plug-ins.

Sometimes a plug-in doesn’t play well with the current versions of WordPress. If that’s the case, it might actually make your website unavailable. Instead of seeing your website, you’ll see a fatal error message. So, if you’re seeing a fatal error message, the first thing to do would be to disable all the plug-ins. Probably the easiest way to do that is to login to your cPanel and find your plug-ins directory and disable it. An easy way to disable it is just change the name on the plug-in folder. Use something like Disabled-plugins.

Did that fix it?

If yes, continue reading this section. If not, continue on to restore your website from the backup.

You’ve determined that your website works with plug-ins disabled so you know that one (or more) of the plug-ins caused the problem. You need your plug-ins so you’re going to enable them one by one to find out which plug-in caused the problem. To do that create a new folder in your cpanel called plugins (don’t get creative here – put it in the same location as the old plugins folder was located.) Copy over each plugin folder from the disabled-plugin folder to the plugin folder. Check after moving each plug-in to the active plugin folder to see if the website is still working. When the website breaks – you’ll have discovered which plug-in broke the website. Now you need to consider whether you really need that plug-in or not.

Restore your website from a backup.

Here’s where it’s important to have you backup database and files.

In your cpanel:

Overwrite or restore your WordPress files with the backup files you saved.
Restore the old database you saved or create a new database and import your backup database into the new database. Change the wp-config file to point to the corrected database.

Your website should now be restored to the state it was in prior to trying to update it. So now you’re back to square one with a working but outdated WordPress installation. Chances are during the restoration you discovered if it was a outdated plug-in or outdated theme that created the havoc during updates. It’s likely you’ll want to replace the plug-in and/or theme with something that is compatible with the current WordPress version.