How to safeguard WP based site from hackers?

When it comes to maintaining a website, you might have to face plenty of technical and non-technical issues. It will be good that you overcome these problems before they destroy your site and takes away everything which you built. Most of the website owners usually worry about the security of their portal. Security issues like malware, virus and malicious codes, etc. are some of the most common problems faced by the owners.

WordPress is one of the most widely used CMS systems. It's an open-source technology which is easy to use and comes with plenty of plug-ins & dashboard settings. Keep this thing in mind, once your site is live on WP and it begins to attract more web traffic, it becomes more vulnerable to hack attempts. You can also look out for an experienced WordPress developer who will help you make your site secure. Most of the web hosting companies don't take the responsibility of defending your website so it completely depends on you how efficiently you handle the security of your site. 

Today WordPress powers almost 30% of the business websites which are live on the internet. This popularity had made this CMS one of the most favorite targets of hackers. As per the market surveys, it is said that around 30,000 WP sites are hacked annually. The main reason behind this is the negligence of the website owners. Most of the small & medium sized enterprises depend on their internal staff to maintain the security of their WP site even if it's not their area of expertise.

Given below are the few simple ways that will help you protect your WP based site from hackers:

Opt for a stronger & hard to configure password : Most of the website owners choose an easy to remember password such as a name, or number, etc. This type of passwords is very easy to decipher. When it comes to creating a password for the website, it will be good that you opt for minimum 8 to 16 characters long password which should contain numbers, lower case letters, capital letters, and special characters.

Always update your WP Version : Whenever WordPress releases a new update or security patch make sure you install it ASAP. Hackers quickly develop a program which can scan the vulnerabilities of the outdated versions of WordPress.

Deploy WP security plugins : The WP directory has plenty of security plugins that will keep your site safe and secure. Besides this, there are several third-party plugins available on the internet, but it will be good that you stick to those which are published in the official store as they are regularly updated and backed up by the team of experienced experts.

If you have sound technical knowledge, then you can yourself tweak the security settings of your site. In case you don't know much about these web systems then you can hire the team of experienced web developers who will help you accomplish this task. These web developers are fully aware of the ongoing security trends and the potential threats based on which they design the security system for your portal.

While looking out for a web developer, it will be good that you consider checking their past projects and clientele. You can also ask them about the type of security issues they have resolved till now as well as the strategies they deploy to overcome these problems. By taking all these factors into consideration, it will become easier for you to find the right developer for your web development and security project. You can also take help of the internet while searching for the suitable developer for your portal.

10 Templates To Fit To Your PSD to WordPress Theme Conversion

You'll find a plenty of Free PSD web templates on the internet. Most of them are nice, some of them are ugly, and rarely will you find fantastic. Since Adobe Photoshop is easy to use, many pros and beginners decide to use PSD templates for their first project as they are easy to setup, easy and use.

There are templates which are incredibly alluring but as soon as you unpack them on your desktop, they are an utter mess, and you will get hard time to find your way around.

A good web template is beautiful, but a great template is a combination of usability and handsomeness. Irrespective of what you want for your website, we've made a list of various PSD templates that ensures you get the best:

Avire

It's a highly customizable “One Page Template” with a free flat style one page design. This fine PSD to WordPress theme is simple to use and can easily be modified to fit your needs just with few simple tweaks. 

Hexal

It's a free PSD file which you can use for both commercial and personal purposes. It is a one-page portfolio web template designed for the creative and skillful mind.

Resto

It's a free PSD template made for restaurants and has everything ranging from menu and reservations to delivery and special courses.

6R Wooden Portfolio

It is a unique portfolio template guaranteeing to leave an impact on anyone visiting your website. It's ideal for graphic designers, web designers and anyone with creative brains.

MoCart

It is a free and responsive eCommerce PSD template suitable for every web shop that you are looking for a robust business. It's clean and fresh design can work for every kind of business seeking to showcase their items.

Kappe

Kappe is an original multipurpose web template, having a grid based design to convert for the blog, personal use, business page, education page or anything that your brain can think and that too, with few clicks of the button.

 

Notify

It is a sleek and modern design to ensure your message is conveyed to your audience and is possibly the best app landing page around the web. 

Polo360

Polo360 is a corporate theme that features various layouts and customizations to get noticed quickly by your and new audience. It's design is modern, flat, with professional approach and appeal.

Design

Design is a responsive, fresh and unique template that is built with care and aligned with the grid system, to get transformed into a website easily. With just one click, you can transform it from a personal portfolio to a functional e-commerce website.

Flat User Interface

It is a user-friendly, clean and simply incredible PSD template for everyone to create the custom solutions to fit all your needs. Its flat design if combined with your creative mind can create an enticing and unique website that will leave lasting impression on your visitors.

Tips To Dramatically Improve Your Website Traffic

Today, WordPress is the most trusted Content Management system with more than 754 million websites built on its platform. The primary reasons behind its high usage are its themes, plug-ins and various customizing features. Creating an appealing design, activating user-friendly functionality and building a traffic-oriented template of a website takes only a dedicated few hours with WordPress.

As you require only the simple knowledge of using its methodologies, a website could be built quickly but still you need WordPress web development process to attract more and more visitors for a wealthy online business. Here are few tips that you can apply to your website to make it more user-friendly and engaging.

Fast Loading Time

Out of 10 visitors, seven will leave your website if it's taking longer than 4 seconds to open. It means, speeding up your website is critical to continue the incoming traffic without any loading-related-obstacles. With below five tips, you'll be able to optimize your website's speed.

1) Choose the Right Hosting Plan :

You're skirmishing a lost battle if your hosting server is taking too much time to process SQL and HTTP commands. It's vital to choose a host that can handle traffic spikes completely.

2) Use A responsive Theme :

Most of the WP themes are well-coded, fast, light-weight and could be easily customized which is beneficial for your website speed. You just need to select the right one. Either hire a WordPress theme developer or learn by online tutorials to get an efficient WordPress theme.

3) Install A Caching Plugin :

WordPress offers various plugins that you can use to clear and optimize the cache. One of the most effective plugins is W3 Total Cache as it comes with features like Page Caching, Object Caching, Database Caching, Browser Caching and much more.

4) Optimize Uploaded Images :

As websites are 70% filled with images, it is imperative to improve their loading speed on your browser. Using optimized images in your website will significantly enhance its performance and speed.

5) Don't Use Conflicting Plugins :

There's no limit to the number of plugins you can use on your website but make sure none of them conflicts with each other. It can hamper the speed and can also cause damage to the website. Also, regularly update your plugins and remove those plugins that are updated or you no longer use them on your site.

Use SEO Plugins

Another good thing about using WordPress is that it offers you various SEO plugins to improve your website ranking among search engines. One of the most used and recommended plugins is Yoast SEO. It helps your website content to be easily indexed by the search engine spiders, thus ranking your website among top searches.

Split Test Your Headlines

One of the most effective ways to increase your website traffic is by deciding which headline of your post will be more efficient. For this, you can use WordPress plugin “Title Split Testing”. It'll dramatically boost the traffic and will also help you in future creating better headlines.

Catchy Content in The SERPs

While most of the bloggers try to keep their website among the top searches of Search Engines, they often forget to write an appealing headline on the SERPs(Search Engine Results Pages). It helps readers find out whether the blog is right according to their search or not. A well-written headline on SERPS is helpful in improving engagement of a website.

How To Hire Pro developers For PSD to WP? And Why!!

When was the last time you felt bad about something you didn't do- or did?

For most of the people who get their website developed by amateurs, it happens right after few days of launching their website as the site doesn't attract traffic or fails to perform significantly for visitors.

Creating a website by professionals is highly relevant because this is the first brick to building your online presence and you don't want it to break down after a period. There are platforms like WordPress that'll provide you with every customizing feature to create a website. But, you can't do it on your own as it requires a professional help or adequate knowledge of WordPress or PHP.

To ensure a healthy and wealthy website for online business, you should hire a team or a developer who knows each bits and bobs of website development. From converting a PSD to WordPress and customizing themes to installing plugins, a developer must know everything that constitutes to an engaging and user-friendly website. As there are plenty of developers registered online to deploy PSD to WordPress conversion services, it is tough to select the right one. Below, we've written few tricks to use so that you don't get stuck with amateur developers.

Freelancer VS Agency

Selecting a developer or an agency is the first step in getting the right developers for your website.

Freelancers are the best option if you are looking to get two or three jobs done as they don't charge too much and give you the best of the development. So, if you already have a website and just need some changes to be done, they are the right choice. You don't want to hire an agency as the cost will be much higher for small work.

To choose a right freelancer for creating a website, platforms like Freelancer.com, Elance.com, Upwork.com and Odesk.com are the best.

Selecting freelancers for the complete project often becomes a headache when it comes to managing different developers as a team. Agency serves best to the people looking for an entire project or more than three or four jobs of a website as they have a full team to deliver the tasks.

To choose an efficient and reliable PSD to WordPress company, look into the top searches of search engines or take advice from your contact list which has recently got the same job done.

Collecting Feedbacks

Whether you have selected a developer or an agency, reviewing the work is the most important step before you close the deal of your website development project. There are forums like Quora to get some heads up about the company or take Google reviews. Once you have prepared a list of developers or companies, go through their accounts or websites to read client's testimonials and feedbacks. If possible, review the projects they have already delivered. It helps in filtering the most efficient developers.

Once, the filtered developers' list is prepared, ask them to present you a demo of your project. It provides you with the gist of how to build your project.

Support

Last but not the least, it's equally important to know the kind of support your developers provide to their clients.

Round the clock support is must as one can need anything at any time of the day. Don't only look for the developers that provide support until your project is completed but also look for the agencies that are seeking to grow with your growth.

How to Develop WordPress Themes

Developing WordThemes are very convenient these days. One does not require any prior knowledge. Here is the simple tutorial that will guide you to create WordPress theme.

What Makes a Theme Great?

Is it Good design? There are many WordPress themes which appear to be charming initially. But when you download it, you will realize that it lacks the basic coding standards. So, coding is necessary. It is easy to develop a WordPress theme, but a good website for eCommerce development requires a lot of efforts and planning. You can consider it by hiring WordPress developer who can professionally convert your coded HTML/CSS design and into a beautiful WordPress theme.

The theme which is designed to modern standards should meet some trends and expectations of a modern web design. Nowadays, CSS3 gradients, transparent boxes, font replacement and noisy background are in the online fashion. Earlier it was cursor trails, animated gifs, and flaming text.

Now let's start

If you are in the practice of writing code in your style, then you need to understand the architecture of the site and figure out how to read it. To overcome this difficulties WordPress has well-established coding standards for PHP, HTML, and CSS. Following these standards, it becomes easier for developers to read and modify your code. They create a baseline for collaboration; it is because WordPress is an open source, and same applies to the plugins and themes. The coding standards help to improve the readability.

The standards given below means your code can be read, understood, and modified.

Example:

WordPress coding standards recommend the following structure to ensure readability of CSS:

- Refer tabs for indentation. Avoid spaces
- Provide a line to each selector, which should end with either a comma or an open curly brace.

1 #selector-1,
2 #selector-2,
3 #selector-3 {
4         background: #fff;
5         color: #000;
6 }

Organize your Theme File
Every web project requires a different set of resources. Some applications work on desktop and works under a single language while few aim for mobile devices with various languages. Many projects may range anywhere from three to four (HTML, CSS, PHP, and JavaScript) languages. Moreover, the components of the themes can work on the side of the client or server, and initiate communication directly with WordPress.

Therefore, keeping your resources organized is vital to overcoming these complexity concerns. Failing in this will be challenging for designers, developers, or users. 

Theme file organization in short:

- Set up template files for different page components instead of one file.
- Keep the foremost template files within the theme’s root directory.
- Give CSS, image, page templates, JavaScript, and language files their directory.
- Be absolutely clear in file naming, prefix page template.

Be consistent to Template Hierarchy

The templates and files are used to produce different parts of the website. Some of them are displayed on every page, and others appear only in certain conditions. There is a hierarchy in WordPress, which represents, which template is to be utilized first and after that. If you do not provide the first option, WordPress will automatically use the second one. It is very vital to understand this hierarchy for WordPress ecommerce development as it familiarises yourself with the template hierarchy and ensures that you’re developing a correct template in the intended places.

Internationalize/Localise Your Theme

Internationalising your WordPress theme means you make it ready for translation. Localisation is the actual transfer of theme strings from one language to another. If you are fluent in another language, you might translate your theme yourself. Otherwise, you can, at least, give others the chance to do it for you.

Making your theme readable for non-English readers comes down to two acronyms: “i18n” and “l10n.” I18n is represented for internationalisation. Similarly, l10n is the numeronym for localisation. To do this WordPress uses the GNU gettext localisation framework. Special tools then parse the source code files and the translatable strings extracted into POT files.

The next step is to translate the text file inside the POT file into the target language. There are some important tools which can be used to create POT file: GNU Gettext, Pootle, Poedit and Launch Pad.

To Conclude

Test Your Theme

It is nothing more disgusting if you download a theme, which has a plethora of bugs, and no sooner people will stop using it. Therefore, it is essential to test the theme developed. Apart from this, if you are thinking to showcase your theme in WordPress directory, the validation team will not accept it. Therefore, check it twice before giving it a green signal.

How to Amplify the Speed of Your Wordpress Website

A site owner has only a few seconds to capture user's attention. And in this case, if the speed of your website is slow then it will be challenging. Therefore, it is very important for the website or services holder to maintain the speed of their website. In a study, it was found that Microsoft, Bing Team reported 3.8% of reduced user satisfaction and 4.3% loss in revenue by a 2-second longer delay in page responsiveness.

Thus, it is significant to find out, why your website is taking too long to upload and how to overcome it.

So here are some handy tips to increase the speed of your WordPress blog if you're looking forward to WordPress website development eagerly. Some of the tips mentioned below may boost the speed up your website considerably while few may take a fraction of seconds worth of difference to your page load times. If you have a highly informative website, and it takes a long time to load then you’ll want to squeeze every bit of optimization out of it.

1. Resize the Images

WordPress images need special attention as it may slow your WordPress website speed. So it is always recommended to resize your WordPress images. The image taken from a camera is 3000-4000 pixels wide and while the other featured images should be 600-800 pixels wide. WordPress users using window can use Pixlr for it. It is free of cost.

2. Removing unwanted Plugins especially third party

After hiring WordPress developer and converting your website to WordPress, there are several plugins available to install. They add extra functionality to your WordPress site. But unwanted and extra third-party plugins unnecessarily adds more code to the server. This adversely effects the loading time of the website. Therefore, we suggest you remove undesired plugins and search for what exactly what plugin is necessary required.


3. Avoid Backlinking

Backlinking is a process where that links from a Web page, back to your Web page or Web site. It is also called as Inbound link. The users may use the content which is a host on website's server. As a result, your server gets no privilege to you whatsoever. Thus, it is quite simple to prevent from stealing your server resources. You can avoid using hotlinking stuff from your website content and apply some codes to your server. It usually targets the images and other multimedia which are data heavy and can be added to your server.

4. Remove Unnecessary Eye-Candy

Many times there are design elements used in a Wordpress website which are just used for its good appearance and actually they are of no use. So hunt for such elements and try eliminating the as early as possible. Simply removing the slider may lead to lower conversion rate, but substituting it with simple text and links would increase it way above the level of the slider’s effect.

5. Cut down the HTTP Request

When a user lands on the website page, there are few corresponding files which are sent to that particular browser including an image, CSS files, and Javascript library references. This reduction of some objects can minimise the number of HTTP requests. Now, this HTTP requests can be reduced with the use of “WP Asset Clean Up”. It is important to note that, if your website carries more HTTP requests, your site will load slower.

So, these were few effective steps to increase the speed to your WordPress website. Now you can stop losing your time and take effective measures to improve the performance of your WordPress site today.

Inducing Responsiveness To Your Images Via CSS

In this modern age world, there are a lot of techniques for building responsive images. However, the techniques are not same due to variations in browser support and complexities. One can make use of the srcset attribute, but it is a complex way of implementing responsive images as it demands several images, markups and the new HTML attributes (not well supported outside modern browsers).

There are lot of people that go for HTML to WordPress conversion so as to make intuitive websites for their business on all kinds of devices irrespective of the size and its orientation. However, in this article, we will simply work on height and width of CSS, which will further make it independent from the browsers property and thus will work on all browser and CSS. However, it will require a fluid design layout for your website. The concept behind this is to use CSS to make images a percentage length unit or any relative unit for making their width re-sizeable and give auto value to the height property.

img {

width: 100%;

height: auto;

}

What's a Responsive image ?

In order to know about a responsive image, we can take an example.

Div acts as a container of an <img> element.

HTML

<div class="container">

<img src="image01.jpg" width="960" height="640" />

</div>

The container has margins on the left and right as the container has 96% width property. The max width is of 960px so that the layout do not appears too wide on a bigger screen.

The container contains a <img> element of 100% width, so that its width so as to make the width equal to its container irrespective of the viewport's size, thus this makes this responsive. Further, set the height to auto so that the image scales in proportion to the screen.

CSS

div.container {

width: 96%;

max-width: 960px;

margin: 0 auto; /* to center the container */

}

img {

width: 100%;

height: auto;

}

The <img> element is always responsive even if we assign a fixed height and width to HTML attribute as shown in the markup (i.e. width="640", height="960"). This technique is best suited for content which has a fixed set of dimension via HTML.

Putting Responsive images in columns

In order to display more images on a small screen, we try to scooch in images in a columns. We often get to see websites which display galleries in a thumbnail on a grid style.

In order to make images responsive in columns, we only need to lessen the width property of the CSS and assign a display property value to the <img > elements.

We further have a couple of layout schemes namely: A two-columns layout and three-column image layout for images.

Two- column layout for responsive images

To get a two-column responsive layout, you need to set the width property of the CSS to 48% or nearly half of the container. Though, you might be thinking why not to 50%. The reason being that images have margins so we need to keep room for them as well.

HTML

<div class="container">

<img src="image01.jpg" width="860" height="540" />

<img src="image02.jpg" width="860" height="540" />

</div>

CSS

img {

width: 48%;

display: inline-block;

}

Three-column layout for responsive images

You need to use the very same concept in order to get a three-column layout for responsive images, all you need to do is to set the width of the container to 32%.

HTML

<div class="container">

<img src="img01.jpg" width="860" height="540" />

<img src="img02.jpg" width="860" height="540" />

<img src="img03.jpg" width="860" height="540" />

</div>

CSS

.three-columns {

width: 32%;

display: inline-block;

}

Adding Conditional breakpoints

Adding conditional breakpoints for responsive images is a good practice, and thus when the images grow smaller, the columns can merge themselves.

This can be done via media queries.

In code snippet used below, we will make images display in single column in smaller device such as smartphone, two columns on slightly bigger devices on phablets or tablets and four columns on much bigger screen such as a laptop or desktop.

HTML

<div class="container">

<img src="img01.jpg" width="860" height="540" />

<img src="img02.jpg" width="860" height="540" />

<img src="img03.jpg" width="860" height="540" />

<img src="img04.jpg" width="860" height="540" />

</div>

CSS

/* For Devices of small size (e.g. smartphones) */

img {

max-width: 100%;

display: inline-block;

}

/* For Devices of medium size (e.g. tablets) */

@media (min-width: 420px) {

img {

max-width: 48%;

}

}

/* For Devices of large size (e.g. desktops) */

@media (min-width: 760px) {

img {

max-width: 24%;

}

}

Responsive images with full width

In order to get responsive images that always remain 100% of the device size, you need to just change the container's width to 100% and simply remove it's max-width property which is 960 px by default.

.container {

width: 100%;

}

img {

width: 100%;

}

These methods were no doubt simple and easy methods to cater mobile device users, but it's pitfall is that it will always deliver images of full size irrespective of the device used by the user. The smaller devices won't be able to take the advantage of high-resolution images which are served in full dimensions, and most of the devices won't be able to open the images even.

Further, if you would wish to improve the performance of your web app by serving your images after reading the conditions ( i.e. a low resolution and a smaller images displayed on small mobile devices and likewise with other devices.), you need to program with the srcset, pictures and sizes elements.