Business trends in the current day and age have changed tremendously with the influx of internet technology and online communication. The internet has become the home for marketing and promotion of business products. It is possible for a Small business to explode into a multi-billion profit entity through effective use of the online platform for marketing. The market will only increase, but must be harnessed with ecommerce for small business. Ecommerce is simply ‘the’ best way to get your business visible and to attract attention of your potential customers. Ecommerce refers to operating business electronically, primarily over the Internet and with the capacity to get your products “floorspace” on the internet marketing platforms like search engines, social media networks, web pages, blogs, and business directories. You can also define it as buying and selling products and services through the electronic channels. There is nothing more convenient as ecommerce because of the expanding market, 24 hour product availability, and global reach in real time. Small, medium, and larger businesses are increasingly using the innovative ways of the internet to provide consumers with faster online business solutions.

The trick of getting ecommerce for small business booming lies in WordPress with the amazing Woocommerce plug-in extension. It’s very important to note that ecommerce works best when you take into considerations the aspects of clean design, fast performance, and visitor captivation. When your business is online some of the things you need to do to attract traffic visibility include beauty and easy access to information on products. This is where the brilliant Woocommerce themes available comes in. Most businesses use WordPress ecommerce since it’s very easy to operate and easier for the traffic to access necessary information. I’ve taught small business owners how to manage their own store in less than 2 hours of training!

Woocommerce is one of the most popular ecommerce plug-ins for WordPress. This is what transforms a WordPress small business website to a serious ecommerce store with easy management, a solid seo foundation, schema data (stars in Google search for products), and all the bells and whistles that an online store requires. With the help of the Woocommerce plugins the WordPress eCommerce become a fast and inexpensive way to get your products selling beautifully, yet feature-rich solution. As long as you pick a responsive theme (which you should!), then the store will be mobile and tablet friendly. This is extremely important in this day and age of iphones, androids, ipads, and desktops. Woocommerce extension plugins provide the best features to keep your store competing on many different levels. It has social media integration, Google Analytics e-commerce tracking, security to a WordPress Sucuri standard, comprehensive store management, tax & Shipping options, and a plethora of payment gateways. It’s also quite conversion friendly, with one page checkout and plenty of room for product images and descriptions. Woocommerce and WordPress in general is developer friendly, so the market and rates are very competitive, equaling cheaper customizations to the theme (design) or coding (functionality) Now is the time for your business to jump into thinking about the possibility of an online store.

So, your new site is complete – congratulations! There are a lot of moving parts to a build, from coding to design to content.

However, if you want to attract and retain customers, you can’t have a “set it and forget it” mentality once the initial work is finished – marketing your business is not only about creating a web presence.

It’s crucial that you make a website maintenance plan a priority for your small business. Here are 4 reasons why:

1. You want to offer a good user experience.

Broken links, 404 pages, half-baked landing pages, slow loading times… your visitors will go elsewhere if they don’t find what they’re looking for fast. The last thing you want for your business is for customers to experience frustration.

Also, you’re not going to build trust among buyers if you don’t offer a good user experience – who’s going to want to enter their credit card or contact information when your online presence looks neglected?

Your website is the face of your business, so invest the time and energy into keeping it current. Monitor for glitches and focus on adding fresh content like blogs, articles, events and testimonials as often as possible to provide a good user experience and reap the SEO benefits.

2. It’s the key to security and safety.

You’re not only responsible for protecting your own data, but you’re also responsible for your visitors’ information. Security requirements are always changing, and nobody is safe – even big brands are targets for cyber attacks and data breaches.

In late 2016, Uber announced the personal information of 57 million Uber users and 600,000 drivers had been exposed by cyber thieves. To make matters worse, the company tried to hide the breach rather than report it.

In November 2018, Marriott International came forward with info that cyber criminals had stolen the data of approximately 500 million customers.

Since hackers get smarter all the time, you need a program you can trust to keep your online assets safe.

Being proactive and protecting your website now is so much easier than dealing with the devastation, disruption and huge costs of a hacked site, lost data and destroyed Google rankings.

The Security & Maintenance Plan includes:

• Continuous state-of-the-art monitoring and “next-generation application firewall” protection against spam, malware and other malicious attempts

• Ongoing automatic backups of your site in case it ever needs to be restored

• Site checks for broken images and links so it runs smooth and fast

• Regular updates of your WordPress site and plugins for optimal performance and security

• And much more…

3. A secure backup is a lifesaver.

A backup is a saved copy of your site, whether it’s from a day ago or a month ago. Backups are stored in files or in the cloud and can be restored if needed.

If you don’t have a backup and your website is hacked and wiped, you’d need to start over from scratch. You wouldn’t want all your hard work to disappear, would you?

A big part of your website maintenance plan is using reliable tools to keep your information safe.

4. Software updates won’t wait.

Software is ever-changing, whether it’s plugins and themes that need updating or security programs.

Your site isn’t going to run smoothly and will also be vulnerable to hackers if you don’t stay on top of software updates. The more often you update, the less likely you are to have problems.

Keeping your software updated also ensures your site loads quickly when visitors arrive; speed has an impact on SEO.

Don’t miss vital leads or sales by neglecting content, security, backup and regular software updates.

Remember: the cost of repairing online issues will be greater than the affordable maintenance costs you pay now!

Your business website is arguably your most vital resource. It is your 24/7 digital shop window and will be the first interaction that the majority of potential customers will have with your business. So if it doesn’t look the part, loads sluggishly or, most importantly, lack a mobile version then you will be letting custom slip through your fingers.

You can market your business as effectively as you like but if the website customers land on doesn’t cut it then you are just throwing away good money after bad. So what is the solution?

Say hello to WordPress. WordPress is the wildly popular content management system that powers over a quarter of the whole web including some of the world’s biggest names like the New York Times, Forbes, People Magazine and National Geographic. So if it works for them it can work for you right? Here’s why:

1. It’s flexible

Whether you a dog grooming parlour, coffee shop, boutique fashion house or a high-flying legal firm the WordPress content management system (CMS) has the flexibility to give your business exactly what it needs. The possibilities really are just limited by the imagination of the business with bespoke looks, function and style to match what you want from your company all achievable.

2. Great blogging platform

Every modern business needs a blog because it’s the easiest way to communicate the latest company news and product offering to your customer base, so it makes sense to have it in the same place that customers can buy products and contact you. Up to now platforms like Blogger and Tumblr have been popular choices for small business but now it’s time to bring it in-house.

A WordPress-based site allows you to have a dedicated page for your blog which will give voice to your business and also be a source of regular new content for your website – something that Google loves when it comes to SEO. Plus all of the social shares that you receive across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc all lead right back to your website bringing potential customers with them.

3. WordPress is open source

What ‘open source’ means is that those that use it are able to contribute to its development, generally by the creation of plugins that perform specific tasks and also the development of best practices. But why does this benefit you if you are hiring a web developer to build your website?

Simply put you benefit from the constant improvement. So many people use WordPress now that it is constantly evolving thanks to the influx of new ideas from users so your website will be built on a platform that is continually getting better and you don’t have to pay a penny!

4. WordPress is constantly updating itself for safety and maintenance

Some CMS systems leave the business of updates in your hands – if you don’t check then you don’t get the benefit of the latest version. Not so with WordPress. It updates instantly to keep your site safe, up to date and inline with the latest best practices around security. In short, it’s as safe as houses.

5. WordPress is SEO friendly

We all want our websites to show up effectively in the search results and WordPress can be a powerful tool in helping make it happen. Its default framework and site architecture is easy for Google bots to crawl meaning that they like it, to the point that company CEO Matt Cutts publicly endorsed it, and as we know when it comes to search, Google is king.

6. It’s a language that all developers understand

In their search for the perfect website a lot of small business owners hire web developers who create complicated websites that may look the part on the outside but that no one other than them can manage. A bit like buying your dream car and finding that only the dealer can actually get it to run.

WordPress is such a big part of the modern web landscape that all developers have at least some experience of it and can turn their hands to coding and building for it. This means that you can run your website day-to-day, adding blogs and new products, but each time a problem comes up or you decide the time is right for a makeover you won’t be short of people who can help.

7. It’s a platform that you can rely on

Having been around for 10 years plus now, WordPress has been continually worked on to remove the kinks and bugs that have been known to plague other content management systems. It’s not absolutely problem-free (what in the world is?) but it’s about as close as you will find anywhere.

8. WordPress is mobile friendly

By now you are sure to have heard the stat that mobile web-browsing now outstrips desktop and laptop by a tidy margin and this change in user habit has had an effect on the online landscape. These days Google actively bars websites from its mobile search results if it isn’t mobile friendly. If that’s you then that’s more than half of your potential traffic gone at a stroke.

Happily if you base your website on WordPress you have all of the tools you need to succeed on all devices because WordPress doesn’t just work on mobile, it thrives. Your website still needs be well designed but done properly WordPress can provide an excellent user experience on any device and an easy to use site brings in sales and leads.

9. Ideal e-commerce platform

These days the amount of items bought over the internet is staggering and is only heading in one direction, creating in its wake a marketplace that businesses big and small understandably want to exploit. WordPress is your ideal platform as it integrates beautifully with some of the world’s most popular, and elegant, e-commerce solutions like Woo Commerce and Magento to give your products real wow factor.

What’s more the core of these e-commerce solutions are free but can also be heavily customised to meet specific needs. Are you a wine club that only wants to sell in cases of six? Or a company that sends out monthly snack boxes on a subscription basis? No problem.

10. It’s a powerful marketing ally

Want to get your products out to as many people as possible and measure the behaviours of your customer base? WordPress is your platform. With WordPress you can get your whole product range on Google Shopping and bring customers looking for exactly what you sell, direct to you.

You can also connect your site to an email platform like MailChimp and measure the behaviour of the customers that visit your site from their inbox including things like which products they buy and the last time they purchased from you. This allows you to tailor campaigns targeting those who say haven’t bought from you in 3 months offering them a discount to bring them back. Or reward those loyal customers who buy from you regularly. All using data from WordPress. Powerful no?

Time to make the most of it!

If you are looking for a secure and fast way to secure data and website backup for your WordPress sites and blogs, then this article is for you. Recently Jason Fladlien and Wilson Mattos developed a tool, rightly named WP Twin, that in turn allows you to make a clone of any WordPress format blog or website within minutes. This tool also allows your to “deploy” the clone, where you can now place on your new site or install on your current one.

It is a huge time saver, especially if you are setting up WordPress sites, a recurring and tedious task. However, WP Twin has shown to completely clone a WordPress site or blog, literally within a minute.

If you like to keep your blog, website up to date by adding plugins, perhaps you have found your site broken and then faced with the task of troubleshooting to repair. Now you can easily avoid this scenario by cloning before tweaking and updating.

This tool has also shown to work effectively with WordPress templates including the ever so tedious to set up – Thesis Theme. Imagine, making a clone and deploying to other like niches within minutes. IF you are also worried about being hacked, simply deploy a cloned version and you are back in business within minutes.

Security is also implemented when using this tool. There are many other uses for this tool and a real must have to have on hand. You can find out the full details by click the links below.

If you have a WordPress website, then you certainly know that there is a variety of plugins available that allow you to enhance your site and your content – the secret is to choose the best one. Some plugins are designed to add extra security to your WP site, while others are aimed at adding additional features and functions. Here you will find 7 interesting WordPress plugins that you will surely find interesting:

1. Google Analytics

As a blogger who has been around for more than 10 years, I can honestly tell you that Google Analytics is one of the most useful plugins for WordPress websites, as it helps you get information about your visitors. You can automatically track their clicks and number of page views, you can see how many visits every author has and so on. The plugin is easy to use.

2. WordPress Form Builder

The Dynamic WordPress Form Builder is also a highly appreciated plugin (as it can help you create both complex and simple forms in several minutes, even if you do not have programming experience. The plugin is user-friendly and intuitive, and its purpose is to deliver forms that are easy to complete, so allowing your visitors to insert and view their information quickly and with no hassles.

It has a simple platform that helps you create mailing lists and contract forms, not to mention its wealth of features and functions from drop down lists and inventory updates to the ability to add contact details for each one of your users. If you have a WordPress website and you want to add a contact form to it, then I highly suggest the Dynamic WordPress Form Builder.

3. Tribber.

Every experienced blogger has heard of Tribber – if you are new to blogging and you still did not get in-depth knowledge in the field, then you should know that Tribber is a place where all the bloggers gather to share their posts and knowledge, to read content from other bloggers, to discuss aspects of blogging or share content for free. Tribber will automatically import your latest posts to the group as soon as you upload them, therefore your fellow bloggers will be kept updated with what you are posted – there is no better and faster way to get followers and to get more visitors to your page.

However, it must be stated that Tribber is not only aimed at bloggers – it can benefit companies who want to launch a company blog, as well as agencies who want to expand their target market and find more customers.

4. Google XML Sitemaps

Sitemaps are important for every website as they help increasing the ranking, so placing that particular website among the first search engine results in Google. In a nutshell, Google Sitemap Generator is a handy WordPress plugin that generates XML sitemaps. These sitemaps will benefit Ask.com, Yahoo, Bing and Google, since it is a lot easier for crawlers to analyze your website and index your latest posts. Moreover, Google Sitemap Generator supports not only WordPress generated pages, but URLs as well. It also keeps the search engines up-to-date regarding your latest posts.

5. Codestyling Localization

Have you ever wanted to manage all the gettxt translation files without accessing an external editor to do so? Now you can, with the Codestyling Localization plugin from WordPress, which allows you to manage and edit them directly from your WordPress Admin Center.

The plugin is automated: it scans the source files and it assists you when you use popular translators such as Google Translate or Translate. Moreover, this WordPress Plugin also comes with other useful features and functions that allow you to ignore certain versions – all the translations are fully compatible with PoEdit, therefore you do not need to worry about compatibility issues.

6. WP-ReCaptcha

ReCAPTCHA is a widely used method that is designed to limit spam, and unlike the classic CAPTCHAs you can see nowdays, WP-ReCAPTCHA uses a totally different approach that makes it even harder for spam bots to analyze and retrieve the random numbers and letters.

7. Simple 301 Redirects

The last WP plugin that can benefit your blog or website is Simple 301 Redirects, which allows you to easily redirect your visitors to another page, no matter if it is on your website or on the Web. This plugin is useful when you move from another platform to WordPress, and preserving your URL structure is impossible. It is easy to use and great for maintaining a steady number of visitors.

Conclusion

In conclusion, these are 7 of the most popular and useful WordPress plugins at the moment. In addition to being very useful and easy to use, these plugins can also be used completely free of charge!

Web Hosting is the place provided by various service providers to host your website online. To host your website online, one should have their own domain name.

The first essential information for beginners to web is to identify what Web Hosting is, what domain is and how business men and bloggers host their websites and blogs online.

One should need to have their domain name if they want to start their business online. For having blog, they can use the blog services provided by Blogger or WordPress. These sites give .blogspot.com or .wordpress.com domains for users. Once bloggers get good amount of experience, they move to self-hosted WordPress which is one of the best blogging platforms that helps them to host a professional blog in their own domains such as .com or .in or .eu etc. These domains are sold by domain registrar such as GoDaddy, Bigrock etc.

Once they have chosen a domain, they need a place to host their website online. For this you can host your own computer as well. But since you don’t always keep your computer 24*7 on, readers cannot get all the information. And one need to install all softwares and have security.

To get all these facilities, one go for best hosting providers. These hosting providers provide you space to host online and also provide you all the software’s and security that is needed to start your blog. Depending on the space they provide and the services they provide, these service providers charge you a certain amount of money for these services.

Basically they are three popular web hosting schemes that everyone provide. Limited, Shared and VPS hosting.

Limited Hosting gives a limited amount of space for your business or blog. It is generally suitable for small startups which need a limited amount of space and share their business information online, If you need much space, then best options are shared hosting and unlimited hosting.

Many hosting providers provide services for many users at same server. This is called shared hosting which is suitable for small/medium sized business organizations which may need to update content dynamically. If you are have big business, then you need to go for VPS hosting or dedicated hosting where your business will be given a dedicated server.

How much does Web hosting Cost?

There are several web features provided by service providers and each service has its own price. Every service provider charge their services depending on number of features provided and also based on popularity.

Some of the best ways of starting your business online is through Shared Hosting for self hosted WordPress users and more. Dedicated Hosting for professional websites, VPN server Hosting for businesses

Where do you get the best Hosting Information?

You can get information related to reliable web hosting tips from bloggers who have been using self hosting for their business blogs. Through them, you can have idea of different hosting services which can be used and selecting best option for your business

The term WordPress refers to the open source platform wherein you can publish blogs for optimized SEO utilization. It is a free web-based program that allows users to set up and maintain blogs with ease.

For a WordPress blog, the constantly evolving WordPress plugin ensure higher customization, easy to modify features and quick enhancements to the website or blog. WordPress is PHP based and all of the WordPress plugin developers add new services and functions to the weblog, giving users easy access to user-friendly features.

To accommodate your business needs, the plug-ins can be customized accordingly. From search engine optimization to social media support, WordPress plugin are available within the repositories. Many companies despite the economic recession have urgent need for the WordPress developers due to the constant need for customization, web management and content creation. In the virtual world, there is constant growth of web based business development and the need for best techniques and resources to stay on the forefront in demand. CMS platform that has been provided by WordPress has changed the face of website design and development, creating a strong presence in open source platforms.

Most companies hire WordPress plugin developers who are experts in development of PHP based plugin that have been scripted to meet individual requirements. The best aspect of WordPress is that it is one of the leading blogging platforms that have the capacity to launch a host of scripts like job boards, web forums and other Content Management System. The featured integrated link management aspect of WordPress blogs gives it the flexibility to be attached to websites.

The reason that you may need to hire WordPress plugin developers is because they have a high degree of knowledge and information about the designing and installation aspect of WordPress which maybe the basics of your website. They have the knowledge and expertise to design, implement WordPress plug-in development and customization that is needed for:

• Monitoring of web traffic

• Sitemap index generations

• Increasing web-security

• Integration of social media

• Add new podcasts, events and videos

• Add new SEO content

• Backup of data

• Enhancing SEO

When you hire WordPress plugin developers, it is best to ensure that they are using the latest technology and software for development of the themes while considering that it is compatible with the host of different web-browsers. However, you need to understand that your website or blog requires more than just plug-ins. You need to optimize them to ensure that the functionality of the website is optimized to the fullest.

And that is why it is necessary to hire WordPress plugin developers that have experience to work effectively and without much supervision. If you are looking at WordPress plugin development, it is best to hire the best company that does it at the most affordable prices.

Do you know that some ISP’s and search engines keep a record of the sites you visit and use? Because of that, hackers can find a way to gather your personal sensitive data thereby exposing you to malwares and spywares which will damage your files and computer.

Here’s how you can stop and/or prevent that:

1. Never put your full name and passwords on search engines.

2. Don’t use just one engine for searching -using different engines will make it harder for hackers to profile you.

3. Use different e-mail servers on different search engines for the same reason.

4. Request for a new IP address if you sense or suffer a malware infection.

5. Use these programs and apps for infection remedy and/or prevention:

a. Trusteer Rapport

b. Spam Poison

c. AVG Link Scanner

d. Anonymouse.org

e. TorProject.org

Reference: WorldPrivacyForum.org

If you browse with Google Chrome, you can use McAfee SiteAdvisor as a scanner for unsafe sights.

Now Google has a feature called Web History that automatically saves all of your Internet searches when logged onto any of their services -Gmail, Calendar, Reader, Docs, etc. It’s retained forever unless you turn it off or manually delete the contents. And if you want to do that, here’s how:

‘To do this simply head to the Web History s option, click “Remove items” on the left pane and then “Clear entire Web History” on the right. You can also choose to remove individual items. If you aren’t signed in to a Google Account, your search experience will still be customized based on past search information linked to a cookie on your browser. To disable this you have to search for something first, click “Web History” in the top right corner of the results page, and choose to disable customizations. You might also want to clear your browser’s cookies (more on that later). – http://www.techspot.com/guides/281-manage-search-engine-privacy/

If that didn’t work, you may need to clear your browser’s cache and cookies before you can see your changes. But keep in mind that, while deleting your cookies may resolve the problem, it will also remove your saved settings for sites you’ve previously visited.

If that still didn’t work (which would be unusual), try this:

1. Delete your history again.

2. Click the Sign out link in the top right corner of the page.

3. Sign in again at https://www.google.com/accounts/

The Ignored and Dangerous Flash Cookies

Flash cookies could be used by hackers to track what you do on-line, access your personal data, and worse, bring malware and havoc to your computers.

Here are some cookie facts:

1. They never expire

2. Your browsers are not aware of these cookies.

3. Super cookies or LSO’s usually cannot be removed by browsers.

4. There is no easy way to tell which flash-cookie sites are tracking you.

Controlling Your Cookies

Here’s how to control cookies manually:

Click the Tools menu then Options.

Click the Under the Hood tab then in the “Privacy” section, click Content settings.

On the “Cookies” tab, click Show cookies and other site data.

You can now decide which cookies you should delete. Click Close for the Cookies and Other Data dialog when you’re done. You should also use Clear Browsing Data or History after using your computer for the day. If you still want more safety, here is a small tool you can use:

FlashCookiesView is a small utility that displays the list of cookie files created by Flash component (Local Shared Object) in your Web browser. For each cookie file, the lower pane of FlashCookiesView displays the content of the file in readable format or as Hex dump. You can also select one or more cookie files, and then copy them to the clipboard, save them to text/html/xml file or delete them.

Java and WordPress are very much different, this is an attempt to compare and see where they intersect each other.

Java

Java is an enterprise Language, what it means it is used to build enterprise applications, what do we mean by that?

· A variety of clients can interact with applications like browsers, smart tablets, B2B applications, .NET and other language apps.

· High Security to support the standards.

· Highly Scalable to support the growing traffic.

· Performance – Begin compile time performance is high.

· E.g applications are Gaming, ECommerce websites, Billing, Retail, CRM and tons of others

Java can be used to create blogging CMS like WordPress. There are CMS’s like alfresco, Plone, JRoller whodo to attempt to that, but none has been able so popular as WordPress.

WordPress

Very specialized CMS/blogging engine build on top of PHP.

· It is very easy to learn software, compare it to learning MS Word.

· You don’t need to know PHP/programming to be WordPress website developer.

· It has a themes concept, which allows a developer to configure website pages with easy.

· Supports thousands of plugins, almost easy to find any kind of functionality a website needs.

· Installs on Apache Server with PHP engine.

· Many hosting sites support 1 click install.

· Uses MySQL as the backend engine.

As you see, WordPress and Java cannot be compared as one is a language where another is a software built on PHP language.

Had WordPress been written in Java

As a Java Developer, I do wish WordPress was built on Java, it would have given

1. Java applications a web flair, we would have to see all together new set of applications /widgets/ plugins.

2. Designers would have not been scared of the language at all.

3. Applications could have used the WordPress database, which has a very simple schema.

WordPress And Java Together

Resin Quercus

Resin is a Java Application server, but with a twist, it has a Quercus engine which allow PHP applications to installed as Java applications.

What does this mean, if a WordPress can be installed on Resin will run as a Java application and also take advantage of libraries like Spring, Hibernate,SOA.

Also, will definitely perform way better as it will be compiled only once and not be interpreted with every request like it does now

To have this integration working has its own challenges but good news is there is a way.

Summary

While WordPress has it own niche, creating CMS websites with blog functionality, it is the DeFacto Platform.

But when it comes to creating highly scalable enterprise Applications Java is the DeFacto Platform.

When you start to install this utility, you have the option to use the full Pro version for 15 days, after this it will revert to the Lite version.

Also on the installation window there is the option to participate in the Community Intelligence Network. This is optional and is explained on the install window.

The installation adds a BHO (Browser Helper Object) which is necessary for the program to function.

After installation it is necessary to reboot your computer.

The Pro version gives you Websearch results inspection, On-demand url scanning, Always-on exploit blocking, Internet connectivity monitor and Real-time site risk analysis. The Lite version will give you Websearch results inspection and On-demand url scanning.

This program analyzes sites in real time to detect a wide range of online threats including malicious content, phishing, social engineering and targeted software exploits.

You have the Link Scanner Console which resides in the Taskbar, simply right click the icon and you can open the Console.

Enter a URL, checkmark the ‘Automatically advance to the page if it is Safe’ and scan.

Exploit Prevention Labs say that LinkScanner Lite and LinkScanner Pro scan individual pages in real time, knowing that malicious hackers can hop from site to site, temporarily infecting them.

LinkScanner integrates with Google, Yahoo and MSN to check the search results and can warn you of exploits, hacked pages, malicious sites and phishing/fraud scams.

Enter a search term into a search engine and the results displayed will have symbols beside them.

Hold your cursor over the icons and a description will appear, click the icon and you will be taken to a definition page giving further information about the site and the reason for the rating.