Need WordPress help for your specific website? Have a question that you want answered by a live human in real time? Look no further. Our Founder (Jaki Levy) is offering free WordPress help for you, every Wednesday.
What’s the catch? No catch.
Every Wednesday, he will offer a (free) 30 minute session. Just find a 30 minute time slot that works for you, and get your WordPress questions answered. Think of it like open office hours, but virtual.
Our doors open. We’d love to help you. So come on in! Schedule your session and get your initiatives off the ground today.
Note: We are not asking for any monetary contributions for this service. However – if you would like to spread the love, please consider making a contribution to World Central Kitchen ahead of our 30 minute session. They have been helping individuals throughout the pandemic, and are continuing relief efforts for Ukrainian refugees.
About Jaki Levy
Jaki is a 15 year WordPress veteran. He’s helped build websites for MoMA, MTV, Sotheby’s, and other global brands. In addition to building custom WordPress websites, he’s taught small business owners how to optimize their websites (and businesses) for maximum performance. In some instances, he’s helped business double their revenue, year over year.
This is your friendly reminder to update your passwords. As the title of this post reads, Facebook was hacked earlier today and over 50 million user accounts were compromised.
You might have noticed this earlier this morning – many users were automatically logged out of the service (including me). Yeah, I know. Pretty annoying. But it’s a big deal.
Here’s a few things you should do start doing today and over the course of the next few days to keep yourself and your friends safe online –
1. Update Your Facebook Password, Like Right Now
When doing this, make sure to use a unique and secure password. This means that you should use a totally unique password on Facebook, and that you should not use that same password on any other site. It should also be a very long and difficult password to remember. Like so long and complex that you probably have to write it down with a real pen.
2. Use a Password Manager
We use Dashlane to manage passwords. Password managers are very helpful because they remember your passwords for you. They also help you set very secure passwords that you do not have to remember. There are other password managers such as LastPass and 1Password. For those that are shopping around or want to do more research, here’s an article from LifeHacker that reviews the various password managers.
3. Use 2 Factor Authentication (2FA)
If you’ve got a cell phone, you can setup 2 Factor Authentication for your important accounts (think bank accounts, email, and twiter). When anyone (including you) tries to log into those accounts, you’ll receive a text message confirmation code before you can login. This helps prevent unauthorized login attempts, and is pretty cool. Google has a pretty nice overview of why 2FA is important and how to set it up for your Google Account.
For more info about Password Managers and this specific Facebook hack, check out the blog on Dashlane. And if you have any questions, feel free to post a comment or contact us directly 🙂
Good luck, and believe me, after setting up that password manager, you won’t worry as much next time Facebook (or another site) gets hacked.
Next week, WP Engine (an industry leading WordPress web hosting company) will be hosting their annual WP Engine Agency Summit. And we’ll be there to report back what the leading trends are in the world of WordPress.
This 2 day conference brings together leaders of the digital landscape, who are developing cutting edge solutions to today’s problems. We’re certainly looking forward to connecting with companies such as IBM, Google, Amazon Web Services and Cloudflare, along with organizations like the New York City’s Mayor’s Office, and agencies like R/GA.
We’re also proud to be an ongoing WP Engine Agency Partner. We’ve been working with WP Engine for quite some time, and seeing them create such a robust summit is highly encouraging, not only for the field of WordPress, but the entire digital world.
The conference happens on September 26th, so if you’re interested in joining us, you might want to hit that Register button, like right now. Or you can follow along on the blog. And hey, maybe we’ll even revive our twitter account for this event. No promises, tho 😉
California is known for its competitive tech landscape. Arrow Root Media is known for our responsive web design and development. What do you get when you put the two together?
We’re proud to say that it’s an announcement naming us a Top Web Designer and Top UX Agency in San Francisco!
Last week, the DC-based ratings & reviews firm, Clutch, listed us as one of their top B2B Service Providers in California.The site gathering client feedback via in-depth interviews, which is then combined with analysts’ market research to create verified listings of the best service providers in the digital space.
We’re not alone in emphasizing the importance of responsive web design, and now we’re happy to say we’re not alone in priding ourselves as a top agency.
We pride ourselves in helping organizations create transformative digital exeriences, and we’d love to hear from you. Hit us up, say congrats, or start planning your next project with us.
The Impact Hub in San Francisco (where we’re based out of) is hosting a networking and promotion event to support The Cartier Women’s Initiative Awards (https://www.cartierwomensinitiative.com). This is an annual competition giving coaching, mentoring, media visibility, and a chance to win up to $100,000. Drinks and snacks will be provided.
There are clear requirements for anyone wishing to participate in the Initiative.
To be considered for the Cartier Women’s Initiative Awards, the project must be an original for-profit early-stage business (1 to 3 years old) led by a woman.
For-profit: the business should be designed to generate revenues, non-profit project proposals not accepted.
Early stage: the business should be in the initial phase of its development (between 1-3 years)
Revenue generation: the business should currently be generating revenue. It being understood that a business that is generating revenue is not necessarily profitable in its first years of operations.
Women leadership & ownership: The main leadership position must be filled by a woman either in the capacity of Director, General Manager or CEO. She must also own significant stake within the company. The ownership of the business is evaluated based on the position of the candidate in relation to other stakeholders
Hopefully, we’ll see you at the upcoming networking event!
This year’s inaugural WordCamp US was hosted in Philadelphia. Over 2,000 WordPress makers and users attended the conference. Below are some photos I took while at the conference in Philadelphia.
Ever since I’ve been attending WordCamp SF, Matt Mullenweg would deliver his “State of The Word” , summarizing key concepts and developments in the WordPress world.
You can watch this year’s State of The Word Below :
You have just completely re-done your website and it looks amazing! So, what about your Search Engine Optimization (SEO)? SEO is very important for making your website easy for both users and search engine robots to understand. Did the company that re-did your site offer you SEO services to optimize your site afterwards? After doing a website redesign it is very important to have an SEO professional go through your site to ensure that all pages were redirected properly and everything has been optimized.
Arrow Root Media recently re-designed a website for Daxor Corporation, Inc. After we finished our re-design, we performed an SEO Audit on the site to identify any errors and warnings that we may have missed during the process. We uncovered several issues, submitted these findings to them with a game plan on how to improve their new site’s performance in the search engines and immediately got to work correcting these issues. We optimized every page on their site including news posts and blog posts.
Here are some important things that need to be looked at after any website re-design:
Redirects
Redirects are one of the most important things to think about during a website redesign. Ensuring that proper pages are redirected to the correct location is vital to your existing SEO. These redirects tell search engines to rank the new page instead of ranking the old one that doesn’t exist anymore.
Redirects should always be 301 redirects. These will tell the search engines to pass the rankings from your old pages to the new pages. In addition, they will send your users to the correct page.
All pages that are redirected should be redirected to a similar page and not just to the home page or a non-relevant page
When redirects are not done at all or done correctly, Google will reset the value of the new pages that were created. These pages will go to a 404 page not found and drop out of the rankings. A lot of times this causes a loss in rankings and in traffic.
Site Architecture
Site Architecture is the process of how the pages are organized on the site and linked together to make sense. Google passes value from one page to the next based on where the pages are located on the website as well as internal links. Pages that a closer knit to the home page or other major pages on the site will rank higher than those that are lower in the hierarchy.
Each page has a topic or focus keyword/phrase that Google values it for and ranks it for that keyword/phrase that has been assigned to that page. Each target keyword/phrase requires a certain amount of value, or a certain score to compete with other websites in the search results targeting that same target keyword/phrase.
When a website changes how the site architecture is set up, it can cause some pages to have less internal links, or be linked to pages that may have less value to pass on. It is important that your SEO professional make the necessary changes to the site’s architecture properly as to get the best ranking from the search engines.
Content
Changing content on your site after a website design can cause Google to re-evaluate the relevancy of the page for the target keyword/phrase. If priority keywords are removed from important areas (Title, Body content, meta description and SEO titles), the relevancy score will drop and overall rankings and traffic will drop as well.
Having an SEO professional go through your site with a fine tooth comb to uncover where all the errors and warnings may be hiding after your re-design is the best way to prevent any loss in traffic. In fact, with your rocking new site and SEO re-integrated, your traffic should actually improve.
Let Arrow Root Media help you with your SEO and ensure that your site is functioning properly.
Sign Up for a free site audit to see how you can improve your site!
The Nepal earthquake was the deadliest earthquake to strike the region during our lifetimes. With a perspective of hope and optimism, we are looking for ways technology is being utilized to help in the recovery efforts. From the first moments of the quake to many weeks after, we’ve seen people mobilize on the ground, and online to help organizations, individuals, and communities recover.
From day one tech companies have been making a real difference. Facebook activated the Safetycheck feature that helps people find out if their loved ones are safe. Facebook also stepped up to the fundraising raising plate. Over 750,000 people donated via Facebook, contributing over $15 million to support the International Medical Corps relief effort. Facebook donated an additional $2 million to local recovery efforts to help those in affected areas. Facebook did not act alone. Skype and WhatsApp also made call to the area free to place for days after the disaster.
We would like to remind you that all Skype calls from Nepal to landlines and mobile remain free: http://t.co/FoY3BkFvJ3
More than $415 million is required for the 8 million+ people affected by the earthquake in Nepal. As of May 19th, there has been only 17% of required aid met.
— UN OCHA Asia Pacific (@OCHAAsiaPac) May 19, 2015
To address these unmet needs, we asked “How might we support those who are committing to innovate, fundraise and help using #techforgood in Nepal?” It is in this spirit that we’ve created this resource guide.
Whether you want to get involved directly or understand how social media, crowdsourcing and technology are making a difference, we hope this is useful for you. Below is a collection of our favorite tools and efforts that are making a difference today.
Learn to map!
For Nepal, map data is key to humanitarian missions. Opensource maps are giving critical information to groups on the ground. Read about the movement of thousands joining to map around the world. MapGive helps new volunteers learn to map and get involved in online tasks. Start an account and learn here. And make sure to take a look at the Open Streetmap in action.
Anyone can logon and share data sets about Nepal to keep the public and relief teams informed. Launched by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the Humanitarian Digital Exchange is an open source platform where data comes to life.
A picture is worth a thousand words. This picture, though, is likely worth alot more. Take a look at this to view the continued tremors visualized. The number of lives impacted is simply heartbreaking.
Give!
Gift guides recommend giving cash over in-kind donations. So what kind of giver are you? We’ve seen a lot of momentum being built by crowdsourcing campaigns that aim to give directly to people and combat corrupt local officials that may misuse funds. NGOs and relief groups are also very helpful. They bring years of experience and are set up to release funds before you donate so they can respond quickly.
The UN Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) has already released $15 million to kick-start immediate life-saving relief work in Nepal. CERF receives contributions year-around so that humanitarian partners can act quickly when and where crises strike.
Looking to support untraditional disaster relief teams? Life IndieGoGo, Ketto.org, and #WeHelpNepal all have very successful crowdfunding campaigns to participate in and take note.
We’re also seeing individuals expand their reach by starting crowdfunding campaigns for large NGOs! By acting as ambassadors for the organizations, individuals are increasing the organizations’ impact. And it’s all based on telling personal stories that cause like minded people to take action.
Share Your Story
Let us know what you find inspiring. How are you making change? Have you seen anything noteworthy worth sharing? What ways are you using #techgood to make a difference?
Arrow Root Media is proud to have posted a new article on Torque Magazine! Torque is an online WordPress magazine that has a ton of information for the WordPress community (people like you). We’re long time readers so are happy to be contributors.
The article reviews Google’s new search algorithm. This time they have been so kind to announce it before it happened. Much thanks to the guys at Google…we greatly appreciate the heads up!
Basically Google will now be using “mobile-friendliness” as a ranking factor for websites. For the web savvy – this we’re talking RWD (Responsive Web Design).
We all use mobile devices and scroll the internet in any given place at any given time. It only makes sense that Google would eventually “grade” websites based on their “mobile-friendliness”. Google announced that this change in algorithm will be released on April 21, 2015.
Be sure to check out the article to see how you can ensure your site is “mobile-friendly” and ready for this next update. And – as always, if you need help getting your site “mobile-friendly” ready, please be sure to contact us and we can help!
The Brooklyn Country Cantina is an annual party produced by The Defibulators and friends. The event features loads of bands and is an unofficial party that happens during the annual SXSW festival held in Austin.
This year, we were on hand to help setup, tweet, post some videos, and provide some on site tech support. Here’s a short clip of The Mastersons – one of the many bands we shot – on video – during the earlier part of the day.
If you want some more good stuff, definitely check out the photos posted by The Bluegrass Station. They’re a fantastic set of images shot by a local Austin photog!
Overall, there were about 30 bands over the course of the day. So we went ahead and made a little playlist for your enjoyment via Spotify. Hope you enjoy that music! We did.
There’s loads of parties and bands that come to Austin for SXSW. According to Operation Every Band, there’s over 2,100 bands playing in Austin over just 1 week! That’s an average of 300 bands every day. Some bands we met played over 10 shows in just a few days.
So we’re thrilled that some folks think this is the best party during the festival. Aw Shucks. Now we’re blushing.
For even more SXSW musical goodness, make sure to check out NPR’s SXSW short list. It features 100 songs from musicians that played at SXSW. Some of those musicians played at our very own event. And all the songs are downloadable. Thanks, NPR!!!
And many many thanks to The Defibulators for putting this whole shebang together! We’ll see you next year at SXSW!
Google rates your site on relativity, keyword usage, site structure, site speed, time visitors spend on your site, number of inbound links and quality of inbound links. The way your website is built and optimized depends on how many organic visitors your site will get.
To help you gain more traffic, Arrow Root Media is offering a complimentary site review to see how your site performs with these metrics. We will then set up a call with you to go over these results and explain what everything means so we can discuss performing a full SEO Audit of your site.
We love helping businesses succeed and operate more efficiently, which is why we are doing this!
The full SEO Audit is an extensive site audit to identify exactly what errors and warnings are affecting your site and where they are so we can correct them effectively. During the SEO Audit we will also perform a keyword research to target your audience better using relative keywords. Identifying the issues that your site has and correcting them enhances the search engines’ ability to crawl your site effectively and turn your pages up in the search results when people search for what you are offering.
After the audit has been completed and written up in detail, we develop a game plan to best suite you and your business. This will include correcting any and all errors that were uncovered during the audit, optimizing your site’s pages, blog posts, etc.
We also help you develop an online presence through social media, creating brand awareness. Posting relevant and shareable content that people will want to read and share on these social media channels greatly increases organic traffic to your site. People want to read something that is relevant to what they are dealing with or experiencing at the time. If this information is engaging, they will then share this information with friends, family, etc. increasing overall visibility of your site in the process.
We understand that every business is different, has different needs and different clientele. We customize your game plan depending on your specific needs and locations.
Arrow Root Media has been able to help many companies increase their organic search traffic. We have uncovered major site issues: Missing sitemaps, missing image alt tags, missing meta descriptions, URLs that are too long, duplicate page titles, duplicate content and many other issues. We use many different places such as Yelp, Manta, Yellow Pages, Google Places, Google+, and many more to ensure that people are able to find your site, what you are offering and get the information they are looking for.
Ensuring that your site utilizes all of these things will greatly increase your organic online presence which in turn can increase your overall revenue. Drawing in the people that are looking for what you have to offer, turns into sales.
To our clients – a message from our hosting partner –
The majority of Cloud Providers across the world will be conducting maintenance for a security related issue. In order to implement the patch, our 3rd party data center providers will be rebooting. For more information about providers responding to the situation please visit this article: https://gigaom.com/2015/02/27/xen-security-issue-prompts-amazon-rackspace-cloud-reboots/
3rd party data center providers have informed us that they will be conducting a maintenance across their environment on March 5, 2015 for 24 hours. We believe that the maintenance may result in a brief interruption of service to your site during a server reboot. We are contacting customers immediately to let them know of this emergency maintenance.
This maintenance window spans the entire 24 hours and the reboot could happen at any time during the maintenance window. We expect a brief period of downtime while the providers implement the patch. Outside of the brief downtime, there should be no impact to your site. We will be monitoring the situation closely.
Last year, I rode my bike 545 miles in 1 week from SF to LA. With 2,500 other cyclists, we raised over $15 million to benefit the SF AIDS Foundation and the Los Angeles LGBT Center. This is what AIDS Lifecycle is. An amazing community of cyclists, activists, and caring people. All riding to make a real difference.
This year, to help raise even more money, we’re providing web services in exchange for donations. And it all goes to AIDS Lifecycle. The way this works is pretty easy. You need web help. We provide that help. Instead of paying us cash, you provide a tax deductible donation directly to the ride. Not sure what we do? Take a look at our wide range of services.
Interested? Just fill out the form below and let us know what you need help with.
And yes – there are limitations. We can’t build you a social network like Facebook or an ecommerce store that has Amazon.com like features in exchange for a donation. Unless that donation is really really big, of course. Then we’ll find a way 🙂
As part of our “Get Your Sh*t Together before 2015” campaign, we’re offering small businesses free Google Apps setup help.
What does this mean?
Well – if you’re still using GoDaddy, Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail, or yes – even a gmail.com email address for your business, it’s time to get your sh*t together. We’ll help you setup a professional, spam free, email address for your business (like [email protected]) and make sure it’s being delivered by Google.
We made an announcement on our Facebook page (below) but not sure if peeps saw it. So here we are. Writing a blog post.
If you’re ready to “Get Your Sh*t Together” , contact us via the form below.
[gravityform id=”12″ name=”Get your sh*t Together” description=”false”]
Note :
If you’re a large business or enterprise and need help migrating your email to Google Apps OR you need help setting up your emails on your mobile phon tablet devices, please let us know in the form above. We can guide you through the process, but it won’t be free.
Also – if we end up getting a crazy amount of demand, well, it’s free folks. We’ll do our very best to process and automate things as quickly as we can.
And if you really need more info – read the stuff below –
What is Google Apps?
Google Apps is a cloud-based productivity suite that helps teams communicate, collaborate and get things done from anywhere and on any device. It’s simple to set up, use and manage, so your business can focus on what really matters.
Millions of organizations around the world count on Google Apps for professional email, file storage, video meetings, online calendars, document editing and more.
Looking professional matters, and that means communicating as [email protected]. Gmail’s simple, powerful features help you build your brand while getting more done.
Access from any location or device
Check email, share files, edit documents, hold video meetings and more whether you’re at work, at home or in transit. You can pick up where you left off from a computer, tablet or phone.
Enterprise-level management tools
Robust admin settings give you total command over users, devices, security and more. Your data always belongs to you, and it goes with you if you switch solutions.
We believe in the power in the digital tools to respond, shape conversations and take action in times of urgency.
And we’re both saddened & disgusted by the situation in Ferguson. The weight of the situation lingers in the air leaving many of our friends & colleagues asking “What’s next? What can I do? Why should I care? Does this even affect me?”
Yes.
Our network has a rich trove of information and sentiment. We connect with community organizers and nonprofits every day in the media space. And so we are writing this post as an inspiration for everyone reading this.
Dig deeper. Express yourself. Learn. Shape the dialog. And unite in solidarity with #Ferguson.
Every action matters. Your voice counts. Do what you can. Don’t let apathy be the rule of the day. Stand together because #blacklivesmatter!
Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen an amazing amount of Collaborative Community Organizing. And over the last few days, people in 37 states have been protesting in the street, stopping traffic, and expressing their desire for justice. Below are a few exemplary sites and projects we’ve found over the last 24 hours. And of course – if you have your own to share, please let us know in the comments!
Links!
No Indictment.org is a google doc (as of now) put together by local community organizers in Ferguson. It’s been a great low-tech way to get critical mass, and massive collaboration in place.
Ferguson Response is a collection of national events taking place. If you’d like to add your own event, or local action, go to the site. Or join an event already posted.
QZ posted a nice article on “things white people can do.” A great read on creating more empathy, and taking direct action.
There has also been a focus on Social Media’s role in bringing people together.
No surprise here. Tools like twitter and Nationbuilder have helped communities organize, fundraise, and spread the word. It’s been a welcome change to the mainstream media, and is a direct example of “democratizing publishing” as well giving people the chance to express themselves.
#BlackLivesMatter is powerful not just as a microaffirmation, but as a hashtag, it becomes a group utterance, it ties us to each other.
And if you are looking for a direct way to help – donate to Nicole Lee’s fund. She is voluntarily working as a legal observer in Ferguson, and documenting what is happening – on the ground.
On a day to day basis, we provide countless organizations and businesses WordPress support. And WordPress’ mission is to “democratize publishing.” We believe that part of this mission extends to free speech, and the ability to express yourself freely – physically, technically, emotionally. So we support the efforts to organize locally. And to do what you can to make your life matter.
We’d love to hear your thoughts. Please feel free to comment below and add your resources.
Updated
Have an idea for a solution? Submit it to #FergusonNext, a solution-based collaboration between Guardian US Opinion, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch Editorial Page, Ebony.com, Colorlines, The St. Louis American and The St. Louis Riverfront Times.
If you’re reading this post, chances are you’re looking for a performance boost. And that’s no surprise. A slow site can cost you dearly. In fact, over 50% of web surfers will ditch your site if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.
According to this NY Times article, “People will visit a Web site less often if it is slower than a close competitor by more than 250 milliseconds (a millisecond is a thousandth of a second).”
So – what are some things you can do to speed up your WordPress site?
1. Check out the tips below for the DIY kind of stuff. We’ve got a short list of how we make WordPress sites speedy. And now you can too.
2. If you don’t have the in house knowledge, let us know! We’d be glad to do it for you :-).
Make sure you’re on a good great host
A great host can make all the difference. If your site is running on a slow server or bad host, it doesn’t matter what you do. Your site’s still gonna crawl.
Case in point – we recently migrated FuseCorps.org from their old host to WP Engine. We used Pingdom tools to test the speed of fusecorps.org before and after the migration.
Before the migration, the site took 6.25 seconds to load on their old host.
FuseCorps.org – Before The Migration
After? The load time was 1.86 seconds. That’s more than 3x faster.
FuseCorps.org Performance on WP Engine
The migration alone shaved nearly 5 seconds off the load time. And the site went from being slower than 76% of all sites on the web to Faster than 73% of all tested websites, according to Pingdom.
Again – all we did was migrate the site to WP Engine. And this gave them a huge performance boost. Win!
Setup a CDN
A CDN (Content Delivery Network) will make sure static files (things like images) are delivered from a nearby server. So if your site’s visitor is checking out your content in Maine, your images will be delivered from a server close to Maine. There are many CDN’s out there – personally, we loveCloudFlare. And it’s free. We tend to use WP Engine’s CDN for our clients. But if you’re not on WP Engine (yet), Cloudflare is a great option to get going.
WordPress has loads of plugins to optimize your site. One of the most popular is W3 Total Cache. It’s a technical plugin and takes time to setup. But the performance boost is massive. Here’s a great video on how to get it setup :
Aside from W3 Total Cache, I’d recommend installing P3 by GoDaddy. This plugin will tell all sorts of things to help you identify what’s slowing down your site.
BWP Minify (make your CSS and Javascript files smaller)
WP Smush.it (smushes images, making them quicker to load)
One note : your host may not allow certain plugins (like W3 Total Cache) to run on their servers. This can be a good thing. It means they are savvy enough to take care of things for you!
Use Varnish Cache
Whenever you visit a website, your web browser caches the content, the images, and other web files. Next time you visit the site on the same browser, it’ll be much faster to load.
Just like your browser, your server can also have a cache enabled. Varnish Cache works in a similar way as your browser’s – except it’s the cache for your web server. And since WordPress uses a database for so many things, the server cache can store a large amount of database lookups, saving you and your visitors lots of time.
Varnish Cache is typically setup by your hosting company or a sysAdmin. So – either ask your host or sysAdmin what they can do to setup Varnish. Or migrate to a host that already uses Varnish (are you getting the subtle hint to migrate to WP Engine yet?).
Other Resources
For even more details on optimizing your WordPress, check out :
We’re also proud to be an ongoing WP Engine Agency Partner. We’ve been working with WP Engine for quite some time, and seeing them create such a robust summit is highly encouraging, not only for the field of WordPress, but the entire digital world.
