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WordPress is one of the most widely used Content Management Systems (CMSs) on the web. At Electric Bricks, we use WordPress for all our custom website development and website design projects. This article provides helpful information on maximizing the impact of your WordPress content.
WordPress
Website Backups – A Critical Line of Defense for Your Website
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This post is directed at all current and future Electric Bricks clients.
As part of your website hosting and maintenance package (H&M), Electric Bricks regularly backs up your site files and database as an important safety measure. These backups are a critical part of your website management service and help ensure your site stays safe and can be restored in the event of a hacking attempt, malware attack, server crash, or user error. We did extensive research and testing, and an issue that we’ve discovered is that most WordPress backup software (including the software we were previously using) can have an adverse effect on server and site performance due to the way they work. They use up a lot of server resources and can sometimes slow a site down or cause other issues. Because of this, Electric Bricks is changing (and improving) the software and methodology we use to manage the backups we do for you.
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New Web Designs for Long Island Businesses and Organizations
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The Electric Bricks web design and development team has been building websites for businesses throughout the US for over a decade. And because our flagship office is on Long Island, this article will highlight some of the Long Island-based companies and organizations whose websites we have recently launched.
Web Design With Advanced Database Features
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Web development and creating websites with custom functionalities is at the core of what we do at Electric Bricks. More than just designing a pretty site, custom web development allows us to solve the unique challenges our clients face and helps them stand out from their competition. When Long Island Lacrosse Journal approached us for a site with a custom database to accurately track and report statistics for every single Long Island high school lacrosse team, game, and player we were eager to roll up our sleeves and get to work.
The Last Days of Flash
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A few years ago, Adobe announced it would stop supporting, updating, and distributing Flash Player by the end of 2020. Google Chrome and other popular browsers are set to stop supporting Flash this year, as well. And although Flash integration has decreased, there are still an estimated 100 million websites using this soon-to-be-extinct technology.
Customizing Views in the WordPress Dashboard
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Have you ever gone into one of the list views in WordPress, such as the All Posts or All Pages list, and thought the view was too cluttered and confusing? Well, there’s a simple way to clean up almost any view to show only the information you need to see. Log into your Dashboard and navigate to the list you’d like to customize and take a look in the top-right corner. You should see a tab called Screen Options with a small down-arrow. Click the tab to expand it and, depending upon the options installed on your site, you should see something that looks like this:
All you need to do is uncheck the columns of information you don’t want to see. It’s that easy. All Electric Bricks client sites have the WordPress SEO plugin installed and it adds 4 new columns to almost every list view: SEO, SEO Title, Meta Desc. and Focus KW. By default all of these are turned on. To hide them, just uncheck them, like I did here, and you won’t see them in that list any longer.
If you have lots of posts or pages on your site you may also be frustrated with the relatively small number of items shown in a list. By default, WordPress only shows 20 items in a list. But as you can see from my settings above, I’ve increased my list to show 50 at a time. This can make finding a particular post or page much quicker.
Of course, don’t forget that you can always just do a search to find that needle in a haystack. You’ll find the search field in the upper-right corner of a list view, just below the Screen Options tab. Just type in a word that’s in the title or body of the page you’re looking for and you’ll quickly get back a list of results.
BulletProof Security for EB WordPress Clients
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You may not be aware, but there have been a rash of new attacks on sites running WordPress. Recently, several sites I manage ( including my own! 😡 ) have been victims. Thankfully, nothing serious happened and no one lost any content or valuable information. In fact, I discovered the breaches and remedied the situation before anyone was aware there was even a problem. But it was a reminder for me about staying vigilant and looking for ways to further safeguard my clients’ websites. So, in addition to making some “under-the-hood” changes to all WordPress sites, I’ve also installed a special security plugin for all customers with a maintenance agreement called BulletProof Security.
Write Where You Are – Get Going with WordPress Mobile
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Let me guess. You spend your entire day sitting behind your laptop in a nice quiet office with a fresh cup of coffee close at hand. There are no distractions and you have plenty of time to focus solely on the blog article you’re writing this week. Maybe you’ll even have time left over to start planning your next article or getting a jump on your taxes.