WordPress – The Heart's Design https://theheartsdesign.com WordPress website design for creatives with heart Tue, 03 Nov 2020 16:41:55 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.4 https://theheartsdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/THD-LogoHeart-RainbowGradient.svg WordPress – The Heart's Design https://theheartsdesign.com 32 32 Do not guess your SEO, use Rank Math SEO to be found online https://theheartsdesign.com/do-not-guess-your-seo-use-rank-math-seo-to-be-found-online/ Wed, 27 May 2020 11:35:36 +0000 https://www.staging5.theheartsdesign.com/?p=960 When it comes to Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) it can feel like a black hole that’s going to suck you in with loads of wasted time for no real result. That’s true if you don’t think clearly about what you’re trying to achieve. I definitely advocate having an SEO plugin on your WordPress website. In particular, I recommend Rank Math SEO. It’s a free plugin .. we like free when its this good!

Let me be clear, I am not paid to write this, have no affiliation with them but if they did that then I would. I’m a fan of their plugin and what it does for free.

This is a long one so, grab that cuppa and a note pad.

When it comes to writing blog posts, it’s a good idea to focus it around one keyword or phrase for a subject area that you are wanting to be found for, and indexed by Google and other search engines. I wrote a blog post about what to focus on to boost your blog posts for SEO. This blog post you’re currently reading now teaches you how to do it.

Don’t let your SEO be a guessing game, let RankMath teach you what to improve and how you’ll show up on search engines.

A magnifying glass on a blue background, sybmolical image for searching for things on google.
Feature image photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

Focus on one topic per blog

If you’re a wedding photographer, with no weddings to publish right now, why not write a blog post about a venue you’ve worked at. Sharing a few of your best photos from weddings at that venue, showing the different locations and the great features about that venue. Your keyword would then be that wedding venue location.

This means that you’ll be found as a wedding photographer who photographs at that venue. Repeat this for all venues you enjoy working at.

But, back to SEO and how to use RankMath.

Blog Post Graphic sharing the title Don't guess your SEO, use Rank Math SEO to be found online. A square sharable graphic.

Why I like RankMath SEO

The reason I love Rank Math SEO the best out of the main three SEO tools I know which are Yoast, All In One SEO and RankMath .. I love it because it’s explicit in what you can improve on your blog post for SEO. It literally tells you and your RankMath button turns from red, to yellow to green. So easy to understand when you’re doing good. If you want to know more, check out their comparison chart of what RankMath does versus the others.

There are many features and abilities that this tool does for free, that other plugins charge you for. Like Search Console integration, complete site wide analysis of your SEO and how to improve it, tracking 404 errors which is when your website bloops and links to missing content. I could keep going but for now I want to focus on your blog posts and what do to for that.

First step, write your blog post.

Write a blog post title that includes the main topic keyword or phrase .. about that topic you’re going to write.

Include that same phrase into the first sentence, or at least the first paragraph of your blog post. Do this in a human way. Words are powerful and can be said in a multitude of ways. You’ll notice that my post is about Search Engine Optimisation and I included that phrase in my first sentence. Within the first paragraph of this post, I’ve also mentioned RankMath SEO, the main topic of this post. Let that be your guide/inspiration of what you’re aiming to do on yours.

Write the rest of your blog post with no other aim than to get those those out of your head and on the screen (or document or notepad if you write there first). Then edit, refine and condense it so that there is little to no waffle filling. Say what you’re going to say.

Fire up RankMath SEO and add your keyword/phrase.

On the top right of your WordPress blog writing screen you’ll see a pinky red button with a number out of 100.

Screenshot showing where to find the RankMath SEO options on a blog post.

Click on this button to open up your RankMath SEO options.

It will open up a side panel on the right and it will you a preview of what search engines will display about your blog, ie. its title, the link and a short description. Beneath that preview screen is the first main point of focus, your keyword or phrase.

THD RankMathSEO FocusKeyword

Into this box type your blog posts main keyword or phrase followed by a comma. So mine will be Rank Math SEO for this blog .. funny that huh, its their example too! One of the few times this coincidence will happen for me. If your keyword or phrase doesn’t turn into a yellow button, then its not an active keyword for RankMath to focus on.

An animation showing the blog post keyword being entered into RankMath SEO focus keyword.

You’ll also notice that I ticked this as Pillar Content, this means that this is content that is evergreen and always useful. Relating back to Wedding Photographers, if you are writing about a single wedding, this is not Pillar Content. If you are writing about a venue, I would say that is pillar content as that is about a venue that will be there for a long time. It’s useful information to your wedding parties. The same with talking all variety of suppliers you work with and how you work as a wedding photographer.

Now you’ve set your keyword, you’ll notice that the rankings out of 100 on the top button changes. Mine has now changed from 17 and a pink button upto 76 and a yellow button. It’s learning how to help us do our SEO better.

THD RankMathSEO MainButtonBlockSetting

TIP: At this point in using the block editor in WordPress you’ll want to be able to flip between editing blocks and then viewing your Rank Math SEO tips again. If you want the WordPress blocks view to edit your text or image alt tags click on the cog, that’s your blog block settings. If you want to view the RankMath SEO tips, click on the colour button.

Refine your blog using RankMaths’ SEO Tips.

RankMath SEO Basic SEO tips showing that I've ticked all but one key point in my basic SEO ticklist.

You’ll see above that in the course of writing this blog post for you that I’ve done the main key tick points of SEO for this article. I now need to write a better SEO description that includes my particular keyword phrase ‘Rank Math SEO’.

You can do this by editing the Snippet.

Screenshot sharing how and where to edit the SEO Description Snippet using RankMath.

When I do this it pushes my SEO score into the 80+ out of 100 and the button turns green. YES! This is the point that I know this blog post will do okay for SEO.

Of course, I can spend extra time refining further and getting my remaining errors down, most of which are simple to do.

All the tips from RankMath SEO that teach what errors to fix to get closer to that elusive 100% SEO tick list goal.

It gives advice on blog post titles to include a positive or negative word, to also use power words. But, we also need to understand that not every title needs to follow this otherwise a scan of your blog post titles will start looking formulaic. So understand that these are guidances and not firm and fast rules, some rules need to be understood and then broken with a reason.

There’s one error I nearly always fail in for Content Readability and that’s using a table of contents. I’ll get there folks, one day but for now .. it’s not a focus of my efforts to fix that last niggle.

In order to improve your SEO now that you’ve got your tips on what to do, you’ll need to go back to your blog and edit stuff.

WordPress Tips for how to do this in the block editor

This is the WordPress block editor

THD RankMathSEO WordPressBlockEditor

This is the standard WordPress blog post block editor. Each block can contain different types of content: text, images, headings, quotes, groups, columns and so much more.

Each block has its own settings. While the full blog post document has its own settings too, which is where you’ll find your categories, tags and more.

How to access the block editor settings and Rank Math settings

Earlier in the post I said that you will need to flip between the WordPress block editor settings of your blog and RankMath settings as well. Let me refresh that tip so its fresh in your mind.

How to switch between the WordPress blocks editor settings and RankMath. ie. its the Cog and the RankMath colour coded button.

Creating Internal and External Links

Creating a link in WordPress is pretty easy. Select the words you want to create into a link and then hit the ‘link’ button.

For internal links, type a few of the words of the blog post title you want to link to and it will bring up that post. I’d advise adding the link to a group of descriptive words. You’ll see above and right now, that I can internally link to a blog post I wrote previously about SEO boosting tips for blog posts, where I show the visual anatomy of a blog post and what impacts on SEO.

THD RankMathSEO InternalLinks

For external links, you’ll need to have the URL address of the place you want to link to on the internet. In this case I’m going to link directly to the RankMath website. So that you can do your research and also download the plugin for your WordPress website. Always set external links to open in a New Tab. This means that your viewers are not being taken immediately away from your website, the link will open in a new tab and your website will remain in their browser for them to come back to.

Animated preview of how to add external links within WordPress

Changing your blog post title

If you wish to change your title to add power words, or you’re just wanting to improve the title from what you originally wrote. The go-to the top of the blog post and edit the title.

TIP: check your blog post permalink.

A visual guide of the Permalink structure in WordPress so that you know where to edit the URL of your blog post to fit between 50 and 75 characters.

You can edit your SEO to be a simpler version of your blog post title. It’s best to have a blog URL between 50 to 75 characters. This does not include the main part of your domain but the bit in bold after your domain name.

Image Alt Text

Ah, now these are a powerhouse. This is where you get to be descriptive (but not too wordy) about what the image is portraying. This is where the power of words comes in, you get to describe using your keyword / phrase what the purpose of that image is, ie. the value it’s giving.

A visual guide of the Image Alt Tag box  in WordPress blocks editor so that you know where write the purpose of that image.

The Alt Text that I wrote for the above image is: A visual guide of the Image Alt Tag box in WordPress blocks editor so that you know where write the purpose of that image.

Alt text is also a powerful accessibility feature for those who are blind. Screen readers read through a website and any images that bring value to what the text is talking about, that image alt text is spoken aloud letting that person know what the image is about. Write in that box what you’d want described to your blind reader and google will also benefit, as well as you.

Now you know about Rank Math SEO and how to use it, here’s how to install it.

Within your WordPress admin dashboard you’ll see a menu on the left for Posts, Pages, Appearance etc. Look for Plugins and then Add New. In the search box on the right, enter the words Ranks Math SEO and it will show the results. Click Install Now to add the plugin to your WordPress website.

THD RankMathSEO InstallPlugin

From here it will take you into a Wizard that will help you do the magic of setting up your SEO on your website, just for you.

Ta dah! You now have the beginnings of SEO set up on your website and also now know how to do SEO on your blog posts. And, blog posts of current and valuable content is exactly what google loves because you’ve done everything needed to teach it what is valuable about what you do. In turn, google say thank you and you’ll go up the rankings bit by bit with each and every blog post you publish and you will be found.

I cannot guarantee you a page one ranking immediately, or even soon. But, time, consistent effort and smart thinking about what you want to be found for .. well, that will help google, help you to be more visible. There’s lots more to do but this is your guide just for doing good SEO on your blog posts.

If you like what I’ve written and what I share, but don’t have the time to setup your website, design it, make it do the stuff you want to do .. that’s what I’m here for. Shoot me a message via my enquiry form and lets see how I can speed you up to being great online.

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The essential SEO tips to boost each blog post https://theheartsdesign.com/essential-seo-tips-for-each-blog-post/ Fri, 22 May 2020 07:00:00 +0000 https://www.staging5.theheartsdesign.com/?p=721&preview=true&preview_id=721 Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) a phrase that strikes fear into the heart of many and sometimes seen as a black hole of effort! I get it .. search engines like Google seem like a law unto themselves and constantly changing their algorithms, you figure out one way to boost your rankings and the rules change.

So if you’re trying to game the system in order to appear high in the rankings? DON’T.

Square marketing image with the blog post title: SEO Tips for Blog Posts

Google and other search engines (yes there’s more than Google), they are all learning the intelligence of our language. So just be yourself, write like a human. Then, once you’ve written your first draft, look at what you’re saying and learn how to improve the value of it by moving sentences around, and finding ways to put your main search phrases you want to be found by into the blog post titles and first paragraphs of your blog post.

The key to being found by search engines today, is to write like a normal human. No keyword stuffing, no gaming .. just normal human language.

I’ve created a graphic, so that you can see the visual anatomy of a blog post. Often the advice blogs (of which there are thousands) on this very topic, give you the key areas of where to focus your SEO efforts .. but not a visual display. So I’m doing different and giving you a visual guide as well.

Graphic showing a visual display of a blog post and all the SEO tips to optimise for each area.
an infographic showing the areas on a blog post to optimise for SEO

Keywords & Phrases

These are the words and phrases your clients will search for to find a solution to their problem. If they are looking for a Travel Photographer, put that into the titles, first sentence/paragraph of your page or post. Don’t just use that one phrase of Travel Photographer every single time, switch it up with other words and phrases like ‘Capturing Scotland’. There are always many words around your keywords and phrases to supplement them with too.

Headings

Google loves headings; it indicates a priority of information. Your blog post title is always the H1 tag, the highest priority of info. Main headers in your blog are H2, and nested under those are H3’s and so forth. Most blogs do well with two levels of headings which split and group the blog into recognisable chunks. Chunking also helps the reader too.

File Names of Images

Make the file names descriptive, for example, MysteriousMistyHighland.jpg – search engines read this and understand a descriptive file name. Once your website is indexed, it also notes all the images. If you’ve ever used Google Images, those file names are used to give context to those images.

Alt Tags on Images

These tags are fabulous for providing a deeper one sentence (approx. 30 words) description of what is in the image. Alt Tags are not just useful to search engines but of most benefit to blind people using screen readers. They can’t see the picture, so your description here helps them understand what you are presenting to everyone else. So be clear in your description, and you’ll help search engines and your blind accessibility customers too.

Captions of Images

Similar to the Alt Tag it allows you to add a little blurb of writing to your image, a descriptor or anecdote. It can be a direct duplicate of your Alt Tag if you wish, but it’s a chance to phrase things slightly different and capitalise on the variety of words available in our languages.

Internal Blog Links

If you’re asking someone to contact you, why not link directly to your contact page. Make it easy on your viewer. Any time you reference content written on another blog post, or you’re asking them to do an action like ‘visit our portfolio’ or ‘contact us’ .. make it a link. Search engines will crawl through your site, and the more genuine (not artificially stuffed links) will rank the pages and posts of your website depending on its cross-linking.

Use an SEO plugin

SEO plugins will do part of the heavy lifting of optimising blog posts for search engines. Some plugins will even if very detailed instructions on what to improve, for example, RankMath SEO and Yoast. All In One SEO is also a great contender but does not provide a guide per blog post on what to improve.

Tip: If you are a Divi theme user, ignore Yoast. It does not play well with shortcodes.

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If you are marketing out on social media, why not do it on your own blog? https://theheartsdesign.com/you-market-on-social-media-but-do-this-on-your-blog-too/ Thu, 21 May 2020 07:00:18 +0000 https://www.staging5.theheartsdesign.com/?p=720&preview=true&preview_id=720 By marketing, I mean anything you share about what you do in your business.

Do you know that your own website blog can host content far far longer than any social media network?

It seems blatantly obvious to me but sometimes the stunningly obvious, its err .. not obvious!

On any social network, you may have a few hours (if you’re lucky: months) of your content being visible, sometimes just it’s just minutes. I’m giving side-eye to Twitter here. It’s a great platform that mimics live conversations and that is its strength, its immediate. But, if your customer isn’t there in those minutes, they’ve missed learning about you, knowing something more and the chance to like what you do. Which all builds up to trusting you know what you’re doing.

Your marketing, especially marketing with any value needs duration and the only place you will get that is on your own website and I’m hoping that you’re blogging too. Because honestly, google LOVES blog posts. Especially if its evergreen content that can keep being re-shared!

I saw a really interesting graphic showing how the Twitter content lifespan was 18 minutes, Facebook is 5 hours, Instagram is 21 and so forth. It was written back in 2016 and a lot changes in 4 years, what tech did then with their algorithms is not necessarily how it works today. If you want to know the details on this read Jon-Stephen Stansel post on How Long Does Bad Content Last? .. still, even with all the changes there is a fundamental truth. Your blog content will outlast any social media presence, with one HUGE bonus that I’ll tell you further down.

THD Blog SocialMediaLongevity INSTA 100

In the original infographic, it showed the minutes, hours, months duration for how long content was displayed effectively to your audience on each network. I’ve repurposed this but made it into a more abstract timeline, because while the exact hours and minutes do matter to some (plus I can’t find any recent studies on it) .. its not the gist of my message here. So I won’t bother sharing the original infographic, it’s now out of date from 2016. But the principle of it remains true.

Social media content doesn’t display for long in front of your customers. So apart from scrolling your timeline, they can’t search for something interesting.

So let this be a hint, have a search bar on your website.

If you are blogging, and creating value for your customers to learn from your experience .. help them by letting them know your blog categories and giving them a search bar as well.

So what’s the HUGE bonus for writing content on your websites blog?

*drumroll*

You can keep re-sharing it!

Yeah, yeah I snuck that tidbit in earlier .. but seriously, recognise the power potential of this statement.

You have spent time creating graphics (I hope) for some or all of your social media. That’s time you’re not getting back, which includes the time of posting to each network or using a scheduler. Everything in business is about what you choose to spend your time on. Social media while great for networking and being where your customers are can be a huge colossal waste of time if not done effectively. Even the masters of social media marketing won’t get it right every time.

The other massive benefit of having a blog is that you can reshare your content using a social media management tool like Blog 2 Social. I have a blog post that I’m writing up about that plugin that I’ll release soon. So you can write once, reshare your evergreen content, again and again .. and again .. then again at any point of time you wish and any frequency too.

Now, isn’t that a smarter way to work and market what you do?

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Choosing your wordpress platform – there are two kinds https://theheartsdesign.com/choosing-your-wordpress-platform-there-are-two-kinds/ Tue, 19 May 2020 07:01:52 +0000 https://www.staging5.theheartsdesign.com/?p=624&preview=true&preview_id=624 WordPress comes in two flavours called .com and .org! That explains things everything doesn’t it. I’ll go now, shall I?

Square graphic asking: which version of WordPress to choose. The .com or .org version?

Don’t worry, it’s all to do where the website is stored on the internet. if you’ve read my ebook that I wrote about Websites and their foundation basics what I’m about to say will be a repeat.

So like I said, its about where your website will be stored on the internet. The internet is made up of a few things when it comes to website, the main two basics are domains and hosting.

If you think of a house, the domain is the address to the house. The house itself, on the other hand, needs to exist somewhere and hosting is about which planet it’s residing on. To scale it up the universe is analogous to the internet. Some hosting planets are lovely, they do everything for you about storing and keeping your website as safe as they can. Whereas other hosting planets are great for folks who want full control over what they can do. Each planet charges differently.

A diagram showing the link of domain and hosting.

The two flavours of WordPress

WordPress.COM is Hosted For You

You do not need a hosting account. This is where the folks of WordPress themselves do the hosting as a done for you service, you don’t worry about the background tech of hosting. But. You pay more, for more flexibility, as you grow. But for those who are okay with spending a bit more for the peace of mind of not worrying about servers, and security and backups .. and don’t mind that you pay more again for more features. This might be your best option.

WordPress.ORG is Self Hosted, i.e. you choose the hosting plnaet

You do need a hosting space and, I highly recommend Siteground.

This is the ‘world is your oyster’ website level, where it can grow to whatever your needs are.  But. You need to learn some stuffs, like different hosting companies, website security and backing up your site. But, you pay less and gain ultimate flexibility. You are then responsible for everything in and around the management of your website.

But, how do you choose which is best for you?

A decision tree map helping you to choose which WordPress version to go for: done for you servers or buy your own and self host.

There are two main questions to ask:

Do you want to learn to manage the tech?

You’ll have to learn some in order to manage your website inside of WordPress. I’m talking about the additions of learning plugins for WordPress and talking to the hosting company if you need further help.

Do you have a tight financial budget?

If you have a really tight financial budget then you need to figure out how much you can afford and what service will give you the best results. It may be that you can only afford a free or very cheap static Wix site and that’s okay. I would advise starting WordPress when you need more functionality like blogging and ability to grow your business with booking appointments and pre-qualifying clients as an example.

So now you’ve got a choice to make .. what do you choose?

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How do I start a wordpress website design with you Cathie? https://theheartsdesign.com/work-with-me-wednesday-what-do-i-need-to-work-with-a-website-designer/ Wed, 13 May 2020 08:00:01 +0000 http://athenasheart.co/?p=452&preview=true&preview_id=452 Website design always start with a purpose, when you work with me. What do you want your customers to be able to do, to view and to know?

THD Blog WorkWithMeWebsiteProcess INSTAjpg

We’ll start with the two basics:

1. What do you want your customers to be able to do?

This is not a trick question. It’s very very simple: what do you want your customers to be able to do on your website? Do you want them to contact you? Do you want them to be able to book an appointment with you? See a directory of suppliers you’ve sourced? Pay a membership fee to learn from you (great if you are a teacher)?

2. What do you want your customer to be able to view and know?

If you are a photographer or creative, you’ll really want a gallery / portfolio to show off your work and what you can do. Do you offer services? If so, show them and add a starting from price. Do you have a process of how you work? Share that (just like I’m doing here). Your customers will also want to know a little of your story and how you are are going to help them .. this becomes your about page. Plus some really obvious (or maybe not so obvious unless point out) things, like where are you based? What’s your address? What are your working hours? How do I contact you via phone or email?

THD ebook websitefoundationbasics free

If you’re nervous about what you need to know about websites .. don’t worry. I’ve written an ebook that I wish I could have had when I first started out learning it all by trial and error. You can do the same, and teach yourself everything I do. What I can do for you, is use all my years of experience and do it that much faster for you.

Get the ebook and get a quick foundation in what to know about websites and WordPress.

[et_bloom_inline optin_id=”optin_1″]

That’s great to know and thank you,
but how do you do website design Cathie?

Yes, well .. that is the point of this blog isn’t it. So, here are all the phases I go through when creating and building your WordPress websites with you.

Website Design – My Process

THD WebsiteDesign TheProcess

1. MEET UP & ANALYSE

We meet up over skype or zoom, we learn about each other, get to know your business, your customers, your content and what you want you customers to be able to do on your website.

2. FUNCTIONAL INSPIRATION

I ask you to provide a link to 3 websites that show the looks and the functionality that you want to inspire your website. What do you want customers to be able to do?

We also look at the content of your website and what you want customers to know. Plus the hierarchy of how we present that information so that your customers can easily see what they need to know.

3. ROUGH CONCEPT

In a virtual or in-person meeting, we’ll digitally sketch up some rough outlines for content layouts for your one page or multi-page website design.

4. DESIGN

The design phase is the main bulk of the process; the functionality is built-in, and the style is crafted. It includes items like contact forms, galleries, booking forms and anything else you want your customer to be able to view or do.

5. REFINE & TEST

No design is ever perfect on the first go. At this point, with most of the website complete, the testing part ramps up. Clicking all the buttons, testing to ensure that all website functionality like booking forms, emails etc. do what they are supposed to do.

6. VIDEO TRAINING

There is absolutely no point in having a website if you don’t know how to use it and edit the information on it. I give you personalised video training teaching how to use your site and answer your questions. You can replay and watch this screencast training again and again .. and again.

7. POLISH

We’ll polish the last rough edges of your website so that its ready for transfer to your servers to go live. You have a chance to tweak any last wording and add blog posts prepared for the launch.

8. LAUNCH

Whoohooo! Your website is live and ready for visitors. It’s your time to shine baby. Get promoting, share your story and your value to your customers.

Get talking. You’re ready to be found!

9. 2 WEEKS POST LAUNCH SUPPORT

I won’t disappear on you once your site is live. I know that the first two weeks of using something is when hiccups happen, you’ll have questions you never knew to ask. I’m still here to help you get started.

THD Blog WorkWithMeWebsiteProcess

Let me help you build a website
where you can be found,
and share the value of what you do.

Get in touch about a WordPress website.

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Work Smarter: See the future of your blog post flow https://theheartsdesign.com/work-smarter-see-the-future-of-your-blog-post-flow/ Wed, 29 Apr 2020 19:00:16 +0000 http://athenasheart.co/work-smarter-see-the-future-of-your-blog-post-flow/ Your WordPress website is your marketing machine to communicate with your customers. In my case, that means I talk about websites, marketing online, graphics and the topics around my services. In your case, that means answering your customers’ questions, sharing what you’ve been up to, any new products or services and the benefits of them.

To do this you will need to be consistent .. consistency is king because it can be relied upon. So your viewers, your potential customers will learn that you release information via blog posts on set days. They know they’ll see something of value at certain days of the week 4 times a month. If you’re only writing four blog posts a month this may not be so pressing an issue for you.

But. If you plan to write and publish even twice a week on a Wednesday and a Sunday, having a way to see your future blog posts on a calendar is going to be really useful. You’ll know if you’ve forgotten to schedule in a blog post for that blank Wednesday spot or if you want to move the flow of your content so that it plans out a sequence better.

THD BlogTitle SeeYourBlogsFuture

So, how do you write consistently
with a good content plan and flow?

Take a look a PublishPress on the WordPress plugin repository. It’s full name is PublishPress: Editorial Calendar, Workflow, Comments, Notifications and Statuses.

THD PluginRecommendation PublishPress

At its simplest, it shows your blog posts as inserts on a month view of a calendar. So you can scan a column of Wednesdays and see, oops, I’m missing a spot for a scheduled blog post. I’ve written about how to write a scheduled blog post previously, but now I’m taking that advice one step further. So if you’re only posting once per week and you’re not bothered about sticking systematically to one day .. then go read the simple way to schedule blog posts.

So for those who want more control over the future of your blog post schedules, let’s continue.

One of the main features I wanted for my own blog is a calendar view of what posts are going out on what day, plus the ability to see the sequence flow of the content. So that if I were to write back to back content that expands on a previous post, I can see how the flow of that works.

THD Blog CalendarView

I also love that I can change the colour coding of my calendar posts so that I can easily see that for me green is published, orange is scheduled and pink are draft ideas. You’ll be able to do the same from the PublishPage menu under the settings and then the status tab.

THD Blog CalendarSettings
THD Blog CalendarSettingsStatus

It’s really useful to be able to see the status of blog posts if you are a business that accepts guest bloggers or you are the curator of a multi author blog. So set the colours to a system you can easily understand, for me something close to a traffic light system is very easy to understand, green is good, red is bad (so I made pink the draft colour) and orange is half way between so its scheduled.

THD Blog CalendarColours

Lastly the other main feature I like of this plugin that makes blogging easier on WordPress, is the content overview feature. When you write blogs for the specific areas of your business, its good to see a 10 day heads up on the areas you are writing for. For me, I can easily see that I’m writing wordpress tips and coaching blogs but nothing in 10 days for branding, graphics or photography.

THD Blog CalendarContentOverview

Something I can keep track of now and plan for the future so that I’m writing and advising on all areas of skills I have and not fixating too hard in one area. Except I am predominantly a WordPress design person so I’ll be writing most on that area.

Now, you can see the future of your blog posts and write well. To be consistent .. in a world that doesn’t feel very consistent is gold dust at the moment!

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Work Smarter: Schedule your blog posts https://theheartsdesign.com/work-smarter-schedule-your-blog-posts/ Wed, 22 Apr 2020 18:30:00 +0000 http://athenasheart.co/work-smarter-schedule-your-blog-posts/ When it comes to working on your business WordPress website and writing blog posts, you can work smarter by scheduling when you want your blog post to go live. You can, of course, just publish immediately .. but if you find yourself struggling to write content, write it out in advance on the days when you feel most inflow.

So my #wednesdaywisdom is Work Smarter: Schedule your blog posts.

When your writing your new blog post within WordPress, it is a draft until it is published. STOP. Before you hit the publish button at the top right, look a bit further down and next to ‘Publish’ you can click on the ‘immediate’ and change the date and time to some time in the future. This way you can schedule up your blog posts.

worksmarter schedulingblogpost1

You can then easily choose the date and time you want to your new blog post to go ‘live’ to the internets.

worksmarter schedulingblogpost2

Once you’ve set your time and date, you’ll notice that the Publish button becomes a Schedule button. So click on Schedule and your post will go live on that date and time. This way you’ll can also schedule your social media posts to go at the same time, even do some pre-teaser work for any of your big blog posts with lots of value in it.

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Another side tip for scheduling posts, is to schedule them to slot in between previous posts in the past. This is slightly less useful as you don’t have the cachet of a ‘new’ post, it will just blend into all the previous posts you’ve written. Still, its an option.

The BIG bonuses of scheduling your posts are:

  • Your posts will appear consistently week on week when you want them scheduled, your audience will learn to anticipate new content from you and come looking for it.
  • You don’t panic about having to write something that week, unless you have no more posts scheduled up.
  • You can organise your social media to sync up with your new blog post.
  • You have time to think, edit and refine your content and graphics. No more rush jobs, unless you feel massively inspired and have to post NOW!
  • If you change your mind about the blog post title, you can do that before it goes live and update its permalink.

Tadah! A very simple solution to working smarter within your wordpress website.

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Website Foundation Basics – we wrote an ebook! https://theheartsdesign.com/website-foundation-basics-we-wrote-an-ebook/ Mon, 20 Apr 2020 11:37:00 +0000 http://athenasheart.co/website-foundation-basics-we-wrote-an-ebook/ You know you want a website, you want a great looking website design and for it function well .. but what now? What does domain mean and do I need hosting? Oh god, there are two forms of WordPress?! How the heck do I know which one I need?

First of all *breathe* .. don’t panic, I’ve written you an ebook that I wish I’d had for me right at the beginning of building websites. The internet has changed a lot since I started learning about websites and how the internet is built of millions of little spaces sharing info. That was 20 years go when I started learning the bits and pieces.

If I was to start from scratch now, what I’ve written in this ebook is exactly what I would want want to know.

THD ebook websitefoundationbasics free

In this ebook called Websites – The Foundation Basics (that title is so SO imaginative I know), this is what you’ll learn:

  • What a website is and can do for you
  • The difference between a website & a blog (or is there a difference)
  • What tech lingo means:
    • Domain
    • Hosting
    • WordPress
    • Plugins
    • Themes
  • Content – who writes the meat of your website
  • Emails – do you want to look & be professional
  • How to buy and get your website.

Plus a bonus tip of how to work with your designers, if you decide you don’t have hours and hours to learn all the stuffs and just want it built already! I’ve already done the 10,000 hours to be good at this so I’m ready to help you.

Get the free ebook to learn what I consider
essential to know about websites.

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The shining knight of passwords for wordpress security https://theheartsdesign.com/the-shining-knight-of-passwords-for-wordpress-security/ Thu, 23 May 2019 13:45:41 +0000 http://athenasheart.co/the-shining-knight-of-passwords-for-wordpress-security/ Passwords, the bane of existence and who can ever remember so many?! Well it’s very easy if you know how, you just need to have a little bit of thinking and come up with a way to combine a unique element per site, some numbers and letters that make up a unique phrase for you.

Graphic with a passwords login with a cloud showing all your information being stored online.

Passwords are the defense between you and another who wants to hack your access and use your personal information. Your password is your shining knight defending you online. Cheesy, yes but true. So let’s make sure you’re safe with the best passwords you can think of.

Think of a unique phrase

For this example, I’m going to write one I will never use ‘Life Sucks’, as an aside I will say life can be hard, we can have lots of obstacles big and small to overcome but I hope never to say ‘life sucks’, spew negativity and check out on life.

So we have a unique phrase.

Now for you, I would recommend trying a little bit of the ‘laws of attraction’ do you have a phrase that summarises exactly what you wish to achieve? Remembering you’re going to be typing this in several times a day it hopefully will be a good one .. but if it’s too hard right this second to think of one, then pick something simple.

Replace some letters with numbers.

There are some numbers and symbols that look like letters. How about a 1 for an l, or 4 for an A, 3 for an E or 0 for an O .. you can see where I’m going.

Here’s a small list of safe symbols you can use in a password: ! ? / ‘ # % = ;

Add a slice of uniqueness

For every site it has a name, why not take the first two letter of the site and use that as the unique part of the password. Or maybe the first letter of each word, the last letter of each word? What ever it is that you decide, make sure it comes from the site name in some kind of way.

The great thing about this unique little key is that you can place it anywhere in the password mix.

Lets make a password mix

Now for the password structure. Let’s take your unique phrase that yours, a couple of switched letters and numbers, maybe an uppercase or two as well and combine with that unique splash from the site domain and you have .. a unique password for every single website! Ta-Dah!

So let’s get it going. You can either start, end or put in the middle that unique little site key you’ve decided upon. The choice is yours but once chosen, be consistent with it.

Phrase: Be A Millionaire
Number / Symbol Switch: 3 for an e, ! for an i,  4 for a
Site Identifier: Th

The Password Mix: BeTh4Milliona!r3

There you have it, that lovely unique password that will be different for every single website. Easy peasy right?! .. Right, guys, don’t tell me you’ve stopped reading .. I’m saving your digital world asses right now!

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