Category: WordPress

The Future of WordPress: Is Your Website Ready for 2025 and Beyond?

Posted on by galaxy-admin

WordPress dominates the web, powering over 43% of all websites globally. Its open-source nature, flexibility, and ease of use have made it a popular choice for businesses of all sizes. However, this widespread adoption comes with its own set of challenges. Maintaining a WordPress website can be a complex endeavor, demanding ongoing attention to security, performance, and updates.

Security breaches remain a significant concern, with reports indicating that WordPress sites are a prime target for attackers, facing thousands of attacks per day. And slow loading times, which plague around 53% of mobile website users, can lead to significant revenue loss. Furthermore, experts predict that in 2025, the focus will shift even more towards Core Web Vitals and user experience, making performance optimization crucial for businesses to stay competitive. Plugin conflicts, compatibility issues, and the constant need for updates further complicate the WordPress experience for many businesses.

Navigating these complexities requires specialized expertise, and that’s where a trusted partner can make all the difference. As an experienced offshore software development company specializing in WordPress, Galaxy Weblinks understands the intricacies of this platform and the challenges businesses face. We offer comprehensive solutions to help you navigate the complexities of WordPress, ensuring your website remains secure, performs optimally, and drives business growth.

These challenges, while common, shouldn’t hold your business back. WordPress remains a powerful and versatile platform, but navigating its intricacies requires a proactive approach. Let’s break down the most prevalent WordPress pain points, explore their potential impact on your business, and discover how to overcome them effectively.

Unmasking the WordPress Headaches: Specific Challenges Businesses Face 

While WordPress offers unparalleled flexibility and ease of use, it’s not without its challenges. Understanding these potential pitfalls is crucial for any business relying on WordPress to power its online presence. Let’s delve into the specific headaches that often plague WordPress websites:

Security Vulnerabilities: Beyond the Hype

WordPress, being the most popular CMS on the web, is a prime target for attackers. While the core software is generally secure, vulnerabilities often arise from outdated plugins, weak passwords, and misconfigured settings. Did you know that in 2023, over 18 million WordPress sites were infected with malware? (Source: Sucuri Website Threat Research Report 2023) This highlights the importance of proactive security measures.

In 2022, a vulnerability in the popular “WooCommerce Payments” plugin, which is used by millions of online stores, exposed sensitive customer data, including credit card information. This incident prompted WooCommerce to issue an urgent update, urging users to patch their systems immediately. (Source: BleepingComputer)

Beyond the common threats, WordPress sites are also susceptible to more sophisticated attacks like SQL injections, cross-site scripting (XSS), and brute-force attacks. These can compromise sensitive data, disrupt website functionality, and damage your brand reputation.

Performance Bottlenecks: More Than Just Slow Loading

Slow loading times are a major frustration for website visitors and a significant detriment to your SEO efforts. Google’s Core Web Vitals emphasize the importance of speed, with studies showing that even a one-second delay in page load time can lead to a 7% reduction in conversions. (Source: Portent)

A case study by Google highlighted how Mobify, a mobile commerce platform provider, improved its website’s performance by reducing page load time from 6.9 seconds to 1.7 seconds. This resulted in a 43% increase in session duration and a 30% increase in conversions. (Source: Google Developers)

But performance issues go beyond just slow loading. Large image sizes, unoptimized databases, and excessive plugins can all contribute to a sluggish website. For instance, a website with over 50 active plugins may experience significant performance degradation, especially if some of those plugins are poorly coded or outdated. A 2024 study by WP Engine found that websites with optimized databases loaded up to 2x faster than those with unoptimized databases. (Source: WP Engine) Identifying and addressing these bottlenecks is crucial for delivering a positive user experience and maximizing your website’s potential.

The Plugin Paradox: Essential Yet Problematic

Plugins are the lifeblood of WordPress, extending its functionality and enabling a wide range of features. However, managing plugins can be a double-edged sword. Compatibility issues, conflicts between plugins, and security risks associated with poorly coded plugins can create headaches for website owners.

In 2023, a vulnerability in the “Essential Addons for Elementor” plugin, which had over 1 million active installations, allowed attackers to take over websites and redirect visitors to malicious pages. This incident highlighted the importance of carefully vetting plugins and choosing those from reputable developers with a strong security track record. (Source: Patchstack)

Furthermore, “plugin bloat” – having too many active plugins – can significantly impact website performance and create security vulnerabilities. A study by Wordfence found that 30% of WordPress vulnerabilities are related to plugins. (Source: Wordfence) Choosing and managing plugins wisely is essential for a smooth and secure WordPress experience.

Maintenance Mayhem: The Hidden Costs of WordPress

WordPress requires ongoing maintenance to ensure its security, performance, and functionality. Regular updates, backups, and troubleshooting are essential tasks that often get overlooked. Neglecting these can lead to security breaches, data loss, and website downtime, resulting in significant costs and frustration.

In 2021, the popular travel website “Nomadic Matt” experienced a significant outage due to a server crash. The website was down for several hours, resulting in lost revenue and frustrated users. This incident emphasized the importance of regular backups and disaster recovery plans. (Source: Search Engine Journal)

Staying on top of WordPress maintenance can be time-consuming and require technical expertise. This is where partnering with a specialized provider can alleviate the burden and ensure your website remains in top shape.

The Talent Gap: Finding Reliable WordPress Expertise

Finding and hiring skilled WordPress developers can be a challenge. The demand for WordPress expertise often outstrips the supply, making it difficult to find reliable and experienced professionals.

A recent survey by Upwork found that the average hourly rate for a WordPress developer with 3+ years of experience is $75-$150 per hour. This high cost can be a barrier for many small businesses seeking to hire in-house developers. (Source: Upwork)

Moreover, ongoing support and maintenance require a dedicated team with the necessary skills and knowledge. According to a 2023 report by W3Techs, over 55% of WordPress websites are running outdated versions, making them vulnerable to attacks. (Source: W3Techs) Outsourcing these tasks to a specialized provider can provide access to a pool of talent and ensure your website receives the attention it deserves.

Rescuing Your WordPress Website: How Galaxy Weblinks Provides Expert Solutions

Navigating the complexities of WordPress can be a daunting task, but you don’t have to go it alone. Galaxy Weblinks offers a comprehensive suite of services designed to address the challenges we’ve discussed and ensure your WordPress website thrives.

Emergency WordPress Rescue

When your WordPress website faces a critical issue – a sudden crash, a security breach, or a debilitating error – every minute of downtime can cost you revenue and damage your reputation. Galaxy Weblinks understands the urgency of these situations and provides rapid response emergency rescue services.

For example, if your website suddenly goes offline due to a server failure, our team can quickly diagnose the root cause, whether it’s a database error, a plugin conflict, or a DDoS attack. We’ll implement a temporary fix to get you back online within the hour and then work on a permanent solution to prevent recurrence.

Ultimately, this ensures business continuity and protects your brand reputation, even when unexpected issues arise.

Proactive Security Hardening and 24/7 Monitoring

Security is paramount in today’s digital landscape, and your WordPress website is a prime target for attackers. Galaxy Weblinks takes a proactive approach to security, going beyond basic measures to safeguard your website and data.

We don’t just install security plugins and call it a day. Our security experts perform in-depth audits to identify vulnerabilities in your themes and plugins, implement two-factor authentication and strong password policies, and configure firewalls to block malicious traffic. We also monitor your website 24/7 for suspicious activity, such as login attempts from unknown IP addresses or unauthorized file changes.

With Galaxy Weblinks as your security partner, you gain peace of mind knowing your website and customer data are shielded by a team of dedicated professionals.

Performance Optimization for Superior User Experience

Website speed is critical for user engagement and SEO. Slow loading times can frustrate visitors and negatively impact your search rankings. Galaxy Weblinks understands the importance of performance optimization and employs advanced techniques to ensure your website loads lightning-fast.

We go beyond basic image optimization. Our team analyzes your website’s database queries, identifies slow-loading plugins, and optimizes your server configuration for maximum efficiency. We also implement caching strategies and content delivery networks (CDNs) to reduce server load and deliver content faster to users around the world.

For example, we recently helped an e-commerce client reduce their website’s average loading time from 5 seconds to under 2 seconds, resulting in a 15% increase in conversions and a significant boost in their search engine rankings.

By optimizing your website’s performance, you can enhance user satisfaction, boost your SEO, and ultimately drive more conversions and revenue.

Custom Development and Seamless Integrations

Your business is unique, and your website should be too. Galaxy Weblinks offers custom WordPress development services to extend your website’s functionality and meet your specific needs.

Whether you need a custom theme that reflects your brand identity, a plugin that automates a specific task, or integration with a third-party service like CRM or marketing automation, our team of experienced developers can build a solution tailored to your requirements.

This empowers you with a website that not only looks great but also functions seamlessly to support your unique business processes and goals.

Strategic Consulting for Informed Decision-Making

Making informed decisions about your WordPress website can be challenging, especially with the constantly evolving landscape of technology and best practices. Galaxy Weblinks provides expert consulting services to guide you through the process.

Our experienced consultants can help you evaluate your current website, identify areas for improvement, and recommend the best solutions for your specific needs and budget. Whether you’re considering migrating to a new platform, implementing a headless CMS strategy, or simply optimizing your existing website, we can provide the guidance and support you need to make informed decisions.

With our strategic guidance, you can confidently navigate the complexities of WordPress and make choices that align with your business objectives.

Comprehensive WordPress Support and Maintenance

Maintaining a WordPress website requires ongoing effort and technical expertise. Galaxy Weblinks offers comprehensive support and maintenance services to take the burden off your shoulders.

Our team can handle all aspects of website maintenance, including regular updates, security monitoring, performance optimization, and backups. We also provide proactive troubleshooting to identify and resolve issues before they impact your website’s functionality or user experience.

This allows you to focus your valuable time and resources on your core business activities, knowing that your website is in capable hands.

Seamless Migration and Platform Diversification

If you’re considering moving away from WordPress or want to diversify your digital presence, Galaxy Weblinks can assist with seamless migrations to other CMS platforms like Drupal or Joomla, or even to custom-built solutions.

Our team has extensive experience in migrating websites from various platforms to WordPress and vice versa. We ensure a smooth transition, minimizing downtime and preserving your valuable content and SEO rankings.

We can also help you implement a headless CMS strategy or integrate other platforms to enhance your online capabilities. This opens up new possibilities for your digital presence, allowing you to explore alternative platforms and expand your online reach without the technical headaches.

Custom Plugin Development and Troubleshooting

Plugins are essential for extending WordPress functionality, but they can also cause conflicts, security vulnerabilities, and performance issues. Galaxy Weblinks offers custom plugin development and troubleshooting services to address these challenges.

If you need a plugin that doesn’t exist or are facing issues with existing plugins, our team can develop custom solutions or provide expert troubleshooting to resolve conflicts and ensure your website functions seamlessly.

By leveraging our plugin expertise, you can unlock the full potential of WordPress without the worries of plugin conflicts or security risks.

Grow Your Business with a Strong WordPress Foundation

Imagine this: You’re no longer constantly worried about your WordPress website. Instead, you have a reliable online platform that supports your business growth and allows you to focus on what you do best. This is the peace of mind that comes with partnering with Galaxy Weblinks.

We’re more than just a fix-it service. We become an extension of your team, providing the expertise and support you need to maximize your online presence.

Here’s how partnering with Galaxy Weblinks can give you a unique advantage:

  • Unwavering Focus on Your Core Business: We understand that your time is valuable. That’s why we assign dedicated project managers who act as a single point of contact, handling all communication and coordination so you can focus on your core business goals. For example, we recently helped a client, a busy e-commerce store owner, increase their sales by 15% by taking full responsibility for their website maintenance, security, and updates, freeing them to focus on marketing and customer service.
  • Access to a Global Team of WordPress Experts: Our team comprises highly skilled WordPress developers, designers, and security professionals with an average of 5+ years of experience and proven expertise in diverse areas like WooCommerce development, performance optimization, and custom plugin development. We carefully vet each team member to ensure they meet our high standards of quality and expertise.
  • Cost-Effective Solutions Without Compromising Quality: Our offshore development model allows us to offer high-quality services at significantly lower costs compared to hiring in-house developers or working with local agencies. We are committed to transparent pricing and offer flexible engagement models to suit your budget and needs.
  • Proactive Problem-Solving and Strategic Guidance: We don’t just wait for problems to arise; we actively prevent them. We use advanced monitoring tools to detect potential issues before they impact your website, conduct regular security audits to identify vulnerabilities, and provide proactive recommendations to optimize your website’s performance and security.
  • A True Partnership Built on Trust and Collaboration: We believe in building long-term relationships with our clients based on trust and mutual success. We foster open communication, provide regular progress updates, and actively seek your feedback to ensure we’re aligned with your goals. Our client testimonials and case studies speak volumes about our commitment to collaborative partnerships.

Take control of your WordPress website. Get a website audit from Galaxy Weblinks and uncover hidden performance bottlenecks, security vulnerabilities, and opportunities for optimization. Our expert analysis will provide you with actionable insights to improve your website’s performance, security, and user experience.

What Are the Essential Design Elements of a High-Performing WordPress Website?

Posted on by galaxy-admin

Businesses are ruled by customers. For online businesses, the user experience is one of the most crucial factors that determine the success of your company. It is important for your website to drive maximum traffic and have high lead conversions. A well-designed and high-performing website adds credibility to your offerings. Remember that it takes very little time for the user to form an opinion about your website! Research shows that over 80% of users are unlikely to return to a website after a bad experience. 

WordPress is the most popular CMS (Content Management System) that powers over 40% of the websites globally. Given its popularity, it is easy to get your website started. However, integrating your website with the right set of tools, plugins, and design is crucial to make it a high-performing differentiated offering versus competitors. 

In this article, we have highlighted key design considerations while building a WordPress website.

  • Branding

Before even starting working on a WordPress site, you need to focus on branding elements such as logo, color palette, high-quality images, fonts, etc. Your brand represents your business, and good branding helps you stand out in a competitive online environment. 

  • Navigation

Navigation helps the flow of your WordPress website and therefore, it is important to enhance the user experience by having simple but effective navigation. Since a lot of traffic these days comes from mobile devices, it is even more important to have good navigation of your website. It will also enable better SEO and result in higher traffic to your website.

The navigation should be designed keeping your users and these questions in mind – Why are they visiting your website? What actions do you want them to perform? We recommend avoiding unnecessary menu options and will focus on simplicity. You should also have CTAs (call to action) for your users. 

  • Consistent design

Your WordPress website should have a consistent design and layout. In simple words, common user interface elements such as logo, site navigation, page content, images, etc. should appear in the same place throughout the website. This allows visitors to navigate through your website efficiently as they know where these common website elements are placed on every page. This also leads the users to spend time engaging with your content. 

In addition to a better user experience, there’s also a time/cost-saving benefit to you of having a consistent design. Having a consistent layout means that your website developer only needs to create a small number of reusable templates which effectively cuts down on the overall development time and costs.

  • Responsive Design

This is a crucial design element of your WordPress website. Your website must be responsive and should adjust to your user’s devices and their screen/size. Search engines such as Google rewards websites that prioritize the mobile experience for visitors. WordPress has several tools (Elementor, Gutenberg, etc) that help develop high-performing responsive websites. 

  • Selection of right tools & plugins 

The performance of any WordPress website is measured by the loading time. The speed of the website is a very important factor and can result in a bad user experience leading to a user abandoning your website within seconds. A few important considerations to improve your WordPress website’s performance is – 

  • Plugins: You should focus on including only necessary plugins for your website’s features/functionalities. Unnecessary plugins can increase load time. 
  • Image Optimization: Heavy Images can lead to an increase in the site load time hence using optimized and presentable images can help reduce the site load time.
  • Enable Caching: Caching saves certain data which can be later accessed directly instead of being loaded again. This reduces the load on your WordPress hosting server and makes your website run faster.  
  • Minimize HTTP Requests: The request that any visitor’s web browser sends to the WordPress hosting server is called an HTTP request. This request contains details of your website such as content and images. Having more files or having more pages on your website results in a longer response time from the server to respond, and hence poor website performance. This problem can be improved by carrying out activities such as combining your CSS files, removing redundant images, etc. 

Conclusion

No doubt WordPress is the most popular and quick way to get your website started. But, making your website a high-performing one requires paying attention to these little details. A well-made website would drive maximum traffic and result in achieving your business objectives. If you’ve any doubts related to WordPress website development and if you need assistance developing one, then feel free to talk to us here.

How to select the right WordPress developer?

Posted on by galaxy-admin

WordPress is the most popular CMS (Content Management System) that powers over 40% of the websites globally. More than 500 websites are built using WordPress daily! 

The reason is that it offers versatility, thereby allowing users (even non-developers) to create feature-rich ecommerce websites, forums, and corporate websites. WordPress websites are highly customizable, can be easily optimized for mobile, and are SEO friendly. WordPress is open-source; is completely free, redistributable, and offers unlimited validity.

However, creating a good WordPress site requires a lot of skill. You need to be well-versed with programming languages (JavaScript, PHP), HTML/CSS, databases, SEO, responsive design, etc. This makes selecting the right WordPress developer or a company crucial in achieving your end objective. 

In this article, we have highlighted a few important considerations that will help you make the right choice. We have also compiled five important questions later in this article to help you in making the right decision. 

1. Objective alignment

Once you have identified the overall goal as well the key features and functionalities of your website, finding the right WordPress developer is the next step towards achieving your goal. The developer should be aligned with your needs and should have the relevant skillset. Based on your end objective, be it a new website or a redesign, you should hire your developer. 

For a website consisting of a traditional site structure (such as a home page, about page, contact page, blog, et all), the right developer would be someone with good front-end design experience. However, if your website needs a lot of features and functionalities, a developer with more back-end technical expertise would be the right candidate. There are various marketplaces where you can find WordPress freelancers for simple websites. However, for developing a website with a lot of features and functionalities, going with a bigger company is more suited given their access to multiple resources with diverse experience. 

2. Technical skills 

A good WordPress developer should be able to understand your site’s needs and design a website that stands out. The developer should have advanced website development skills such as design understanding, page customization, plugins, site speed optimization, etc. Given that over half of the website traffic globally is via mobile devices, the developer should design a website that is compatible and responsive with all mobile devices. 

A good way to evaluate expertise is to ask about their WordPress portfolio and check out some of the websites they have developed. A few evaluation criteria could be design, compatibility across different devices, ease of navigation, etc.

3. Pricing

Pricing remains one of the important considerations in the selection process. Once you have evaluated a few developers/companies on their project understanding as well as their capabilities, understand the # of hours and project plans each is proposing. Then compare their total costs and timelines in selecting the right choice. 

Five questions to help you decide the right WordPress development partner

Based on the above considerations, here are five important questions for which you need clarity to select the right WordPress developer/company. 

  1. What expertise do they have in WordPress? Can they provide some work examples?

(Tip: Ask about a few sample projects completed. Have a Zoom/Skype call with the WordPress developer to know his experience/communication skills.) 

  1. What will be their approach towards building the website? 

(Tip: Ask them about their approach around using existing/custom themes, mobile responsiveness, SEO, security, work best practices, etc.)

  1. In the case of outsourcing, have they worked with clients from your location?

(Tip: Ask them about a few clients that they worked with as per your timezone so that you become comfortable with issues such as time difference, cultural and linguistic barriers.)

  1. How much will the website development cost?

(Tip: Ask them about their pricing including the number of hours they estimate for the work. Note that website development costs vary depending on factors such as the complexity of the features/functionalities, themes, integrations, etc.)

  1. Will there be continued support after the website is developed?

(Tip: Ask them about their support and maintenance after the website is developed. These may include plugin updates, feature enhancements, etc.)

Conclusion

We know how important it is for you to get things right as your business is in question. If you’ve any doubts related to website development and if you need assistance developing one then feel free to talk to us here.

About Galaxy Weblinks 

Galaxy Weblinks is your one-stop solution for WordPress solutions. We offer a complete range of IT services including WordPress development and WordPress optimization. Contact us now for complete WordPress solutions.

5 Tips to Protect Your WordPress Site Against DDoS Attacks

Posted on by galaxy-admin

We all have been on the internet long enough to know that while it brings the world in our palms, it is also vulnerable to theft and attacks. When your website grows, it also gets vulnerable to security threats like DDoS attacks, phishing attacks, SQL injection attacks, cross-site scripting(XSS), password thefts, and more.

In this blog, we are going to talk about the most common threat – a DDoS attack. A DDoS or Distributed Denial of Service, dramatically slows down your website and renders it inaccessible to users. This may directly impact your conversions and business revenue, as it causes an unsatisfactory user experience.

Understanding DDoS

Distributed Denial of Service attack is essentially a process of swarming the server or a network with bot traffic, to overwhelm the system and ultimately cripple the website for real users. With the help of multiple computers, the attackers send thousands of requests to the target server, typically more requests than the server were built to support at a time.  

Here are some tips to keep your WordPress website safe from DDoS attacks: 

1. Get your Hosting right

There are plenty of options when it comes to web hosting. But choosing the right one can be a deciding factor in keeping your website safe. 

Not all web hosts are created equal! Some may kneel under even a moderate strain. Ensure that your host is capable of handling DDoS attacks and your website remains functional and accessible to users under worst-case scenarios. 

2.  Setup a Website Application Firewall (WAF)

Another way of securing your WordPress website is to set up a Website Application Firewall (WAF). It protects your website by adding a layer of protection between your site and web traffic. It also utilizes an intelligent algorithm that automatically blocks incoming malicious traffic. 

3. Disable XML-RPC

XML-RPC is a WordPress feature that allows you to connect your site with any 3rd party application. It comes enabled by default and you may find it difficult to disable it. The ability to connect with 3rd party applications is a great thing but it comes at a cost. It leaves your website vulnerable to security threats such as DDoS. 

Although it’s absent from the dashboard, there is a way to disable XML-RPC. You can do so by accessing your .htaccess file through your host’s cPanel account. Just copy-paste the code mentioned below at the end of the file.

# Block XML-RPC

<Files xmlrpc.php>

order deny,allow

deny from all

allow from // IP

</Files> 

Save and exit.

4. Disable REST API

Just like the XML-RPC, REST API also allows 3rd party applications to access your WordPress site. It allows the plugins to send/receive data or delete content. However, it also leaves your website vulnerable to attacks.

Unlike XML-RPC, disabling REST API is not a chore. It’s pretty straightforward. This plugin will disable it for you. 

5. CDN to the rescue

CDN or Content Delivery Network utilizes multiple servers spread across the world to reduce loading time and increase the speed of your website.

What CDN does is that it stores your website’s files in caches residing in their data centers. Now whenever a visitor requests your website the CDN immediately loads it through their caches without having to approach your host server. While the CDN is increasing the speed of your, it’s also filtering out malicious traffic to prevent DDoS at the same time. 

Related blogs:

9 steps to ensure high speed of WordPress website

What makes a great WordPress plugin

Final Thoughts

As you expand your business and more and more users start to show up to your website, the potential impact of a threat such as a DDoS also grows. So do what all is necessary and secure your WordPress website today. Our tips will help you along the way and if you’re looking for WordPress experts to fortify your website then give us a call.

About Galaxy Weblinks Galaxy Weblinks is your one-stop solution for WordPress solutions, We offer a complete range of IT services including WordPress development and WordPress optimization. Contact us now for the complete WordPress solutions.

9 Steps to Ensure High Speed of WordPress Website

Posted on by galaxy-admin

WordPress powers more than 40% of the web today. WordPress is powered by thousands of different plugins, themes, and technologies and all of these have to coexist. Things can quickly turn into a nightmare for regular WordPress developers here when the website gives them trouble and they can’t identify the problem area. 

The speed of the website is of the utmost importance and remains a top priority regardless of the nature, size, and function of the website. In every technical audit, an improvement in website speed is given weightage. Poor page loading is a big turn-off for users, as well as a factor that drives them away. 

User experience, content, SEO, mobile-responsiveness, etc are a few of the elements that make a successful website. However, website speed has become more and more important over time. The 4gs and 5gs have made consumers impatient. Even if a website is fractionally slow, they would move on to something else. 

A study from Microsoft Corp. says people are generally losing concentration after eight seconds. It is an effect of an increasingly digitalized lifestyle on the brain.

The fact that visitors are mostly using mobile devices, often having a slower data connection than computers exacerbates the problem further. 

As a result, WordPress website owners are hard-pressed to make their websites fast. But, this demands a lot of technical knowledge.

Here we attempt to guide you in speeding up your website step by step. 

First Up – Backup

The process of speeding up a WordPress website may cause you to lose data and other important components of the website. To that end, always make a backup to restore in case of a mishap. A fresh backup can go back to how things were before. The first step will always be downloading both website files and the database. Do it manually or via a plugin, whatever is convenient to you.

Let’s get to the steps… 

Step One – Damage Assessment 

Post backup, it is time to see how the site’s current performance is in terms of page speed. Then follows the before/after comparison. If you have before/after data, you can draw the comparison and check if your actions made any difference. Some of the commonly used tools are – Pingdom, GTmetrix, Google PageSpeed Insights.

Plugging the URL into these sites to see the site’s performance. These testing tools will provide inputs on how the speed of the page can be improved. The recommendations will look like this:

  • Enable compression
  • Leverage browser caching
  • Reduce HTTP requests
  • Eliminate JavaScript and CSS above the fold
  • Optimize images
  • Minify CSS and JavaScript
  • Reduce server response time

Step Two – Eliminating Unnecessary Plugins and Themes

There are always some plugins on the site that are not useful or have outlived the initial purpose. These plugins put an extra, unnecessary burden on the site, increasing the loading time. HTTP requests can slow a site down, so log in and sort through the plugin list. Disable plugins that are not in use and also stop by the theme menu to see if there is anything that isn’t needed.

Step Three – Run Plugin Performance Profiler

With Performance Profiler, plugin performance can be scanned, pinpointing the ones slowing down the WordPress website.

Step Four – Update!

Upgrading WordPress, themes, and plugins gives you access to the latest features and also lets you take advantage of speed improvements. Proper up-gradation of each element constructing the website is necessary.

Step Five – Optimization of the Database

Data optimization can be done using plugins like WP-Optimize. It helps you remove the data overhead from database tables and unnecessary entries such as old post revisions and more.

Step Six – Image Optimization

Images often make up the bulk of any webpage, especially if they are completely composed of visuals. For that reason, we optimize images as much as possible. 

Step Seven – Enable Compression

Next, zip up the files to make them smaller so that browsers need less time to download and present them on the screen.

Step Eight – Turn on Browser Caching

Enabling browser caching basically means telling the browsers of visitors to store parts of the site on their hard drive for a quick future load. This way, resources that aren’t likely to change, can be reused next time.

Step Nine – Minify and Concatenate

Using plugins like Autoptimize to reduce the number of HTTP requests made by the browser by minifying and concatenating the CSS and JavaScript files.

About Galaxy Weblinks 

Galaxy Weblinks is your one-stop solution for WordPress solutions, We offer a complete range of IT services including WordPress development and WordPress optimization. Contact us now for the complete WordPress solutions.

Google Core Web Vitals for your WordPress Website

Posted on by galaxy-admin

All WordPress sites are made different, and they all react differently when exposed to different kinds of stress and scenarios. The speed and performance can be attributed to various factors. Fortunately, there are some guidelines for a robust foundation and optimum performance. These guidelines will also help you improve user experience and search rankings. The latest in the line of these guidelines is Google Core Web Vitals, which helps measure User Experience quality. 

Talking of UX, here is a blog that we recommend for UX tweaks to improve customer retention by DesignRush.

Before we go further to understand what Google’s CWV metrics mean for your WordPress websites, here is a primer on Google Core Web Vitals.

Understanding Page Load

Let’s understand the fundamentals before we get down to tweaking for speed and performance optimization. This is what goes behind every page load:

>>Server receives request

>>If HTML is cached the server responds instantly, if not then it takes time to build it

>>Browser reads through the HTML and makes a rough outline

>>Browser loads CSS from the HTML, if any

>>Browser loads JavaScript if required

>>Browser matches styling with the outline

>>Images and other elements load as encountered

>>Font files are applied to the text

While all of this is happening in the backend, it’s easy to take page loads for granted. It only becomes a problem when it’s taking more time than usual. Performance metrics can help you identify problem areas and take actions accordingly and subsequent optimization can shave seconds off of your load times. 

Optimize your hosting environment

Poor performance can be caused by various factors. But in most cases slow page speeds can be attributed to the hosting environments and time it takes for servers to respond. Since the server has to load the WordPress framework, connect the database, and process content into its final structure, all in an instant. 

Cached pages are instantly available to the visitors and the server doesn’t have to generate fresh pages upon each page request. An ideal approach would be to go with a hosting solution that provides a caching facility. WPEngine and Pantheon are such options for WordPress needs.

Keep a check on resources needed to render a page

Even after receiving the HTML, the browser doesn’t show anything until it figures out how everything needs to look. That includes downloading and parsing stylesheet data. These are additional files that can be kept in check to render things faster.

Best practices to keep resource dependency in check:

  • Use a pipeline to compile scripts and styles into single resources. Similarly, you can also combine all of your JavaScript and CSS into single files using plugins.
  • Reduce the number of font file downloads. The lesser the number of custom fonts used the better.
  • Make use of critical CSS/fonts that load in the order of their appearance on the viewport.

Keep everything up-to-date

When the caches expire, the pages regenerate and the page loads all over again. Large monolithic site builders like DIVI or WPBakery add to the loading time as they add numerous database calls to every page on the site. 

Audit your installed plugins and see if they are contributing to slower load times. Update all your plugins for security and performance purposes as bugs or flaws can be used as a backdoor for attacks. 

Hosting and managing WP Servers

Apart from cosmetic optimizations, you can get more control and performance out of your WordPress website by hosting and managing your server. In case you’re thinking of getting your server, these techniques will help. 

  • You can reduce the number of data calls needed to generate a page via object caching.
  • WordPress loads and compiles several PHP files while building a page. Using OPCache to store compiled code will improve your page generation time.
  • Use a reverse proxy for page caching. You could look at tools like Varnish and NGINX for that.

Wrapping Up

We are yet to see the major implications on search rankings of this algorithm update but we suggest that you incorporate all these updates on your WordPress website. The optimizations and tools that we have mentioned here will only help you to keep your site up and running and faster than ever.  

About Galaxy Weblinks

We specialize in delivering end-to-end software design & development services and have hands-on experience with popular front-end and back-end frameworks. Our back-end and front-end engineers also help in improving security, reliability, and features to make sure your business application scales and remains secure.

5 WordPress Trends For Business Growth in 2021

Posted on by galaxy-admin

Regardless of the stiff competition, WordPress has been growing steadily since its inception. It is constantly evolving with new trends and technologies. 

Our blog uncovers the most significant WordPress trends that will help future-proof your business. As a business owner, adopting these practices can give you an edge over your competitors.  

1. AI in CMS

Our lives are faster than ever. Chatbots, voice search, and other AI-powered utilities have become essential for our need for speed. 

Modern CMS platforms are now equipped with AI-powered functionalities that seamlessly integrate backend to a website’s front-end. Wix for example utilizes AI to help web developers and designers to create custom web templates based on their preferences. 

These CMS platforms are so advanced that a headless CMS can deliver content using chatbot interfaces on mobile devices just through API integration.

2.  Hybrid CMS

To make up for the lack of a visual interface to design and preview content in a Headless platform, businesses are adopting the hybrid way.  

The hybrid approach comes with the scalability of a headless CMS architecture and at the same time keeps things traditional with a content control perspective. WordPress paired with REST APIs is a great example of this hybrid approach. 

A hybrid approach offers the best of both worlds with a structured presentation while giving the essential content control to marketers to manipulate content for customers.

3. Focus on Accessibility

Smart speakers with voice capabilities have dramatically improved access to online content, as has captioned media, simplified navigation, and increasingly accurate voice search technology. With increased dependency on IoT for work, school, entertainment, commerce, and social connections, the importance of maintaining and improving accessibility for people with disabilities is more profound than ever. 

WordPress offers integrations for accessibility and encourages development for the same in the community. There are millions of accessibility themes and plugins like WP accessibility that highlight accessibility issues within your website. 

4. Motion UI

According to a rough estimate by Siteefy, 547200 websites are registered daily. With these many websites being released every day, the competition for user’s attention is a great challenge. You cannot rely on the traditional ways of gaining user’s attention. 

Users need visual stimulation, and we recommend Motion UI to do just that. You can offer a unique experience in a motion user interface by adding movement, animated elements, and transitions to your design.

Motion UI is not just for the aesthetic and edginess, you can also use it to direct visitor’s focus on important things. 

For instance, this website of a music band does a great job of grabbing one’s attention. It is interactive, keeps you engaged, and ticks the right boxes, helping them achieve their business goals. 

5. Voice Interface

Voice-based experiences are no longer just some novelty feature that companies use to sell their products. It facilitates web accessibility, thereby making the web more inclusive than it was 10 years ago. And besides everyone just loves interacting with their phones and other mobile devices via voice interfaces. Google reports that 27% of the online global population is using voice search on mobile.

Summing Up

These trends are reshaping the web and the way we use it. Your WordPress website can also take advantage of these trends to change your content management strategy for the better and drive your business. 

You can get in touch with us if you’re looking to partner with WordPress experts. Our team will understand your requirements and provide you with a robust and cutting-edge solution that puts your business on a fast track to success. 

About Galaxy

We are your offshore CMS development partner and have state-of-art infrastructure and development expertise on the latest CMS technology trends. We have hands-on experience in end-to-end WordPress CMS development solutions catering to different business needs. We offer assistance from building custom CMS websites to website migration and maintenance processes.

The Quest Of The Most Extraordinary CMS - WordPress vs Drupal vs Craft

Posted on by galaxy-admin

This article is an assessment and comparison of the popular content management systems WordPress, Drupal, and Craft. We’ll dig into each CMS platform’s features, ease of use, the types of businesses that are best suited to the platform, and more. We’ll also walk you through the use case scenario of each CMS and will help you understand which one could be right for your business and goals.

Before we explore the nuances of each CMS, let us quickly introduce the three stalwarts in the CMS arena.

WordPress

WordPress is an extremely versatile CMS that facilitates users (even non-developers) to create feature-rich websites and ecommerce portals. It is completely customizable, mobile-optimized, and SEO friendly. It’s also open-source, making it completely free, redistributable, and offers unlimited validity.

The most popular CMS platform powers more than 40% of the websites available on the internet. It also offers thousands of free and paid themes and plugins that the developers can choose from.

Drupal

Drupal’s open-source model encourages continuous improvement and innovation through the support and passion of the Drupal community. With a pool of diverse experts regularly working to make Drupal better, the possibility to create exceptional digital experiences expands far beyond what a single team of proprietary software developers could dream up.

Recent versions of Drupal have also prioritized user experience (UX) to empower everyone from the site editors to content creators and to build powerful customer experiences.

Craft

Craft CMS is a content management system similar to WordPress. The interface is a simple, more stripped back version of WordPress, built and tailored to the needs and requirements of the business. This simple view makes updating and adding content a much more seamless experience.

For some, this adds an increased level of comfort when migrating over to Craft due to the out-of-box understanding developers, designers, and writers are likely to have.

Comparison — WordPress, Drupal, & Craft CMS

Drupal

Below are the brief use cases for each CMS, showcasing when and how the three of them are being used to help you decide which one suits your business needs, size, and scalability.

WordPress

One of the common misconceptions about WordPress is that it’s mainly for creating blogging sites. WordPress was developed as a blogging platform, but that is ancient history now. The platform has evolved radically with the various new releases over the years.

The good news with WordPress is that it is extremely flexible. It can be adapted for ecommerce websites, corporate websites, communities, and forums. WordPress is an ideal fit for startups as well, as it allows them to start small and then scale up to run even enterprise level organizations that span many countries and continents.

All you need are suitable plugins and themes. So, for instance, if you wanted to make an online portfolio for your web design business or even a blogging site, you could go with the provided themes. You can alter its source code to customize your website’s look or functionality!

You have a choice of adding extra oomph to your website by opting for customizations.

For example,

You may have a website that includes a design that should be converted to HTML, CSS, and JavaScript — being three different “technologies”, and be mobile friendly as well. That design is then integrated into a WordPress theme. Whereas all dynamic components such as menus, sidebars, footer widgets, and general content areas should be connected and coordinated with the backend.

Several custom features are then built as custom plugins by a back-end developer, who should be aware of the front-end specifics and business needs through a manager. That final product is packaged and then hosted on a specific server environment.

It will require an extra pair of hands further when it comes to security (having more people able to tackle an assignment and a project manager in charge), having potentially higher code quality when a bunch of people carry out code reviews. This process includes automated testing and ongoing scalability given the diverse expertise of our WordPress developers.

In addition to that, WordPress might be free but it is common for businesses to pay the experts to design a logo for you or adjust some of the CSS code on your site. Whereas, other WordPress users are keen on keeping graphic designers or maintenance experts on call.

So, it all depends on your experience and the scale of your website.

Drupal

Drupal is the best choice if you are building a website that needs complex data organization, that needs to be customizable.

For instance, when you’re building an advanced website, you can choose from among many technologies. Usually, the first choice is the programming language (ASP.NET, Java, Python, PHP, etc.) and then we decide whether we should code everything from scratch or use a framework to do all the heavy lifting.

There is also a third choice, a more comprehensive solution, CMF (content management framework). Drupal 9 is one of these frameworks/systems.

And by large and advanced, we mean one that is changed frequently. Content changes are carried out by at least one editor, supported by at least one developer (along with a QA tester and a sysadmin), who’s responsible for fixing the bugs, continuous development of the website, adding new functionalities, and so on.

Some examples of large and advanced websites are:

  1. A corporate website of a medium or large production or service company.
  2. An informational website, for example, run by a paper or magazine.
  3. An organization’s employee portal for managing processes in the company, such as a CRM system.
  4. A system feeding content to other systems — an API with content for other websites and mobile applications.

Besides, Drupal has almost everything you need out-of-the-box. But more often than that, you may need a functionality that is not a part of the Drupal core yet. And to fulfill that need, you need modules. Modules are bundles of code that can extend or add the functionality of Drupal websites. For example, Drupal Commerce provides everything required to sell products, services, or files online.

Craft

With Netflix, Moz, Duck Brand Duck Tape, Salesforce, PBS, and countless other brands running Craft websites, it’s a mature and competent content management system. At the same time, one of the most important things about Craft is that it is among the newest CMS solutions.

Craft CMS has ditched the traditional CMS systems that come with pre-built themes, CSS frameworks, and ready-to-go websites. It provides a bespoke solution to developers. Craft CMS neither offers posts or pages nor does it offer any bootstrap features and themes to spin up the frontend.

Everything is coded and designed from scratch which allows creating a unique experience specific to your project. And a fluent, sensible content management experience is the result.

Craft specifically targets developers responsible for building complex websites for companies with large budgets.

The primary reason for what makes Craft successful is that CraftCMS gives web professionals and developers control over websites they build.

There are many key tools in CraftCMS that are managed through the control panel of the CMS that illustrates how Craft supports and favors developers of your business:

  • Hundreds of Craft mediated plug-ins
  • Live preview during the website build
  • Regular releases and bug fixes
  • Complete control over the content and categories
  • An ability to manage multiple sites with one Craft installation
  • Custom templates
  • Allowing developers to write and use their own HTML

Why does it matter to your business?

When we boil this down to value for your business, all three CMS ensure a robust and feature-rich website with fewer maintenance costs, faster publishing, and quicker onboarding of new people.

The flexibility and features they offer are out of the box, along with their content-first approach, and make them our go-to for nearly every custom web project.

It’s a crucial part of our web design and development capabilities. Intrigued? Get in touch with us and we’ll be happy to talk about how they can make your site great.

WordPress 5.4 ‘Adderley’ | New features and improvements

Posted on by galaxy-admin

The recently released WordPress 5.4 ‘Adderley’ update has got a lot to look forward to! Since this highly popular CMS ditched its classic editor for blocks, the updates that followed were more or less about the editor. This incremental update brings some changes in Gutenberg along with accessibility improvements, site health check mechanisms, and numerous other enhancements.

Before we dive deeper into the update’s details, here is a quick list of reasons for anyone who is deferring any updates for a later date.

Why should you upgrade to 5.4?

While incremental updates might not seem that urgent, here are some compelling reasons that will urge you to think otherwise:

A continuous upgrade helps address security loopholes and ensure that your website is protected against possible security breaches.
Like other updates, WordPress updates are also focussed on continuous performance improvements of your website.
Updates help your website become more user friendly and accessible, thereby creating a better user experience.

Let’s take a closer look at the new features and enhancements in this update.

Changes in the Gutenberg Editor

  • Social Icon buttons

You can now add more than 30+ social platform icons to all your posts and website pages. It includes Reddit, Medium, Facebook, Linkedin, and more. This will eventually help you increase engagement across all your social media platforms.

  • Gutenberg’s got a performance upgrade as well

There is a 14% reduction in the loading time of the editor as compared to 5.3 update.

  • More color options

There is now a gradient background option available for columns, cover, and buttons. This new color customization option goes a long way in making your website’s layout more engaging and visually appealing.

Additionally, you are no longer restricted to a single color of the text in paragraphs. You can add inline text color within your paragraphs.

  • Buttons block

You can now get multiple blocks on a single page. This means multiple CTA in a single block, thus letting your user decide which option to go for. Plus, you can play with button style, text font, and the background colors.

  • Full screen mode

Gutenberg editor now opens in full screen mode by default. You can switch the mode in the top right menu and go in, ‘editor settings’, and uncheck the ‘fullscreen mode’ option.

The community has a mixed reaction towards this addition, especially for beginners. A notable issue is that when the full screen mode is activated, the top bar and admin panels are removed. This makes the navigation a task for the new users.

  • TikTok embed block

This update now has embed blocks for TikTok videos, similar to adding Youtube videos.

  • Featured image

You now have the drag and drop option to add featured images to your blog instead of manually selecting the image. The size and alignments can also be adjusted in the gallery block.

Other notable changes

  • New welcome model

The new welcome model provides a tour of the Gutenberg editor. Tips are no longer present and in its place, there is a slideshow with necessary explanations of blocks and official documentation reference. And the good thing is that this welcome guide can be seen as and when needed via the top right corner menu.

  • Accessibility improvement

On the accessibility front, keyboard navigation in media modal and privacy policy’s readability is improved. You also have the option to change the image title in the image block itself.

  • Health checks enhancements

There is a new widget on your site’s admin dashboard. This displays your website’s overall health and gives you a warning on possible issues. In case you want detailed reports, there is a CTA button that will provide the required information and possible remedy for the issues.

Incremental updates are just as important as version upgrades because the exploits don’t stop unless you do the essential regular maintenance.

About Galaxy Weblinks

We have a team of WordPress experts that will assess your WordPress website and help you be at the top of your game when it comes to security, performance, and stability. Contact us for a free

Maintenance chores to keep your WordPress site in good health

Posted on by galaxy-admin

Today, websites are more than just a ‘set-it-and-forget-it’ proposition. They are marketing machines that help you get new customers and leads. You might be planning to or already own one.

Regardless of what size and functions they inherit, this is true for all sites…for WordPress ones too. And complexity being the most ingrained quirk of websites nowadays, maintaining the website on a regular basis becomes a necessity.

As this will help you avoid being reactive, eschewing the risk of ending up with a chaotic, insecure and slow website that is hard to use for both admins and visitors.

The Blame Game

In a typical manufacturing facility, there are two primary groups: production (or operations) and maintenance. Likewise, a website entails two major phases – the development and maintenance (after going live).

If you have poorly trained operators then this will lead to reactive maintenance and destroy maintenance’s ability to efficiently maintain the factory. The opposite is also true.

Tension and blame games become a common scenario due to conflicts.

In the same way, installing the wrong versions of themes and plugins in the development phase can lead to a site break after going live.

Conversely, if you are not analyzing or worrying about achieving loading times under 1 second after getting the website live, you will probably never get a Mayday! signal from your code.

Both the phases are so intertwined and symbiotic in nature that they cannot be at opposite ends of the performance spectrum.

There are certain maintenance exercises that are needed to be assured in both the phases. The list of WP maintenance is endless.

But, we have sifted down some major practices to maintain good website health…

During Website Development

Set up your WP website with latest versions

It’s crucial that you always use the latest version of WordPress, themes and plugins.

Ensure that your plugin and theme developers coordinate their updates with major WP releases. Because with each new release, they enhance existing features, improve performance, add new features, and fix bugs to stay up to date with new industry standards.

So that you won’t miss out on new improvements/features, and risking your website to break.

Install plugins to plug website’s security holes

The security of your site is only as good as the backend and foundation it’s running on. Security plugins can save you from..

  • Hackers stealing your data belonging to your users
  • A compromised website that can malicious code to unsuspecting users

Sucuri, Wordfence and iThemes Security are some of the popular security plugins.

Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

There are chances that large images, CSS and JS files might have not been optimized taking a lot of time to arrive from the web server to the visitor. Whereas, your hosting server is hosting many websites together and response times are slow due to resource + bottlenecks.

A CDN is a network made up of servers all around the world that can help to speed up loading times for all of your visitors. And you can take a lot of load away from your server, because the heaviest resources are now hosted by the CDN.

Work on your code

There may be times you have to access the source code of your website. There are 3 main areas where you need to maintain a clean coding environment.

Commenting:

It cuts down time on edits and bug fixes which otherwise will be spent by the new developers or even by the same developer on figuring out what a particular code block does.

Linting:

It is another cool feature which enforces rules on the way we write code, and sometimes it corrects the code formatting itself.

Debugging:

Some popular examples of WP debugging plugins include Debug Bar, Kint Debugger and Query monitor.

Maintaining a live website

Back it Up!

The Rule-Of-Thumb dictates you must create a back-up of the data of your website. Sometimes it is also advisable to create more than one back-up and store it in different places to avoid any contingency.

Make sure to run backup plugins only during low traffic time on your website. You also need to adjust the frequency of backups and data that needs to be backed up.

Monitor website server uptime

There can be many occasions when your website is down and you’ll not even be aware of it. And this affects your business severely, website reputation, and user experience.

Use Jetpack, Down Notifier, and Pingdom plugins to monitor your website every specific minute via stats available on the dashboard. These plugins notify when your website goes down or is inaccessible.

SEO

The whole point to starting a business is to have clients. You get ranked on Google with most up-to-date and relevant information. They may even de-index your website entirely if it hasn’t been updated recently enough and if they suspect it has been infected by malware.

You must keep your website regularly updated via current content, news, keywords, permalinks, and rich snippets to rank well in search results.

The big dog in this picture – No..Not Speed!

Your website is a very important element of your business. It can cost you dearly, if it’s not in a good state or it can be a valuable asset if it is up-to-date and running smoothly. Once you are behind on your maintenance needs, it can be quite the process to bring the website back up to speed.

Do your business and yourself a favor by staying on top of your website. This will repay you with simple ease of mind. Devote your time what you’re best at: creating content and managing business.

Afterall you don’t want to wake up to alarm bells showing that something has gone south with your WordPress website.

Taking burden off you

It’s true that much of the work of maintaining your site can be automated.

But you still have to set it all up. You have to take the time to check any issues and you may have to fix them too. That will require you to learn about website security, error logs, or 404 pages.

Which is why it can be helpful to hire WordPress maintenance professionals. As a good WordPress maintenance expert not only fixes problems but also finds ways to keep them from happening again.