Tag Archives | Backups

WordPress Plugins That Can Make Your Website Better

WordPress Plugins That Can Make Your Website Better

If you want to make your website better these plugins can help. Plugins allow you to add features and functions to your blog without having to learn programming language. You might notice a common theme with these plugins. All of these use WP or WordPress in their WordPress plugin names.

WordPress Database Backup

No one plans for their site to crash, but sometimes it happens. With this blog plugin you can schedule regular backups of your website to be sent automatically to your email. You do not have to worry about remembering or being on vacation.

WordPress Firewall

Similar to the firewall you may have installed on your computer, this blocks suspicious parameters. This means that if it detects something suspicious happening to your WordPress website it blocks it. It also logs the interaction for you to check over later. You can also whitelist your own IPS address and your other blog writers further limiting access.

WP Optimize

You probably have noticed every time you make a change to your posts, WordPress saves a revision. After a while all those revisions grow into mountains. You also have extra information saved on various code sheets that make up your site with installing and uninstalling plugins and themes. Optimize your site with this WordPress plugin.

WordPress Mobile Edition

More and more people are checking websites on their phone. But phone browsers may not be able to read your theme. When this WordPress blog plugin detects a phone it uses a mobile friendly theme instead of your normal one. Now your readers can continue to have access to your site wherever they roam.

WordPress Stats

Many statistics plugins take setting up and then require a learning curve to understand. With WordPress Stats you visit the plugin on your dashboard. The line graph show number of visitors. The tables below show you what pages people visited, what brought them to your site and reminds you of your busiest day.

WordPress Thread Comment

Social media has gained in popularity because people like to interact. The standard WordPress comment system allows comments to flow in time order which makes it hard for people to understand when one comment is responding to another. Not with this plugin, your readers and you can comment directly. The response will be with the original comment to flow evenly and logically.

WP Super Cache

While you are getting the site working better this will come in handy as well. Most of your visitors will see a saved static file version of your site. This allows your website to run faster and will help should your site suddenly have heavy traffic.

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How I Crashed My WordPress Site (forever)

How I Crashed My WordPress Site (forever)

I was making an instructional video on the topic of installing WordPress onto a domain.  In order to show the process, I was using my own account, by installing WordPress on one of my own domains.  I completed the video and was very pleased with the results.

I went to my main domain to upload the video and was shocked to find that my site was gone and in its place, the default template you get when you first install WordPress onto a domain.  Confused and panicking, I called Bluehost (the greatest hosting company out there) thinking they would have a way of fixing what I had done to my site.

I heard the words that everyone who has a site on the internet fears hearing: “”I am very sorry ma’am, but there are no backups to roll your site back to.  Your content is gone and not recoverable.””

Having always assumed that my site was being automatically backed up, I was shocked to say the least.  How could this happen?  Technical support informed me that my account had long ago exceeded 2 gigabytes, and that after the 2 gig size has been reached, they cannot guarantee that the sites will be automatically backed up.  In fact, it is very unlikely that the sites will be (automatically) backed up.

So what have I learned about hosting that could help you in the future?

That once your account (not just your site) gets bigger than 2 gig, it can and will no longer be backed up automatically.  You either need to go to your hosting and back it up yourself, or add a plugin that will do it for you.
That you do not get any warning that lets you know you are close or have exceeded the 2 gig limit.  But you can go into your C-Panel (the back end of your hosting) and check the file space and usage anytime to see how close you are to the 2 gig point.
You can backup your site yourself and I highly recommend that you do this.
Bluehost has wonderful tutorials that will walk you through this process.  Go to tutorials.bluehost.com for the best info available.
That PARKED domains are redirected to your main domain.  What you do to a parked domain, you will be doing to your main domain.  (Remember I installed WordPress on a domain I wasn’t using? It was a parked domain.)
I highly recommend that you learn all you can about your hosting package.  Bluehost offers C-Panel which is a user friendly, highly intuitive program allowing end users (you) to manage your hosting/sites/account yourself. Read up on all that you can get your hands on from your Hosting company.
Wherever possible, use other sites to upload content to. For example, did you know that you can create the coolest sales page in Twitwall?  And you can host your videos on YouTube and so on.  Get really creative and monitor the size of your account frequently.

What causes your site to exceed 2 gig? 

For one thing, it is not just any one site that you have hosted that is considered in the size-it is your

whole ACCOUNT. 
If you have a couple of sites hosted, they are both factored in on the size. 
Extra templates, unnecessary plugins, files you don’t use, and too many video and audio files.
Files in your directory.  If you don’t use the file any longer, take it out of your directory.

So please, go and create a backup of your site (s).  Never assume anything.

Oh, and I still highly recommend Bluehost.

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