I make judicious use of Jetpack on my sites as its publicise feature, comments, social login and subscriptions facilities are unparalleled. I've tried other plugins - none are
Sadly I have to move to another hosting site?
I make judicious use of Jetpack on my sites as its publicise feature, comments, social login and subscriptions facilities are unparalleled. I've tried other plugins - none are
That's so sad but i'm confused as to how this is a question when it's a statement. I think you should still stay as a member for the training and advise even if you don't use this as a host.
I could only post it if I added a question mark! I paid for a year so I wills till hang around for 6months. The community aspect is great.
Oh ok cool. Yes the community is my favorite it helps me understand what I'm learning. I'm glad you're staying for a bit but out if curiosity hoe do you move the site to another host. Honestly I'm considering it too. I'd like something cheaper. Plus once I know everything I may need to move if I don't start making money soon. I won't be able to afford to stay here much longer.
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Over the last few weeks, my side bar widgets have defaulted to the original theme options (search etc in left side bar, right side bar empty) and all the widgets I had in the r
I know that one, sometimes for no good reason, we find a solution and are still not sure why. Charge on I say.
You may have entered the Twilight Zone. It sounds like a glitch it is good you caught it quickly. I don't think it is anything you had control over.
Why do widgets reset to default?
Over the last few weeks, my side bar widgets have defaulted to the original theme options (search etc in left side bar, right side bar empty) and all the widgets I had in the r
I know that one, sometimes for no good reason, we find a solution and are still not sure why. Charge on I say.
You may have entered the Twilight Zone. It sounds like a glitch it is good you caught it quickly. I don't think it is anything you had control over.
Something very funny is happening with Google Analytics on my 3 sites, all of which use the same theme and plugins. I've set up analytics identically on each of them, same plug
I think the only what matters are GA and Webmaster, check in both.
I get from Semrush 5 times more traffic than from GA. Unfortunately I am sure this is not so.
Why is google analytics not capturing my visitors?
Something very funny is happening with Google Analytics on my 3 sites, all of which use the same theme and plugins. I've set up analytics identically on each of them, same plug
I think the only what matters are GA and Webmaster, check in both.
I get from Semrush 5 times more traffic than from GA. Unfortunately I am sure this is not so.
Just received the following email via my blogsite. Has anyone else had experience of this? Is it legitimate or will I be expected to feature dodgy products with dodgy claims? I
Sponsored post is a form of link building for SEO purposes. Link building is not part of the training here. Link building was badly abused by many and Google slapped many of those practices with the Penguin and Panda updates a few years ago.
A sponsored post is that they pay you to write a post with their link in the post. This should not hurt your site in any way and you are in control. You can demand any price you want and you can turn them down for any reason. As with any affiliate link, don't do this too many times. You want to maintain your authority with Google and not look like a spammy website.
I don't recall EVER getting legitimate affiliate-type offers in email that solicit for marketers (except, JVZoo does this, but they are legitimate, and it's how their program works). Also, I was involved, for a very short time, with a company with the initials DC, found out quickly doing internet research that the main complaint was that they don't pay, and quickly cancelled. BTW, they were asking for money up-front, when you joined and wanted to get going with their program.
I'd sure be interested in knowing the name of this company. If you're reluctant to show it here in public, could you PM the name to me, please? Thanks ~ Mike
Probably from someone selling blog posts on legit sites from Fiverr, Upwork or elsewhere. But they obviously don't know anything about your site and haven't done any research as the email is generic and probably sent to thousands of people.
But you've nothing to lose by giving them a price and obviously you'd have final say about what goes on your site, so nothing spamming or Viagra related could get posted.
Sounds legitimate to me. You could ask for more details and references to be sure that it isn't a "scam". But it doesn't sound like a scam, I mean you don't give away any important data and you don't have to pay for anything.
Seems like you are on a good way, keep it up! Wish you the best of luck!
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Is this sponsored post offer legitimate?
Just received the following email via my blogsite. Has anyone else had experience of this? Is it legitimate or will I be expected to feature dodgy products with dodgy claims? I
Sponsored post is a form of link building for SEO purposes. Link building is not part of the training here. Link building was badly abused by many and Google slapped many of those practices with the Penguin and Panda updates a few years ago.
A sponsored post is that they pay you to write a post with their link in the post. This should not hurt your site in any way and you are in control. You can demand any price you want and you can turn them down for any reason. As with any affiliate link, don't do this too many times. You want to maintain your authority with Google and not look like a spammy website.
I don't recall EVER getting legitimate affiliate-type offers in email that solicit for marketers (except, JVZoo does this, but they are legitimate, and it's how their program works). Also, I was involved, for a very short time, with a company with the initials DC, found out quickly doing internet research that the main complaint was that they don't pay, and quickly cancelled. BTW, they were asking for money up-front, when you joined and wanted to get going with their program.
I'd sure be interested in knowing the name of this company. If you're reluctant to show it here in public, could you PM the name to me, please? Thanks ~ Mike
Probably from someone selling blog posts on legit sites from Fiverr, Upwork or elsewhere. But they obviously don't know anything about your site and haven't done any research as the email is generic and probably sent to thousands of people.
But you've nothing to lose by giving them a price and obviously you'd have final say about what goes on your site, so nothing spamming or Viagra related could get posted.
Sounds legitimate to me. You could ask for more details and references to be sure that it isn't a "scam". But it doesn't sound like a scam, I mean you don't give away any important data and you don't have to pay for anything.
Seems like you are on a good way, keep it up! Wish you the best of luck!
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I've been using GTmetrix to assess my site load times. The same site page load time varies between 1.9secs and 40.0 secs over the course of an hour without me doing or changing
My site used to do this too. I'm not sure exactly why but I did a good deal of frustrating trial and error with some plugins that can speed up your site and have improved my load time drastically. I also removed a spam protection plugin that was increasing my site load time.
Here are the plugins that I have experimented with using:
-BJ Lazy Load to not load images until the user scrolls to them
-Far Future Expiration Plugin to tell the browser to save certain things that don't change much and not reload them every time you visit the website
-GZip Ninja Speed Compression to compress the code
-JCH Optimize to cache my pages (tell the browser to remember them and not reload them)
-WP Smush to reduce the file size of all my images (I also compressed images that were huge and re-uploaded them)
-WP Super Minify
I made sure not to minify the css because it made my site look bad on IE. It is a balance between plugins adding load time vs how much they can improve the load time. You can use the plugin P3 Plugin Profiler to test how long each plugin takes to load.
The one that probably made the biggest difference for me was turning on caching with JCH Optimize. That plugin only takes .0392 seconds to load.
I do think that the hosting we have is not the fastest. A CDN can improve load times but I don't think we can use them with this hosting. I might be wrong about that though. Also your theme can definitely affect loading times.
Always back up your site before downloading any plugins! (Tools -> Export)
This is not a direct answer, but it may help.
Safari, Chrome, Firefox, and Opera each have "developer tools", which include a "network" tab. The network tab shows a graph of loading times for your primary resources on the web page.
Because it's a graph, it's easy to make visual comparisons of load times for different resources on the page. Between that and the millisecond notation of exact time, you may be able to pinpoint your problem.
If you're not familiar with this tool for your favorite browser, I can PM a link to a page that shows you how to enable these for each browser, and a few simple instructions of how to open to the tools.
Hope this helps.
--Fran
Just to follow up, after I tested your page, we discovered that 1) the DNS lookup of plugin JavaScripts on numerous different servers was what the GTMatrix tool referenced as "DNS lookup". Also that 2) a particular plugin was firing late which was affecting what's called "layout"—the time it takes for the page to start looking normal.
One solution to the plugin's firing late may be to move those items it affects below the fold (below what's visible when the browser window is at full height). Although it will still register late in a timeline graph, your page should appear to load much faster for visitors. It's worth a try,
As to the DNS lookups of all of these extra JavaScripts, there could be one or more of them that is slow to look up—no fault of yours or the WA servers; but because of these servers on which the various scripts reside. The recommended way to see which plugin's script is the problem is to deactivate all of the plugins, and test. Then activate the plugins, one at a time, retesting each time, to determine which one or ones are slowing things down. Ditch or find replacements for those.
It's a bit of a hassle; but once you do these things, you'll probably never have to do them again, for any of your sites.
Your sites are beautiful and have lots of good information, Sarah. Let me know if I can be of more help.
--Fran
Thanks for all your help Fran. I will definitely test all the plugins as you suggest. In teh meantime, one possible problem was the slider bar which I have now replaced with one image to see if that speeds up initial load time. I also asked SUpport to allow me to register my premium theme which I hadn't been abble ot do before. Once the key code validation was allowed it turned out there were 5 recent theme updates which corrected minor issues, some of which related to the recent big WP update. Having updated those (I'm using a Child Theme so didn't lose any settingst) things are now definitely better. Thanks for your comments on my sites! Sarah B
Apparently it is the DNS lookup which is slow at 9.54 seconds. Is that the time to access WA servers?
I've also deactivated Spamshield as it was taking 8.2 secs to load according to P3 plugin test. I now use Antispam Bee (used by Marcus and Marion) as it doesn't need captcha and it has no impact on site load at all which is great. And, so far, no spam!
I tried right now on mobile, with 4 active plugins,the speed is good too, and gtmetrix shows a good result,https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/ shows 85/100, https://varvy.com/pagespeed/ shows 85 out of 100 and a lot of things to correct.I think after you correct the site with Marcus training, you can keep a few active plugins after you publish more items, it is necessary to use Marcus training.Also,I deactivated WP-SpamShield and I use Akismet. Akismet Spam Protection - Get it Free I'll try like this!
I tried Marcus training,too, it was like this for me,too.I had 1.97 seconds, retest and after I had 19.2 seconds, I thought the cause can be the internet connection, anyway the site loads very quickly on mobile in both cases.
Thanks. It loads slowly for me on my computer at times - especially on the back end when opening posts and pages. SIgh.
It is important to load quickly for other people when they are looking at your site!A nice Sunday!
See more comments
Why is my site load time so variable?
I've been using GTmetrix to assess my site load times. The same site page load time varies between 1.9secs and 40.0 secs over the course of an hour without me doing or changing
My site used to do this too. I'm not sure exactly why but I did a good deal of frustrating trial and error with some plugins that can speed up your site and have improved my load time drastically. I also removed a spam protection plugin that was increasing my site load time.
Here are the plugins that I have experimented with using:
-BJ Lazy Load to not load images until the user scrolls to them
-Far Future Expiration Plugin to tell the browser to save certain things that don't change much and not reload them every time you visit the website
-GZip Ninja Speed Compression to compress the code
-JCH Optimize to cache my pages (tell the browser to remember them and not reload them)
-WP Smush to reduce the file size of all my images (I also compressed images that were huge and re-uploaded them)
-WP Super Minify
I made sure not to minify the css because it made my site look bad on IE. It is a balance between plugins adding load time vs how much they can improve the load time. You can use the plugin P3 Plugin Profiler to test how long each plugin takes to load.
The one that probably made the biggest difference for me was turning on caching with JCH Optimize. That plugin only takes .0392 seconds to load.
I do think that the hosting we have is not the fastest. A CDN can improve load times but I don't think we can use them with this hosting. I might be wrong about that though. Also your theme can definitely affect loading times.
Always back up your site before downloading any plugins! (Tools -> Export)
This is not a direct answer, but it may help.
Safari, Chrome, Firefox, and Opera each have "developer tools", which include a "network" tab. The network tab shows a graph of loading times for your primary resources on the web page.
Because it's a graph, it's easy to make visual comparisons of load times for different resources on the page. Between that and the millisecond notation of exact time, you may be able to pinpoint your problem.
If you're not familiar with this tool for your favorite browser, I can PM a link to a page that shows you how to enable these for each browser, and a few simple instructions of how to open to the tools.
Hope this helps.
--Fran
Just to follow up, after I tested your page, we discovered that 1) the DNS lookup of plugin JavaScripts on numerous different servers was what the GTMatrix tool referenced as "DNS lookup". Also that 2) a particular plugin was firing late which was affecting what's called "layout"—the time it takes for the page to start looking normal.
One solution to the plugin's firing late may be to move those items it affects below the fold (below what's visible when the browser window is at full height). Although it will still register late in a timeline graph, your page should appear to load much faster for visitors. It's worth a try,
As to the DNS lookups of all of these extra JavaScripts, there could be one or more of them that is slow to look up—no fault of yours or the WA servers; but because of these servers on which the various scripts reside. The recommended way to see which plugin's script is the problem is to deactivate all of the plugins, and test. Then activate the plugins, one at a time, retesting each time, to determine which one or ones are slowing things down. Ditch or find replacements for those.
It's a bit of a hassle; but once you do these things, you'll probably never have to do them again, for any of your sites.
Your sites are beautiful and have lots of good information, Sarah. Let me know if I can be of more help.
--Fran
Thanks for all your help Fran. I will definitely test all the plugins as you suggest. In teh meantime, one possible problem was the slider bar which I have now replaced with one image to see if that speeds up initial load time. I also asked SUpport to allow me to register my premium theme which I hadn't been abble ot do before. Once the key code validation was allowed it turned out there were 5 recent theme updates which corrected minor issues, some of which related to the recent big WP update. Having updated those (I'm using a Child Theme so didn't lose any settingst) things are now definitely better. Thanks for your comments on my sites! Sarah B
Apparently it is the DNS lookup which is slow at 9.54 seconds. Is that the time to access WA servers?
I've also deactivated Spamshield as it was taking 8.2 secs to load according to P3 plugin test. I now use Antispam Bee (used by Marcus and Marion) as it doesn't need captcha and it has no impact on site load at all which is great. And, so far, no spam!
I tried right now on mobile, with 4 active plugins,the speed is good too, and gtmetrix shows a good result,https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/ shows 85/100, https://varvy.com/pagespeed/ shows 85 out of 100 and a lot of things to correct.I think after you correct the site with Marcus training, you can keep a few active plugins after you publish more items, it is necessary to use Marcus training.Also,I deactivated WP-SpamShield and I use Akismet. Akismet Spam Protection - Get it Free I'll try like this!
I tried Marcus training,too, it was like this for me,too.I had 1.97 seconds, retest and after I had 19.2 seconds, I thought the cause can be the internet connection, anyway the site loads very quickly on mobile in both cases.
Thanks. It loads slowly for me on my computer at times - especially on the back end when opening posts and pages. SIgh.
It is important to load quickly for other people when they are looking at your site!A nice Sunday!
See more comments
That's so sad but i'm confused as to how this is a question when it's a statement. I think you should still stay as a member for the training and advise even if you don't use this as a host.
I could only post it if I added a question mark! I paid for a year so I wills till hang around for 6months. The community aspect is great.
Oh ok cool. Yes the community is my favorite it helps me understand what I'm learning. I'm glad you're staying for a bit but out if curiosity hoe do you move the site to another host. Honestly I'm considering it too. I'd like something cheaper. Plus once I know everything I may need to move if I don't start making money soon. I won't be able to afford to stay here much longer.