Google is one of the most popular and well-known search engines with a market share of 92%. Nearly 92% of all the searches made globally are made using Google Web Browser. But the rest are divided among multiple other search engines. And Bing is the second most-used search engine with a market share of 2.47%. It may seem like a meager number. But when it comes to website traffic, every impression and click matters. People put a lot of effort into optimizing their websites for ranking better on Google and forget about their opportunity to rank on other search engines. Bing Webmaster Tools is an analytical tool similar to what Google search console is for Google. Adding your site to bing webmaster tools helps you get analytics about how your site is performing on Bing Search results. In this article, we will help you add your website to bing webmaster tools so you can analyze the traffic you get from Bing Search Engine and optimize it for better clicks and impressions. How to connect your website to bing webmaster Tools There are basically two methods to connect your website with bing webmaster Tools. Use method one, if you have already connected your Website with Google Search Console. And Use method two, if you haven’t. Method 1 – Import from Google Search Console Step 1: Visit the Bing Webmaster Tool. Step 2: Click on Get Started Step 3: Click on Sign In with Google Step 4: Choose any Google Account. Step 5: You can either Choose to import your site from Google Search Console or Add your Site manually. Click on Import Step 6: Click on Continue on the following Screen. Step 7: Click on the Google Account associated with your Google Search Console Step 8: Click on Allow to allow bing permission to access your google search console data. Step 9: Now select the websites that you want to import and click on Import. Your sites will get imported from Google Search Console to Bing Webmaster tools. It will take up to 48 hours for Bing to connect to your website. Check your webmaster tools dashboard after 48 hours for analytics and insights. Now method one is done. If you haven’t set up your google search console account. Then you can follow the second method discussed below to add your website to the bing webmaster tools. Method 2 – Adding Site Manually The first 4 steps of this method are exactly the same as the previous method. Complete the First 4 steps from the previous method and continue here. Step 1: Enter the URL of your website exactly how it appears on the search bar, in the field, and Click on Add button. Just Copy and paste the URL as it appears on the search bar to avoid any mistakes. Step 2: Click on the HTML Meta Tag and Copy the meta tag code. Step 3: Head back to your wordpress site, and Install a plugin called Insert Headers and Footers by WP Code. This will allow you to add header and footer code to your wordpress site. Step 4: Click on Add Your Custom Code -> Use Snippet under the Most Popular Section. Step 5: Now paste the HTML Meta Tag Code, Enable Active Switch, and double-check if the code type is HTML Snippet. Click on Save Snippet to save this code. You can use any other header and footer code plugin of your choice. Step 6: After pasting the HTML Meta Tag, now come back to the Bing Webmaster Tool Setup Wizard on click on Verify. Step 7: If the verification process succeded, you will get a Congratulation, Site Addition Successful! Message. That is it! You have successfully added your wordpress website to the Bing Webmaster Tools. Hope this article was helpful in guiding the process. If you face any issues connecting your website, drop your queries in the comments!

A 404 Error Page or a Page Not Found is usually called the last page of the internet. And it is displayed whenever you try to search a non-existing content on a website. By default, every wordpress theme has a pre-designed 404 webpage. If you are either not satisfied with the inbuilt design or if the design doesn’t align with your brand. You can easily create your own 404 page from scratch. This article covers in detail the ways by which you can create a custom 404 error page in wordpress. A 404-Page is also a part of a website. It does contribute a part to branding as well. Therefore, it is essential for a 404-Page to align with the brand and not awkwardly stand out. Here are a few 404-page inspirations of popular websites. As you can see, these pages align with the branding and styling of these brands. Look at the amount of detailing these popular brands have put into their 404-Pages. Different Methods to Create a Custom 404 Page There are two main methods, using code and using plugins. You can go with the one you are comfortable with. I. Edit the 404.php File If you are from a technical background or have good coding skills, then you can easily customize your default 404 Page by directly editing the 404.php file. You can find this file in Appearance-> Theme Editor. Or login to your web hosting provider and navigate to the wordpress installation. Access your File Editor to find all the files of your website. A Strong Coding Knowledge in CSS, HTML, and PHP is required to create a custom page using this method. If you aren’t tech-savvy, don’t worry. We have got a simpler method covered that helps you create custom 404 Pages in minutes without having to code! II. Use Plugins There are many plugins that help you with this task. Whenever you choose a plugin, make sure that the plugin has got good reviews and is updated frequently. Plugins to Create a custom 404 webpage The Plugins you need differ based on the page builder you use. If you use WordPress’s official Gutenberg page builder or the free version of Elementor then you need to install additional plugins to create a custom Error Page. But if you are using a paid version of Elementor or are working with premium page builders like Divi, you no need to install any additional plugins. These premium builders provide you the functionality to customize your 404 Page with no additional plugins. Here I have mentioned some of the free and paid plugin versions. Free Plugins There are a lot of free plugins that you can use to create a customized Error Page for your website. Here is a list of a few of the free plugins. 404 to 301 – Redirect, Log and Notify 404 Errors 404page – your smart custom 404 error page Redirect 404 Error Page to Homepage or Custom Page with Logs Most of the steps for all the plugins are quite the same, there might be several changes in some steps depending on the plugin you use. But more or less these are the generalized steps for all the plugins. Premium Plugins These methods are useful if you have access to the paid version of the plugins, themes, or page builders mentioned here. SeedProd Divi Builder Divi is a premium page builder that you can use to create a webpage on wordpress. With Divi, you can create custom 404 Pages without having to install a separate plugin. Elementor Pro Elements of a 404 Page The objective of a 404 Error page is to point visitors to what went wrong and provide them with some suggestions on what they can do to make it right. There are several elements that are required to make the 404-page user-friendly and informative. These elements are necessary for every 404 page no matter what their purpose is. Let’s have a look at these essential components that make up a good 404-Page. a) Illustration– It is crucial to alert your visitors about the fact that they have reached a dead-end and they should tailor their search query to exactly find what they are looking for. The 404 messages shouldn’t be tiny or hardly visible. It should be big, bold and clearly stated. b) Query Status – Not all 404 Errors are some. A Resource that doesn’t exist, Broken Links, Misspelled words all these types of queries get redirected to a 404 Page. That is why, it is better to indicate the query status like, “Page Not Found”, “Link doesn’t Exist”, etc.., c) A Short description – A short descriptive message about what exactly went wrong. d) Helpful links – Provide users with some helpful links to other pages on the website and the latest posts. In this way, even if the user has misspelled a certain term or is using a different term can find the right phrase for the query. e) Search Bar – A search bar to search the content within the entire website. Along with those helpful links and a list of recent posts, a search bar is essential. It enhances the user experience of every 404 page. The user can search for whatever they want from the website. f) Home Page – Have a link or button with an anchor text, Back to home page. This acts as a guide to navigating back to the home page of the website. Tips and Tricks to make your 404 Page Useful i) Never leave your 404-page blank – users may get confused about whether the page is still loading or if the search is complete. This can definitely affect the user experience. You can also customize your 404 page to display other useful information if the user is unable to find what they are looking for. If a user types a misspelled URL, your custom 404 page and the error message can also display additional information like

If you have already read our article on the best free wordpress security plugins you would have noticed that we gave the first spot for malcare. Malcare is great for advanced-level security, malware scanning, and cleaning. But it doesn’t offer much basic level security and prevention. For a basic level of security and prevention, Defender plugin works the best. Defender is great for entry-level security. With this plugin, you can prevent all types of security attacks that paves way for large attacks in the future. It has a dedicated tutorial section to learn more about this plugin. In this article, I have explained how you can make the utmost use of this plugin to tighten your website’s security. Features Defender comes with lots of security features that can prevent your website from most of the well-known attacks. You can Limit login attempts, Brute force attacks, Detect file changes, Enable security headers, and much more. If malcare is for advanced prevention, the defender is for basic prevention. With both these tools under your belt, your wordpress site’s security becomes undefeatable. Security Recommendations Defender recommends security measures for your site and pinpoints the exact places where there is a lack of security and possibility of vulnerability. Expand each recommendation to know more about it. This tool also suggests the preventive measure that you should take. Follow the given measures to keep your site safe. It can also detect file changes. The file changes made by the admin and other users are also shown here for security purposes. Brute Force There is a feature to limit the total number of login attempts that the admin and other users can make in a given span of time. With this feature enabled, it becomes quite easy to avoid brute force attacks, password guessing, and username enumeration attacks. You can lock out a user after a certain number of failed login attempts. Two-Factor Authentication You can enable the two-factor authentication feature for enhanced security and prevent easy password guesses and login attempts. With the 2-factor authentication feature enabled, you need to enter a code generated by an authenticator app in addition to the login username and password. Download any authenticator app on your phone. Eg: Google authenticator. Mask login area You can easily mask the admin URL to a unique name of your choice. By default, the admin URL for any wordpress site is /wp-admin. Since it is a well-known URL, it becomes an easy target for all kinds of attacks. There are many suspicious tools that can scan this URL to find vulnerable links in your wordpress website that the attacker can use to hack your website. Masking or Hiding this URL becomes a great security step. By simply hiding this URL, hackers now have no access to the admin URL and can’t target your admin panel. You can also redirect the people who are targetting your default admin URL to a 404 page or another custom webpage. A detailed report about every activity that happened along with the IP address gets recorded. Activity Log You will get a detailed activity log with all the information about the activities that happened on your site. Recent File changes, any changes in the plugin’s settings, failed login attempts and any other activity will get recorded. These activity logs include the date and time of the incident, the activity that happened along with the IP address. Security Headers Enabling security headers without a plugin is a tedious task. But Defender makes it easier. Just by enabling a switch, you can enable these security headers. X-Frame Options – With this option enabled, you can prevent other websites from embedding your webpage within an iframe element. XSS Protection – This will prevent your website’s page from loading if it detects a cross-site scripting query. X-Content Type Options – If your website allows users to upload content, then you need to be extra careful. Because by enabling users to upload content your website becomes a target for a lot of vulnerabilities. With the x-content type options header enabled, the defender will block users from uploading content, if it detects that the user is trying to upload a different file type in disguise. 404 Detection If any users repeatedly try to request pages that don’t exist on your site, Defender will block these requests and lock them out for a specific time period. Not just that, but it also blocks those IP addresses and adds them to the block list. In order to prevent your IP from being accidentally blocked out, you can add your IP address to the allowlist. You can specify your own 404 rules. You can also ban users who request certain files or folders. For eg: If a user tries to enter your website name/wp-admin URL and you have added this to your 404 rules list, then the person who searched this URL, will get blocked out. IP Blocking You can add any number of IPs to the blocklist and allowlist. You can block users based on their geo-location or the countries where they are from. This feature comes in handy when a company in a region is facing a data breach, or if there is malware spread from a certain country. You can import the IP list as a CSV file and also export the current list of blocked and allowed IP lists as a CSV file as well. User Agent Banning This is to block the user agents or bots. There is a huge number of bots that are constantly trying to access content and spam your comment section with spammy content with malicious links. Manually segregating the bots from users is difficult but for Defender, it isn’t. It can easily identify the bots and block them from accessing the content, files, and other parts of the website. Conclusion Having a Security Plugin, especially for a WordPress site is absolutely mandatory With a lot of people using wordpress, hackers are constantly trying to find exploits

Having a periodic backup of your website is a basic security measure. A Backup can help you restore the last saved version of your website in case of any malware attack or unexpected disaster. But storing a backed-up website is a tedious task. You need a robust and flexible storage system to store your backup safely. Google Drive is the best free cloud storage service that you can use to store your website backups for free. There are a lot of plugins to create a backup in wordpress. In this article, we use Updraft the most trusted and secure WordPress plugin for website backup, restoration, cloning, and migration to backup your wordpress site to Google Drive. Introduction Updraft offers the latest features, and with updraft, you can create manual backups and scheduled backups, and automatically store them to any external storage system of your choice. It can restore and clone your wordpress site. There is no limit on the number of backups you can create. Google Drive offers 15 GB of Free Storage with every Google Account that you create. You can make use of this to periodically create and store a backup of your website to Google Drive for Free How to Backup to Google Drive Let’s see how you can create a backup of your site using updraft and store it in google drive. Step 1: Click Plugins -> Add New. Install and Activate the Updraft Plus Plugin Step 2: Click on the Settings Options in Updraft. Select the Backup Schedule for your files and Database along with the retention period. The retention period is the amount of time you want this backup to stay. After this period, your backup will get deleted automatically. Step 3: You will find a lot of remote storage options where you want your website to be backed up. In our case, it is Google Drive. Click on the Google Drive Icon. Step 4: Scroll down to include the files that you want to back up. You can back up the Themes, Plugins, and Uploads and can individually exclude certain files. This option gives you complete control over the files that you need to back up. You can also add specific exclusion rules. Step 5: Additionally, you can enable the email notifications checkbox to receive an update in your email whenever a backup is saved. Step 6: Click on Save Button. You will be redirected to the authentication Screen, where you have to authenticate with your google drive account details. Step 7: Click Allow, to allow access to the Updraft plus to save your backup files. You will be redirected to the Updraft Plus website. Step 8: Click on Complete Setup. Now the Authentication is done. Step 9: Press Save Changes to save all the given details. You have successfully enabled Google Drive Backup on your Website. As soon as your website is backed up. It will get stored in the Updraft Folder in your Google Drive. And with the email notification option enabled, you can double-check the backup details. How to Create a Manual Backup You can also create a manual backup of your website. Step 1: Click on the Backup/Restore tab. Step 2: Click on the big blue, Backup Now button. Step 3: After the backup is complete, you can either restore or delete the backup or view the log files to view all the backup-related information. How to restore a backup To Restore a backup Step 1: Click on the restore button in the backup version that you want to back up. Step 2: In the restoration wizard, select all the components that you want to be restored. You can restore the plugins, themes, uploads, databases, and others. After selecting the necessary components. Click Next Step 3: Now Click Restore on the next screen. Step 4: If the restore process is successfully complete, you will get a Restore Successful Message with a green check mark. You have successfully restored your backup! Step 5: Press the Return to Updraft Plus Configuration button to get back to the wordpress dashboard. Conclusion Prevention is always better than cure. It is safe to have a backup of your site, that you can restore at times of unexpected situations. Taking a backup is essential especially if you are installing a new plugin, or theme or making any changes to the code. This will help you can get back to the working version of your site even if anything breaks or if the entire site gets hacked.