How to Integrate Google Pay and Apple Pay in your WooCommerce Store

People are showing more interest than ever in purchasing products online. E-commerce platforms are gaining a lot of popularity and traffic. With a lot of competition in the market, you should never miss out on any chance to maximize your sales and make your customers happy.Integrating an additional payment system like google pay or apple pay can make it convenient for your customers and enhance the user experience of your store. These payment methods being one of the most popular, trustworthy, and convenient methods can make the overall purchase experience a pleasant one. Integrating these payment methods into your woocommerce store is extremely easy and is completely free of cost. This article explains to you all the nitty gritty about how you can integrate google pay and apple pay with your woocommerce store for free. How to Integrate Google Pay and Apply Pay Step 1: Click on Plugins -> Add New Step 2: Search for Stripe Payments For WooCommerce by Checkout Plugins. Step 3: Install and Activate the Plugin Step 4: Once the plugin is activated, click on the Settings option of the plugin and press the Connect with Stripe button Step 5: You will get redirected to the setup page. Enter the email and password associated with your Stripe Account. Step 6: Enter the verification Code. Step 7: Now select your stripe account and Click on Connect Step 8: If the connection process was successful, you will get a Congratulations page. On this page, you can enable different payment gateways. The Stripe Card Processing Payment Gateway is enabled by default. Leave it as it is. And Click on Enable Gateways button. Step 9: On the following page, you will get the option to enable the Express Checkout feature. This includes the Apple pay and Google pay payment methods. For now, Click on Skip Express Checkout Step 10: On the next page, you will be asked to enable webhooks, Click the Skip button here as well Step 11: Click Let’s Customize button. You will be taken back to the wordpress dashboard. Step 12: Now in the WooCommerce Settings tab, Click on the Express Checkout Link Step 13: Check the Enable Express Checkout checkbox. Here you can customize all the settings related to express checkout. Customize the button text, theme, the pages you want to show this button on, button position, separator text, responsive behavior, and layout for every page. You will get a live preview of how the buttons will look on the right side. If you have made all the necessary changes click on the Save Changes button. Now navigate back to your online store’s checkout page. You can find the Express Payment Option. If you use Safari Web Browser you will have the Apply Pay button displayed instead of the Google Pay button. You have successfully integrated Express Checkout Payments like Google Pay and Apple Pay into your woocommerce store.

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How to Create a Quiz in WordPress

Forms and Quizzes are one of the best conversion-driving factors of a website. These elements help you get a lead. You can collect emails at the end of the quiz if the visitors need their results. There are hundreds of form creation plugins available. One among those is Forminator. This plugin offers a lot of amazing features even in the free version and is one of the best plugins to create quizzes, surveys, and polls. This article discusses about how you can make use of this Forminator Plugin to create a Quiz. Let’s get started! What is Forminator? Forminator is a wordpress plugin that is used to create contact forms, polls, quizzes, multi-step forms, and much more. Forminator offers a lot of features in its free version which is more than enough to create any kind of form. You can also customize the form to match your brands like the font, color, and padding of the form fields. The Forminator premium plan starts at just $5/month. The Pro version allows you to accept subscriptions and recurring payments, add premium form fields, E-signature, and get access to marketing components like popups, google analytics dashboard, and much more. The builder is an easy drag-drop builder. You can design your form as you want and arrange the form fields however you need. It also has certain pre-made templates for forms like Contact us, Quote, Newsletter, Registration, and log in, which comes pretty handy at times. You can create your forms from scratch as well. You get analytics about the number of people who have made submissions, their details, and much more right in your wordpress dashboard. How to Create a Quiz using Forminator Step 1: Go to Plugins -> Add new Step 2: Search for Forminator Step 3: Install and Activate the Plugin Step 4: From the Menu on the Left, Click on “Forminator“ Step 5: Click on “Create Quiz“ Step 6: A Model Opens up, give a title for your quiz and select the type of quiz. Forminator offers two different quiz types. The Knowledge Quiz and the Personality Quiz. Enter the required details and Click Continue Step 7: Now if you want the user to enter their email and other information before or after the quiz, enable the ‘collect leads’ feature. If you are not collecting any details. Disable it. Click on “Create Quiz“. Step 8: Provide an Introduction for your quiz. An intro title, image, and description. The Introduction will get displayed before the quiz starts. You can also provide the instructions and rules for your quiz here. Once you have provided all the details for the introduction, Click on “Questions” Step 9: Enter the question, an image for the question (if needed, a Quiz description, and the answer for the quiz. Click on “Add answers” to add options/choices to the question. Enable the Correct Answer Check box to mark that option as an answer. If you have entered all the details required for a question, Click on “Add question“. This question gets added to the quiz. Step 10: To add more questions, Click on the “Add question” button and repeat the above-mentioned step. Step 11: If you have added all the questions, click on the Preview button to see a preview of the quiz. If you are satisfied with the preview, Click on Appearance. Here you can change the appearance of the quiz. You can customize the color of the buttons, overall fonts, and the style and padding of the form fields. If you are done with your customizations, click on Publish. Now your quiz has been published successfully. Conclusion If you are looking for an easy and free method to create quizzes without restriction. Forminator is thebest plugin to use. And with the premium version, you get access to lot more features.

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How to Fix Google Ads Account Suspension

Google Adsense account suspension won’t happen overnight. It occurs because of neglected warnings, and a history of policy violations. In this article, we have covered all the details about how you can find out if your Adsense account is suspended, common reasons for account suspension, how to fix the suspensions and how to avoid it in the future. How to find out if my AdSense account is suspended? If your account is suspended, Google will notify you through email notification and also mention it in your Adsense account. You will get an email about the suspensions, various possible reasons for them, and the suspension period details. You can also check by signing into your Adsense account. Here are 3 simple steps to find out if your account is suspended: If there are no issues, then it would look like this. How to Fix the Suspension You should take all the necessary actions within the suspension period and apply for a review to reactive your AdSense account. But if the violation persists even after the suspension period, the chances of your AdSense account getting disabled permanently are high. If your site gets permanently disabled then Google will withhold your earnings in the past 60 to compensate the affected advertisers It is possible to fix the account suspension and get back your account. But this process involves several steps. 1. Find the Possible Reasons Before proceeding with the steps for account recovery, try to find the reason why your account got suspended. Finding the root cause of the issue and fixing it all together is the only effective solution to completely recover your Adsense account and also prevent it from further suspension. Check if your website has all the basic and mandatory pages like Privacy Policy, Terms, and Conditions, and Contact Us Page. If you are running an e-commerce site then having a Refunds & Returns Page, and Cancellation Policy is mandatory. If your site uses affiliate links in any form, explicitly mention the affiliate link usage on a disclosure page. The absence of any of these pages is a policy violation and can lead to account suspension as well. 2. Check for Malware Malware is one of the biggest reasons for account suspensions. The hard truth is that most of the time they are present on your site unnoticed. Unless you perform periodic scans and monitor the activity of your site, finding the existence of any malware on your site is difficult. If your site behaves so weirdly and faces random redirections to improper sites, the chances that your website is affected by malware are high. Use a Free Security Plugin like Malcare to run a full site malware scan. If your site is affected, then use the malware removal plugin or software to remove the malware. Seek expert guidance if necessary. 3. Fix payment issues If you are an ad publisher, any withstanding payment to be made can be a reason for account suspension. Unresolved payment issues are one of the common reasons for account suspension for publishers. Clear the pending payments. If there are any outstanding payments to be made, pay them as soon as possible. Check the payment method, and whether your debit or credit cards work. 4. Submit for appeal If you have rightly identified the root cause and rectified the mistakes, then google will automatically remove the suspension in a period of time. You need not ask for an appeal. If the error is rectified, your account suspension will be taken off. However, if the suspension still persists after several days of fixing the issues, you can write to google with all the details related to the account suspension. And appeal to activate your account. Double-check that your site no more violates any policies. If you are sure enough, then appeal to google by filling in the form, Give detailed steps you took to fix the issues along with proof and attachments like screenshots, reports, and before and after images. etc.., Any appeal made is manually reviewed by a member of the google team and if they feel that policies are no longer violated and your site is perfectly fine, you will get back your account. Types of Adsense Suspension Even if your google AdSense account gets suspended, you will still be able to log in to your account. However, no ads will be shown on your website, until the issues are fixed. There are three different types of AdSense suspension. Adsense can suspend your account either on the Page Level, Site Level, or Account Level. Google will also hold your payment, site reviews, and account upgrades until the suspension gets removed. Most Common Reasons for Account Suspension Policy Violations Google has put forward a list of program policies that you should follow. If your site frequently violates the policies and doesn’t take warnings into account, your site might get suspended. Some of the Common Policy Violations include: Invalid Traffic It has become a common practice of using Bots and invalid traffic sources to increase ad revenue. If Google finds that your website gets invalid traffic, then you might get suspended Some of the Invalid Traffic Sources include NOTE: Google is more stringent about invalid traffic, and if your account gets disabled due to invalid traffic, then you can no longer create any new account. Other Reasons How to Avoid such suspensions in the future? Fixed your Account Suspension and got back your account? Great! But, the chances of your account getting suspended again are not zero. It is wise to take proactive measures to avoid such suspensions in the future. Here is a list of tips that you should follow to avoid such suspensions in the future. Use a Firewall and Security plugin – It is always better to address a problem at its root cause before it is too late. Use a Security Plugin like malcare and defender to avoid malware, viruses, and other malicious programs from your computer. Watch your google AdSense

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How to Increase the Loading Speed of Your Site

Are you tired of waiting for your site to load? The online world has become a lot faster over the past few years, but most sites don’t feel it. Even though the internet has made it so easy now to post content online, many of us still struggle with how our sites impact user experience and performance. A poor website can slow down your site or even cause it to stall altogether. This is especially true if the other pages on your site are also slow. Loading speed is an essential part of the user experience. Your site can feel unresponsive or even crash if your loading speed is poor. To keep your users and the Search engine happy, you need to ensure that their pages load as fast as possible. Here are some ways to do just that. Use Next-gen Image formats Most websites use images in either JPG or PNG formats. WebP and AVIF are the next-gen image formats. These formats offer larger compression and a huge amount of reduction in file size. Use these file formats for faster load speed and image rendition. Also, large images take more time to load. To optimize for page load speed, compress and optimize your images. As you can see, two images of the same resolution can have drastic differences in their file size when different image formats are used. The one in jpeg format occupies 129Kb of storage whereas the same file in WebP format occupies just 95Kb of storage. This significant difference can improve the loading speed of a website. Remove the Unnecessary Code You can’t just optimize a few pages on your site and hope for the best. Your theme or the code that runs on the backend must also be optimized for speed. This means that you need to make sure that the files are small enough to load quickly. If your website uses a theme or plugin that has a lot of stuff and unwanted code, then it can definitely slow down your website. Pre-made templates and themes come with lots of unnecessary plugins and additional code installed. If you are a tech expert then you can try removing this unwanted code by yourself. Else seek professional help or optimization software. There are many software and tools that can reduce/minimize server-side code by removing duplicate files, and reducing unused CSS, JS, and HTML files. Use Cache Reduce the server response time. In the case of WordPress or other CMS, use the cache plugins, that can reduce your initial load time. Serve static assets with an efficient cache policy. If your website has so much static content, caching can save a lot of loading speed, instead of trying to render your website fresh every time, use an effective cache policy. Some of the popular Cache plugins for wordpress include: Use CDN Use Content Delivery Networks like Cloudflare to render webpages. A CDN has a network of computers located in different parts of the globe and they host the static CSS, HTML, and JS files of your website. Whenever any request comes, the static files are rendered from the servers that are nearest to the visitor’s location. This reduces the overall rendering time and latency and provides a fast user experience to website visitors. Here is a list of some of the popular CDN networks: Optimize for Various Devices Remember, your site isn’t just destined to be viewed on desktop devices. Even if you have a responsive site, you want your visitors to be able to experience it fully on any device they choose to view your content on. This means that your desktop and mobile experience should be optimal, too. This includes navigation, content, and the look and feel of your site. If your visitors feel like they’re in a different environment when they’re on your site, then they probably won’t stick around very long .This could be a problem if you’re selling products or providing services. You want your visitors to feel at home when they first land on your site. Don’t just optimize your website only for desktop or mobile view. Make sure that the website is responsive and loads fast on every device no matter what and that the images are rendered at the right resolution and quality. Upgrade your Hosting If you have tried all the above methods and still have a significantly slower loading speed, then try upgrading your current hosting plan or service. If you are in shared hosting and your website gets a lot of traffic, then your website might experience a delay in loading. Try hosting your website in a cloud hosting or VPS hosting service or allocating more hardware and CPU resources. Conclusion It’s important to keep your website’s loading speed up for your users. This not only helps them to get the full experience from your site but also ensures that search engine spiders love your content. To make sure your site is always up to date, and loading fast, you can use the tips that we’ve provided here. These techniques should help increase your site speed and make your users happy. When all is said and done, your site will load much faster and look much better. This will ensure that your visitors are happy and that you’ve gained some valuable new visitors!

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How to Create an Appointment Booking Site in Squarespace in 2022

Squarespace has Squarespace scheduling that allows you to create Scheduling websites to manage appointments.You can easily add or integrate scheduling to your existing Squarespace website. It has all the features that are necessary to create an online appointment. In this article, we have covered all the information that will help you create an appointment booking site in Squarespace. How to setup Squarespace scheduling Step 1: Visit Squarespace Scheduling Step 2: Click on Try Scheduling. Sign in with your Google Account or Email. Step 3: In the Setup Wizard, Enter your Business name, a custom URL for your scheduling page, and the Time Zone. Click Next Step 4: In the next screen, enter your Appointment Name, Appointment duration, and Price. Step 5: In the next screen, set your availability. Select at what times of the day you offer your service. For every day you select, enter the time that you will be available. You can select multiple days. If you are done, Click Next. Step 6: On this page, you are asked to connect your payment method. You can Click on Connect to connect with your stripe account. Or click Later to complete the process later. The Payment Settings is available under the Business Settings options. Here you can connect your Stripe, Paypal, and Square Payment options. Features of Squarespace Scheduling With Squarespace scheduling, you can create any type of service. Classes, Consultations, Meetings, Events, Doctor appointments, and a lot more. You can integrate Squarespace scheduling future not just in a Squarespace website but with any website. Clients can book their appointments using the scheduling calendar. You can either embed the calendar within a website or just share the link of it with the required people. Booking Types Squarespace scheduling offers two types of booking. The Appointment Types Setting is available under the Business Settings options. You can create the type of booking service you want. Appearance There are two types of Calendar views. A Monthly View and a Daily View Calendar to book appointments. You can edit all the information related to your online service in this section. Change the title, Scheduling Instructions, Button Color, Logo, Time Format, Language, Time Zone, and other details. The Preview of the Changes is visible on the right side. Under the Page Options Settings, you can customize the appearance of your scheduling page. Some of the options include disabling recurring appointments, Hiding Duration, Prices, and other settings. Calendar This Calendar will give the admin an overview of all the appointments booked along with information like Date of booking, Client Name, Timing, and Duration. You can easily change or reschedule any appointments here by just drag and dropping. Generate Invoices Here you can generate invoices for your clients. Create invoices and send them to the client’s email in a single Click. No need to use any additional software or tool for invoice generation. Reports You will get analytics and reports about clients, bookings, payments, and more. Remainder & Scheduling Whenever an appointment is booked, you will get notified about it along with appointment-related details. You can also set the exact times before which you need to be reminded about the appointment. You can Send email notifications for initial confirmation, reminders, cancellations, rescheduling, follow-ups, and subscription details. Not just that, you can also customize or edit the email template that you send to your client before and after the appointment. A feature to send SMS notifications is also available. Sync The booking details can be synced with Google Calendar, iCloud, Office 365, Office exchange, or Outlook. Clients Here you can Add new clients and get an overview of all the booked clients and their information. Intake Form You can create a form that clients need to fill out before booking your appointment. This acts as a lead magnet and also helps you know better about your clients to serve them better in the future. How to Embed Scheduler into your Website To embed your scheduling booking system into your website, Squarespace offers different methods. Integrate with Squarespace – In Squarespace, you have an appointment Scheduling Block. You can integrate your scheduling system using this block. Direct Link – A Direct link is used to share your booking system with your clients. Also share it on other platforms. Booking Button – If you want to just integrate or embed just the appointment booking button into your website. Copy the HTML code of the booking button and paste it into your website’s code. Booking Bar – A booking bar similar to a booking button, helps you book appointments. Copy the HTML code and embed it inside your webpage. Embed Other – Use this option to embed the complete booking system into your website. Conclusion The features in Squarespace Scheduling aren’t just limited to the ones mentioned in this post. There are lots more for you to explore. Also, Squarespace is frequently updating its platform and bringing in new features. Squarespace Scheduling without a doubt is one of the most robust and secure appointment booking systems that you can integrate not just with your Squarespace website but with any type of website in general. If you are looking for a tool to create an online appointment booking system, then Squarespace Scheduling is definitely a choice to consider.

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11 Best AI Content Writing Tools in 2022

With so much information available online, it can be hard to know which sites are reliable and credible. If you’re writing content for your website or blog, you need quality content that will help people find what they’re looking for. Content can be anything from blogs, articles, and newsletters to wikis, white papers, case studies, and even video scripts. Content can be used as a marketing tool to explain complex topics in an easy-to-understand way or to help educate the public on issues or concerns they might have about your company or product. Whatever your content needs are, the right writing tools will help you write engaging and optimized content that answers your target audience’s needs with ease. There are plenty of great tools that make writing quality content easier than ever before. Here we outline the 11 best AI content writing tools available on the market today. Here is a list of the 11 Best AI Content Writing Tools in 2022 Writesonic Best Overall AI Content Writer Tool Writesonic has got 80+ features in different categories like eCommerce, Marketing, Blogging, etc., Not just content writing it is too good for copywriting as well. If you are a content writer or a copywriter Writesonic works great for both. Writesonic offers Unlimited Free Trial with credit limits. More than just creating content, it is a holistic tool with one click WordPress export feature and is easy to integrate with other popular software. You can also create landing pages. It has 2 paid plans and 4 different word qualities in each of these plans. Completely flexible pricing, the price varies based on the word quality, word count, and the features you need. The price is completely affordable. Also, it is best not just for solopreneurs but also for enterprises and organizations. With easy integration, bulk processing ability, and affordable pricing. The platform is very easy to use and the UI is simple to explore. Features Copysmith Best AI Content Writing Tool for Large Scale Content Creation This is the best tool for large-scale content writing, especially for agencies, entrepreneurs, and enterprise teams. The tool has a lot of pre-made templates that can make the task of creating hundreds and thousands of product descriptions, and SKUs much easier. Produces unique and plagiarism-free content. Supports 100+ languages. Offers a bulk content creation feature which is quite impressive. With this feature, you can create up to hundreds and thousands of pieces of content at a scale. You can mass-produce content with a few clicks and within minutes. They also offer a free 7-day trial. You can try their Chrome Extension for e-commerce Product descriptions. Great for collaboration, if you looking for an enterprise-level content writing tool this is the best choice. With a workflow queue, and easy-to-assign collaborative features this tool is the best suited for agencies and companies. Features Copysmith offers 3 plans, and the pricing is a bit on the expensive side with a starter plan costing you about $19/month with a 40k word limit. Overall the best tool for writing copy for various marketing channels at pricing that suits enterprises the best. Textcortex.ai Best Affordable Content Creation Tool Targeted for copywriting. This tool helps you create unique, grammatically perfect, plagiarism-free content and copy. Good for blogging. Not for enterprise-level content creation. They offer unlimited free trials that you can use to try out every feature of theirs. Features You get access to various tools. Some of them are Product descriptions, Blog writing, marketing copies, story writing, Shopify integration, Instagram captions, youtube descriptions, sales email copy, Facebook ads, blog title generator, paraphrasing & rewriting, and tone changer. The options are quite limited compared to Copysmith. The pricing is affordable and reasonable. It costs about $9.99 every month with no limit to the number of content you can generate. If you are a freelance content writer or a blogger writing articles this is the best affordable option. Articleforge Best Article Writer It is a bit expensive for what it offers. It does only one job but does it perfectly. Articleforge is for writing 1500+ words articles in less than a minute. Starting from the Blog Headline to Conclusion, it covers everything perfectly. All you have to do is type the keyword for your article and within a minute you have your article ready. You are charged $27 per month in an annual plan for 250,000 words. Features Anyword Best Content Creation Tool for Copywriting Businesses. The pricing for solo freelancers is a bit on the higher side. It has nearly 100+ features which are higher than any other tools in this list. It has 200+ tools specifically designed for copywriting. The pricing is reasonable for the features it offers. Team collaboration is easy and integration with other tools is excellent. Features Rytr Offers 40+ features, It has a free plan that you can try, and you can also use its free extension. Unlimited free trials with credit limits to try out different features on the platform. Feature Scalenut Scalenut offers a 7-day free trial and has an affordable $30/month plan for unlimited content writing. It has 10+ features which are quite good enough if you are just a content writer or a copywriter and don’t need other tools for marketing and business. It also provides SEO reports. But Scalenut is not well suited for professional agencies or large-scale enterprises. It is one of the best affordable tools with limited features for content and copywriters. Features It also has a chrome extension, which you can try to explore more about Scalenut and its features. Overall the best tool with advanced SEO Optimization options. Inkforall Inkforall for 3 different services, the AI writer, SEO Optimizer, and Content Planner. Each of these services has pricing. You can also opt for the bundle plan that has all three features combined. If you are a blogger handling more than one blog or a freelance content writer then the bundle plan is your go-to plan. The AI Writer costs

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4 Best WordPress Plugins That Make Your Site Load Incredibly Fast

A website’s loading speed is one of google’s ranking factors. Because people hate a slow website. A Slow site can affect the user experience and google hates it. There are many factors that can affect the loading speed of a website. It is essential to focus on all these factors to make your site load fast on both desktop as well as mobile versions. If your wordpress site is not ranking well on Google, then page speed might be one of the reasons why your page is not ranking well on google even if you have quality content. If you are using a wordpress site, then there are various plugins that can help you not just boost your site’s overall performance but also make it load at a lightning-fast speed. Use tools like GTMetrix and Google Page Speed tools to get an overall view of the current loading speed and performance of your site. If it is below the recommended score then it is time to give your website a workout. This article talks about the best WordPress plugins that every site must have to make their site load faster and improve their site’s performance. a3 lazy load – Lazy loading of images This plugin is used to lazy load the images on your website. A lazy load can improve the site’s performance and speed it up. The plugin has both free as well paid versions. Free Vs Paid – You get access to all the necessary features in the free version but if you run a content-heavy site with a lot of images, then you probably might need to upgrade to the paid plan. The paid plan comes at $24.99 for a single website for a month which is quite expensive. Disable WordPress Lazy load – With this plugin, you can also disable the WordPress default core lazy load functionality. Customization – You have more control and flexibility over what images should lazy load and what shouldn’t. You may choose to turn on lazy load for images in posts, and pages but choose to turn it off for thumbnails and Gravatars. Ability to completely exclude certain images or videos from loading at all using their class name. Lazy Load iFrame & Videos– With this plugin, Lazy loading of the iframe is also possible. It also supports lazy loading WebP images. You can surprisingly lazy load not just the images but also videos that are embedded by URL in posts and pages and videos in widgets. Animation Effects – Animation effects like fade-in and spinner are provided for the lazy load. Integration – Other popular wordpress software and plugins like woocommerce, jetpack, and Elementor are highly compatible with a3 lazy load making the integrations with such tools easier. Short pixel Short pixel is an image optimization plugin. It is normally used to compress images of different formats like JPG, PNG, or PDF. Image Conversion – Converting any JPG, PNG, GIF, or animations to WebP and AVIF format is easier with this plugin. WebP and AVIF are greater for reducing page size and increasing the loading speed. Smart Cropping – It has a smart cropping feature that automatically generates subject-centered thumbnails. Compresses retina images, and auto-optimizes all the thumbnails and featured images. Customization – Flexibility to exclude certain image files based on their filename, path, and size. With short pixels, you can scale down your images, without having to externally resize them. Supports CMYK to RGB conversion. Customer Support – Excellent support system and an amazing community to find answers to all your doubts and queries. Privacy Protection – Removes all the EXIF data from your images in a single click and keeps your images secure and safe. Bulk Optimization – It can optimize images in bulk. For image-heavy sites like eCommerce stores or blog posts with a lot of images, this comes as a savior in reducing the file size of your pages. File Size – There is no limit on the image file size you can upload. Report – Comes with a built-in report feature. You can get a detailed report about all the images optimized in the last 30 days. Free Vs Paid – It has both free as well as paid plans. With the free plan, you get 100 credits every month. if you exhaust all the credits or are in need of additional credits, you can get 5000 additional credits for just $4.99. Short Pixels is generous enough to provide Free Optimization Credits for Non-Profit Organizations. Also if the image is optimized for less than 5% then no credit gets used for that optimization. Apart from this, short pixel also offers a list of other excellent plugins for CDN, on-fly optimization, thumbnail generation, and resizing that you can make use of. Light speed cache This plugin speeds up your page and improves its performance. Cache – In the cache control settings, enable all the cache types. Enable the mobile cache option if you want your website to have a separate cache version for mobile. Make sure to enable the browser cache as well. Apart from caching, this plugin also offers several page optimization features. Page optimization settings are what you should make the most use of apart from the cache settings. Also, the possibility of you messing up with any of these settings is quite high. File Optimizaiton – It can reduce or minify the file size of CSS, JS, and HTML files. And can combine several unique CSS files into a single file and reduce the overall page. It can defer the loading of JS files and asynchronously load the CSS files. After changing every setting, purge all cache and test your website. If your website breaks or any of the elements behave differently, it will be easier to spot the error and rectify them. Lazy Load – The feature to Lazy load images is also included. But using a dedicated plugin like a3 lazy load is recommended. Plugins that are exclusively dedicated to

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How to Compress and Optimize Images Without Losing Quality

Images are everywhere. From social media to advertisements, images circulate everywhere, resulting in an endless stream of visual content. And with the amount of image content on the web growing at a rapid pace, it’s no surprise that image compression is becoming a key focus for designers and developers alike. To reduce your site’s file size while still maintaining visual quality and readability, you need to compress your images. This will not only reduce how much storage space they take up but also make web pages load faster. In this article, we explain how you can compress and optimize images without losing quality. What is Image Compression? Image compression is the process of reducing the size of an image by removing unnecessary detail or replacing it with a smaller but similar image. One of the most common uses for image compression is reducing the size of an image so that it can be sent over the internet without consuming too much data and storage. While compression can reduce the file size of your images, it doesn’t reduce their visual quality. When you compress an image, you’re “shrinking” it. This process doesn’t change the dimensions of the image, but it can make the image file smaller. If you’re using Photoshop or another image editing program, you can change the dimensions of the image to suit your needs. The resulting image is the same dimensions as the original but has a smaller file size. Different Types of Image Compression There are two main types of image compression techniques that are commonly used by all compression tools and software. They are lossy and lossless. Lossless Image Compression Lossy Image Compression How to Compress and Optimize Images There are many image compression and optimization programs available. In fact, many of them are completely free. But which one is best for you? The first thing to keep in mind is that there is no one best method or tool to compress images. Different programs have different strengths and weaknesses, and you should use the method that works best for you. To help you find the best image compression program for your needs, there are two main steps that are involved. They are: i. Finding the right image format There are many image formats and every format suits a particular type of image. First, select the file format for your image. Some of the popular image formats are: ii. Finding the right resolution Whenever using images, it is important to know the right resolution of that image. Because with an increase in the resolution of the image, the file size also increases. So, have a clear-cut idea about the resolution that you need. There is no one size fits all resolution. The resolution depends on the use case of the image and the type of the image as well. With people using different types of devices with varied screen sizes, it is important to use the right resolution for a better user experience. Now depending on these two factors, you can use various image resizing, compression, and conversion tools. What is the Best tool for image compression? There is no one size fits all rule when selecting a tool for image compression. It depends on the features you require. If you are looking for the best free tool for image compression, then nothing really can beat adobe photoshop. But not everyone has got a paid plan in photoshop or the skills required to compress and optimize images using photoshop. That is why there are multiple free and high-quality paid image optimization tools that you can make use of. These tools are easy to use and offer multiple features that can make image compression easy. One tool that I personally use for image compression is shortpixels. Other highly recommended ones are tinypng and iloveimg. Shortpixel offers a bulk optimization feature to optimize multiple images all at once. And three main types of compression methods, namely lossless, lossy, and glossy. If you are using WordPress, then you can make use of Shortpixel’s plugin to optimize your images. Here is the same image compressed using three different compression formats. The percentage of reduction in file size in each of these formats is: In Lossy format, the image was made 28% smaller, and lossless compression made the image 2% smaller and 24% smaller file size with the glossy format. This shows that the lossy compression method offers the largest amount of reduction in file size. How can uncompressed images affect your website? If you think, what possible damage can any uncompressed image cause to your website? Well, think again. An uncompressed image not just occupies much storage but also makes your website speed low and also affects the SEO of your website. If you think that an image occupying a few extra bytes, doesn’t cause any harm. That’s not the case. If you have 10 images on your website, and each of those images occupies 100Kb of extra memory, you need 1Mb of additional storage. If you have opted for shared hosting this can not only affect the speed of your website but can also cost you extra money for additional storage. And if you have opted for cloud hosting then the cost of it is going to be very high. That is why people make so much effort in optimizing images. Which Images Should Be Compressed? To determine if you should compress your image, you need to consider how valuable it is to your visitors. The purpose of the image is the most important factor to consider when deciding if your image is worth compressing. Decorative images that don’t convey any meaning and are used just for visual attraction can be compressed by a huge size. Because these images need not have pixel-perfect precision, sacrificing some image quality, in this case, is acceptable. But if the images play an important role in the content. Eg: A portfolio of images of a photographer, infographics, Diagrams, Graphs, or any images

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Malcare WordPress Security Plugin – A Detailed Review

Malcare is the best free wordpress security plugin. It has an exceptional malware-scanning feature. It can scan malware and viruses that other security plugins miss. The free version offers every security feature that you can ask for. What’s so special about malcare is that it doesn’t perform all the scanning and analysis within the wordpress website. The scanning is done outside the website on its server. This improves your site’s performance and also helps in reducing page size. Here we have covered the step-by-step instructions on how you can install and set up this plugin to enhance the security of your website and keep attackers at bay. How to install and Setup Malcare Plugin Step 1: Go to Plugins -> Add New. Step 2: Search for Malcare, Install and Activate the plugin Step 3: To set up malcare, Enter your email address (need not be the one associated with your wordpress account). Agree to the terms and Conditions. Click on Submit You will get redirected to Malcare’s web application. Step 4: In the dashboard, you can find the name of your website. A Green Reload icon on the right indicates that your website is currently being scanned. Once the scan is completed, the icon changes to gray. Hover over the icon to find the current state of the scan. Step 5: Now, to get detailed insights about your website click on your website’s name. Here you can see all the analysis about your website. Apart from scanning your website for malware and other security issues, Malcare also allows you to manage themes, plugins, and users from its dashboard Features We have listed down all the features that the Free version of the Plugin has. With the free version, you get access to daily malware scans, real-time firewall protections, vulnerability scans, and login protection. Advanced Malware Scanning – The automatic malware scanning feature scans your site every day. Malcare uses various deep-learning algorithms to scan your website for various malware signatures. Your site will be scanned for malware every day. To remove the malware you need to upgrade to the pro plan. Security and Firewall – Real-time firewall protection is a feature that no other security plugin offers especially for a free version. Malcare analyses your site in real time for malware and if it finds one, it will block them. Login Protection – Captcha-based Login Protection system to avoid bots. Detect File Changes – Malcare detects even the slightest changes made to your files, database, or core and logs the details about it. Schedule Updates – You can schedule automatic updates for your themes, plugins, and wordpress core. Pricing Plans Malcare has 3 paid plans, the basic plan starts at $99 a year, plus plan at $149, and the pro plan at $299. For most websites, a Basic plan is more than enough. Along with all the features of the free plan, in the Basic plan, you also get additional features like bot protection, instant malware removal, uptime monitoring, and personalized support. Final Words Never take your website’s security for granted. Not being cautious about your website’s security can land you in trouble, and can easily get your site hacked. Use security plugins to enhance overall security. It is never too late. Prevention is better than Cure!

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How to Fix a Hacked WordPress Site

Logging in into your website’s admin panel to find it hacked is the worst nightmare for anyone running a website. Most of the time people are not even aware of the fact that their site has been hacked. In this article, we have discussed in detail the steps to find out if your website is really hacked and if so how you can fix it and the tips and tricks to avoid getting hacked in the future. So, what are you waiting for? How to find out if your website is hacked? Before fixing your hacked site. It’s important to understand if your website has really been hacked. Here are some of the common behavior of a hacked website: A website hack is not just limited to these general categories. There is more to it. Perform a deep site analysis Conduct a deep site analysis to see if your website has been hacked or affected by malware, viruses, or other malicious software. Use Malware Scanners You can use the paid version of tools like malcare. Even if you don’t have the paid, the free version is equally good. You can also use other premium malware scanners to identify the type of malware and also avoid false positives. There are several online site security scanners like Sucuri. But these aren’t as efficient as a premium malware scanner or other plugins.Because these scanners can only scan the publicly available part of your website, not the database, files, and other data. Inform the Hosting Providers Inform your web hosting provider that your website has been hacked with all details of your website and ask them to block access to your website to avoid further damage to your brand and users. If needed, you can also ask them to change the password of your wordpress account to prevent the hacker from stealing your data. How to clean your website? If you’re sure your website has really been hacked, now’s the time to clean it up! Wrap your sleeves and get ready folks! You can either use malware removal tools or you can also perform manual malware cleaning, but you have to be technically strong to do any manual changes to your site especially when it comes to a hacked site. a) Remove the Malware To clean up your website, you need to use an excellent malware removal tool. Malcare comes to the rescue again. The pro version of this plugin has an instant malware removal feature that will help you get back your site to normal. Run a Scan to find any malware within your site, any unusual file changes, account access, or other malicious activities. Remove the malware using the removal tool. If you have some technical knowledge, you can manually remove the malware from your site. Find the affected files and data of your system and remove them. If you have tried to manually remove the malicious program, then run the scanner to double-check if the site is completely clean and free of malware after manual file and data removal. b) Clean Up the Website Also uninstall all the unused plugins or new themes, plugins, or third-party code that you recently added. But make sure you have enough technical knowledge before taking up this task because it involves many risks and can even get your site and all its data deleted if not done properly. c) Seek Expert Help You can even hire a cybersecurity expert who specializes in cleaning hacked WordPress sites to get them back on track. Worry not, it is not that difficult to find one. You can easily hire them at affordable prices from Fiverr, Upwork, or other cybersecurity service providers. d) Ask the Hosting Providers Once you are damn sure that the site is clean and clear. Inform your hosting providers about the situation and ask them to rescan your site from their end to double-check if the site is completely free of malware of any form. If so then regain access to your site. Most of the time, Hosting providers will also provide you additional help in removing the malware and also help you further in the process. How to Remove your Website from Blacklist Google can easily detect websites that are spammy and will blocklist them. If your site has been blacklisted while it was hacked. Ask google to remove your site from the blacklist. How to Protect to site in Future Unable to install any plugins Sometimes a hacker gains access to your website and you may not have had a security plugin, to begin with. If you try to install a security plugin now, it doesn’t allow you to do that. The following steps will help you install a security plugin and clean up your site. If your website has been hacked and you cannot install a plugin, you can manually do it using your file editor. You don’t have to be a tech wizard to do it, the process is quite simple. Effects of a hacked website How can a hack possibly affect your website in present as well as the future? Even though it is hard to face such a situation, it is not impossible to recover. You have learned a lesson and an experience. If you have fixed the issues, cleaned your site, and have all the security measures in place, within 2 to 3 months, your website will be back to normal. All you need is some patience.

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