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11 Reasons Why a Self-hosted WordPress Blog is Better than a Blogger Blog


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I recently shifted my blog TipsoTricks.com to WordPress from Blogger. So I’m still new to blogging experience with WordPress. But in these few days that I spent with my new WordPress blog I learned so much about “blogging freedom” and true customizablilty. Although just like blogger, WordPress also offers free blogging platform through WordPress.com, but real fun, the feeling of owning a blog and true blogging experience can only be seen in a self hosted blog (WordPress.org)

Why WordPress is better than blogger blog

WordPress users must have this experience. They know how they can control their blogs in different ways. Since you pay to own a self hosted WordPress blog, it gives you a professional attitude as a blogger and readers assumes you as a dedicated blogger towards your blog.This increases both trust and interest of readers in your blog. So totaly based on my personal experience so far, this article is exclusively for those bloggers who are still on blogger.com so that they can get a idea how it feels to be on WordPress.

So here are the 11 top most reasons that I think self hosted WordPress blogs are better than blogger/blogspot blogs.


1. Own branding and Ownership

blog ownership

With WordPress you get complete “ownership” rights, making you the sole owner of the blog. You own your server, so there is no possible risk of external intrusions and/or blockage by your blogging platform. With a blogger blog, you’re under control and mercy of Admins behind blogger blogs.There’s always a risk of a blockage or a temporary ban and you would never get any idea why your blog is blocked. You cannot reclaim your blog in case of permanent ban and your years of hard work can be lost in seconds. But with self hosted WordPress blog you have full ownership and control. You can brand your blog in any way and since you’re the owner and sole proprietor of your blog there’s no risk of getting banned.


2. Full control Over Your Blog

get full control over your blog

You pay for your hosting and own both the hosting space and blog’s content. Finally you have a space to host your files or anything that you’d like to share through your blog. There’s no limitation of file types. In blogger you’ve a limited space and you can only host images. To host a file other than an image you need to use those third party free hosting services. Offcourse you can buy a hosting space to host your files for blogger blog, but the content (blog posts) is still ultimately at bloggers.com’s servers.


3. Massive Support of Plugins

Wordpress plugins support

With almost 11000 plugins available at WordPress, Blogger.com is no match. At Blogger there are limited numbers of “widgets” (that’s what they call plugins at blogger.com). At Blogger.com there’s no special effort seen on their widgets and other supportive features. Infact there are only countable widgets “featured” by official blogger.com’s development team. But in WordPress, plugins support is simply awesome. You think of a plugin and it’s nearly impossible if you can’t find the one you’re looking for. Thousand of developers come up with new and exciting plugins which are supported, commented and rated by WordPress users and can be seen at official WordPress Plugins page.


4. Ease in Code Management and Editing

Wordpress Code Management

At WordPress, editing codes of themes/templates becomes very easy even for beginners. If you’re a quick leaner, you may immediately get the idea about what thing is kept where in WordPress theme’s code if you browse through different code files. Since it’s based on PHP, which works on functions and their calls, codes looks much cleaner and managed. And since everything is stored in different code files, it’s easy to add/edit the code by opening the appropriate file where you want to make changes unlike blogger.com where everything (your template, css, scripts, widgets, their codes, meta keywords and tracking codes etc) is stored in an all-in-one XML file which is offcourse hard to edit.


5. Extensive Customizations and Database Support

Wordpress Database SupportSince all your blog’s content are stored on your own server, you get a database where your posts, settings, and all the options are stored in different tables. You can view whole site’s database, all the tables individually, or even single entry in each of the tables. In this way you can edit/add/delete anything from anywhere you want. If you want to export your database to some other blog, you can easily do that by exporting it and importing in other blog. Like if you want to apply only the settings of your one blog to another, you just export the “options” tables from database and import in other so never have to apply whole settings in your new blog manually.


6. Multi-Site Capability & CMS Support

Wordpress Multisite and CMS

WordPress is considered one of the best blogging platforms for creating a perfect multi authored blog or a complete CMS (Content management System). By installing few plugins you can convert your simple blog into a complete CMS. As I’ve already said that with plugins support, it gets so easy to change your site the way you want it. You never have to play with codes, or do anything with scripts. Just install the plugin, activate it, and refresh your site to see the changes – All through user friendly interface and with few mouse clicks.
As far as multi authored sites are concerned, WordPress gives you multiple levels of (Admin, Editor, Author, Contributor, Subscriber) authority for your editors and writers. Learn more about these roles and capabilities at WordPress Knowledgebase.


7. Better Themes & Support

Wordpress themes and support

At WordPress you can get way more better themes than blogger blogs. Based on PHP, those themes are more robust, customizable and compatible with all browsers. While the themes for blogger blogs are based on XML and most of them are actually inspired and converted from WordPress compatible themes. At WordPress you can find hundreds of developers creating premium themes, and with the developer’s support forum (almost all of the premium themes developers have this) they try to make sure you get the full support and help right from the developer in case you face any issue. While for Blogger Blogs you rarely see premium themes from developers’ side. You have to install and choose from those free templates with self support to make any adjustment if you plan to do any in future.


8. Better Content Management by Tags & Categories

Wordpress tags and categories

In Blogger Blogs, you can label your blog post with a single or multiple labels which is good for managing your blog posts. But with WordPress you can not only categorize a blog post but can also “tag” with different keywords and as many tags as you want. Users can now search for a blog posts by not only in categories but can also look for “tags” to find a particular posts. Search engines looks for these tags in WordPress blogs to refine and present better results. This indirectly helps Search Engines to index your blog through tags, increases the chances of more visitors and increases your page views if a reader lands on your blog to search the content.


9. Better Custom Pages, Menus and other Widgets

Wordpress drop down menu and pagesBlogger.com after so many years introduced the “pages” support few months back. In pages you can put the static content like, “about us”, “contact us” pages. WordPress have this feature from the beginning. In WordPress pages you can put literally anything you want. Plus you get a cool link for your pages. e.g. http://www.mysite.com/about. Which is easy to remember unlike blogger blog’s ugly permalink for static pages (http://www.mysite.com/p/about.html). If you’re on blogger, you can’t even tell anyone to directly open your about or contact page with this hard-to-tell page links.

WordPress has easy-to-create menus, you can make drop-down navigation menus for any link or category. In Blogger blog, you need to first search and put a bunch of javascripts manually to create a drop down effect on navigation menus. Other interesting feature on WordPress is “Page Templates“, with which you can give any static page or blog post an entirely different look from pre-defined page templates (which comes with your theme). You can make your pages with full widths, remove the sidebar, or footer section by choosing the templates while creating posts/pages. Which is completely missing in Blogger Blogs. You can offcourse do this in blogger too, but to achieve this you have to go for the time consuming manual editing and if that goes wrong at any step you may end up messing with your whole template.


10. Better SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Wordpress SEOWordPress is well known for its better and quick SEO (Search Engine Optimization). With additional Tags support search engines are more comfortable to crawl and index your content. With the “Archives” page (Archive page template) you can showcase your older blog posts to your readers, and search engines crawling these archives increases the chances of better indexing. You can create sitemap of your whole site (including archives and static pages) and can optionally set the settings for search engines indexing. Plus with the help of particular plugins you can make your each post Search engine optimized by giving it a unique title, you can set meta keyword, robots settings on each individual posts.

Site’s Meta Keywords, Search Engines meta codes can be installed and managed by simple user interface. You don’t even have to open the code to install them (like in blogger). With pinging support for WordPress blogs your posts are automatically pinged to some popular pinging servers. So whenever you update your blog, these services are alerted to index your blog’s new content. You can add more pinging services through the options as well. In Blogger blog there’s no such option at all and you have to take the support from third party pinging services and manually ping your blog.


11. Comprehensive Dashboard for Admins

Wordpress comprehensive dashboard
WordPress has this all-in-one dashboard to view your current post,their status, comments, link backs, trackbacks, site’s stats (using Google Analytics) and much more. You can make new post, reply to comments or do other tasks right from this dashboard without opening any pages.
In blogger you get a dashboard with very limited options to browse in one view. To see comments you have to open a different page and didn’t I tell you that blogger’s default comment form is worst of all, specially with no spam or blocking support, most of the blogger users prefer third party comment forms over the default one. There is no record of site’s performance, no linkbacks can be seen and you have to go for third-party services and open entirely different sites each time you want to monitor and view your site’s statistics.


UPDATE: I’ve also compared blogger.com’s prominent features that somehow make Blogger better than WordPress. Read the article here.

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Development

How To Fix 502 Bad Gateway Error in WordPress

How To Fix 502 Bad Gateway Error in WordPress

We all have encountered the very frustrating 502 bad gateway error on our WordPress website many times. As speaking about WordPress, the platform often clusters with many irritating errors which all of us hates for many reasons. In which database connection issues, white screen of infinite pause are the most prominent one. But even more annoying is of the 502 bad gateway error which causes many headaches for developers on many occasions. And though finding various ways to fix 502 bad gateway error in WordPress, the developers not only waste serious time but also gets distracted with the other major issues during the website development.

So below we will be discussing few points on how to fix 502 bad gateway error in WordPress starting with the details about this error, and how it often emerges with the mishandling of the wrong code between the browser and the web server. While elaborating those, we will be then looking towards various ways about how to fix 502 bad gateway error in WordPress, as of how quickly the problem could be rectified just with the intrinsic knowledge of web Browser and sometimes DNS checkups.

How To Fix 502 Bad Gateway Error in WordPress

What is the 502 Bad Gateway Error?

Renowned by many, the 502 bad gateway error is an HTTP status code, which is then generated on browser screen when something goes wrong between the browser and web server. In other words, HTTP status codes come back with the response of web servers but are not visible on screen unless some problem arouses, and 502 bad gateway error is one of those.

The error has the specific meaning that one server while imitating as gateway or proxy, got an invalid reply-back from the inbound server. That is why the HTTP status code quickly shows the “Bad Gateway” message on the screen to notify the relevant authorities.

bad gateway error

How To Fix 502 Bad Gateway Error in WordPress

There are many ways to fix 502 bad gateway error in WordPress, in which some of the most popular and exact are given below. Trying out these can solve your problem within minutes, and you can gain back the control of your web work perfectly again.

1. Reloading the website URL from which you received the error sometimes solves the problem quickly. As this issue sometimes gets generated randomly and is temporary on the norms. Hence refreshing back the web page with the URL sometimes comes very handy in fixing the bad gateway error.

2. If the above problem persists, then closing all your active sessions of the browser and reopening it freshly could be another way to fix 502 bad gateway error in WordPress. This issue is sometimes associated with the network as well as with the internal browser metrics. Hence closing all the browser windows/tabs and reopening a new window could give you the desired results, and can luckily fix the temporary aroused lousy gateway issue.

3. Clearing your browser as a whole with all cookies and caches inside it could also fix 502 bad gateway error in WordPress. Because once your browser has crawled the bad gateway message, then it somehow gets stored in your cookies and thus can return even if there is no significant blockages are there. So making sure, that your browser is cleared with all cookies and caches is also essential in rectifying this annoying bad gateway message and can literally work for you cheaply.

4. If the bad gateway message has aroused due to some network problem, then restarting your WiFi or switch could be the next step you should follow. As it is mostly stated that the 502 bad gateway error is mainly associated with the network problem, therefore checking up your network devices and restarting them could also do wonders for you in eradicating this problem.

5. If you are using a third-party CDN, then it might also be the reason for bad gateway problem. So disabling the CDN on the temporary basis could also resolve the issue sometimes, especially when you up on the work with a free CDN. Trying out this simple step is also very cheap and gives smart solution sometimes.

6. Checking up your DNS and local DNS is also very important if you are facing this bad gateway irritation. Make sure that both your DNS and local DNS are correctly configured and the problem doesn’t lie in between those. Because it is widely stated that network issue is the main reason enlarging this problem. And DNS configuration is one of the critical aspects of your network metrics. Hence rechecking them is the right thing to do for eliminating this temporary carnage.

DNS configuration

So there are also many other ways of eradicating this problem out. In which checking your plugins configurations, themes internal metrics and other website dynamics sometimes become very prominent. But the above-defined points are termed as the most common and easy in discarding the issue cheaply and smartly. That is why all six of them have been elaborated with complete detail to give you ease finding the right solution.

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Why WordPress Is The Best Platform to Setup your eCommerce Store Online

best platform to setup your eCommerce store

Key role to the success of every online business is a professional and effective website. A well maintained and effective website can open door to earn unbelievable profits hence it’s a gateway to run any online business. WordPress has transformed over the years from a simple blogging platform to the world’s most dominant CMS. Nowadays, over 24% of all websites are managed by WordPress. It includes some of the most known brands like Bata, Mashable, CNN, BBC, and TechCrunch etc. In the past, most of the people used to avoid using WordPress for setting up an eCommerce store, but things have now completely changed. the time is not so far when WordPress will become the best platform to setup your eCommerce store.

 

WordPress The Best Platform To Setup your eCommerce Store

WordPress has become one the best platform to setup your eCommerce store for the large known online stores to new building in-house or small online stores. WordPress provides loads of resources and flexibility, which can help you to save lots of money in development.

Incredibly Easy to Install, Configure, Use, and Manage

It’s not necessary to be a coding expert to get started with a WordPress. Just spending a few hours on training, you will be able to set up and run an eCommerce site within minutes. Let it be the order management or sales monitoring, everything is very easy to manage with the help of WordPress. In most cases, it’s not even necessary to call a WordPress expert because with all the documentation provided, you can manage almost everything by yourself.

Offers a Wide Range of eCommerce Themes

WordPress works on the source of its theme system and architecture. The theme makes a site look more appealing and interesting. It helps the user to easily turn a regular WordPress blog into a multi-million dollar shopping site. WordPress offers a vast variety of eCommerce themes.

The user can not only makeover a WordPress with just a single click but also can add desired eCommerce functions to a site as well. While using WordPress it’s not even necessary to hire a professional developer for such tasks.

Open-source with a Massive Community

WordPress is open-sourced software that means you can modify and change the source code in any way to fit your required eCommerce business needs. With WordPress, you will not only have full control over your online shop but also it will be free from several commercial limitations and restrictions imposed by a regular eCommerce company.

On the other hand, the supportive and vibrant helpers behind WordPress are always ready to help users in case of getting stuck somewhere. Setting up an eCommerce business with WordPress virtually costs almost nothing. All you need to have a relevant domain name and a reliable web hosting service and you’re good to go.

Scalable, Flexible and Secure

It has mostly heard that WordPress isn’t secure enough to manage eCommerce exposures but actually, that’s not the case. The security of your online shopping business depends on how you use and set-up the WordPress. There are various numbers of dominant security solutions such as, (Security and Wordfence), which can be used to protect your WordPress based eStore against today’s ultra-advanced cyber-crimes. Hosting websites like Page, WP Engine, Microsoft Azure and Google App Engine make it possible easily for WordPress to handle huge headache of traffic. This makes WordPress the best platform to setup your eCommerce store

WordPress Plugins

Nowadays we have a wide range of eCommerce plugins available; they easily can improve your sales by placing your choice on the right eCommerce plugins for your online shops. Each of this plugin is designed to turn a normal blog into an eCommerce site.

A noble plugin comes with a great flexibility and functionality that keeps a website smooth in running and enhances your site performance. A good plugin enables the customers to experience an enjoyable online shopping and also enables the registration process more easy and comfortable.

One last thing you need is a hi-quality blogging that summarizes your products. And will help the probable customers to realize the products. A correctly written explanation of products will help the buyers. All these plugins make WordPress one of the best platform to setup your eCommerce store

No Ongoing Fees

Dissimilar other eCommerce stages, which charge a regular transaction fee along with the fixed monthly fees, WordPress ask you to pay only for what you really need. A small business owner may get hard to pay monthly subscription fee. WordPress understands it well and thus offers a comparatively a cheaper way to set-up an online store. WordPress eCommerce themes and plug-ins come with the one-time purchase you may just need to pay for a hosting company and the domain name you are using.

Conclusion

Since it’s understood, there have been a number of improvements and updates made to WordPress. With the achievement of WooCommerce, it is proved that WordPress is focusing more on selling than publishing. The dedicated team of developers behind WordPress is endlessly working hard to make it the world’s most powerful, multi-purpose Content Management System (CMS). That is the reason why anyone can create any website including eCommerce business websites with WordPress. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that soon WordPress will be known as the best platform to setup your eCommerce store.

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10 Best WordPress Themes to Use For Your Creative Agency Business

Best WordPress themes

We’re living in the world where competition between agencies, corporations and firms is getting tough. Everyone is trying to offer better products, better solutions, and better services. Online marketing is the modern times best methods of getting more customers, provided that your website is actually of high quality. Here are the ten best WordPress themes developed especially for a creative agency businesses websites.

These amazing WordPress business themes are custom-built to provide a wide range of features that you need for promoting and running an online business. If you are creating an engaging and striking website for creative agency business, check out some of the best WordPress themes. They are fully loaded with amazing features that will help you to create a website that stands out.

Best WordPress Themes For Creative Agency Business

Creative agencies are created to help you construct the brand, improving your company’s public reputation. Somewhat, a good creative agency may need help for website development. This is further highlighted due to the lack of resources, as new businesses rarely have the funds to hire an outsourced web development company.

Thankfully, networks as WordPress provide productive ground for innovation. Below are the ten best WordPress themes for creative agency business That I have gathered according to their rating and user ship all across the globe

Theme X

Theme X is an incredible multipurpose WordPress theme. It is suitable for all needs of the user. You can create millions of designs with the help of a single theme. It provides dozens of demo’s; this is the best example for designing a WordPress site according to your dreams.

best WordPress themes

Divi

Divi is a clean, reactive theme, which is versatile and easy to use. It is suitable for both creative and corporate businesses. This Theme’s elegant design gives you maximum flexibility. Even if the thought of customizing the theme makes you nervous, still you can be assured knowing that the Divi developer enables you to drag and drop aspects to build and maintain pages without any code.

best WordPress themes

Uncode

Uncode is conceptually designed, innovative, elegant, professional, attractive, imaginative and flexible best WordPress theme. It is technologically and profoundly functional. It features vibrant and responsive WordPress multi-concept, multipurpose website theme.

best WordPress themes

Agency

Let your photographs stand out and capture the attention of your target audience with the help of WPLook’s Agency WordPress theme. The Agency is a clean and minimalist designed theme, which will make your images or photographs stand out to capture the interest of visitors. This theme offers unlimited designs and customization options because it is developed on SASS, which offers wide-ranging features and capabilities.

Best WordPress themes

 

Jupiter

Just like its name of the planet, this theme is larger and better than life. If you are looking for one of the best WordPress themes, look no further than Jupiter. It offers many customizable options, ensuring that your site can eclipse your competitors. Its template varieties are divided into six categories, and in total it has 25 templates.

Best WordPress themes

Zerif Pro

Zerif Pro is the striking and clean theme for creative agency business which manages to offer a professional look to your website while maintaining a personality. The theme looks great with its straight out of the box idea. It also offers customizing options to make personalization a breeze.

Best WordPress themes

Enfold

Enfold is an outclass masterpiece developed by Kriesi, which is one of the best authors of ThemeForest. It is one of the best WordPress themes, and it is sizeable for any website. Enfold provides an easy setup predefined content, and that’s what saves quite a lot of your valuable time.

Best WordPress themes

Studio 8

Studio 8 is a top rated WordPress theme that allows everyone to built an impressive business website, due to their skill level. In the case of non-technical users, the configuration and installation will be handled by the developers. Its design never fails to impress.

Best WordPress themes

BeTheme

BeTheme provides the option for the user to get rid of the useless inner page’s background images. It also enables users to apply the parallax effect to jazz up your website. It has incredible functionality that will help you attract more visitors to your site without compromising the usability and responsiveness of your site.

Best WordPress themes

Stockholm

The developers pay great pride to themselves in developing a theme that is originally a multi-concept product. If you wish to check what Stockholm is all about, check their one of 20 stunning multi-concept demo themes, or the free live preview feature. It does not require any large amount of coding due to their easy admin panel facility.

Best WordPress themes

Above are the best available themes of WordPress for your creative business website. If you have any other best options, let me know. Your feedback is warmly welcome.

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