How to Properly Move from Medium to WordPress

After reading our WordPress vs Medium comparison, several readers asked us to how to move from Medium to WordPress. In case you were looking to switch from Medium to WordPress, this step by step guide will help you learn how to properly move from Medium to WordPress.

Before we start, here is a breakdown of all the steps that we will be covering in our Medium to WordPress migration guide:

1. Install and Setup WordPress


2. Export your Medium stories


3. Import Medium stories into WordPress


4. Import Images from Medium to WordPress


5. Setup redirects (If you have a custom domain on Medium)

Step 1. Install and Setup WordPress

Unlike Medium, WordPress is a self-hosted platform. This means that you own and control every aspect of your website.

The first thing you need to do is install and setup WordPress.

You will need a domain name and web hosting for WordPress.

We recommend using either Bluehost or SiteGround because both are official WordPress recommended hosting partners and are rated best WordPress hosting providers by WPBeginner.

Both of these providers understand beginners needs that’s why they are offering WPBeginner users an exclusive 60% discount as well as a free domain name.

After signing up for hosting, you will need to install WordPress. We have a complete step-by-step WordPress installation tutorial.

Once you have installed and setup WordPress, you’re ready to migrate your content to WordPress.

Step 2. Exporting Your Data from Medium

Medium is an innovative publishing platform with many features that help you easily publish your stories. However, when it comes to taking away your data, currently they don’t have the best tools for it.

With the help of this tutorial, you will be able to move your articles from Medium to your WordPress website. However, you will not be able to import your followers, likes, and responses to your articles.

If you have a custom domain setup on Medium, then you might be able to manually setup redirects from your Medium publication to your WordPress site. However, you will have to do it manually for each article.

Having said that, let’s look at how to export your data from Medium.

Login to your Medium account and then click on your profile picture at the top right corner of the screen.

From the fly down menu, click on the ‘Settings’ link to access your Medium account settings page.

You need to scroll down a little to the ‘Export Content’ section and then click on the Download zip button.

This will bring you to the export content page. You need to click on the Export button. Medium will then prepare a zip file with your articles and email you the link to download it.

This email can take a while, so periodically check your inbox for an email from Medium. Inside the email message, you will see a link to download your export file.

Go ahead and download the zip file to your computer and then extract it.

Inside the extracted folder, you will find your Medium articles in plain HTML format, you will also find an XML file called medium.rss.

You are now all set to import your content into your WordPress site.

Step 3. Importing Your Medium Articles into WordPress

First, you need to visit Tools » Import page and click on RSS link.

This will bring up a popup to install the RSS Importer plugin. You need to click on the Install Now button to continue.

WordPress will now download and install the RSS Importer plugin on your website. You need to click on ‘Activate plugin and run importer’ link to continue.

On the next screen, you need to click on the choose file button and select the medium.rss file from your computer.

Click on ‘Upload file and import’ button to continue.

WordPress will now upload medium.rss file and import your articles. Upon success, you will see the number of articles imported as posts with an ‘All done. Have fun’ message at the end.

That’s all, you have successfully imported your content from Medium to WordPress.

Step 4. Importing Your Images From Medium to WordPress

The RSS Importer will not be able to import images from your Medium stories into the WordPress media library. Those images will still be visible, but they will be loaded from Medium servers.

We recommend that you import those images into your WordPress media library. To do this, you will need to use a WordPress plugin called Import External Images.

Watch the video below:

Alternatively, you can follow the text instructions in our guide on how to import external images into WordPress.

Step 5. Setting Up Redirects for Custom Domain

If your Medium stories had a medium.com URL, then you cannot setup redirects.

If you were using a custom domain for your Medium publication, then you can setup custom redirects in WordPress.

First you will need to get all URLs of all your Medium articles and save them to a text file. After that you need to start setting up redirects for all your articles.

There are multiple ways to setup redirects in WordPress. You can follow the instructions in our beginner’s guide to creating redirects in WordPress for detailed instructions.

That’s all, we hope this article helped you properly move from Medium to WordPress. You may also want to see our list of 40 useful tools to manage and grow your WordPress blog

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Properly Move from Medium to WordPress appeared first on WPBeginner.

How to Permanently Delete a WordPress Site from the Internet

Recently, one of our readers asked if it was possible to permanently delete a WordPress site from the internet? Simply deleting your WordPress installation does not completely remove it from the internet. In this article, we will show you how to permanently delete a WordPress site from internet.

When and Why Permanently Delete a WordPress Site from Internet

Sometimes you may need to completely remove a WordPress site from the internet. You can simply delete WordPress files from your server, and it will become unavailable.

However, your site may still appear in search results, cached snapshots, and the Wayback Machine.

It is quite difficult to remove all traces of a website from the internet. There are thousands of websites that aggregate content from other sites, publish screenshots, offer statistics and comparisons.

With the steps highlighted in this article, you can make it difficult to find your deleted website, and its content.

Please note that this article is about deleting your self hosted WordPress.org website. See our guide on the difference between self hosted WordPress.org site vs WordPress.com blog.

If you want to delete a WordPress.com blog, then see this article on how to delete your WordPress.com blog.

Having said that, let’s take a look at how to properly and permanently delete a WordPress site from internet.

Permanently Deleting a WordPress Site from Internet

Here are the steps you can take to properly delete a WordPress site and make it difficult to find.

Step 1: Backup Your WordPress Site

First thing you need to do is to create a complete backup of your WordPress site. Even though you want to delete your site completely, you should still make a backup.

This will come in handy in case you change your mind in the future, or want to access piece of content that you had already deleted.

Step 2: Delete Your WordPress Files

Now you need to delete WordPress files stored on your server. Deleting these files will erase WordPress software as well as your themes, plugins, images and other media files.

You can do that by visiting your WordPress hosting account’s dashboard. Upon login, locate the File Manager icon.

File Manager provides a web based interface to manage files stored on your server. You need to go to the root directory and delete all files stored there.

You can also delete your WordPress files using an FTP client. If you are unfamiliar with FTP, then take a look at our beginner’s guide on using FTP.

Step 3: Block Search Engines Using Robots.txt

Now that you have deleted your website, it is time to block search engines from crawling your website.

We will use robots.txt file to tell search engines that we don’t want our pages to be crawled.

Remember, that robots.txt file is just a directive. It is respected by most search engines, but some lesser known crawlers may completely ignore it. Don’t worry we will show you how to deal with those as well.

First you will need to create a new robots.txt file using file manager in cPanel or FTP.

After creating the file you need to edit it and add the following lines:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

These two lines disallow all user-agents (crawlers like Googlebot) from accessing all URLs under your domain name.

Step 4: Removing Content From Search Engines

Even though your content does not exist any more, search engines may keep showing it for sometime.

Search engines understand that websites can go down due to technical faults. This is why they keep showing the content for a while hoping that your website will come back.

You will need to explicitly tell search engines that your content is no longer available, and it is removed permanently.

The easiest way to do this is by using the .htaccess file. You will need to create a new file in your website’s root directory and name it .htaccess.

Next, you need to edit the .htaccess file and add this code inside it:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/robots.txt
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.example\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ - [L,G]

Don’t forget to replace example.com with your own domain name.

This code will redirect all requests to your website and show 410 Error. However, it will allow crawlers to access your robots.txt file.

Despite taking all the steps, this process can still take sometime. You can speed it up further by submitting cache removal request.

Removing Website Snapshots from Wayback Machine

Archive.org’s Wayback Machine is the world’s largest archive of websites. It crawls and stores cached versions of billions of web pages.

Anyone can visit Wayback Machine and look for cached snapshots of any website.

The best way to permanently remove your website from Wayback Machine is by contacting Archive.org and request them to remove snapshots of your content.

Removing your website from Wayback Machine by emailing Archive.org will ensure that your past snapshots are never included again.

Even when your domain registration is expired and transferred to a new owner, Archive.org will not enable archiving for that domain ever again.

That’s all, we hope this article helped you learn how to permanently delete a WordPress site from internet. In case you want to start a different website, check out our guide on how to start a WordPress blog for detailed instructions.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Permanently Delete a WordPress Site from the Internet appeared first on WPBeginner.

How to Delay Posts From Appearing in WordPress RSS Feed

Recently, one of our readers asked if it’s possible to delay posts from appearing in the WordPress RSS feed? Delaying posts in your RSS feed can save you from accidental publishing and beat content scrapers in SEO. In this article, we will show you how to delay post from appearing in WordPress RSS feed.

Why Delay Feed in WordPress?

Sometimes you may end up with a grammar or spelling mistake in your article. The mistake goes live and is distributed to your RSS feed subscribers. If you have email subscriptions on your WordPress blog, then those subscribers will get it as well.

By adding a delay between your RSS feed and your live site, you get a little time window to catch an error on a live site and fix it.

RSS feeds are also used by content scraping websites. They use it to monitor your content and copy your posts as soon as they appear live.

If you have a new website with little authority, then a lot of times these content scrapers may end up beating you in the search results.

By delaying an article in the feed, you can give search engines enough time to crawl and index your content first.

Having said that, let’s see how to easily delay posts from appearing in WordPress RSS feed.

Delaying Posts in WordPress RSS Feed

This method requires you to add little code into WordPress. If this is your first time adding code manually, then take a look at our beginner’s guide on pasting snippets from web into WordPress.

You need to add the following code to your theme’s functions.php file or in a site-specific plugin.

function publish_later_on_feed($where) {

	global $wpdb;

	if ( is_feed() ) {
		// timestamp in WP-format
		$now = gmdate('Y-m-d H:i:s');

		// value for wait; + device
		$wait = '10'; // integer

		// http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/date-and-time-functions.html#function_timestampdiff
		$device = 'MINUTE'; //MINUTE, HOUR, DAY, WEEK, MONTH, YEAR

		// add SQL-sytax to default $where
		$where .= " AND TIMESTAMPDIFF($device, $wpdb->posts.post_date_gmt, '$now') > $wait ";
	}
	return $where;
}

add_filter('posts_where', 'publish_later_on_feed');

This code checks to see if a WordPress feed is requested. After that it sets the current time and the time you want to add as delay between post’s original date and the current time.

After that it adds the timestamp difference as the WHERE clause to the original query. The original query will now only return the posts where timestamp difference is greater than the wait time.

In this code we have used 10 minutes as $wait or delay time. Feel free to change that into any number of minutes you want. For example, 60 for 1 hour or 120 for two hours.

We hope this article helped you learn how to easily delay posts from appearing in WordPress RSS feed. You may also want to see our guide on how to show content only to RSS subscribers in WordPress.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Delay Posts From Appearing in WordPress RSS Feed appeared first on WPBeginner.

How to Add GIFs from Giphy in WordPress Using Giphypress

Do you want to add animated GIFs in your WordPress site? Giphy makes it easy to search, discover, and share animated Gifs on the web, in text messages, and on social media. In this article, we will show you how to easily add animated GIFs from Giphy in WordPress using Giphypress.

Pros and Cons of Using Animated GIFs in WordPress

You must have seen animated GIFs being used on popular websites like BuzzFeed, List25, Reddit, etc. GIFs allow you to add animated reactions, amusing anecdotes, and pop culture references to your articles.

The reason why GIFs are so popular is because they are fun and highly engaging. They allow you to boost the time users spend on your website. Articles with Gifs are also more likely to be shared and become viral.

The downside of animated GIFs is that they can slow down your website, and it can take a lot of time to create your own.

That’s when Giphy comes in.

Giphy is a popular website that makes it easier for you to find and share animated GIFs. It has thousands of GIF images stored in categories and sorted by hashtags.

If you are on shared WordPress hosting, then serving your GIFs via Giphy will save you bandwidth. It will also have a less impact on pagespeed and user experience on your website.

Having said that, let’s take a look at how to easily add GIFs from Giphy in WordPress using Giphypress.

Video Tutorial

If you don’t like the video or need more instructions, then continue reading.

Adding GIFs from Giphy in WordPress Posts and Pages

First thing you need to do is install and activate the Giphypress plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you need to create a new post or page. On the post editor, you will notice a new button labeled ‘GIPHY GIF Search’.

Clicking on the button will bring up the Giphy search in a popup. You will see the recent and trending GIFs along with menu and search bar at the bottom.

You can browse or search for GIFs to find the perfect GIF for the moment.

Once you have found a GIF, click on it for a larger view. Now you can click on the Embed into Post button to add the GIF into your article.

Giphypress will now embed the GIF as an iframe into your post. You can save to update your post and view the GIFs in action.

We hope this article helped you learn how to easily add GIFs from Giphy in WordPress using Giphypress. You may also want to see our guide on how to find royalty free images for your WordPress blog posts.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Add GIFs from Giphy in WordPress Using Giphypress appeared first on WPBeginner.

How to Exclude Specific Categories from WordPress RSS Feed

Do you want to exclude specific categories from RSS feed on your WordPress site? Many site owners use some categories for content that they don’t want to appear in the RSS feed of their site. In this article, we will show you how to exclude specific categories from WordPress RSS feed.

Method 1: Exclude Specific Categories from WordPress RSS Feed Using Plugin

First thing you need to do is install and activate the Ultimate Category Excluder plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation you need to visit Settings » Category Exclusion to configure plugin settings.

The settings page will display all categories on your WordPress blog with options to hide them from front page, RSS feeds, archive pages, and search results.

Simply select the exclude from feed box next to the categories that you want to exclude from your RSS feed.

Don’t forget to click on update button to save your settings.

That’s all, posts filed under your selected categories will disappear from your WordPress RSS feed.

Method 2: Manually Exclude Specific Categories from WordPress RSS Feed

This method requires you to paste code in your WordPress files. You can use this method if you are comfortable with pasting code snippets from web into WordPress.

You need to add this code to your theme’s functions.php file or a site-specific plugin.

function exclude_category($query) {
	if ( $query->is_feed ) {
		$query->set('cat', '-5, -2, -3');
	}
return $query;
}
add_filter('pre_get_posts', 'exclude_category');

This code simply excludes categories that match the given IDs. Simply replace the category IDs in the code with the IDs of categories that you want to exclude.

See our guide on how to find category IDs in WordPress.

If you just want to exclude a single category, then change the code like this:

function exclude_category($query) {
	if ( $query->is_feed ) {
		$query->set('cat', '-15');
	}
return $query;
}
add_filter('pre_get_posts', 'exclude_category');

Replace -15 with the ID of category that you want to exclude from RSS feed.

We hope this article helped you learn how to exclude specific categories from WordPress RSS feed. You may also want to see our list of 10 most wanted category hacks and plugins for WordPress.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Exclude Specific Categories from WordPress RSS Feed appeared first on WPBeginner.

How to Remove the Password Reset / Change option from WordPress

Are you looking to remove the password reset option in WordPress? By default, WordPress allows users to reset/change password by providing their email address. Sometimes you may want to disable password reset option in WordPress. In this article, we will show you how to remove the password reset / change option from WordPress.

Why Remove Password Reset/Change Option From WordPress

If you allow user registration on your WordPress site, then password reset option allows user to recover lost passwords. Normally, you wouldn’t want to change that.

However, in some usage scenarios you may want to remove this option for specific users or user roles on your WordPress site.

For example, if you have created a temporary account for someone or if you have created a demo site where users can login with a demo username and password.

The easier solution will be to just remove the password reset link. But some savvy users may already know the URL to access the password reset form.

Having said that, let’s see how you can easily remove password reset/change option from WordPress.

Method 1: Disable Password Reset/Change Option Using Plugin

The plugin method is better and easier. It allows you to disable password reset option for specific user roles or even individual users.

This way you can still control and provide password reset feature for some trusted users or user roles.

First thing you need to do is install and activate the Plainview Protect Passwords plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you need to visit Settings » Protect Passwords page to configure the plugin settings.

Simply select the user roles or individual users to disable their password change or reset option.

There is also an option to exempt individual users. This option is useful if you want to disable password reset option for all users except yourself.

Don’t forget to click on the save changes button to store your settings.

You can see the plugin in action by visiting the WordPress login page and clicking on ‘Lost your password?’ link. It will take you to the password reset page where you can try entering the username or email address for a user who does not have password reset option.

You will see an error indicating that password reset is not allowed for this user.

Method 2: Manually Disable Password Reset Option From WordPress

This method requires you to add code to your WordPress site. It is not recommended for beginner level users.

First thing you need to do is open a blank text file using a text editor like Notepad. Paste the following code inside this file.

<?php
/*
 * Plugin Name: Disable Password Reset
 * Description: Disable password reset functionality. Only users with administrator role will be able to change passwords from inside admin area. 
 * Version: 1.0
 * Author: WPBeginner
 * Author URI: http://wpbeginner.com
 */
 
class Password_Reset_Removed
{

  function __construct() 
  {
    add_filter( 'show_password_fields', array( $this, 'disable' ) );
    add_filter( 'allow_password_reset', array( $this, 'disable' ) );
    add_filter( 'gettext',              array( $this, 'remove' ) );
  }

  function disable() 
  {
    if ( is_admin() ) {
      $userdata = wp_get_current_user();
      $user = new WP_User($userdata->ID);
      if ( !empty( $user->roles ) && is_array( $user->roles ) && $user->roles[0] == 'administrator' )
        return true;
    }
    return false;
  }

  function remove($text) 
  {
    return str_replace( array('Lost your password?', 'Lost your password'), '', trim($text, '?') ); 
  }
}

$pass_reset_removed = new Password_Reset_Removed();
?>

Save this file as disable-password-reset.php on your desktop.

Now you need to upload this file to your WordPress site. You will need an FTP client to do that. See our guide on how to use FTP to upload WordPress files.

Connect to your website using the FTP client and then go to the plugins folder. The plugin’s folder is located inside /wp-content/ directory.

Upload disable-password-reset.php file from your computer to the plugins folder on your WordPress site.

Now you need to login to your WordPress admin area and visit the plugins page. You will notice a new plugin titled ‘Disable Password Reset’ in your list of installed plugins. Click on the activate link below the plugin.

That’s all, activating the plugin will disable password reset option for all users including administrators. Administrators will be able to change passwords from the admin area, but they will not be able to reset password from the login screen.

We hope this article helped you learn how to remove the password reset/change option from WordPress. You may also want to see our list of 13 plugins and tips to improve WordPress admin area.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Remove the Password Reset / Change option from WordPress appeared first on WPBeginner.

How to Link to External Links from the Post Title in WordPress

Do you want to add an external link as post title in WordPress? Sometimes you may just want to share a link with your users. Instead of sending them to a post, you may want the post title to link to the other website. In this article, we will show you how to link to external links from the post title in WordPress.

Method 1: Linking Post Title to an External Link in WordPress using Plugin

This method is easier and is recommended for beginners.

First thing you need to do is install and activate the Page Links To plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, simply create a new post or edit an existing one. You will notice the new ‘Page Links To’ meta box below the post editor.

Click on ‘A custom URL’ to add the link you want to add to post title. Now you can save or publish your post.

That’s all. The post title will now link to the custom URL you provided.

It is not necessary to use it for external links only. You can also use it to send users to different posts and pages on your WordPress site.

Method 2: Add External Link to Post Title Using Code

This method requires you to add code to your WordPress site. You can use this method if you are comfortable with pasting snippets from web into WordPress.

Simply add this code to your theme’s functions.php file or a site-specific plugin.

function print_post_title() {
global $post;
$thePostID = $post->ID;
$post_id = get_post($thePostID);
$title = $post_id->post_title;
$perm = get_permalink($post_id);
$post_keys = array(); $post_val = array();
$post_keys = get_post_custom_keys($thePostID);

if (!empty($post_keys)) {
foreach ($post_keys as $pkey) {
if ($pkey=='external_url') {
$post_val = get_post_custom_values($pkey);
}
}
if (empty($post_val)) {
$link = $perm;
} else {
$link = $post_val[0];
}
} else {
$link = $perm;
}
echo '<h2><a href="'.$link.'" rel="bookmark" title="'.$title.'">'.$title.'</a></h2>';
}

This code looks simply looks for a custom field containing your custom URL. If the post has the custom field, then it outputs the post title linked to your URL.

The next step is to replace your theme’s default display of post title with this function. You will find it in archives.php, content.php, category.php and other templates. It would look something like this:

<?php the_title( sprintf( '<h2 class="entry-title"><a href="%s" rel="bookmark">', esc_url( get_permalink() ) ), '</a></h2>' ); ?>

You need to replace it with this code:

<?php print_post_title() ?>

The code part is over, now you need to add the external URL to the post. Simply edit the post or create a new one. On the post editor page, look for the custom fields meta box.

If you cannot see the custom fields meta box, then you need to click Screen Options in the top right corner of the screen. This will bring down a menu where you need to check the box next to ‘Custom Fields’.

You will find the custom fields meta box below the post editor.

Click on ‘Enter New’ and then enter external_url in the ‘Name’ field and the URL you want to add to post title in the ‘Value’ field.

You can now save or publish your post. That’s all, your post title will now be linked to the URL you added in the custom field.

Next time you need to add a link, you just need to select the external_url custom field from the drop down menu and enter your external link in the value field.

We hope this article helped you learn how to link to external links from the post title in WordPress. You may also want to see our guide on how to add an external link icon on your WordPress Site.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Link to External Links from the Post Title in WordPress appeared first on WPBeginner.

How to Protect Emails from Spammers with WordPress Email Encoder

Do you want to share your email address on your website without getting caught by spam bots? When you add an email link or plain text email address, it will most likely be copied by an spam email harvesting bot. In this article, we will show you how to easily protect emails from spammers with email encoder.

Why is Email Encoding Important?

Most website owners don’t realize that pasting their email address into their posts, pages, or on a contact page can put you at risk for a lot of email spam.

Spammers use email harvesting bots that automatically browse the web to collect email addresses. These email addresses are then sold to spammers all over the world.

This is why we almost always recommend creating a contact form instead of sharing an email address.

Now the problem is that sometimes you may really need to add an email address that users can copy or click to email.

Thankfully there is a way to do that and protect your email address from spammers. It’s called email encoding and it’s quite easy.

Let’s take a look at how to do that.

Protecting Email Addresses from Spammers

First thing you need to do is instal and activate the Email Address Encoder plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

The plugin works out of the box, and there are no settings for you to configure.

Once you activate the plugin, Email Address Encoder simply starts encoding email addresses in WordPress posts and pages, custom post types, widgets, etc.

What that means is that it converts the plain text email addresses into decimal and hexadecimal entities.

If you see the page source of your page, then you will see the email addresses encoded looks like this:

This way when an email harvesting bot visit your page source, they will not be able to see the email addresses.

However, real human users will see the plain text email addresses in their browser window.

That’s all. We hope this article helped you protect email addresses in WordPress from spammers. You may also want to see our guide on 24 must have WordPress plugins for business websites.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

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Freebies From Atlantic.net: Six $25 Coupons To Be Giveaway!

alt="Freebies From Atlantic.net: Six Coupons To Be Giveaway!" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/atlantic-500x341_c.jpg" />

Just got a free T-shirt from Atlantic.net…. and the shirt fits just nice! So as promised, here’s me wearing the free tee. Thank you Atlantic.net! And hey Adnan, you the man, thanks!

class="border" alt="Atlantic Net T Shirt" src="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.com/images/2011/0324-2.jpg" width="750" />

Hey, Where’s The Atlantic.net Free Coupons?

Wait wait wait… I know, I know. The title says ‘Six Coupon To Be Giveaway!’ – So this means this post is not about the T-shirt (I’m just too excited with the free tee), there’s something for YOU too!

So here’s the thing, Atlantic sent me one free tee and six coupons. The T-shirt is black color, L-size; while the coupons, come with a 16 digits code, are worth hosting credits each. style="text-decoration: underline;">Since I will be keeping the cool T-shirt, I will be giving out all six coupons (valued at 0 in total) to all my readers (you!).

How Can I Get These Freebies?

What You Need To Do: Send me a simple Hello-email with the subject line “I Want Atlantic Free Coupons” at style="text-decoration: underline;">jerry (a) webhostingsecretrevealed.com. That’s all!

What I will do: I will send out the 16-digit promo code to the first six readers who send me the email. You can then code in the 16 digits into the Promo Code Field on the signup page at href="http://www.atlantic.net/Cloud-Computing/cloud-servers.html">Atlantic.net/cloud and enjoy the free credits.

class="border" alt="Atlantic Net Coupons" src="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.com/images/2011/0324-3.jpg" width="750" />

Easy? So what are you waiting for? style="text-decoration: underline;">Be the first six and drop me an email with the subject line “I Want Atlantic Free Coupons” at jerry (a) webhostingsecretrevealed.com! and grab these free hosting credits!

About Atlantic.net Web Hosting

href="http://www.atlantic.net/" target="_blank">class="border" alt="Atlantic Net Website" src="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.com/images/2011/0324-4.jpg" width="750" />

Established in 1994, href="http://www.atlantic.net/" target="_blank">Atlantic.Net is a market-leading Hosting Solutions Provider renowned for providing exceptional Infrastructure as a service, simplifying complex technologies and building a brand that people trust. Atlantic.Net operates SAS 70 Type II audited and certified hosting solutions platform to assist businesses around the globe with their advanced IT needs.

To learn more, please visit: href="http://www.atlantic.net/" target="_blank">http://www.atlantic.net/. You can also get the latest updates about the company at href="http://twitter.com/#!/atlanticnet">Twitter.com/Atlantic and href="http://www.facebook.com/AtlanticNet?v=wall">Facebook.com/AtlanticNet.

Page 27 – Web Hosting Secret Revealed

Monitor website uptime from iPhone

alt="Monitor website uptime from iPhone" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/default-image-500x308_c.jpg" />

A new version of Pingdom iPhone app has just released. As expected by many experienced webmasters, the new Pingdom iPhone app 2.0 now comes with push notifications – where you’ll get instant alert on your iPhone when your site goes down.

Push Notifications on Pingdom iPhone app 2.0

Here’s the quick print screen to show how the iPhone app works.

src="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.com/images/2009/1203-9.jpg" alt="Pingdom iPhone App with Push Notifications" class="border" />

Uptime in graphical view

Also, the new Pingdom iPhone apps added a couple of graphical tweaks. Users (both free and paid accounts) can now examine website uptime and response time trend directly from their iPhones. As you can see from figures below, graphs are shown in various date range.

src="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.com/images/2009/1203-8.jpg" alt="Pingdom iPhone App with graphical tweak" class="border" />

How much does Pingdom iPhone app cost?

This application is totally free if you have a Pingdom account (which can be created for free as well).

However, the free account allows you to monitor one website only. To go further, you will need to purchase a Basic or Business Account. The Basic membership allows you to monitoring five websites concurrently at the cost of .95/mo; while for Business Account, users get to monitor 30 websites and receive up to 200 sms alerts for a price of .95/mo.

Sidenote: What exactly Pingdom does?

In layman term, Pingdom is like a watchdog for your website. The service monitors websites and servers from multiple locations on the Internet to make sure that they are working fine. Pingdom are often used to monitor uptime for websites, FTP servers, mail servers, as well as any other kind of services that should be accessible from the Internet.

Do note that I do not receive any credits from Pingdom writing this post. It’s just because that I am very impressed with their service and think you should at least give the free account a try.

href="http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=298055896&mt=8" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Get the Pingdom iPhone app (App Store link).

Page 30 – Web Hosting Secret Revealed

Tips On Starting A Blog From Scratch

alt="Tips On Starting A Blog From Scratch" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/blogging-terms-500x372_c.jpg" />

If you have a business idea or want to start promoting existing products and services online, setting up a blog is a necessary part of this process. Using a blog, you can give existing and potential clients more information about your company and what you offer. It also gives you a chance to interact with customers, and create an online community. Taking your business online is no small challenge, but with access to millions of users around the world, it’s possible to gain far more exposure for your business using the internet than you can offline.

If you’ve never created a blog before, the set-up process might feel daunting. We’ve created a checklist of steps you should take when starting your blog from scratch to help you cover every consideration and speed up your journey to success.

class="border" alt="Blogging Guide" src="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/images/2012/1003-9.jpg" width="750" />

1. Decide whether you want to monetize your blog

Deciding whether you want to monetize your blog before you’ve actually created it might seem premature, but this decision will affect what kind of blog you create, as well as what platform you use. Therefore, it’s important to know whether you want to href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/inbound-marketing/the-most-profitable-ways-of-monetizing-a-blog/">run your blog as a business in itself (i.e. host advertising, affiliate marketing or sponsorship, or directly sell products and services), whether it’s a promotional tool for an existing website, or whether it’s a blog for fun.

2. Decide on the topic

If you already have your business, this is the obvious topic to discuss on your blog. On the other hand, if you’re setting up a blog as a business in itself, and hoping to monetize your website through advertising or sponsorship, you need to think carefully about what topics you’re going to talk about on your blog. You should choose a specific topic to attract a core audience and build up your search engine ranking. Entrepreneur rel="nofollow" href="http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/02/28/9-tips-to-start-blogging-successfully/" target="_blank"> Sudeep D’Souza recommends choosing a topic you are knowledgeable and passionate about. For example, a blog about new iPhone apps is going to attract an audience of iPhone users and establish you as an authority in that area, whereas a general blog about cell phones is unlikely to attract a group of loyal readers as the topic is too broad.

3. Find a web hosting service (if relevant)

If you want to host your blog yourself, you need to research and href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/choose-the-right-web-hosting/">find a web host that will offer the features you need. You can choose a blogging platform that provides hosting, however you won’t have as much ability to customize your blog, and you might not be able to monetize it either.

4. Get a domain name

If you want your blog to look professional, it’s a good idea to purchase an exclusive domain (e.g. www.yourname.com), rather than use a hosting platform’s subdomain (e.g. yourname.wordpress.com). When choosing a domain, start by thinking about keywords people might use to find your blog. For example, you might want your domain name to be the name of your business, or describe what your business does. If you plan to monetize your blog, consider purchasing and redirecting related domains too, such as .net, .org, and .biz.

Read Jerry’s recent article href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/featured-articles/all-you-need-to-know-about-domain-names/">All About Domain Name to dig deeper on this subject.

5. Find a blogging platform

The next step to take when starting blogging from scratch is to choose a blogging platform. The platform you choose will depend on several considerations, which we cover in more detail in choosing a blogging platform , and you should research the available options carefully. The main blogging platforms include href="http://wordpress.com/" target="_blank">WordPress, href="https://www.tumblr.com/" target="_blank">Tumblr, href="https://www.blogger.com/tour_start.g" target="_blank">Blogger and href="http://www.typepad.com/" target="_blank">TypePad. If you’re working with a limited budget, it’s possible to set a blog up for free, however you might not be able to access some features without paying a fee.

6. Create an account, and set up new blog

The first step you usually have to take after creating a new blog is to choose a title and customize some basic settings. The title of your blog will usually be the same as your domain name, however if you’ve chosen a domain name that describes the type of business you have, you should enter your business name as the title of the blog. In the beginning, your blog will only come with one page that displays your posts. To make your website as user-friendly as possible, it’s a good idea to add an “About” page, as well as a “Contact” page if necessary so visitors can read more information about you and your business.

7. Customize your blog’s appearance

Your blog’s appearance will have a huge impact on how people perceive your website and business. Most blogging platforms have a range of ready-made templates you can choose from, while some also allow you to customize your blog’s appearance using HTML and CSS. You should choose a template or design that allows your blog to stand-out, but is still in-keeping with the blog’s tone and topic.

8. Select relevant plug-ins

Some blogging platforms provide ready-made sections of code that translate into specific functions on your blog. These are called “plug-ins” and allow you to add optional extra features to your site. You can use plug-ins to add important features like a contact form, to protect your comments from spam, to help with href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/web-tools/my-quick-review-on-getresponse/">email marketing, and to improve your posts’ SEO.

Read href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/blogging-tips/essential-wordpress-plugins/">Essential WordPress Plugins.

9. Create an “About” page or bio

The “About” page will be the second-most visited page on your website after the landing page. When visitors come to your website and want to find out more, the “About” page is where they’ll go, so it’s important to provide enough information about your business, and leave readers with a positive impression. href="http://www.chrisbrogan.com/make-your-blog-design-work-for-you/" target="_blank"> Chris Brogan, a blogger and entrepreneur, says that your “About” page should show customers how you can serve them.

10. Create your first posts

Your first few posts should introduce what your blog is about, why you created it, and establish you as an authority writer on that particular topic. Publishing regular content helps build an audience quicker, and develops your credibility through consistency. It’s helpful to establish a regular posting schedule, for example two or three times per week, and stick to it. Writer and entrepreneur rel="nofollow" href="http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2006/11/10/the-easiest-instructions-for-how-to-start-a-blog/" target="_blank"> Penelope Trunk also remarks that the more you post, the more you practice. Building up a pool of excess posts early in your blogging career will take the pressure off when other areas of your life get busy.

11. Share your work

The internet is saturated with blogs, so visitors aren’t going to flock to yours unless you give them a reason. href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/blogging-tips/s-o-s-dead-blog-how-to-resurrect-your-blog-in-10-easy-steps/">Start promoting your blog early by finding other blogs to comment on, and sharing your posts via social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter. You can also ask friends and family to share your work with their friends and family, and take the first step towards building an online community.

Page 22 – Web Hosting Secret Revealed

Write Headlines Like Brian Clark, Neil Patel, and Jon Morrow: 35 Headline Samples From The A-List Bloggers

alt="Write Headlines Like Brian Clark, Neil Patel, and Jon Morrow: 35 Headline Samples From The A-List Bloggers" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/0409-2-500x507_c.jpg" />

class="alignright size-medium wp-image-642" alt="Quick Sprout Case Study Headlines" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/0409-8-300x297.jpg" width="300" height="297" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/0409-8-300x297.jpg 300w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/0409-8-150x150.jpg 150w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/0409-8-130x130.jpg 130w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/0409-8.jpg 313w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />

There are two things you bloggers should know: One, great bloggers write great headlines, and two, great headlines often follow sets of similar formulas.

Great headlines follow sets of rules – they are compelling, specific, intriguing, and often follow sets of proven formula.

Yes, just like maths, there are formulas that can help us to write headlines that work. It’s no coincidence that three out of four Neil’s case studies headlines on QuickSprout started with the phrase “How I…”. Headlines written based on certain sets recipes simply get more clicks and reads online. And these types of headlines will always work, because good headlines tap into psychological triggers that are programmed into the human mind.

In other words, the easiest way to write powerful headlines is to follow these recipes. As a smart blogger, you should keep a set of headline formulas, templates, or cheat sheet for your writing references. And, that’s what I’m going to offer in this article – we are going to look into five most frequent-use headline formulas and some real life examples.

List Headlines: X Ways To Get This And That Done

Brian Clark of CopyBlogger once title="7 Reasons Why List Posts Work" href="http://www.copyblogger.com/7-reasons-why-list-posts-will-always-work/" target="_blank">said this about list-headline:

Any headline that lists a number of reasons, secrets, types, or ways will work because, once again, it makes a very specific promise of what’s in store for the reader. A nice quantifiable return on attention invested goes a long way toward prompting action, and as long as you deliver with quality content, you’ll have a satisfied reader.

Truth is, you can never go wrong with headlines consist of a list.

style="text-align: center;">class="aligncenter wp-image-643 border" alt="List Type Headlines" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/0409-2.jpg" width="750" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/0409-2.jpg 650w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/0409-2-295x300.jpg 295w" sizes="(max-width: 650px) 100vw, 650px" />

Here are a couple of recent list-headlines written by title="ProBlogger.net Darren Rowse" href="http://www.problogger.net/archives/author/darren/" target="_blank">Darren Rowse. Note that how these titles state clearly the reason why you should read the articles; and without doubt, they attract me to click  in and read it.

1. 9 Steps To Creating A Successful e-Course

2. 9 Benefits (and 3 Costs) Of Building Community On Your Blog

3. 7 Strategies For Growing Community On Your Blog

Other Similar Headline Samples

In case you need more samples, here are couples similar headlines extracted from other popular blogs.

4. 5 Tips to make Facebook Marketing Mobile Friendly

5. 4 ways to maximize the social media presence at your next event

6. 10 sure-fire headline formulas that work

7. 7 more sure-fire headline templates that work

8. 101 sure-fire ways to make people hate your marketing

How-To Headlines: How To Do This And That

style="text-align: center;">class="aligncenter wp-image-644 border" alt="Neil Patel's headlines" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/0409-1.jpg" width="750" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/0409-1.jpg 650w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/0409-1-300x289.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 650px) 100vw, 650px" />

I believe you see this type headlines everywhere. Why not? How-to headlines work like a charm always. If you are a frequent reader on title="Quick Sprout" href="http://www.quicksprout.com/" target="_blank">QuickSprout, you should know Neil Patel  loves using this headline method to hook his readers. For instances:

9. How To Use Rejection To Achieve Your Business Goals

10. How To Make Your Site Insanely Fast

11. How To Think Like Google

Other Similar Headline Samples

There are plenty of variations you can use on how-to headlines. Here’s a few that pop up in my mind while writing this article. With a little brainstorming session, I am sure you can come up with a lot more than these.

12. How to lose fats without exercising

13. How to make money without sacrificing your TV time

14. How to jump higher and play basketball like Michael Jordan

15. How to build a twitter account with tons of followers and make ,000/mo

16. How to make use of Pinterest for your social media success

17. How to make use of your house sofa for your six pack abs

Hey You! Headlines Focusing On Target Audiences

class=" wp-image-645 alignright border" alt="Swine Flu Posts On Huffington Post" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/0409-4.jpg" width="300" height="300" />

Headlines that call names or focus on certain group of views are often very effective in building rapport with the target audience and hence creating awareness.

The image on your right (extracted from href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/28/swine-flu-what-travelers_n_192436.html" target="_blank">Huffington Post) is a very good example: This article has information about Swine Flu for travelers. Not parents, not teachers, not doctors; but only for folks who are on the road or will be travelling soon.

Other Similar Headline Samples

Here are some real life examples displayed by bloggers at Copy Blogger, Boost Blog Traffic, and Out Spoken Media.

18. Bloggers beware: Avoid these pitfalls when you start a blog

19. What you need to know as a web hosting shoppers

20. Everything a marketer needs to know can be learned from journalism

21. The woman’s guide to having it all

22. An open letter to all the bloggers cluttering the web with forgettable content

Case Study/Report Style Headlines

By clipping the phrase ‘Case Study’ (or other similar words) into your headlines, you inform your readers that your articles are thoroughly researched and consist of valuable information. title="Beth Hayden" href="http://www.copyblogger.com/author/bethhayden/" target="_blank">Beth Hayden has some perfect examples for this type of headlines on CopyBlogger.com.

style="text-align: center;">class="aligncenter wp-image-646 border" alt="Case Study Types Of Headlines" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/0409-3.jpg" width="750" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/0409-3.jpg 650w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/0409-3-300x287.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 650px) 100vw, 650px" />

For examples, Hayden wrote these two headlines recently.

22. Case Study: How To Build A Vast Audience by Mastering The Art Of The Interview

23. Case Study: How Aurelien Amacker Escaped The Cubicle

However, do note that this type of headlines might backfire if it’s not handled properly – a case-study-titled article requires lots of  in-depth research and detail writings as the readers’ expectation is high. You certainly do not want to write a case study headline for your 500-words-simple-article.

Other Similar Headline Samples

24. Case study: How Jane made ,000 during dot-com booms

25. Tax report: Why the riches are getting richer

26. Case study: The truth about unlimited web hosting offers

27. Consumer report: Are you spending too much on your SEO campaign

Threat Headlines: Don’t Say That I Never Warn You

style="text-align: center;">class="aligncenter wp-image-647 border" alt="Treat Headlines" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/0409-7.jpg" width="750" height="432" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/0409-7.jpg 650w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/0409-7-300x172.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px" />

What is your readers’ greatest fear? What’s keeping your readers up at night? Good salesmen leverage human’s fear to sell more; a good writer should do the same his/her headlines. A threat headline gets us to take action because it creates fear. It also implies that something we trust has misled us and may be at risk. If you are serious about writing a blog that sells, you should use more treat headlines.

Here’s what Jon Morrow has to say when it comes to writing good treat headlines.

The key is to be specific. You want the reader to think, “How on earth did they guess that I’m afraid of that? Are they psychic?” Like many headline hacks, your power to use it will grow in proportion to how well you know your audience.

Now, let’s look at some samples, shall we?

More Similar Headline Samples

28. 15 warning signs that your business sucks

29. SEO scams – 12 warning signs that you hired the wrong SEO

30. Can we really trust bought email lists

31. Suicide, shame, and the painful truth about accomplishing your goals

32. 9 great lies of online sales and marketing

33. The biggest lie in email marketing (why most email is junk mail)

34. The shocking secrets about budget hosting (must read)

35. Alert: The new social media marketing scam to avoid

Bottom Line: What’s Next?

Okay, so now you have five surefire formulas and 35 headline samples for reference. Ready to write some kick-ass headlines? Here’s what I want you to do, in your next blogpost, use one of the headline formulas stated above and post the link in the comment box below. I might not read everything you write. But if it comes with great headlines, I promise that I will glance thru and add your headlines as samples #36 and so on.

Credits: This article uses multiple references from various A-list blogs, including title="Copy Blogger" href="http://www.copyblogger.com/blog/" target="_blank">Copy Blogger, title="Pro Blogger" href="http://www.problogger.net/blog" target="_blank">Pro Blogger, title="Social Media Examiner" href="http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/" target="_blank">Social Media Examiner, title="Boost Blog Traffic" href="http://boostblogtraffic.com/" target="_blank">Boost Blog Traffic, title="Out Spoken Media" href="http://outspokenmedia.com/" target="_blank">Out Spoken Media, title="Quick Sprout" href="http://www.quicksprout.com/" target="_blank">Quick Sprout,  title="Distilled Blog" href="http://www.distilled.net/blog/" target="_blank">Distilled Blog, and title="Hub Spot" href="http://blog.hubspot.com/" target="_blank">HubSpot Blog. Thanks a lot for all the great work – I wouldn’t have learn so many about persuasive writings without you guys.

Page 21 – Web Hosting Secret Revealed