This is a curated collection of interesting articles I’ve seen online in the past few months. Enjoy!
5 Quick Tips for Your Photography Website in 2017 – sensible advice, including another argument against using sliders: “They don’t result in sales or leads. Among marketers and people who create commercial websites, it is known that they are a killer of both.”
Website Legalities & Your Photography Website – “website terms and privacy policies are relatively something that can easily be checked off your list with only minor revisions in the future”
Why Typography Is Important to Your Website – “Typography encompasses a number of elements that affect and are affected by web design, including choice of font, color palette, size, the length of lines, layout, and integration with a design.”
WordPress-specific
7 Reasons to love WordPress – “WordPress now supports PHP 7, promising impressive improvements in site performance. For content creators, its interface is straightforward and agile. For developers, the customization possibilities are endless.”
What’s New in WordPress 4.8 – “It is the first major release of 2017, with some long awaited new features and enhancements.”
The Do’s And Don’ts Of Choosing A WordPress Theme – “with so many themes in the pool, it can be a rather daunting task to pick the best one possible.”
15 of the Best WordPress Plugins for Photographers – “whether you are a professional photographer looking to get more views on your content or you just want to use photography to promote your brand on Instagram and other sites, you’ll want to check these out!”
How to Build a Multilingual Site in WordPress – “Presenting your site in different languages means it is more user-friendly to people from different countries and can help your site move up the rankings in these countries instead of just the English-speaking market.”
What is PHP 7 and How to Start Using it With WordPress? – “you’ll be equipped with a firm understanding of PHP, and convinced enough to update to the recommended minimum — or maybe even take the next step to PHP 7!”
WordPress Security – 19+ Steps to Lock Down Your Site – “Using outdated WordPress software, poor system administration, credentials management, and lack of necessary Web and security knowledge among non-techie WordPress users keeps hackers on top of their cyber-crime game.”
10 Things To Remember Before Launching Your WordPress Site – “From content to design to the legalities of setting up your site, check below for some essential things to check off before your site is viewable to the world.”
How to Make WordPress Faster – Much Faster! – “Website speed is a big deal. It has a direct influence on the chances of a visitor returning, conversion rates, customer satisfaction levels, and even the chances of your website ranking well in search engines, like Google.”
55+ Most Wanted WordPress Tips, Tricks, and Hacks – “Ever wondered what WordPress tips, tricks, and hacks most popular WordPress sites are using?”
SEO
How to Create Search Engine Friendly Title Tags – “Before you yawn and find some more sexy SEO topic to jam on, hear me out. Title tags are one of the cornerstones of SEO. They always have been, and as far as we can tell, they always will be.”
10 Quality Factors Search Engines Need to See on Your Site [Podcast episode, 23 min] – “While technical SEO still exists, a huge chunk of modern search engine optimization consists of “generating high-quality content.” So what does that mean?”
How to Crush Google Analytics Spam in 2017 – “This article will fully explain each type of spam that may affect your Google Analytics profile and exactly how you can remove it to prevent spam from ruining your data in the future.”
See Spikes in 404 Errors In Google Search Console? It’s Normal. – “So if you see such spikes, there is no need to panic, especially if those pages should be 404ing.”
What Should You Do If Your Search Rankings Just Won’t Go Up? – “If your rankings are stuck, there are things you can do to help them move up in the SERPs. It’s absolutely possible.”
How to Rank in Google Image Search – “When a third of all searches performed in Google are for images and 12.5% of SERPs show Image Pack results, you know it’s not a facet of SEO to be trifled with. Today’s episode of Whiteboard Friday is densely packed with all the image SEO tips you could ever want, from the bare basics to ranking factors to important next-steps.”
How to Create SEO Friendly URLs – “after tons of research and a lot of trial and error on my end, I’ve come up with what I think is a rock-solid formula. It covers all of the bases and aims to satisfy both search engine bots and of course human users. In this post, I’m going to explain the science behind creating URLs for maximum SEO as well as the logic behind each tactic.”
Others
Building a Better Photography Portfolio: Tips From a Pro – “As the head of the New York Film Academy’s photography school, Brian Dilg has seen mor than his fair share of portfolios. So, if you’re looking to impress people with your work, presentation can be almost everything. Here are some crucial tips for making your work look its best.”
How to Grow A Wedding Photography Business – New guide from PhotoShelter. “In it you’ll find advice and tips from some of our favorite wedding photographers to get your photography business off the ground, stay one step ahead of the competition, and have your clients swooning over your services.”
Stop Taking Photos – Very interesting piece on how shutter-crazy we are sometimes. “Striving to be more intentional in our actions arguably makes us more human. So if you don’t know why you’re pressing the shutter, stop taking photos.”
Trying to Do Too Much: The Decline and Fall of the Instagram Empire(video, 4 min) – “the history of Instagram—from the app’s explosive growth immediately after its release, to its current trajectory full of cloned Snapchat features and ubiquitous ads.”
Google’s new encoder makes JPEGs up to 35 percent smaller – “Speed is everything on the internet, and as a general rule of thumb: the smaller the file, the faster it’ll load. To help with that, Google created a new open-source JPEG encoder that will purportedly reduce the file sizes of images while maintaining picture quality, allowing websites to load faster.”
Adobe figured out a way to copy realistic photo styles from one picture to another – “A bunch of researchers from Adobe and Cornell University have come up with one of the coolest developments in imaging tech in recent times: the ability to transfer photo styles from one picture to another.”
