Most of us have used Google Search Console, but many SEOs ignore Bing Webmaster Tools. Columnist Tony Edward argues that we should not overlook this rich source of data.
Author: Yelena Shabrova
When Bots Go Bad: Common UX Mistakes In Chatbot Design
Great chatbot UX can amuse customers into buying your product and loving your brand. Or they can piss them off the same way shitty customer support does.
As the full benefits of chatbots become more proven, most companies will deploy their own AI-assisted bots to augment their customer service, marketing, sales, product development and social media teams. Remember that user experience remains the key factor that will contribute to the success (or failure) of your chatbot strategy.
Really Good Emails
Really Good Emails showcases a huge handpicked collection that provides insight into product email and customer email cycles. powered by community submissions and their own obsessive drive to find the best email examples out there.
Adding Free SSL Certificates to WordPress with Let’s Encrypt
An SSL certificate encrypts the connection between your site and your visitors’ browser so hackers can’t steal personal information. SSL certificates can be cumbersome to install and can be expensive, but this situation is changing.
Let’s Encrypt is a new open source certificate authority that is backed by top companies including Automattic (the force behind WordPress), Facebook, Mozilla, Chrome, Cisco, and Sucuri. The aim of the project is to make installing SSL certificates automated and free for everyone.
wpmudev has everything you need to know about Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates and how to use them with WordPress right here.
Do keyword rankings even matter anymore?
Some SEOs and brands think that rankings are a very important metric to track for SEO success. But is this really the case? Some sites rank well for high-volume keywords but don’t get any benefit from it because the keywords do not meet user intent, and the user ends up leaving the site because they could not find what they are looking for. This leads to a bad user experience.
Is it useful for SEOs to track keyword rankings anymore? Winston Burton, a columnist at Search Engine Land, weighs in.
Flexbox Patterns
These interactive examples will show you practical ways to use flexbox for building UI components. They start out simple and get more complex near the end. But before you use these patterns in your own code, heed the warning from the author, CJ Cenizal:
I don’t recommend copy-pasting these examples directly into production code. I’m only trying to demonstrate different ways of using flexbox through these examples, so they may not incorporate some accessibility best practices (such as using semantic HTML5 elements and the role attribute). Before using this code in production you should make sure it meets your accessibility needs.
Sordid Confessions of WordPress Developers and Designers
WPMU DEV reached out to developers and designers asking them what was their funniest confession about their work. The result is a categorized list of funny “confessions” to which many of us can probably relate 🙂
8 Old School SEO Practices That Are No Longer Effective – Whiteboard Friday
Are you guilty of living in the past? Using methods that were once tried-and-true can be alluring, but it can also prove dangerous to your search strategy. Rand Fishkin spells out eight old school SEO practices that you should ditch in favor of more effective and modern alternatives.
Grid by Example
This site developed and maintained by Rachel Andrew offers an extensive collection of examples, video and other resources to help you learn CSS Grid Layout.
Reveal Template – WordPress plugin for developers dealing with complex themes
Reveal Template helps determine the exact template being utilized to render the currently displayed page in WordPress or those to which WordPress falls back if the theme does not have a template of its own.
The revelations can be shown in several ways: in the site footer (default plugin setting), in a widget that can be placed into any widgetized area, as a shortcode within a post/page content area, or a template tag.