Month: May 2018

Instant Feedback: Choosing the Right WordPress Commenting Plugin for your Website

Posted on by Mario

Instant Feedback_ Choosing the Right Commenting Plugin for your Website

It’s no secret that for every insightful feedback or comments you’ve received on the internet there’s going to be at least 10 more that are downright unconstructive. Whether it’s in the form of trolling, incendiary rhetoric or questionable stories of how Jenny earns $8,000 a month working from home and can now afford a brand new Mustang GT, pointless feedback has always been a problem with the internet. If you’ve ever spend some time inside Reddit and 4chan, you should already know firsthand how chaotic the internet can be when let loose, as the veil of anonymity it provides allow users to deflect consequences, a luxury real life does not provide. A glance at the Gamergate harassment scandal from a few years ago should leave no doubt to just how toxic the internet can be.

The biggest critics are in the online comments

Things have gotten so bad in the last few years that a couple of prominent publications decided to remove comments entirely, partly because the discussion itself has shifted to social media platforms and partly because it can easily devolve into an anarchy only with the slightest instigation. It’s not totally uncalled for but such blanket movement does severely restrict a website’s capability of fostering a community and negating users from being able to have a two-way conversation with the writers themselves, as I know from personal experience. Take for example, the music blog Stereogum, where a close-knit community around its regular commenters and the writers has formed thanks to the site’s regular interaction with its community and fostering them through a regular weekly roundup of the most and least-liked comments.

Now, if you’re just starting a WordPress website, it’s not very likely that you’d have the resource to create a specialized comment section of your own, not that you have the required community to support it anyway, so your choice would strictly be limited to plugins. There are a number of choices available for your web developers when it comes to this, some coming with more bells and whistles that you’ll ever need while others are barebones and anonymous so as to encourage impulse feedback. As it’s impossible to do an overview on every one that’s available, I’d limit my coverage into 4 of the more popular ones.

  • Native WordPress plugin

Simple, straightforward and as sophisticated as a doorstop. The native WordPress plugin is bundled within the core WordPress platform and as such remains the go-to choice for a lot of spartan webmasters out there. The only requirement for commenting is users are required to leave their name, e-mail address and optionally, their website but as there is no confirmation required, it practically allows anonymous comments and as such, it has made a name for itself as a breeding ground for spams. To top it all off, the native plugin does not allow threaded comments, no notification for commenters, no comment edits and its Achilles heel, no upvotes and downvotes, depriving our society of instant gratification from their primary lifeblood. It’s definitely usable but should probably be used solely as a stepping stone for better and bigger things.

  • Jetpack comments

Jetpack is one of several enhancements available for the native WordPress comment plugin and arguably the most popular. While it doesn’t fundamentally change how commenting work, it is after all an enhancement to the native plugin, it adds several useful functionality that improve the experience. Jetpack adds social media logins, enabling users to comment using their Twitter, Facebook or Google credentials while still allowing anonymous comments, providing a compromise between both worlds. Additionally, Jetpack allows for response notifications, making it easy to start a discussion between commenters. The problem with Jetpack is that the comment plugin is bundled with several different plugins that you might not want to use even though the comment plugin itself is light enough to not seem intrusive to your website.

  • Facebook comment plugin

This one’s self-explanatory; the Facebook plugin basically turns your commenting platform into a Facebook wall and all its functionalities. That means the like button, a reply button for threaded comments and the ability to sort comments based on newness or likes. As with everything Facebook, you are required to have and login into your Facebook account to leave a comment, which could limit your audience as even with 2 billion users worldwide, Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal and data privacy issues has left users somewhat nervous about the social media giant. Still, this restriction also means that you could cut down on spams as anonymous comments are impossible and Facebook has been doing a relatively good job shutting down spam accounts. The thing is, Facebook’s comment plugin isn’t the easiest to integrate so unless you have a web developer on standby, stick to other plugins in this list.

  • Disqus

By far the most fully-featured and popular third-party plugins out there, Disqus is used by a lot of mid-tier websites (popular websites that aren’t big enough to warrant a specialized comment section) such as gaming-focused Destructoid and pop culture magazine Entertainment Weekly. Disqus has all the necessary features: comment edits, threaded comments, social media logins, upvotes and downvotes and response notifications. What makes Disqus different is that it acts as a social network platform of its own, enabling commenters to see the profile and comment history of other commenters (as long as it’s not set to private) and follow them to see what they have to say across all sites that use Disqus.

As a dedicated commenting plugin, Disqus offers a lot of functionality that comes with the territory. Disqus is one of the few to offer support for other media, with image and video linking being supported but also offering users to hide them if seeing the same memes over and over again is not their thing. Disqus also allows for administrator moderation, either by the site administrator regarding problematic comments or by Disqus’ automatic spam filter, and self-moderation, enabling users to block other users so that any other comment from that user will be hidden from view. These fancy features come with two major caveats though, Disqus can be slow to load and the free version is bogged down by ads, requiring you to step up to the premium plan of US$9 a month to go ad-free.

So, which one should you go for? That mostly depends on your needs. Disqus is by far the fanciest of them all and is objectively the second-best feature outside of having a specialized comment system of your own but is only free with ads. Enhanced WordPress plugins like Jetpack offers just enough features to keep them from being primitive but still leaves you vulnerable to spam. Facebook plugin is a middle-ground, it has more features and Facebook’s ecosystem already has a way of handling spam but ongoing issues with the platform isn’t likely to sit well with a number of users. You could always start with the simpler ones and move on to Disqus or a specialized comment system down the road but I should point out that such systematic changes aren’t always going to sit well with some users. Figure out which features you need and what limitations you could live with and choose accordingly.

These Risky Black-Hat SEO Techniques Are Still Used Today (But Please Don’t Be Tempted)

Posted on by Mario

Risky Black-Hat SEO Techniques that Are Still Used Today

It is not uncommon anymore for business owners to know the importance of having a website for the growth of their business. After all, it is such a waste if you sell good stuff but nobody can find it, right? For that reason, SEO exists. Many business owners hire SEO services, but so many of them are still not aware of the dark side of SEO if you use it the wrong way, like using black-hat SEO techniques for your website. Black-hat SEO techniques are the “quick” methods or the “short-cuts” used for increasing your website visibility in a way that is against search engine rules and guidelines. Basically, you might get fast results with these techniques, but in a negative way that if search engines find out about it (which they usually do), it will cause damage to your business, resulting in getting penalised for what you have done. Therefore, if you are a business owner and wanting to hire an SEO company, make sure you know these black-hat SEO techniques, so that you will avoid these techniques in the future. This article will tell you the risky black-hat SEO techniques that are actually still used even until today. Keep reading to find out!

Paid links

Buying links for SEO may be undeniably advantageous for the buyer, as it is easy. If you pay links for SEO, once a transaction is done, there is no need to bother with the quality of the content. Also, the anchor text, which is a strong Google ranking factor, is also chosen according to customer’s preferences. This method are able to effectively manipulate search engine rankings, and that’s why this SEO technique is classified as a serious black hat.

Spam comments

Spam has been people’s public enemy even since the dawn of time. Yes, it is undeniably but annoyingly true. You may often see spam comments in blogs which might bother the blog’s owner, especially if the comments are not relevant to the blog posts at all. While there are some ways you can do to make the comments more natural than just becoming spam messages, most of the comments we have seen are all spammy and irrelevant, making them really bad for SEO. If your blog also contains spams, make sure you set comment moderation for your blog so that you can filter comments before publishing the comment.

Duplicate content

Oh, yes, another content you might find on Google. Just like the name suggests, duplicate content means as the well-known “copy and paste” content creation practice across domains and means that blocks of copied content from different sources exactly match each other or look very much alike.

Search engines prefer unique and high quality content which is why content purposely duplicated across different domains is perceived as one of the worst black hat techniques. You might search for something on Google, but you accidentally find the same results in the Google listing. This can be a clear and obvious sign of manipulation of search engine rankings and it may usually result in poor user experience.

That’s the most common parts of black-hat SEO techniques that are surprisingly (or unsurprisingly) still used even until today. With this knowledge in mind, you can avoid doing black-hat SEO techniques. If you need more information about SEO, feel free to contact us and our team will be ready to assist you.

Stop Using These Used-to-Be Web Design Trends If You Want to Attract More Customers in 2018

Posted on by Mario

Stop Using These Used-to-Be Web Design Trends If You Want to Attract More Customers in 2018

In a world where everything is constantly changing as time goes by, we are expected to adjust to the changes, especially business owners. Why? Before answering that question, first let’s define what exactly a business is. Business is the act of selling goods or services and earning profits through satisfying human needs. Basically, a business owner earns money for a living through fulfilling people’s needs especially those who need what the business owner has in store. With that knowledge in mind, a business owner has to do what it takes to make those people stay. Well, it is always possible to do that in this era, where everything is almost digital and can be reached anywhere and anytime they want.

One of the ways you can do to reach your target audience in this era is by having a website. A website is one of the important elements in communicating with your target audience and providing information about your business so that they can find reasons to trust your business. However, building a website sometimes is not easy. You have to harmonise and combine every components needed in building a grandiose website for your target audience to see. One of the very crucial components in building a website is a web design. If SEO is the component that can boost your online visibility, let’s just say; “introducing your website” to search engines and web development is one component that brings your website to life, then web design is one important component that makes your website “feel alive.” Want to know more? Well, if you are a business owner, especially if you are just starting out, this article is perfect for you!

Just like fashion, interior design, or even cosmetics, web design is also changing with time, because of the trends. Trends are always coming in the future, whether you like it or not. If business owners want their business to run smoothly, they need to pay attention to the trends. Pay attention, not immediately change to the trends. Just because something is on trend, that doesn’t mean you have to follow every one of them. While trends have to be adjusted to your business too, there are trends that are just not right no matter what kind of business you have is. Below we have provided you with web design trends that are not cool anymore.

Bevel and Emboss

Have you ever worn a skinny jeans when it was the “it” in its time? Then suddenly now when you look at a photo when you wore it, you’re like “what was I thinking?” Yes, that is also what happens when you see bevel and emboss now.

Web 2.0 Gloss

The bevel and emboss trend wasn’t suddenly left behind one day in favour of minimalism. Instead, it had to evolve into something even more ornate before we decided to run in the completely opposite direction. Can you imagine a button glossier than your lip gloss? Ugh. No. Sure you can add a glow or two to a button, but overdoing this is not right and will just hurt your audience’s eyes.

Too much cursive text is a curse!

We admit that cursive text is beautiful. Only if you use it for a display on your home’s wall. But for a website? Do you expect that to attract your target audience? One of the crucial parts in a websites is the readable text. Cursive text is beautiful, but it is not readable on a website, especially if you are trying to explain about your business in a bit longer sentence.

Yes, those are the trends that “had their time” but their time is done. Now that with more website design trends coming, more websites are beautifully designed and even provide simpler navigation with “good looks.”  But we never know what the future holds. Maybe designers will work on new things or just patch up the old designs to make them even better in the future. Well, let’s wait for new trends and keep paying attention.