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Customizing the Error Page for Deactivated or Archived WordPress Sites

Posted on by Mario

When someone visits a site by default, that means they are deactivated, then they will see a pretty dull default screen, informing that the site has been suspended. However, the problem comes when you want to customize, or add some custom content. Therefore, as a solution, this article will show you the exact way to do that. Below are some of the ways:

Suspending Sites in Your Network – the Options

Many web developers may think that terminology around deleting and suspending sites in a network is very confusing, since it’s not clear what each one means and sometimes when you do one, the system will tell you that you’ve done another.

Below is a recap on the options for removing sites from your network.

Here’s a detail of the Multisite Sites screen, which you access by going to My Sites>Network Admin>Sites:

You can find four options for removing the site:

  • When your users signup for a site, you can deactivate reverse the activation step users. However, it can be reactivated any time, since it doesn’t permanently delete the site. Besides, both the front end and the site admin screens aren’t accessible.
  • It is important to mark a site as being archived to prevent other users from accessing it. The admin screens can be accessed but not the front end. Besides, you can archive a site easily at any time and it hasn’t been removed.
  • Once your site gets spam, your site will be marked as spam, not deleted. To make it available again, you can decide whether to unmark it as spam or delete it.
  • Delete the site, but be careful when deleting the site because you have to make sure that you are ready to delete it.

The Default Screen for Suspended Sites

When your site is removed, WordPress will show a default screen. Below are scenarios that you will see.

Deactivated Sites

Visitors can see a default screen if a site is deactivated and someone other than the (logged in) network admin visits it.

Archived Sites and Sites Marked as spam

You’ll get a different screen notification, when you mark a site as spam or archived.

I know that the screens may be too basic and simple. Therefore there is not much information or explanation about what’s meant by ‘no longer available’ or ‘archived or suspended’.

Creating a Page for Deactivated Sites

Creating a new page for displaying when someone visits a deactivated site is quite straightforward. You simply create a new file called blog-deleted.php and put it in your network’s wp-content folder. This file will then be used to display a custom page instead of the default page.

Note that this is in the network’s wp-content.php folder and so the same file will be used for any sites in your network that are deactivated. In other words, you have to create something generic, rather than something specific to one site in your network.

To avoid your site from using theme or calling any plugins or additional files, the page you create has to stand alone. As a solution, you need to include any styling in that file or call an external stylesheet, which you would put in a styles folder in your wp-content folder.

Remember to include the <head> section and the opening and closing <body> tags as these won’t be coming in via your themes’ header or footer files.

You can try this by using a very simple file with all the styling included in it or with a completely blank file if you’d like or you can copy some of the content from your theme files. For example, use the copied contents of  theme’s header.php file and edit those down significantly, then manually add the rest of the markup.

Here’s the content of  <head> section:

<?php
              // file for displaying an error message on deleted sites
?>
<!DOCTYPE html>
<head>
<meta charset=”<?php bloginfo( ‘charset’ ); ?>” />
<title><?php
              /*
               * Print the <title> tag based on what is being viewed.
               */
              global $page, $paged;
              wp_title( ‘|’, true, ‘right’ );
              // Add the blog name.
              bloginfo( ‘name’ );
?></title>
<style>
              .content {
                             width:500px;
                             height:500px;
                             margin:0 auto;
                             background:#999;
                             position:absolute;
                             left:50%;
                             top:50%;
                             margin-left:-250px;
                             margin-top:-250px;
                             padding: 10px;
              }
              .content p {
                             position: relative;
                             top: 50%;
                             transform: translateY(-50%);
                             text-align: center;
                             font-size: 18px;
                             font-family: ‘Helvetica Neue’, Verdana, sans-serif;
              }
              a:link,
              a:visited {
                             color: #fff;
                             text-decoration: underline;
              }
              a:hover,
              a:active {
                             color: #fff;
                             text-decoration: none;
              }
</style>
</head>

 

You can find some metadata and styling from the example above.

Now for the <body>:

<body <?php body_class(); ?>>
       <section class=”content”>
 
              <?php _e( ‘<p>This blog has been deleted, sorry! To create your own site, please visit <a href=”‘ . network_site_url() . ‘”>The Main Network Site</a>.’, ‘compass’ ); ?>
 
       </section>
</body>

 

The code above is just an element for the content, with a paragraph inside it and some text, which is translatable. If your network allows user sign-ups, you might need to include a link to the main site. If this site has been replaced, you might need to link to a different site or to a page on your main site explaining your policy for deleting sites, or wherever you want.

So, now the result will be like:

Isn’t it pretty? Now, you can add some different styling colors and maybe a headline. Furthermore, it is also possible to replace the default page for deleted sites and add anything you want to.

Creating a Page for Archived Sites

You can also create a custom page for sites which have been archived or marked as spam and you need to create another file also in your wp-content folder. This is called blog-suspended.php. file, but with a slightly different text. Here’s the code:

<?php
              // file for displaying an error message on deleted sites
?>
<!DOCTYPE html>
<head>
<meta charset=”<?php bloginfo( ‘charset’ ); ?>” />
<title><?php
              /*
               * Print the <title> tag based on what is being viewed.
               */
              global $page, $paged;
              wp_title( ‘|’, true, ‘right’ );
              // Add the blog name.
              bloginfo( ‘name’ );
?></title>
<style>
              .content {
                             width:500px;
                             height:500px;
                             margin:0 auto;
                             background:#999;
                             position:absolute;
                             left:50%;
                             top:50%;
                             margin-left:-250px;
                             margin-top:-250px;
                             padding: 10px;
              }
              .content p {
                             position: relative;
                             top: 50%;
                             transform: translateY(-50%);
                             text-align: center;
                             font-size: 18px;
                             font-family: ‘Helvetica Neue’, Verdana, sans-serif;
              }
              a:link,
              a:visited {
                             color: #fff;
                             text-decoration: underline;
              }
              a:hover,
              a:active {
                             color: #fff;
                             text-decoration: none;
              }
</style>
</head>
<body <?php body_class(); ?>>
       <section class=”content”>
 
              <?php _e( ‘<p>This blog has been suspended, sorry! To create your own site, please visit <a href=”‘ . network_site_url() . ‘”>The Main Network Site</a>.’, ‘compass’ ); ?>
 
       </section>
</body>

 

The page below is what you will get when you visit an archived site:

 

By this, our visitor will get more information and a link to the main site which you can replace it with whatever you want.

Hopefully, by following the steps above, you can quickly and easily replace the default pages for archived, suspended or deleted sites. As a result, visitors will get more information from the default screens which will give them a link to your main site. This will prevent users from just leaving your network entirely.

3 Techniques on How to Optimize Your Website for Multiple Keywords

Posted on by Mario

How-to-Optimize-Your-Website-for-Multiple-Keywords

With so many updates, nowadays SEO puts more priority on context. This makes context is above keywords. But, this doesn’t mean that you will neglect keywords relevancy and authority. Therefore, as a SEO engineer who works for SEO service, you have to understand and combine what Google wants and what users want.

If you assume that Google will understand the context of your content while you build a strong brand and positive user experience, you will still have to consider about the hierarchy of your content, how to organize it, and how to build context that can rank for multiple keywords, so that it will meet your conversion goals. Below are several tips on how to optimize and focus on keywords.

  1. Know Your Current Content

After determining your conversion goals, you may need to set your analytics house, and conducted keyword research, then you’re ready to organize your keyword data into meaningful topics. Instead of stemming or use all of the literal variations of the terms and its plural or singular versions, you can find sets of terms on the same topic and group them together.

Usually we often fall into the most general topics of the niche or industry when running an e-commerce site. Most B2B sites follow a pattern as well with top-level business industry terms, product or service categories and the products or service themselves.

As keywords grouped into topics, so it is possible to take the important next step of mapping your keywords to existing pages of content or conducting a content audit. As the first step you can run a crawl of the existing site structure with screaming Frog, download the HTML page results into Excel, and then get to work putting topics and terms out to the side of specific pages.

When you know you have content gaps and need to create more, that’s when you can turn around and quickly search to see which websites own the top of the SERPs for those topics and draw inspiration (without copying them) for ways to fill the gaps with your own content and draw inspiration for ways to fill the gaps with your own content and make decisions based on priority.

  1. Optimize Site Architecture

Even though, you can start once you know where you stand with content, then having a plan for filling gaps but first you need to figure out how to organize the content. This means balancing user experience, with product/service offerings and topical keyword search volume. Moreover, build out your site hierarchy working top to bottom going from most general to most specific. Even though, mostly sites are already built this way. However, site navigation and structure is often dictated by an internal or organizational view when SEO isn’t involved.

Besides, you are able to cast a wider net in terms of rankings and visibility, by taking an approach that looks at essentially any page at any level on the site as an entrance point and landing page for one or more topical keywords. In fact, all of your efforts will destruct your message, when you try to rank for too many terms with a single page or section of the site.

  1. Do Your On-Page Optimization

It is surprising that there are so many SEO campaigns that neglected the basics of on-page optimization. In fact, these SEO basics still apply. However, you need to look at it deeper than just trying to merely produce content and organize it well top to bottom in the site. Besides, you need to ensure proper categorization, when you’re building context for the user and Google. Another power in the on-page variables is having all factors working together with architecture and on-page optimization.